Angry Birds stretches its wings and swoops in on the board game market - <AUTHOR> http://www.precentral.net/angry-birds-stretches-its-wings-and-swoops-board-game-market-video

<comment><USER2> Came here expecting tacky tie-in... Slightly ashamed to say that I really want this.

<comment><USER3> My second reaction to Angry Birds - right after "hey, this is Artillery with more amusing graphics" - was "hey, this is the virtual version of that game with the blocks, the toy soldiers, and the rubber bands that my dad played as a kid, and then taught to me when _I_ was a kid."

I predict they will sell a lot of these playsets. Video is great but miniatures have a charm all their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coming soon: The Angry Birds Movie...

<comment><USER5> Close - it's actually a cartoon: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/18/angry-birds- cartoon...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/18/angry-birds-cartoon-in- wo_n_810209.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think maybe I should just set up a direct deposit between my bank account and rovio.

</comment><comment><USER7> An interesting bubble, this Angry Birds phenomenon. And people seem to be starved to buy things, all the time.

<comment><USER3> The secret is the pricing. Back in the old days I spent more money in the first _hour_ of my Magic: The Gathering habit than my wife and I have spent on Angry Birds. Of course, MtG required printing and shipping physical cards.

<comment><USER7> Still, even 0.99$ or whatever it costs is not nothing. I know people who have racked up several hundred EUR in App shopping. It adds up.

And people don't buy every game that is cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know it's execution that matters, but it sort of disappoints me in an idealistic sense that Angry Birds got so widely accepted and liked when the concept isn't original; they just took another game and spiced it up a bit. Still a great achievement, but it makes me feel weird.

</comment><comment><USER9> Dear internet: Any other notable i.e. good board game adaptations of video games?

<comment><USER10> <http://boardgamegeek.com> is probably the resource you want to look at for board games. You can probably find a list of boardgames for video games.

<comment><USER11> Yup, here it is, more than 200 of them: [http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1101/video- game-t...](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1101/video-game-theme)

Very few of them are 'notable', as far as I know.

<comment><USER12> Well sometimes it's the other way around that's notable. See Spacehulk. Awesome board game and a pretty good video game as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These guys are printing money.</comment>


SNHU to cut tuition from $31,000 to $10k, revamp on-campus learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.unionleader.com/news/health/coronavirus/snhu-to-cut-tuition-from-31-000-to-10-000-revamp-on-campus-learning/article_03612259-97b8-5ff6-9e1c-134b8e8d375d.html?block_id=664693 <comment><USER2> There's going to be layoffs in the future for faculty. Instead of tenure-track faculty or at least term faculty where one could make a living and plan for the future you now have contingent faculty. At my institution the rate for online courses is USD 125 per student and course. To make 50 kUSD yearly salary a faculty member must teach 400 students!

Education isn't the way to a decent living any longer, neither do the students get an education if faculty salaries are like this.</comment>


So You Want My Job: Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://artofmanliness.com/2009/09/09/so-you-want-my-job-entrepreneur/

<comment><USER2> "First, I wanted the challenge and freedom of running my own show. I like the idea of waking up in the morning and knowing that the success of my company depends directly on the decisions I make. Second, I believe that one of the surest and most responsible paths to financial freedom is through building a successful small business that creates jobs and wealth for a community."

That pretty much sums up my motivation for going down my own path, hopefully soon.</comment>


Pony: Lock-less, data-race-free concurrency - <AUTHOR> https://tutorial.ponylang.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> " \- It's type safe. Really type safe. There's a mathematical proof and everything.

\- It's memory safe. Ok, this comes with type safe, but it's still interesting. There are no dangling pointers, no buffer overruns, heck, the language doesn't even have the concept of null!

\- It's exception safe. There are no runtime exceptions. All exceptions have defined semantics, and they are always handled.

\- It's data-race free. Pony doesn't have locks or atomic operations or anything like that. Instead, the type system ensures at compile time that your concurrent program can never have data races. So you can write highly concurrent code and never get it wrong.

\- It's deadlock free. This one is easy, because Pony has no locks at all! So they definitely don't deadlock, because they don't exist.

"

"By sharing only immutable data and exchanging only isolated data we can have safe concurrent programs without locks. The problem is that it's very difficult to do that correctly. If you accidentally hang on to a reference to some isolated data you've handed over or change something you've shared as immutable then everything goes wrong. What you need is for the compiler to force you to live up to your promises. Pony reference capabilities allow the compiler to do just that."

"Reference capabilities allow you to label different bits of data based on how that data can be shared. The Pony compiler will then verify that you are in fact correctly using the data based on the labels you provide. Reference capabilities combined with Pony's actor model of concurrency makes for a powerful pairing."

[https://www.ponylang.io/discover/](https://www.ponylang.io/discover/)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some areas in 2017 which can be automated in Banking/Finance? - <AUTHOR> As an outsider not working in Banking/Finance what are some problems which needs to be solved in 2017.<p>1) What are some pain points which have been there forever which should be solved? 2) What software systems are aging and needs to be replaced? <comment><USER2> I used to work in enterprise performance management software, which touches corporate finance / FP&A a little bit. I have some ideas, always down to chat.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably inaccessible to an outsider, but there is strategically a big push in the industry to automate liquidity and market making across derivatives and fixed income.</comment>


Show HN: New Cool Calendar App for Android Just Launched - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/03/oneview-is-a-surprisingly-refreshing-calendar-app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Finally,

I showed you all this app idea a while back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846108)

It was #1 here at hacker news most of the day. So I put in an extra gear and got the app finalized and launched.

It has been a side project of mine for the past 3.5 years. Basically, it's a clean Calendar app visualized as a zoomable and scrollable timeline. Developed on an HTML5 canvas.

Hope you all like it :)

<comment><USER2> Great job with the app.

Any specific reason to develop it using web technology over native?

Since the app is developed using Cordova, it shouldn't require much work to get a working iOS version.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason for the web technology choice is firstly that it works on the web :) and secondly for not needing to maintain code bases for each OS.

It has meant a lot of extra work, so I'm not sure I would recommend that choice to others.

And, yes, the iOS version shouldn't take much work :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Been using this as a replacement for Sunrise, and absolutely love it. It would be nice to see the app better adhere to material design guidelines. Also, you might want to prevent text selection under the "Calendars" view.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it :) I'll check on that detail on the Calendars View, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, congrats, I've been waiting for this! When's the german localization due? I know you already have some volunteers working on it.

Keep up the great work!</comment>


Sites with great user logins, or great UI in general? - <AUTHOR>

Just looking for some inspiration. here's a few that I've stumbled across:<p>http://www.freelancesuite.com/demo/ http://www.safaribooksonline.com/ http://grooveshark.com/ <comment><USER2> This is more of a design showcase site, but you can have a look at Behance and you might find some inspiration. You can also filter by web design, web development, UI, information architecture, or interaction design:

[http://www.behance.net/?sort=appreciations&time=all&...](http://www.behance.net/?sort=appreciations&time=all&content=projects&search=web&field=102)

</comment><comment><USER3> State farm actually has a really setup for login. It's in the right place (should always be upper right), and its obvious but not obtrusive. It expands to show the password field when you click it. <http://www.statefarm.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you checked dribbble?

<http://dribbble.com/search?q=login></comment>


Single-user Unix - <AUTHOR> http://arcanesentiment.blogspot.com/2011/02/single-user-unix.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ArcaneSentiment+%28Arcane+Sentiment%29 <comment><USER2> His own examples illustrate why it's bad to treat Unix as a single-user system: I _hate_ using software from developers who are always logged in as root. You can't anticipate the needs of admins and users on multiuser systems when you develop as the most powerful user in an environment. "Run it as root" is not practical advice in the real world and it's a bad habit to get into during development.</comment>


FISA Court opinion details secret Patriot Act interpretation used for NSA spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/courts/fisc/br13-09-primary-order.pdf

<comment><USER2> "The sole purpose of this production is to obtain foreign intelligence information in support of [redacted, a quantity?] individual authorized investigations to protect against international terrorism and concerning various international terrorist organizations."

So collecting records of my mother's (domestic) phone calls serves this?

EDIT: Also interesting: "no recipient of any section 215 Order has challenged the legality of such an Order, despite the explicit statutory mechanism for doing so." Thanks Verizon, AT&T, et al!</comment>


Warning – iOS 8.0.1 Update Breaks Cellular Connection - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/macrumors/status/514825605880504320 <comment><USER2> Can confirm on AT&T / iPhone 6 :(

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy the download took forever for my update. If it was speedy I would have run into quite the pickle.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:Should google include tweets and retweets as part of pagerank? - <AUTHOR>

Don't know if this has already been asked or discussed to death or whether it's a stupid question.<p>Anyone have any opinions on whether Google should or have plans to include tweets and re-tweets of url's as part of their page-rank calculation? <comment><USER2> If this happened google bombing would become that much easier.

