The biggest deterrent for women in tech - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/30/the-biggest-deterrent-for-women-in-tech/

<comment><USER2> I'll highlight these since it comes up here a lot (and is the second comment on that page, right underneath the ever-expected kitchen joke) --

> _Geek technology culture not appealing:_

> Women: 20.6% Men: 34.3%

> _Dispel stereotypes that boys are better than girls in math and science:_

> Women: 48.9% Men: 31.0%

Working in technology _is_ appealing to girls, but growing up being told that's not what girls do is what hurts.

<comment><USER3> Well, there's no doubt that fathers would react negatively to a son playing with dolls, immersing themselves in fashion, or healthcare.

Is there such a pressure on girls? Do the mothers feel unnerved if their daughters start fiddling with lego?

<comment><USER2> The issue is even having those LEGOs to begin with, rather than worthless new [pink, sparkly] fashions for her Barbie. Personally, I was obsessed with American Girls because of how they represented historical times and had stories about their experiences living back then, even though my parents couldn't afford the dolls themselves. I also enjoyed having a dollhouse because it allowed me to problem-solve spatial situations while keeping design/foot traffic in mind. Having one that was modular/extendable would have been amazing, too. Little stuff like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _What do you think are the top deterrents for women NOT going into technology- related careers today? (More than one response allowed)_

1\. Choosing a career based on a desire for work/life and family balance that doesn't involve 60 hour weeks or waking up at 2:00 AM to answer a pager alert.

2\. Choosing a career based on a desire for self-actualization and personal fulfillment instead of what best pays the bills.

3\. Dropping out of difficult technical education courses in college in favor of less demanding classes, because there is not enough pressure to think about providing for oneself.

 _What do you think it will take for women to be successful in the technology field? (More than one response allowed)_

Bleak reality. Technology jobs are useful and pay well. The more women are forced to care for themselves instead of relying on a husband, their parents, or the government, the more likely they will choose technology careers.

Of course, as more women that enter the technology market, salaries will drop (for everyone).

 _How optimistic are you about the future of women in technology?_

Not optimistic at all. I don't think people are looking at the right problems.

<comment><USER5> I choose a career in tech (graduated from Mechatronics Engineering at Waterloo, worked at Microsoft for 2 years and just got accepted into YC S13). I'm personally offended by your generalization of what you feel is deterring women to enter tech.

1\. I never had a problem working hard, 60+ hours, nor did any of my female friends growing up. 2\. A tech career can be great at self-actualization. You build cool shit, and can make new things that can change peoples lives. It's awesome. 3\. Seriously...you actually believe that smart women are thinking about lowering their life goals in anticipation of marrying up?

Women absolutely care for themselves. I'm not saying there aren't still women who don't, but this view that a female will be taken care of was never something that entered into my head, nor anyone else I know.

The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was not seeming "cool" while I signed up for a computer engineering class in highschool. Peer pressure was a hard obstacle to overcome back then, but I am so glad I did.

<comment><USER4> _I'm personally offended by your generalization of what you feel is deterring women to enter tech._

Of course you are offended. That's why reasonable, more detailed examination of generalizations such as mine rarely happens and you certainly don't hear about it. It makes people awkwardly uncomfortable and you can't have that on CNEntertinment, unless it's delivered by an over-the-top caricature you don't have to take seriously. Instead you have equally absurd generalizations based on popular opinion that make everyone feel warm and fuzzy.

 _1\. I never had a problem working hard, 60+ hours, nor did any of my female friends growing up._

Nor do any of the women I know. In fact most of them work as hard as I do or harder. I am not surprised at all to find smart, hard-working women in technology. STEM degree stats suggest women make up nearly 20% even in the most male-heavy fields like Computer Science and Physics. The relevant demographic is not necessarily you or every woman you know, but the hypothetical women that would make up that 10-30% gap in the gender balance.

Or, from the perspective of companies wanting to hire more capable engineers at cheaper salaries, the point is not to address the imbalanced gender ratio, the point is to maximize the pool of talent by whatever means available.

 _2\. A tech career can be great at self-actualization. You build cool shit, and can make new things that can change peoples lives. It's awesome._

Of course it can be. But what percentage of people going into STEM fields admit that it was their first choice and one made without much regard for earning potential? It certainly was not my first choice. I originally wanted to be a professor of music theory. I looked at the employment prospects and job markets and opted to pursue technology instead. In fact many of the people I've worked with in technology started out with different ambitions and wound up here because they were smart, resourceful, and needed money.