I shudder to think of what 4chan would do with such power

</comment><comment><USER3> The spam on twitter is bad enough as it is, as soon as this happens you can expect it to go right through the roof.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know enough about spam on twitter, but can't most spam be recognized by how many people are being followed and how many followers they have? But as I said I don't know enough about it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you mean basing a PageRank not based on Twitter's PageRank, but on the users' popularity or influence?</comment>


The Soviet Union's Scientific Marvels Came from Prisons - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/soviet-science-stalin/525576/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> With those with ad blockers: [http://archive.is/MWKkV](http://archive.is/MWKkV)

Am I the only one that doesn't like Q&A format?</comment>


Angry Programmers (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.selectedintelligence.com/post/47182940161/angry-programmers <comment><USER2> I don't get this at all. I've been at this over 20 years and the only times I get "angry" (or more realistically, frustrated), is when the powers that be are adamant that the team spend months building a feature that no one wants or has no justification or is the feature we removed two years ago or there is no vision for what we are collectively trying to do. Digging a hole and filling it back in each day is very frustrating and can lead to anger.

Programmers do get a dopamine high for solving things, creating things. But for me, this isn't about how _genius_ we are but about making someone's life easier or better or providing real value to the company or customers. Right now, I'm spending most of my time adding features to a web portal/console with the sole intention to reduce tech support and enable scaling. There is _nothing_ hard or genius about it. It is about understanding the real issues and making tools to solve problems. And when I succeed at that, I do get a rush. Yeah, me.

Years ago, I worked at a company that had a computer vision based software product. The internal object structure was a nightmare. (Whoever wrote it initially had obvious just read their first OO programming book and decided to _abstract all the things!_ ). Each customer project had a configuration file that described all the tests and objects and connections. There were some that took over 45 minutes to load! With a little (2 days) profiling, I could see the biggest time waster. So, I add a map<object,name> to simplify the object connection process. Nothing _magic_ or _genius_ but it reduced the load time to 7 minutes! Not all valuable computer science work needs to be creating a new technique for neural networks. 90% of all things we need computers for is a simple UI and CRUD to a data store. It doesn't have to be genius if done in a way that adds value, then it is worthy of pride, not anger.

<comment><USER3> >I don't get this at all. I've been at this over 20 years and the only times I get "angry" (or more realistically, frustrated), is when the powers that be are adamant that the team spend months building a feature that no one wants or has no justification or is the feature we removed two years ago or there is no vision for what we are collectively trying to do.

Constantly amazed at how often this has happened to me. The worst is the fake "agile" terminology when you're doing the opposite. MVPs that are neither minimal nor viable nor a product. Two week sprints that stick to the Gantt chart we made 6 months ago no matter what the customers/target audience tell us. Spending more time talking about the work we've done and plan to do than actually doing any.

The empire-building as well drives me nuts. We need more people! Don't know what projects they will specifically do, communication and collaboration overhead is already slowing the pace down to a crawl, but we need more people. That way I can say I "led" a large team of engineers on LinkedIn. Wish these people obsessed with "leading" people could all be replaced by people obsessed with leading products.

Always amazed me that I could make $8 an hour serving pizza in high school,, but clearly delivering economic value to people, then find so many people in the world who can raise so much money money or headcount and pay me ten times as much so I can deliver absolutely no value to anyone.

I know we were talking about how most stuff _doesn 't_ make us angry though :)

I think I was always above-average intelligence (top 20%) but I don't think I'm close to a genius. Sure, people pay me money to do things and of course many of them could do it themselves if they learned how, that much is obvious to me. I pay a lawyer money but I'm pretty sure I could have become a lawyer, it's not an insult to their intelligence, we all specialized, that's how economics works.

I think a lot of programmers get angry because they're young and poorly socialized, my past included. Getting motivated to improve that which can be improved is good. Looking out for yourself and not being a doormat to the sociopaths that VC and management tends to attract is good. Doing the above without getting angry about what is usually trivial in the big picture is best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The universe is so structured that most programmers find themselves solving > problems of exactly that complexity which it is just barely within their > competency to solve. In other words they feel as if they're solving quite > difficult problems a lot of the time. Hence they feel very smart.

I don't know about other's here, but this is the opposite of my experience. I feel under-employed because I'm constantly solving problems which are way below my competency. (That's not to say that I'm smart; just that the kind of work most people have to work on is insanely easy, and many probably feel 'above it'.)

When I get angry it's almost always because I'm bored out of my skull, and need to take a break to do something creative or intellectually surprising. The original post seems to pin anger on jealousy and not boredom. And at any rate, whether or not you are angry because you are jealous or because you are bored, the solution is to take a break.

> In fact, sometimes they may get the feeling that someone who doesn't program > at all, could readily do it if they were bothered, but since they can get > other people to do it for them, consider the whole thing a little trivial.

This is arrogant. There are a lot of people that can avoid programming, but a majority of these people wouldn't find it trivially easy. It's a skill set which actually takes quite a long time to build up, and having good people managing skills isn't likely to help.

All I can really say after reading this, is: generalising other people's psychology, choice of work, and perceptions about their work isn't a good way of understanding them or working with them. The fact that this person decided to make a blog post of it as if it was a clever way of understanding 90% of programmers is just an embarrassing reflection of themselves.

<comment><USER5> > I feel under-employed because I'm constantly solving problems which are way > below my competency. (That's not to say that I'm smart; just that the kind > of work most people have to work on is insanely easy, and many probably feel > 'above it'.)

This leads to injecting tool complexity. The JS world is a good example where it seems sometimes people are bored so they inject tool complexity in order to not be bored.

<comment><USER6> Heh. As a dude who makes his daily grind with java, I am convinced this is what happened with java from 2001-2010...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found this insightful.

I've been a professional software developer for 20 years. In the early days, I would experience thoughts like "I just figured out an elegant solution to a hard problem. I am a GOD AMONG MEN!!!!"

About 5 years in, I started to lose that "high" I would get from programming. That feeling came less often and was less powerful. I experienced some mild depression and general health issues. It occurs to me now that I was likely dependent on that dopamine high.

I'm sure some programmers burn out during this phase. Somehow I made it through.

These days I still enjoy my work, but I'm no longer chasing that dopamine high. I still stumble upon it every once in a while. But I recognize that it is a fleeting experience and I just go with the flow while it lasts. And when it is gone, I am still able to get work done. I've learned to be productive in both states.

I think many developers (and tech. companies) could benefit from more education and study about this topic. I think it affects us more profoundly than many of us realize.

<comment><USER8> I think when you stop experiencing it that's a good indication that you should start learning other things. I like that idea that you should try to become an expert in something every 5-10 years. (not that you should stop the old things)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. People seem to be applying a lot of very different interpretations to this. Which means I either did a good job or a bad job, depending on your feelings about ambiguity.

For clarity, I wrote this 3 years ago after a conversation with an elderly man who asked me why his son was so angry. He'd heard I was a programmer and he told me his son was a programmer and he felt convinced the work was the root of the problem.

I put forward the theory here with a characteristic lack of tact or sensitivity. The next day I wrote it up and forgot about it until now.

So contextually, it was very much about mental health.

</comment><comment><USER9> All a programmer has to do to show his or her real power is utter the words 'I quit.' Then all the obviously more intelligent and better looking managers and business people start to lose their shit.

<comment><USER10> At face value you're right. Threatening to quit should leave managers in a panic because no one else can do your job.

There's two main reasons why this might be the case.

The first is because you're actually not very good. Great code can be worked on by someone else, which means if you not easily replaceable then it's because your code isn't easily accessible to other developers or there's knowledge that you haven't documented properly. In this case any competent employer should readily accept your resignation.

The alternative is because you're the absolute best your employer can get _for what you 're paid_. You could be _amazing_ but there's always someone better if the employer is willing to write a bigger check. They could replace you with a team of 20 if they're willing to pay enough. In which case your employer has to choose whether to agree to your terms to keep you or to pay more and get someone who'll agree to _their_ terms. Never underestimate how much an employer will pay to get their way.

<comment><USER11> > if you not easily replaceable then it's because your code isn't easily > accessible to other developers

No matter how good your code is it would be impossible that someone can hit the ground running right away. Meanwhile there are deadlines to meet.

<comment><USER10> _Meanwhile there are deadlines to meet._

Deadlines can be moved. Resources can be allocated to projects to account for unforeseen events. Penalty payments can be paid. It's definitely not ideal but often established businesses can cope with someone leaving unexpectedly. It can kill a startup, but so can most things.

What I'm saying is that you shouldn't be too surprised if a threat to leave is met with "Oh. That's a shame, but nevermind. Bye." You may feel you have a great deal of power over your employer because you see your role as important or even critical to the business, but they might see your role _very_ differently.

<comment><USER12> Usually because your employer _has no idea how important you are_ to the effort. Often employees have regard for developers based on fame or project they've done before. Rarely on skill or how important they are to current efforts. When asked who were the most important developers to our OS group, the engineering manager named the original team that created the project. He got a perfect score - completely wrong. They had all moved on and the current OS team were young folks, new hires and recent additions. Including me at the time.

Be very diligent about communicating! You can easily get forgotten in a larger effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Occasionally an awareness may filter through that the kind of difficult > problems they solve, are the dull trivialities of some other programmer's > daily bread

Radar is one of the magic voodoo technologies that is hard, if not sometimes impossible, to get right. In theory it's extrmeley simple. Anyone with any background in radio knows just how "easy" radar is. You throw a 70cm or shorter wave at something and wait for it to get back. You can also stance two 70cm transmiters (one in front of the other) at diffetent fequencies and using the known distance of the 2 transmitters, the known speed of the wave in the air, and the time of arival of the two waves very simply calculate the speed, distance, and direction of an object. Look up "Doppler Frequency Shift" equations and also just wave velocity. It's dead simple.

Now, given that information I can also talk about how amazingly difficult radar is to implement. All sorts of noise in collection and extremely small errors in sampling can throw your reading far off (in most states in the US that's why there is a +-10MPH speed gratice applied to radar guns).

If someone was to go through and by themselves solve every little problem associated with radar and build a microwave-based radar system I'd be really fucking impressed [0].

This is because radar is hard and the act of tackling every little challenge associated with building it. Just because other people have built radar systems and some people do so every day doesn't mean it isn't hard or you're not advanced for doing so.

Radar is a bit of an extreme example but I think the methodology still applies to making massivly parallelized programs, or synchonization and elimination of race conditions, or learning all of the tricks to get your program into a small space, or even perfecting UX/UI for your users. It doesn't matter if other people have solved it, if you're also solving it on your own then you're just as smart as the others before you who came up with the idea and did it themselves as well.

I do think it's valid to say many programmers are big headed but I think that's just the online space of programmers. Most programmers I've met in real life are really nice and humble people who are just excited to get-shit-done.

[0] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhp21FxttWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhp21FxttWM)

<comment><USER14> > If someone was to go through and by themselves solve every little problem > associated with radar and build a microwave-based radar system I'd be really > fucking impressed.

Check out Henrik's Blog [http://hforsten.com/](http://hforsten.com/)

<comment><USER13> This is amazing work! Kudos the Henrik.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wait, what? It seems like this person is projecting their own problems on everyone else.

The realization that you're not a genius and that there are more competent people around and that programming is often not research but actually engineering, you should have that realization in your late teenage years or early twenties when you go to university or work hard on acquiring computer science skills.

</comment><comment><USER16> I dunno about that, I tend to get angry because someone has solved a problem, taken the dopamine hit and walked off without making sure their solution was correct.

</comment><comment><USER17> What I get angry about is that some people just underestimate the time to get a program ready for production. Of course I can write a program in a week. But I doubt that it will be easy to update and will have more bugs than a program that was written with longelivity in mind with a proper time frame.

</comment><comment><USER18> My experience has shown that, quite frankly, many programmers seem angry because they don't like and/or arent good with people.

<comment><USER19> Right they need more "people skills": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGS2tKQhdhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGS2tKQhdhY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Programmers that think they are geniuses account for about 90%. Programmers who think they are pond scum, 10%". I stopped reading here. Maybe it was the author's first day at work..?

</comment><comment><USER21> Sometimes I wonder how much smarter I'd be if I'd never gotten into computing.

<comment><USER22> How is knowing something different "smarter" ? Its just another domain.

<comment><USER23> I think spacemanmatt might be implying that working in IT has a tendency to make one feel stupid. ("The more you know about IT, the more you realise you don't know about IT.")

This isn't unique to IT. There are many fields where there are always new things to learn. However, a career in (say) selling cars or owning a restaurant would require much less lifetime learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is some truth to this thesis.

However, it is a problem successfully solved by many programmers.

Bezos. Gates. Larry and Sergey. Zuckerberg. DHH. And of course, Paul Graham.

You might say this is the whole reason YCombinator exists.

"The real reason we started Y Combinator is one probably only a hacker would understand. We did it because it seems such a great hack. There are thousands of smart people who could start companies and don't, and with a relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place, we can spring on the world a stream of new startups that might otherwise not have existed."

[http://paulgraham.com/whyyc.html](http://paulgraham.com/whyyc.html)

Reading between the lines slightly (and I believe Paul said this more directly in an article I can't find right now), Paul believed its easier to turn great hackers into great business people, than the other way around.

So yes, at some point spending all of one's time programming yields diminishing returns. But its perfectly possible for someone smart enough to be a good programmer to also learn how to solve problems requiring more than one individual's contribution.

</comment><comment><USER24> I actually enjoy being able to break supposedly complicated tasks or projects down into something that anyone I'm talking to about it can understand.

Basically I don't think I'm better than everyone else, and so I don't get upset or depressed when it's proven that I'm not.

</comment><comment><USER25> "... fact, sometimes they may get the feeling that someone who doesn't program at all, could readily do it if they were bothered, but since they can get other people to do it for them, consider the whole thing a little trivial. That is a very unpleasant feeling. Sometimes they may get the feeling that a whole class of persons vastly more intelligent than themselves don't even care to know how a computer works: it is possible!"

Every time that happens, i make a new project to kill that persons meaning in life or their job. Yeah, you make nice bonsai's- so i made a bonsai cutting robot. Yeah, you relish wielding power and talking down to others- but my neural network is better at that. Next project: Make a blog-bot, that trys to reduce other peoples confidence to ash.

Stops the anger every time.

<comment><USER26> I don't think you understood the post.

I used to be one of those people in that quote - I found programming too simple/easy, and ended up doing math and physics, subject matters of far more complexity. I only ended up programming because I needed work afrer grad school and after 2 1/2 years of job searching, I got lucky and someone took a chance. To this day I continue to be happy about my line of work - it isn't particularly difficult (frontend web development primarily), but it lets me solve little problems and keep my mind engaged while paying exceedingly well. The perspective shift from being unemployed with dubious prospects makes me not care about how I am relative to the rest (although in my domain, it turns out to compare very favorably).

<comment><USER27> I really don't think that it's possible to rank disciplines like math, physics or computer science by complexity and say "physics is so much more complex than computer science". There might be areas of physics that are very complex, like string theory (which probably belongs more to mathematics though), but there are also very complex and hard problems in computer science (or even programming!) that no one was able to solve effectively up to this day: As an example, we're still struggling to design a programming language that is easy to learn and use and at the same time efficient and safe. And I think if we took 100 string theorists and put them up to the challenge of building such a language there is a very small likelihood that they would succeed (I even think there is a large probability that they would scr*w it up in a spectacular way).

I worked in quantum physics myself and have a PhD in experimental quantum computing, but still I consider writing good and reliable software a tremendous challenge, and often I initially fail at it when building large projects. I'm now mostly working on data analysis and static code analysis, and I consider these two fields to be at least as complex and stimulating as my earlier work.

I think what we as programmers need to realize is that we're not better (or worse) than anyone else just because we can write software, and we also need to realize that building anything usually requires people with a variety of skills, both technical and non-technical. Most of our work would be entirely useless on its own, it just derives meaning within the context where it's used.

Therefore, in my opinion the real "10x" programmers are not only those that can churn out brilliant code at an amazing pace, but those that understand their own work in the context of the project that this work supports, are able to effectively and efficiently work with everyone else on the team to support it, and do not have a mental ranking of job professions that classifies people into "high" and "low".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _So here we have a dopamine'd up, blissed out little programmer..._

The author referred to programmers as "little" repeatedly throughout the blog post in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of a certain politician's successful tactic to smother an opponent in recent primary debates.

It's just being nasty. Whatever truth scandox is trying to share is hampered by his own apparent anger and condescension.

</comment><comment><USER29> Great post. Now I have understand a bit more why I am grumpy when stymied at work.

That said I think that anyone who loves what they do would be a bit annoyed if someone else treated the work done as something just to be paid for as inexpensively as possible. Angry? I don't know about that. I do the see why programmers/developers would be different.

</comment><comment><USER30> Lost me at the first paragraph. I know many very competent (even amazing) developers who THINK they're pond scum. Imposter syndrome is very real. On the flip side, the developers who think they know everything and lack the knowledge to know what they don't know are the scariest.

</comment><comment><USER31> What a patronizing, miserable article. I found this a very unpleasant read.

Which is kind of a shame, because he does touch upon a very good point.

<comment><USER32> That 'unpleasantness' is due to a part of yourself recognizing some truth and being uncomfortable with what the mirror projected back. It's normal, all of us experience it. It's very useful to analyze why something makes us feel this way and better understand ourselves.

<comment><USER31> No, it's definitely unpleasant because it makes 90% of programmers look like arrogant assholes and talks about "our little programmer" in a patronizing way. The final sentence touches upon some correct things, but as far as I can tell many programmers aren't arrogant; rather the opposite, they have imposter syndrome, caused by the fact that by nature, programming involves spending hours on something that turned out to be trivial in the end.

I myself am not a developer, just a hobbyist; don't assume everyone on HN is a developer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> hmm, generally when I suppose there are classes of beings of intelligence vastly greater than mine I suppose they are sitting up on Mars watching the earth with jealousy.