 _3\. Seriously...you actually believe that smart women are thinking about lowering their life goals in anticipation of marrying up?_

I believe that all women will marry up if they can and that dedicating time and attention to raise a family does not represent lowering of life goals. I also think that regardless of what one may want or what they may decide with their brain, most people will accomplish less if they do not face pressure.

 _Women absolutely care for themselves. I'm not saying there aren't still women who don't, but this view that a female will be taken care of was never something that entered into my head, nor anyone else I know._

And you are working in a technology field.

Of course women take care of themselves. The question is how much pressure are they under to do so relative to the pressure faced by a man with similar gifts and opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> What do you think it will take for women to be successful in the technology field?_

 _> Equal pay for men and women with same skill sets: Women: 65.5%, Men: 46.8%_

Clearly two different perceptions.

Off the top of my head, I'd expect any gender wage gap in tech to be small relative to other fields.

A quick search seems to bear that out [1][2][3].

1: [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2031357/gender-gap-in-tech- sa...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2031357/gender-gap-in-tech-salaries-its- all-gone-dice-reports.html)

2: <http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.pdf>

3: [http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2013/04/09...](http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2013/04/09/59698/the- gender-wage-gap-differs-by-occupation/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Just because an opinion is popular, that doesn't necessarily make it a fact.

</comment><comment><USER8> Remember the dawn of computing? There were no women!

And no men. How did men do it without role models?

I don't know. How did they discover America without role models? Or climb Everest? How do they do anything when everyone says it can't be done?

Its a mystery. Especially if you pay no attention to biology.

<comment><USER9> But at the dawn of computing it was all women. It was considered womens' work, akin to secretarial duties.

<comment><USER3> From what I've read, none of them were programming, the job was to transcribe programs for the computers. That's what they were advertising as a secretarial duty. That doesn't suggest attitudes have suddenly done this strange 180 in the past few decades. The job was just replaced by compilers.

<comment><USER10> You may want to revisit your history then - a woman wrote what is widely considered, by both men and women, to be the first computer program, an extremely complicated algorithm (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace>). During WWII, women were "recruited to do ballistics calculations and program computers. Around 1943-1945, these women "computers" used a Differential Analyzer in the basement of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering to speed up their calculations." In 1949, Grace Hopper was the first programmer of the Harvard Mark I, known as the "Mother of COBOL", and developed the first ever compiler for an electronic computer, known as A-0. In the late 1950s, orbital calculations for the United States' Explorer 1 satellite were solved by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's all-female "computers", many of whom were recruited out of high school.

While attitudes may not have done a 180, your inference that early women computer scientists were "not programming" and only transcribing is factually incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I stopped reading here:

> "It provides access to jobs purely based on merit and results and really, in > some ways, neutralizes some of the gender discrimination that exists around > the world."

The fact is that Elance does not neutralize anything, except their reputation by stating such BS. If I would be sexist, I could simply reject women on Elance the same way I could do in person.</comment>


Ruby DATA - <AUTHOR> http://caiustheory.com/why-i-love-data <comment><USER2> This is copied from Perl. See [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/161872/hidden-features- of...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/161872/hidden-features-of- perl#163700)

      my @lines = <DATA>;
      for (@lines) {
          print if /bad/;
      }

      __DATA__
      some good data
      some bad data
      more good data
      more good data

<comment><USER3> And widely used in the perl world. It's a good idea for a lot of simple programs.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, this is not a "hidden feature."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I learnt about this a while back when sinatra was released, you could have your html template in the same file. great idea for a micro framework.

<comment><USER6> Minor correction (mostly because, I think the code is kinda interesting), Sinatra does something close to this. It actually uses the __END__ tag for its inline templates, but then internally it splits the file itself in two and then parses the latter portion:

[https://github.com/sinatra/sinatra/blob/master/lib/sinatra/b...](https://github.com/sinatra/sinatra/blob/master/lib/sinatra/base.rb#L1139)

I suspect the reason it does so is for the point the author of the article makes briefly: "And it only exists for the first ruby file to be invoked by the interpreter."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wrote a static-site generator, and I wanted to be able to allow users to deploy new instances easily.