Vastly more intelligent not just more intelligent but vastly. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER34> god no, this post reminds me how i was looking at it, i started to deal with it in another way, it is just a fun money source until i start my own thing

</comment><comment><USER35> [2013]

<comment><USER36> [Timeless]</comment></comment>


Heroku is down - <AUTHOR> http://status.heroku.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the status page they have. I wish more providers did this.

However, I wish I never had to use this page.</comment>


New Class of Vulnerability in Perl Web Applications - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gerv.net/2014/10/new-class-of-vulnerability-in-perl-web-applications/

<comment><USER2> I believe this is similar, in a way, to the Rails vulnerability regarding multiple assignments.</comment>


Apple finds issue with logic board in some 2018 MacBook Airs, offers free repair - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/30/macbook-air-logic-board-issue-power-apple/ <comment> java-man Just ordered a MacBook Air and it is "taking longer than usual" to get shipped.</comment>


A Kubernetes Crime Story - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.prezi.com/https-engineering-prezi-com-a-kubernetes-crime-story-2e8d75a77630 <comment><USER2> Great post, I will also add it to [https://k8s.af](https://k8s.af) (Kubernetes Failure Stories)</comment>


California in range of N. Korea ICBMs - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/19/asia/north-korea-missiles/ <comment><USER3> CNN is full of it. The key paragraph in the article: "North Korea has never successfully tested an ICBM, despite repeatedly showing off what it claims are working missiles at military parades. Some experts have publicly doubted whether these missiles are anything but mock-ups."

The missile that is claimed to have a 5,400 mile range has never demonstrated this capability, making the article alarmist claptrap. CNN should check actual distances they've achieved, versus what they claim in their breathless press releases.

NK's last launch, on March 6, went 620 miles.

NK have detonated 5 nuclear underground tests, which have had incredibly low yields. Like early US designs, it is likely that the devices were large and heavy. I do not believe NK has a warhead small enough to fit on a rocket - <USER2> costly R&D to make a miniature nuke is beyond their means.

Finally, NK loves posturing and bragging. The NK leadership is well aware that an actual attack would end the good life they have as elites.

<comment><USER4> > The NK leadership is well aware that an actual attack would end the good > life they have as elites.

It would end _any life they have at all._

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Take a look at the map in that article. CNN says North Korea's latest ICBM can reach California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and western Canada with a nuclear weapon. The midwest and eastern US are out of range. Of those areas, only California has targets worth a nuclear weapon.

If North Korea's is attacked by the US, we can expect a nuclear strike at California. Today, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that "(the) Trump administration might be forced to take pre-emptive action if they elevate the threat of their weapons program" to an unacceptable level."[1]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/asia/rex- tillerson-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/asia/rex-tillerson- north-korea-nuclear.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER5> > Take a look at the map in that article. CNN says North Korea's latest ICBM > can reach California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and western Canada with a > nuclear weapon.

That's what the propaganda was about NKs last supposed ICBM too. NK has never fired anything demonstrating anything like that range, and a significant number of their demonstration shots have failed utterly, and there is serious doubt whether they even have usable warheads (being able to build a nuclear explosive and detonate it is not the same as being able to build a warhead sized for and usable on a particular missile.) There is a propaganda confluence between the DPRK and the American Right where each ha their own reason for exaggerating DPRK military capacity, and the American media gets easily sucked in by it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The US believes the activity could signal preparations for some type of > ballistic missile test in the first days or weeks of the Trump > administration, they said.

Didn't this already happen? Not much of a test though, but it sure did put S. Korea on notice.</comment>


Quitting your job to pursue your passion is a privilege - <AUTHOR> http://www.janellequibuyen.com/blog/quitting-your-job-to-pursue-your-passion-is-bullshit <comment><USER7> I don't understand the extremist views of blog posts like this. Do you really need to think in such simplistic "truisms" and catch phrases?

> Quitting your job to pursue your passion is bullshit.

Not at all true. I know plenty of working class people who have saved money at their day jobs, researched a small business opportunity, and chosen to pursue it. A decent portion of them are succeeding beyond their wildest expectations. All are glad to have had the experience and put their money where their mouth (dream) is. You only live once after all. Not starting a business you wanted to is not a stone you want to leave unturned, for a lot of people.

But there's some key points here. They saved money. They planned. They came up with contingencies.

> This messaging is only beneficial for privileged people and very dangerous > for working class people.

Right, throw away that ambition and continue to be my employee until the end of time. This is the kind of thing I would write as a modern day "Lord of the Manor".

Once again, be intelligent. Have an idea of your worth. Use the internet to do research, learn about small businesses, and financial planning.

Of course there's a big difference between a working class person and the kid who grew up in the valley with parents working at GoogleSoftBook who gets shuttled into Stanford and isn't in a rush to pay loans or move out after graduation, preferring instead to make mobile apps with his frat. That doesn't seem to be what's being discussed though. It's just some vague attack at those who go out on their own. I'm surprised this sort of post is getting upvoted on HN. Are we a forum of spectators envious at those who chose to try that which we did not?

As a final thought, people complaining about other people's privilege would be doing themselves a much bigger favor if they got off their ass and worked to maximize their own potential. Don't try to bring me down, work on bringing yourself up. I'd be happy to help.

<comment><USER8> Amen.

I'm one of those. I understand the intent of this article. It's however unfortunate that the author has not come across enough success stories. Here is mine, which is arguably very small, but came out of exactly the same situation of an employee branching out:

* I saved, I was clear about not only what I like to do, but also what I'm good at.

* I couldn't get to it in my 20s, but I did get to it in my 30s.

* Yes, there was privilege, but not any more than so many of my friends and acquaintances have. I didn't come from money either.

* Yes, there was luck, but not any more than what I'd have needed to survive as an employee.

* Yes, there was agony of survival, still is, will continue to be, and only increase. But I expected that going in, and I carefully created a support system for it, which comes in handy in those tough times.

* Yes, there were unexpected events, including existential threats, but not any more than what I'd have had while working as an employee.

* It has only been a year and a half, and I'm in no position to sermonize, lecture and draw conclusions. But I know that I'm having a blast. I am answerable to nobody but reason, I have flexibility with my time like I never had, and I have immense satisfaction of being the first one to introduce a new useful thing to this planet and make an impact in lives of several of my customers.

But most importantly, it has afforded me life lessons which I'd have never had otherwise and I can accelerate my kids into. Yes, I'm making more than I'd have made in my job, but who is even looking at that?

[For the curious, I run this: [http://InterviewKickstart.com](http://InterviewKickstart.com)]

<comment><USER7> Congratulations on your success thus far, I think you've started a great business that serves a real need. Hope it's people like you writing more blog posts in the future.

Off-topic: a while back I toyed with the idea of making an interview coding practice smartphone app, so people could practice anywhere or on the go. You guys look into any mobile products? Feel free to run wild with the idea if you like it =)

<comment><USER8> Thanks! :-)

There already are a few mobile apps for this e.g. coderust, Job Bytes etc. In fact, there are many excellent resources out there viz. books and websites. Existence and availability of material is not a problem and will never be in this connected world.

Problem is, that people don't get a chance to go thru that material properly. It needs a lot of dedication and a strong support system, which many people don't have. And hence, they squander a chance to work for best companies of their times, or even reach their true potential. That is what the course provides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Passion without genuine skill and knowledge is useless. You can be passionate about many things, for example cars, but unless you put in the hours, your passion doesn't mean you will be a great car engineer, or automotive company executive.

[EDIT] Also want to add that people grossly underestimate the responsibility of being their own boss. There are a lot of tasks you have to handle outside of your usual work like finances, scheduling, client outreach, etc...

The OP seemed to understand this, but a lot of people will create a start-up for the sake of being on the creating end of something without really knowing how practical their venture really is.

Paul Grahm may disagree though.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are lots of startups that I considered dumb. A messaging service that only allows 140characters sounds ridiculous. But here we are.

In trying to start my own business I'm still learning to get over my own self doubt.

<comment><USER10> > A messaging service that only allows 140characters sounds ridiculous.

It made a lot more sense when we used SMS to tweet.

<comment><AUTHOR> It made sense at the time, and most people probably weren't around when you could tweet by SMS, but almost 10 years later we're still working with this imposed limit. And doing it well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _" We are predatorily luring working class people into an entrepreneur lifestyle as the answer to living a meaningful life and loads of money. It's the new American Dream."_

Yes.

Being an entrepreneur is about selling. Few people are good at selling. If you're good at selling, you can make good money doing it for someone else.

Expecting most people to be good at selling is a cruel fantasy.

<comment><USER12> What was the old American Dream, if not exactly that?

<comment><USER13> Good grades->good college -> good job -> marry -> buy house -> have kids. All on a middle class salary. In the bay area that's probably about 100k/yr for a household. Impossible these days.

<comment><USER14> I think the American Dream was a little less specific than that. AFAIK the American Dream was that if you applied yourself, you could be anything that you wanted to be. You see it with the movie trope of the kid who wants to prove everyone wrong and be the next president of the United States.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Was looking for something insightful, but I guess I haven't heard (and bought into) the same stories as the author. I quit my job half a year ago to do the "entrepreneurial lifestyle", but I'm not going around telling everyone to quit their job and be as ostensibly great and care-free as I am.

Of course I'm thankful for my situation, and realize I'm luckier than many Americans, and lucky to live in a prosperous country. But is it really "privilege" to live frugally enough to save up for years, and then quit my job to _pursue my passion_? Am I not supposed to do that at all? Am I supposed to feel my privilege for having a job? Or computer skills? Or a computer in the first place? Electricity? I don't know where, to the author, the privilege train is supposed to end.

<comment><USER16> As someone who did the same, most people do not have the privilege of having an income where they can just quit working and live off of savings before retirement. If they have a college education or home, they most likely have loans that need to be paid and that ties them to a job.

> Am I not supposed to do that at all?

No one is suggesting that. We're just particularly lucky to be in this position in the first place is all.

The privilege argument seems to come out when people like us lose that perspective and expect others to do the same or are shocked when others won't. I don't see this applying to you at all because

> I'm not going around telling everyone to quit their job and be as ostensibly > great and care-free as I am.

<comment><USER15> I definitely know most people don't make enough to do that, but people like you or me _work_ and _plan_ for doing something like that. Even the author did -- but she's not really proposing any solutions for the un-"privileged" or even proving her "... is bullshit" thesis well. I guess that's the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Life is full of trade-offs, and sometimes the choices you make don't work out. The author sounds pissed off because they took a risk that didn't work out, so he's telling everyone that it's objectively "bullshit" to make himself feel better about his lack of success like it's someone else's fault. The fact is that both the haves and the have-nots take these kind of risks all the time, and few succeed. But some do and many still consider the chances worth the risk, despite their failure. It really doesn't have that much to do with privilege, so much as creating a mental fixture from a statement like "follow your passion" and ignoring the fact that all statements are subject to exceptions. Basically, the post reeks of bitter naive white guy problems, and I want my 3 minutes back.

The fact that I am even here is evidence that I quit my previous career to pursue a passion. I also don't assume that the same decision would work for everyone. But I'd hardly call it "bullshit".

<comment><USER9> I don't think you understood the point of the OP's article. This article is calling out the motivation and entrepreneurship gurus who push the idea of entrepreneurship like its some kind of way to unbind yourself and become truly free to people who don't fully understand what it means.

<comment><USER18> The article was about some woman who was unhappy and quit her job, and had some resources to fall back on.

I am sure lots of points can be projected onto it, but the long and the short is she didn't do a very good job at saying anything very clearly.

<comment><USER19> Her clearest point to me was when she wrote:

"I don't want anyone who works a 9-to-5 to feel like a fool for staying at a stable job, or feel wrong if they actually enjoy it."

The whole romanticized narrative of quitting your job to pursue your passion is certainly something I've encountered, and I appreciate her point of view on that narrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ten years ago, the rhetorical buzzwords of that period had gotten really, really tedious.

Words like:

      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - Never Forget
      - If we don't do X, they win

Ten years later, and I'm glad those words are a joke by now.

But only to face new words:

      - <USER5>
      - <USER6>
      - Victim Blaming
      - Social Justice
      - Perpetuating false narratives

Buzzwords only have currency with people who want others to stop thinking deeply about what they're reading or hearing.

When I see buzzwords, especially the politicized variety, I'm pushed away from an article, because I sense an attempt to manipulate and pander to a preferred audience, and that feels dishonest to me.

<comment><USER21> My favorite new ridiculous word is "silent technical privilege"[1] , according to which we now must apologize for having interests in technical subjects since childhood, rather than socializing and getting drunk like rest of the "unfortunate" kids.

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/programmer_privilege_as_an_asian_male_computer_science_major_everyone_gave.html)

<comment><USER22> It isn't, and never has been, about apologising. It is about _recognising_ that you had a step-up based on being part of a particular demographic, and then either acknowledging that other people won't necessarily have had those step-ups, helping to level the playing field by giving extra help to those who don't have that step-up, or both.

So, basically equalising things a wee bit.

<comment><USER23> This is a new low. Apparently putting in the work to learn things is now a "privilege." We made the choice to spend our formative years immersed in technology. We suffered as a result.

Maybe the bullies should start by apologizing and inviting us to their parties instead of demanding that we give them jobs.

To be clear, I do agree that being middle class and having free time as a teenager is a privilege. What I disagree with is that my choice to spend that time programming instead of partying is a privilege.

<comment><USER24> The premise you're assuming only holds if socioeconomics is constant. Imagine being the child of two software engineers living in a house in the suburbs with your own room and computer. Now imagine being the child of a single mother who works two minimum wage jobs and lives in a cramped apartment in the projects.

If the latter child doesn't end up spending as much time programming as the former child, how much of it do you think was choice?

<comment><USER23> Maybe you missed the last paragraph of my comment?

I absolutely agree with the notion of socioeconomic privilege. For what it's worth, I ended up making more than my (single) mother in my very first CS internship.

<comment><USER24> Sorry, completely glossed over it. Looks like we agree on this :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It would be a real shame if the next Larry Page or Bill Gates decided to live in a barrel instead of founding a company because of this sentiment. A happy home and middle-class parents aren't a bad thing. In fact, they're so good that everyone should have them. You should apply your advantages strategically in order to affect change[0] in the world, and while doing so may not be courageous, squandering the effort spent on raising you is a waste of time and resources that helps nobody.

I live with a gardener who makes just above minimum wage[1] who is planning to start his own business. For him not to do so would be a gigantic waste of his skills, as he's far and away the most competent employee of his current boss. He's courageous because he's going to take a carefully managed risk in order to fully use his skills, even though his life is reasonably comfortable as is, and by doing so will fractionally lower the cost of living for all the residents of the apartment blocks he plans to service[2].

When people say "pursue your passion", what they really mean is "you are too good for your current job, and staying there is a waste of your good fortune". It's a goad to prod the elite into working and climbing long after they've passed the point where they can live for the rest of their lives on savings and investments, and to push the comfy middle class to go through the extremely uncomfortable process of starting a business.

Having the audacity and wealth to single-handedly eradicate polio is also a privilege, but Gates is currently trying to do it, because society taught him that he'd be a good person if he did good things. Turning around and denouncing entrepreneurs as privileged will make for fewer entrepreneurs, even if it's true, in the same way as calling Gates a privileged do-gooder sufficiently loudly might stop his charitable work in Africa.

[0] hopefully positive change, and hopefully change that uplifts others

[1] minimum wage here is quite a bit higher than in the US

[2] by raising supply; I'm not an economist, correct me if I'm wrong here

<comment><USER26> Despite the headline, I don't think the article is deriding quitting your job for your passion. It is primarily about pointing out that it is from a place of privilege usually that one takes the "leaps of faith" that are culturally revered and respected, and is trying to recognize that.

I (and I would imagine the author) am all for people quitting their jobs for passion, and being able to do so thanks to their privilege. But I do think it's _very_ important for them to recognize those privileges, not wax too poetic about the bravery and challenges involved (be strong and hustle non- stop) as if people in other jobs don't have to do that, and not tout the act as something anyone and everyone can/should do to lead a "fulfilling life."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This article comes off very bitter to me, its like she failed so she is angry.

"But what bothers me most is how we prop up the entrepreneurial class to be inherently brave and courageous."

I think she projects how she felt about entrepreneurs onto everyone else. I never thought of them as inherently brave, there are many kinds.

One small other thought is if it wasnt for entrepreneurs everyone else would have no one to work for. I am an entrepreneur not because of any particular bravery, I just like knowing there is no one to blame but me if I fail.

</comment><comment><USER28> so this isn't the obvious "duh" post

tl;dr OP quit their job because they were depressed, got bombarded with quips about how courageous they were, got seduced by conflating their depression with a courageous career choice, then talks about what caused other people to be so excited for them when entrepreneurial endeavors is a privilege reserved for the upper class, instead of a practical social contract of the American Dream

<comment><USER29> No he is saying it is disingenuous & dangerous to pretend everyone can just as easily quit everything and become your own boss, with the same risks. For someone who is "less privileged" (or however you are supposed to describe it), the consequences can be more severe if failure happens. While the rich, ivy league grad whose endeavor flops can go home to pops and rebuild his resume, hit up his network, and get a great job no problem. I agree that over- stressing this current reality (as opposed to looking forward and being optimistic) can make things worse. It is a tricky line to walk.

<comment><USER30> *she

<comment><USER29> I apologize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Couldn't agree more. I had a few rough years in business, that I only got through due to various forms of good luck (my business partner, my domestic partner, no debts, etc.)

Two other points I think are relevant.

First, people treat passions are something one is born to. The things I'm interested in now I learned of mostly due to accident. For example, I got into programming languages because I read Philip Greenspun's writing back in the day, which took me to SICP, and from there onto other programming language theory. I studies AI thinking I was interested in genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic, but an inspiring lecturer got me interested in statistical machine learning. These are just lucky accidents. There are many other areas that would be just as deep that I could have landed in. A few chance encounters at the right time and I might have ended up in graphics, or distributed systems, or some other field away from computing.