To do that I wrote some code that parses a __DATA__ block for lines like:

mkdir foo create_file foo/bar.txt <<EOF .. This is the file content .. EOF mkdir bar ..

The process was very simple and allowed me to bundle up the "master template" files in one simple to understand resource.

[1] - <https://github.com/skx/templer> [2] - [https://raw.github.com/skx/templer/master/lib/Templer/Site/N...](https://raw.github.com/skx/templer/master/lib/Templer/Site/New.pm)

<comment><USER8> Nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had thought that the ability to do a simple quine by rewinding DATA was some weird implementation bug, so nice to see the rationale here !</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a good, zero-knowledge backup and synchronisation program? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, like everyone else, I need a good program that will backup and synchronise my files across computers. I don't trust Dropbox with all my data, so I came across SpiderOak and paid for a yearly account.
However, SpiderOak takes up 100% of my CPU for minutes on end, regularly freezes in some states, and a few days ago it stopped working altogether (it refuses to synchronise, it just sits there taking up all my CPU and even my attempts to reinstall it have been thwarted as it freezes on "Downloading data").
Is there a reliable, zero-knowledge program that will backup and synchronise data across computers? It's something indispensable but I'm disappointed with how buggy SpiderOak is, and all the alternatives I've seen are either backup-only or not zero-knowledge...
I'd appreciate any help! <comment><USER3> I've used unison in the past and liked it. May not fulfill the "zero knowledge" criteria but IIRC it's fairly simple to set up.

<http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Unison does fulfill the zero-knowledge criteria, but it's not a daemon that runs constantly, although I might give it a shot, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You might look at Egnyte or Jungle Disk. We've used Egnyte for a few of our clients and had mixed results with reliability. Luckily they give you a 30 day trial, so you can try it out. Their pricing is also pretty decent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, both of those look good. Your comment reminded me of AeroFS, a synchronisation program that's peer to peer. I should give that a shot too, as it doesn't need to be zero-knowledge if nobody other than my computers see my data...

<comment><USER5> I've been running the AeroFS beta for a couple of weeks and am very happy with it.

Nothing high volume or stressful, but it has done what it said it would quickly and efficiently, and the client even worked behind the moderately aggressive filters we have at work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just installed it, apart from the fact that it gave me an "AeroFS Drive" I can't remove (I suspect the older version installed this but the new one deprecated it) and the fact that I can't sync any two arbitrary folders, it looks perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use Duplicity for remote incremental encrypted backups.

<http://duplicity.nongnu.org/>

It fulfills the "zero-knowledge" and reliable criteria. It's based on rsync. I'm not sure whether you can use it for synchronisation, though, never tried that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use duplicity+S3 as well for backups, it's the best for that. Hmm, I might sync everything to my home NAS and back it up to S3 with duplicity, now that you mentioned it, it might actually be cheaper.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also any of these cloud backups solutions available, that run on Ubuntu?

i know of Ubuntu One, wondering if there're cheaper/better alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, yes, I forgot to mention, I run Ubuntu so that's a pretty big prerequisite :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any reason you can't use truecrypt/whatever your favourite OS provides on top of Dropbox?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Dropbox will have to up/download the entire multi-gigabyte file container each time, as far as I know.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure that Dropbox uses [EDIT: was "something like the rsync algorithm."] something like Tarsnap's algorithm: break a file into data- dependent blocks and upload all changed blocks (optionally with rsync). (For a toy implementation, let everything between two NUL bytes be a "block" - <USER2> see how this is a big win for detecting changes and deduplication.) This is supported by e.g. [http://serverfault.com/questions/52861/how-does-dropbox- vers...](http://serverfault.com/questions/52861/how-does-dropbox-version- upload-large-files).

TrueCrypt and alternatives definitely make sure that writing one unencrypted sector only changes one encrypted sector worth of data - compare their performance with gpg'ing the entire disk on each write, and you'll quickly see why.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I will have to look into that, although I think that Dropbox only does per-file diffing... Thanks for the recommendation.

EDIT: Interesting, that makes the TrueCrypt suggestion not only viable, but desirable. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Slingshot: Facebook's new app for ephemeral photos - <AUTHOR> https://m.facebook.com/slingshot?refsrc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fslingshot

<comment> k-mcgrady It's not a new app. v2.0 was actually released 2 weeks ago according to the linked page.</comment>


Defiant Washington DC Mayor Renames Plaza 'Black Lives Matter Plaza' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52941254 <comment><USER2> It's so sad to see the BBC caught up in all this. It used be a reputable news source, the BBC World Service was just that - listened to the world over.