Second, business as a sole trader is hard. It gets much easier when you can share the load and specialise a bit.

</comment><comment><USER32> We've attempted to reword the baity title to express the spirit of the article. If someone suggests a better (i.e. more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.

<comment><USER33> How about:

      Quitting your job to pursue your
      passion is horse apples

<comment><USER32> Profanity isn't the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It is not bullshit. I quit my job, and it worked fairly well, 6 figures in remote job, I even got on stage with Google vice-president.

The problem is that you need to give it 100%. Otherwise you are just replacing one job with another. It is not good idea to 'travel the world' while building next startup. Best thing is to lock yourself in cheap basement, work 12 hours day, take regular walks, eat and sleep.

What killed my passion was toxic marriage. I filled time I would spend at work, with another task. And my passion was still on side track.

And author himself admits, he quit for other problems, following his passion was sidetrack.

Anyway just one warning: it takes lot of dedication and self-control. If you are struggling with procrastination etc, dont even think about it!

disclaimer: I am drunk

<comment><USER30> *author herself

also lol at the disclaimer

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The OP quits job and finds out that passion is not the same as entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER35> Seems like this article messes up definitions of employment, freelance and entrepreneurship. Being entrepreneur is not about getting money from the sky, it's tough. It's about getting higher risks for greater benefits. But you need to pay for it: plan your budget, time and efforts, be accountable and disciplined, try to balance your risks and invest your time/money wisely.

This article is more about "employment is better than freelance". Seems like the author had no passion neither as a full-time employee, nor as a freelancer. It seems like the author don't know what passion really means or simply has no priority for it in her life.

That's ok unless you say that entrepreneurship is "bullshit" for working class. Sounds like a very biased statement. Everyone has their own way. There is nothing wrong with people who have passion to something different than full-time employment.

</comment><comment><USER36> > We praise people that are "courageous" enough to quit their 9-to-5 and dive > into the deep end of the exciting unknown. We idealize and romanticize the > idea of being our own boss and being in charge of our own schedule. To take > a risk and reap the bountiful benefits. Yet no one talks about the real > sustainability or self-sufficiency of this formula when the playing field is > never even.

There are risks and then there are calculated risks. In other words, you should always know what you're getting yourself into ahead of time. A simple understanding of evidential probability will yield you the proper decision making tools in that regard.

I agree with the sentiment that privileged people have a softer landing if they fail, but there are many examples of working class or even penniless entrepreneurs becoming successful. Jan Koum comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER37> "The concept is ideal for all, but not realistic for many"

Working on your own on something you are passionate about is, in fact, not the ideal for all. Many many people see work as a paycheck. They derive their meaning from activities from outside of work.

One could argue they could enjoy work more if they incorporated a passion into it, but then what if they lose that stark line of separation? Some people may actually enjoy a clear line between work (make the money) and fun/meaningful stuff (spend the money on)

What if that passion loses its luster once its your work? What if you get most meaning from close relationships, how do you incorporate that into a job?

I'm wary of most things that say this is the ideal for everyone. There are universal needs but there are not universal ways to meet those needs.

</comment><comment><USER38> In order to win the lottery you have to buy a ticket. Not everybody wins, but that man can make a difference (or not ) in this world. We all have a shot at the BIG prize.

<comment><USER39> The author acknowledges this and isn't arguing about whether the lottery exists, but what the stakes are. For the working class, they stake their livelihood. It means that failing to win the lottery might mean starting a career from scratch, that is, if they enough to still have roof and food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The article seems to imply there is a right and wrong answer to what is a very personal question that depends on your exact circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER41> To promote Entrepreneurs/Startups

1\. Impose tax on corporate revenues, not profits

2\. Regulate market capitalization of corporations

</comment><comment><USER42> tl;dr "Being your own boss is hard work."

It's true that some people are going to have an easier time quitting a full time job to pursue a passion than others. The correct response is for those of us who have that privilege to do our best to recognize that not everyone can do that, and then _enable those people for whom that 's harder._

Discussions of privilege derail when they turn in to "...and so you should feel bad for being happy." No, you should recognize that if it's within your power to help other people be as happy as you are, you have a responsibility to do that.

<comment><USER37> I dont think thats author was saying. Its just that when we paint the pretty vision, we should be explicit about who is applies for / include disclaimers. Otherwise some people who have obstacles in their reality that you did not have may feel inspired, take a leap and...crash into those obstacles.

You cant be responsible for other peoples actions, but to the degree you can be self aware about whom your advice applies to, you should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Risk taking isn't as brave when your partner pulls a few hundred thousand dollars at a Fortune 500 company.

</comment><comment><USER44> The concept of privilege is passive-aggressive shaming. And that's remarkable because shaming is passive-aggressive already.

<comment><USER32> This account seems to be using HN exclusively for political/ideological purposes. Please don't do that. It's not what this site is for.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Google recording our conversations to serve us with relevant ads? - <AUTHOR> I believe we have all been served with ads for products and services that we haven't even searched for. I presented this question to our Google Account Manager and he told me that Googles machine learning has become really good at predicting people's intent. Having dabbled in Machine Learning myself, I don't buy his crap. <comment><USER2> The simplest way to prove it is to show that kind of information flowing from a device to Google (or any other party). No one has ever done that. You wouldn't expect a full audio stream being sent, rather the device would look for triggers, but they would still need to be communicated in someway over the network.

Google (or any other company) have also never promoted such an ability to advertisers. If it would be a very closely guarded secret you would think that high budget advertisers would be the likeliest to have access to such targeting. However in "tests", like the 'dog toys' video that mikejb mentions and many more, the advertisers are usually no-name companies with cheap products. Most of these proclaimed tests also seem to be YouTube videos trying to get revenue from views. Furthermore, if devices would be looking for trigger words (like mentioned in the first paragraph), it would be even more likely that you would only see this happening for high volume/big budget advertisers.

<comment><USER3> I worked for a very large advertiser until end of 2017 and there was certainly no such offering.

Disclaimer: Today, I work for Google, but nowhere near ads. And I wouldn't share internals anyway.

<comment><USER4> > And I wouldn't share internals anyway.

No matter _how disturbing_ they would be to the broader public?

<comment><USER5> What the broader public thinks is disturbing and what actually is unethical are two very different things.

<comment><USER6> > What the broader public thinks is disturbing and what actually is unethical > are two very different things.

Maybe there are some things that may be unethical without being disturbing, I'm not sure the opposite is true; if the majority thinks it's disturbing then it's most likely unethical.

<comment><USER5> Facebook lets you target people for advertising based on the job titles Facebook users enter into their profiles.

So you can advertise Bingo Card Creator to teachers. Or swimming suits to lifeguards.

A few dozen people put gross things like "jew hater" as their job titles. So, if you trawled hard, you could target these "jew haters" on Facebook.

Some blogger screenshotted this and it became a national uproar about the evil Facebook profiting from hatred. None of the popular articles pointed out the nuance. And in response, FB nerfed the job title feature to hell, which means its harder to actually put relevant ads in front of people.

So that's an example of something that disturbed the public but was completely misunderstood.

<comment><USER6> > put relevant ads in front of people

I'd say the main problem is this. Nobody has ever asked for ads to begin with.

The unethical part is not better ad targeting, it's simply the fact that advertising exists and is depriving the world of millions of man-hours that could be put to better use.

<comment><USER5> People ask for varied content, but don't want to pay for many providers, so ads help provide the content.

<comment><USER6> Maybe people don't pay because they didn't want the "content" and it isn't good content anyway, but are merely being manipulated into watching it (through "feedback loops" like social media "likes", etc) by the creators of this garbage content for the purpose of getting ad views?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everyone is worried that Google and/or Facebook are listening to us. Nobody seems to realise that it's actually worse if they _aren't_ listening to us, as it proves that their targeting is so good that they make you think otherwise.

<comment><USER8> A funny anecdote, when Google shows off the link to the "here's what we know about you page" every now and then, users more often then not will actually correct parts that are wrong.

You can find it in Account > Personal info & privacy > Ad Settings. You can also turn off ad personalization.

<comment><USER9> Yes, Google is willing to pretend to know only what you tell them to pretend they know. After Chrome made any login to a Google service also log you in on the browser, I decided to use a non-Google browser for any Google service. I switched over to another computer, which had a non-Google browser (FF) on it, made sure all cookies, etc., were deleted, and went to YouTube. YouTube said I wasn't logged in.

And yet, YouTube's recommendations were combination of obscure items of interest only to me that it had been recommending on the other computer. It was telling me to log in but already knew who I was.

Presumably it matched my IP address, but if I had used it for a while from a different IP address, it would have been able to match my usage and identified me that way. And if not that, one of my many Google-employee neighbors mentioned that they record your typing rhythms when they can, and those rhythms eventually uniquely identify you.

So when Google's "here's all we know about you" purports to reveal all, it shows you what they think of you rather than what they actually know about you.

<comment><USER5> Google's "what we know" is what they're confident enough in to bucket you to advertisers. Stuff like Youtube recommendations is a different algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Secretly recording audio is illegal in many (but not all) jurisdictions, including California. However, just because Google isn't recording you to target ads doesn't mean no one is.

A fair number of people are claiming they've been targeted with ads seemingly based on information that could only have been obtained through audio recording. But so far no one _technically sophisticated_ has, and so these claims never seem to involve narrowing it down to a specific device, or checking the devices for malware or suspicious apps.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anecdote time... So, I was sitting in a car with a colleague who was talking about how he used to live in the UK (we're both Danish but were speaking English because we had a non-Danish colleague in the car with us). My colleague talked about how he'd developed a fondness for cricket while living in the UK, to which I replied that I only really knew cricket from Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that it was one of those sports that I'd always been sort of curious about since it gets so little exposure here in Denmark. We agreed that we should maybe watch a game together so he could explain it to me and the conversation naturally changed topic shortly after. But a couple of days later Google Now showed me a notification saying that cricket results were available asking if I wanted to subscribe.

There's of course always a chance that I've done something that—unbeknownst to me—has led Google to believe I was interested in cricket, but I definitely didn't google "cricket", watch videos about it, mentioned it in emails or some such.

<comment><USER12> Google knows that you and your colleague met, drove together etc from location of both your devices. So, "maybe" your colleague frequently searched about cricket on his device. Based on these data points, google might have shown you cricket suggestions.

<comment><USER13> Pretty much sums up my thoughts exactly. There was a good reply all episode about this very thing. [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook- spying](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook-spying)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >I believe we have all been served with ads for products and services that we haven't even searched for.

Sure, including ones I've never discussed; simple (not even requiring ML) statistical prediction of likely interest based on interests of people with similarities in search history or other things that Google overtly has in its tracking of profiles could well explain that; with ML applied well, that gets even better.

Covertly recording conversations for ads seems to be an unnecessary assumption to explain any effect I've seen or heard decribed, so while it's not _impossible_ , I don't see any reason besides paranoia to believe it is true.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm sceptical, but it's hard to prove or disprove. So many other factors that go into making ad decisions (what did people who are somehow similar to you show interest in? Your friends? What's currently trending in certain areas of the internet, etc.)

I've only seen one attempt (shown in a video online, the topic was 'dog toys'), where recorded conversations were claimed to influence ads. Lots of people indicated foul play in the video, so I didn't book it in my "that's happening"-bucket.

I've only tried to reproduce it once, half-hearted, and failed.

<comment><AUTHOR> The only problem with the parameters you listed is that you get served with the most random ads at the most optimum moments. I once saw an ad for Swiffer mop moments after mentioning casually to my friend that I am thinking of buying one.

<comment><USER15> That of course is suspicious. Do you sometime receive random ads that are completely out of the blue that you haven't talked about? (I'm asking because if you get shown 100 random ads per week, for how many can't you attribute them vs. how many seem to be related to some (online, offline) activity? Is it only by chance, and we just remember the 0.1% where it worked?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely understand your point. Maybe I am noticing those ads only after I have consciously made the decision of buying the product. Or maybe the ads of that product are sub consciously nudging me to buy those products. Most of the display ads are meant to do just that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's a live test that may help you to believe [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBnDWSvaQ1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBnDWSvaQ1I) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmM9ch_oXA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmM9ch_oXA4)

In first video, a guy talks about dog toys and then he'll see ads related to what he talked about.

Worth noting, he doesn't have dogs or searched about it. The ads are even specific to the toy colors he talked about.

<comment><USER8> A more substantial test would be to monitor network traffic for audio streams, or if basic parsing is happening on device, then those keywords being set.

<comment><USER17> If it exists, then the parsing is almost certainly happening on-device, and the messages are encrypted and stenographically hidden.

<comment><USER18> This would have impact on battery life that no one has yet noticed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a few data-grabbing questions I've always wondering with Google and Facebook and others.

Does the Facebook app, if granted permission to access photos, upload thumbnails or metadata generated on-device that's descriptive-enough to characterize photos located on devices even if they're not chosen by the user to be uploaded to their service.

Does Facebook and/or Google send your current clipboard contents to their server? Google Maps seems to do-so since it has the address pre-filled when you launch the app if you've copied it from elsewhere.

Anybody able to officially answer or speculate on either of these? I've always resorted to assuming they do because they can.

</comment><comment><USER20> 1\. We've discussed this question with сolleagues, and one of them discussed with his wife bout with the gloves for his son, and on the next day he a received ads with bout with the gloves. Аnd it was not like that once. I do not claim that it was google, may be other ads company, but it is a fact.

2.Once a work colleague said me "Hey, listen my phone (nexus 5x)". From conversational speaker we heard as other people said! nexus 5x was on standby state! According to the conversation, I think that people did not talk on the phone, but offline.

sorry for my english ).

<comment><USER21> Did the wife Google the gloves, or open a page about the gloves that also had Google ads (or Analytics maybe)? Ad companies _do_ know that certain groups of users/devices share interests.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well maybe continuous subconscious exposure to an ad is causing me to discuss a product with my friends and I am acknowledging the presence of the ad only after having talked about it.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wish. I don't get relevant ads from Google.

Even when searching for specific items "tacos" the ad will be stupid. I can't recall the last time I used a Google ad productively.

</comment><comment><USER17> It remains unclear. There are reasons to believe they are (it'd really improve their ad targetting, and there are some anecdata to suggest they are), reasons to believe they aren't (they must have _some_ ethics, and if they got caught, the result would be Bad), and reasons to believe they can't (constant audio recording would cause a suspicious drain on battery).

</comment><comment><USER23> Forget ads, are they selling it to Alphabet Agencies?

</comment><comment><USER24> Try to buy an ad served against this data. How do you do it? If you can't you can reasonably assume it's not tracked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google doesn't mention the source of data. You can setup display campaigns to optimize for more conversions, click through rates etc. It'll serve the ad based on either audience or goals

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Don't think companies are willing to test if they can go that far. But many small apps are for sure</comment>


The Growth Hacker's Dilemma: Process vs. Tactics - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/101283/The-Growth-Hacker-s-Dilemma-Process-vs-Tactics.aspx <comment><USER2> The attempt to turn Growth Hacking into a discipline will fail exactly because it attempts to put a formal framework and language around something that is ultimately un-formal and all encompassing.

Its going to experience the same slow death as the UX discipline has. It's too wide a definition for its own good and those who know how to do it, know it because they know something else (design, programming etc)

Its like saying there are is a dilemma for hackers with regards to process vs. tactics.

<comment><USER3> I hate the term "Growth Hacker", but there is certainly a ton of demand for full stack marketers. The role may seem vague because it is definitely cross- functional but almost always has the following requirements:

\- Product Competency (ability to product manage and make sensible product decisions)

\- Marketing Competency (knowledge of all possible marketing channels and enough understanding to prioritize marketing efforts across them)

\- Engineering Competency (ability to work directly with engineers and ability to do basic statistical analysis)

This basically describes a Product Manager who also has an in-depth understanding of marketing, which is not really that vague at all.

<comment><USER4> Very well explained Jamie.

I think the growth hacking/engineering role/persona is especially now building up as a core skillset as product decisions need to be made way faster and way often than ever before (thanks to realtime usage data and very short release cycles).

This basically puts way more pressure on making the right decisions for the product & its marketing (in a holistic cross-functional way). A thing that traditionally was handled 'well enough' with several people/departments that communicate.

In a nutshell it is a product management position but with emphasis on marketing and growth. Depending on the lifecycle of your company this is the job of the founders/CEO or the product manager or a dedicated CMO. All in all the skillset in itself is very very valuable and there is not enough good material on product management and cross-functional agile marketing.

I am contributing content in this area and hope more and more people will follow. There is a ton out there that solely focuses on marketing (low barrier to entry) but not much quality content on the intersection of marketing & engineering & ux.

If you are interested in growth hacking feel free to check out my upcoming book:

[https://www.blossom.io/growth-engineering](https://www.blossom.io/growth- engineering)

Also very happy to help anyone who'd like to grab a coffee/tea with me in San Francisco or Bay Area or via email, twitter, hangout. Feel free to get in touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Put another way, some startups have a process, other startups just implement the tactics (best practices) that are the results of someone else's process.

Yes, but you still need to test other people's best practices. What works for some, might not work for you. I remember when Etsy introduced infinite scroll because everyone were doing it; they soon found out that it affected their conversions negatively and returned to old style.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's no dilemma, you can and should do both! It's just a link-baity title (that I fell for)

</comment><comment><USER7> The smartest don't share their tactics, why would you give away competitive advantage?

<comment><AUTHOR> The smartest know that dialog, discussion, and cooperation, can bring about a sum of possibilities that will easily dwarf any small-minded collection of tactics. By taking part, your part is enlarged.

<comment><USER8> Sounds good on paper, possibly disastrous in practice.</comment></comment></comment>


AST Computer – Tales from Tech Support - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hdazA-VUf0 <comment><USER2> For future reference it would've been nice to have tagged this as a [video].</comment>


Mountain of Bikes Left at Dallas Recycling Center After Ofo Leaves City - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/mountain-of-ride-share-bikes-left-at-dallas-recycling-c-1828156808 <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see the timeline in serpentza's youtube videos about bike sharing in China Starts out well in January [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi9G1jLUeUk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi9G1jLUeUk) Overcrowding starting to be a problem in April [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdsb2wwn-7g) Bike graveyards in October [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYu4wzy9Lw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYu4wzy9Lw)

<comment><USER3> See also an article link for those not wanting YouTube: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas- bike-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-share- graveyard-a-monument-to-industrys-arrogance)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> All this waste makes me feel like we could just make free bikes for everyone. This one company could afford to make all these bikes, and yet they throw them away. We must be able to find a way to make free bikes for everyone who wants them.

<comment><USER4> We could, you can get a cheap bike for around $100, so making one available for everyone would be a small cost if we thought it'd be valuable.

However, that doesn't cover maintenance or getting a new one when the old is stolen. And it would not be a good bike to start with either, so most people would not want to use it, making it somewhat of an useless investment for society.

As a tourist in Berlin, the Mobike system was great. For just 8 EUR a month I could just grab a working bike, go where I want and just leave it outside. Then I could use the tram to go somewhere else, and use a new bike from the new place.

This without worrying about it getting stolen and being certain I'd find a working bike nearby when I need it. Making it very competetive with regular rental bikes.

I imagine that the low effort required makes it a good option to a free bike for many.

Maybe a subsidised rental bike system would make sense, to cover maintenance and administration but keeping the prices affordable? (I suspect the mobike pricing was some kind of campaign as it was quite low)

<comment><USER5> Mobike is the same model as ofo. The differences are market specific demand, geography, population density, and taxes and regulation. Of is leaving Dallas, but active in other cities. Of is also leaving Seattle while other companies are staying, so it maybe ofo specifically is having trouble running their business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Guess their business model didn't work unless the city provided free parking for them.

<comment><USER7> Like they do for cars?</comment></comment>


Gaikai Demo: Stream Desktop Apps/Games to the Browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/gaikai_-_video/

<comment><USER2> Astounding.

So now that the internet is fast enough, there is no longer a need for desktop OS or even the desktop web browser. Just stream the clicks and the videos. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER3> wow, I am pretty impressed. I wonder though about the actual cost of the server, and whether it's feasible for companies to start offering subscription services for cloud gaming.

On a side note, I wonder when are they going to use this technology to start offering a complete desktop replacement service on the cloud, and not just offer games, but the full range of productivity software as well as storage capability. My thoughts on this kind of development is on my blog. <http://lchou1.blogspot.com/2008/12/future-of-computing.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> Another one like this is called OnLive:

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123787473566622741.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting to see video game dev vets like Carmack and Perry still hanging out at the edge after all of these years

</comment><comment><USER5> This makes it irrelevant that my video card sucks.

I can't wait.

Farcry highest settings on my netbook!</comment>


An Asteroid Alert System - <AUTHOR> http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5335/an-asteroid-alert-system <comment><USER2> Only $5 million?</comment>


You Stopped SOPA. Now Let's Startup America - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/31/you-stopped-sopa-now-lets-startup-america/ <comment><USER2> It's so cute all the people who think they can steer this bandwagon. SOPA was an acute threat and a flash mob formed, did its thing, and moved on. The flash mob doesn't have an independent existence from SOPA and there is no actual (virtual) mob of people milling around, wondering what they should do next. There's no bandwagon to steer here, folks. That's not how flash mobs work. You're still going to have to build a consensus the old fashioned way.

<comment><USER3> Before the Tea Act led to the Boston Tea Party, there were the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, Quarterings Act, Stamp Act, Declaratory Act, and Townshend Acts, all of which caused brief outrages and "flash mob" reactions. One of these days one of these "flash mobs" might just turn into something more...

<comment><USER2> Completely orthogonal to my point. I am not saying flash mobs are useless. I'm saying they can't be _steered_. The issue belongs to the mob, the mob doesn't belong to the issue.

<comment><USER3> No, that was my point. Flash mobs can't be steered until it's the _last_ flash mob that ends up being steered into a revolution. You can't fault anyone for trying to steer...only the last one will be successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why the shift in focus? ACTA is still alive and evil, and it's even more overtly anti-democratic than SOPA/PIPA. Also, it's being run through the Executive branch in near-total secrecy, making it that much harder to fight.

Startup America is great, but given that the fundamental integrity of the internet is still very much at stake, it's hardly priority #1.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice, I do have a quibble though, it would be nice to see them do more on the immigration front.

Yeah they're going to remove EB3/EB2 country caps, but how about expediting the process so it doesn't take 5 years to get a green card while you're stuck in the same position, at the same company, who's taking you from behind in terms of salary during that time.

In Canada, you can get your green card within 1 year of graduating college and working fulltime for a company, then 3 years after that, become a Canadian citizen. why not do something like that for engineers and scientists from accredited US universities? Or people who are working fulltime in those sorts of capacities?

<comment><USER6> > why not do something like that for engineers and scientists from accredited > US universities? Or people who are working fulltime in those sorts of > capacities?

The folks advocating for that have tied such proposals to open borders for low-skills folk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading Steve Case's summary, most of this is good stuff-- very much like the crowd funding legalization. I think its absolutely absurd I can bet $50,000 or $100,000 on options in the stock market, but can't put $10,000 into a local startup. (I do well in the stock market, but I think the local startup is a better bet, given my experience working for startups for a couple decades, and other reasons.)

I'm not sure about the $1B in spending, whether that will go somewhere or not. I'd prefer this bill didn't increase the federal budget deficit, even if it is probably one of the vanishingly few economically useful places for the government to put money, at the end of the day, that money had to come out of the economy (it doesn't really grow on trees) via inflation or taxation, and thus risks making things worse if it isn't spent wisely.

<comment><USER8> Maybe one of the reasons it's one of the vanishingly few economically useful places for the government to put money in is that it is one of the vanishingly few economic places that the government doesn't put money in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "You've rejecting sipping on one glass of poison, now let's all join in and chug another one!" Sigh...</comment>


Show HN: Afternoon project, a job board in your inbox -- jobmailr - <AUTHOR>

http://www.jobmailr.com/
Most of the valuable hires out there already have jobs and aren't actively looking for another.  But would they be interested in getting relevant jobs emailed to them once a week or so, so that they were sure to hear about that dream position opening up?  And would companies pay to access their inboxes?
Asking myself, I found it valuable.  Seeing if others do too is what jobmailr.com is trying to find out.
If several hundred people sign up, there's an instant audience that employers can pay to access.  If it doesn't gain traction amongst the would-be hires, then I'm just out a few hours of development time.  :)
Anyone have any insight or critiques on this side venture? <comment><USER2> E-mail is a great way to reach job seekers. I know because I've built a business on it. The key is being able to build an audience of talented people who are excited about opening your e-mails. If you do that and can deliver quality candidates for employers, it could turn into a pretty great business. If you'd like to discuss it further, feel free to reach out to me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an employer, I'd be willing to pay (at least something) for this.

</comment><comment><USER4> easy to click link: <http://www.jobmailr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Other than delivery to your inbox, which I think Monster does a bit of (though I could be wrong since I pay so little real attention to my Monster Jobs account and the stuff they mail me), what value are you offering? I am thinking about your comment about "most of the valuable hires..." What is their motivation to be interested? How do you qualify them as "valuable hires"? If you can prequalify them, how do you show this value to employers?

Your description sounds to me like you are thinking of a fairly elite service but then your closing remarks sound like you aren't really focused on that but just thinking of it as another job service, but by email. Maybe you can flesh out that value position a bit more.

Good luck with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the real value propositions I'd like to offer are these:

To employees: information about interesting and potentially better-than-you- have-now jobs without having to expend any effort

To employers: access to the inboxes of thousands of passive job hunters; those would would jump for the right position, but who aren't looking at job boards

<comment><USER6> I would argue that you've come at this problem from the employee side (ie, "I have a job but I might jump for a better job - someone should make a website for that"), but the employer side is where you'd be better off spending your time. There are less employers than employees and they have their resources spread more thinly. For them, I think quality, rather than quantity, is your main value proposition.

The neat thing about already-employed potential hires is that their employment is a kind of social proof. They were hired at X, therefore they must be pretty good.

How about this: take signups, but ask them for their current employer and their field. Now an employer can say things like "I want to poach employees from [Google,Apple,Microsoft] in Engineering" and have a place they can do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What makes this different than rss2email or yahoo pipes pointed at craigslist, or indeed.com's notifications (or linkedin's, or...)?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Significantly easier signup than rss2email and other similar solutions 2) Gated for much less spam/barely ham postings 3) Higher levels of customization</comment></comment>