Now it's this.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by "caught up in all this"? It shouldn't report about this happening? You don't like some wording they use?

<comment><USER2> It's very clearly anti-Trump (I live in the UK). As for the article, there's this part:

"The president was criticised for ordering authorities to forcibly remove peaceful protesters from a square outside the White House so he could cross the street to take a photo in front of a church."

Wasn't it the AG that ordered the protesters to be moved?

Either way, who cares. This is HN, not reddit (although sometimes I wonder)

<comment><USER4> > Wasn't it the AG that ordered the protesters to be moved?

(A) Barr denies it.

(B) The buck stops at the President's desk.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cannes Artistic Director Explains Netflix Competition Ban - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-artistic-director-banning-netflix-competition-why-he-allowed-streaming-movies-last-year-1096800 <comment><USER3> The entire purpose of Cannes is to showcase films which need distribution. It's pointless to show films there which have already secured distribution. It's worth noting that the films shown there can be and are purchased for distribution by Netflix, Amazon, etc.

<comment><USER4> > The entire purpose of Cannes is to showcase films which need distribution

This seems like one of these things that were probably nominally true all along, but that everybody were very happy to forget as Cannes became a super- prestigious celebration of the art of cinema, but then gets dug up when it's convenient to keep the arriviste on the outside.

I mean, if Cannes is just an industry trade show, it certainly isn't justified that media from across the world (including public service media) sends their top arts reviewers out at great expense?

<comment><USER5> Why would I not want to have media representatives (including public service media) at an industry trade show? Things like "the newest trends from CES" are generally considered newsworthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So as far as I understand, films submitted to the Cannes film festival must have a theatrical release in France, and then French law forbids streaming for 36 months after the theatrical release.

I don't see why Netflix doesn't just submit a few of its own movies to Cannes, then does a token theatrical release in one cinema in France somewhere (to abide by the letter of the law), then prominently displays the movie in the streaming catalog. But when a French person selects the movie, it just says: "This movie is not available before $long_away_date because of $stupid_french_law. By the way, this is the phone number of your representative. Just saying."

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there a reason Netflix can't do a limited release in a few French theaters, as many as necessary to satisfy the eligibility requirements? Or are they not particularly concerned about being ineligible for the Palme d'Or? Which is also a valid stance.

<comment><USER7> Cannes is mostly about having a venue for film makers to find distributors, Netflix films already have a distributor (it's Netflix).

It's equivalent to asking why The Last Jedi or Black Panther aren't allowed to enter the competition.

<comment><USER8> Episode 3 was the opening film of the 2006 Cannes.

[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/feb/18/cannes2005.cann...](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/feb/18/cannes2005.cannesfilmfestival)

<comment><USER9> Netflix can show movies at Cannes, they just can't compete for the prizes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good cinema is good cinema no matter the release medium. This is making a statement that people who release their art with a certain distribution outlet and medium are somehow inferior. Deplorable.

<comment><USER11> Film art, good or bad, has no place at a sales event if it's already sold. It simply isn't a quality statement. It would be like a wholly owned alphabet subsidiary that doesn't need or take any investors trying to get into ycombinator, or like an NFL team crying foul for not being allowed to compete in the NCAA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The truth is, Netflix loves any publicity that associates them with high- quality movies. Since the depressing truth is, most of their movie output is just plain dull stuff, in contrast to their pretty great TV commissioning.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think Netflix customers nor Netflix cares. The competition is a side show to the real purpose of the festival, that is the professional event where deals and contacts get made.

</comment><comment><USER14> We should start a pool on how many years it will take for Cannes to accept Netflix and other streaming sites.

</comment><comment><USER15> Side note: Could we, as submitters, please try a little harder to submit the original source link instead of the reblogging link?

The linked article from The Verge is little more than pull quotes from the full article by The Hollywood Reporter and the source link is provided in the opening lede: [https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-artistic- direc...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-artistic-director- banning-netflix-competition-why-he-allowed-streaming-movies-last-year-1096800)

The outlets that write the original report deserve our clicks and interaction as much as (or, I'd argue, more than) the summarizers.

<comment><USER16> Well, the original statement is here: [http://www.festival- cannes.com/fr/infos-communiques/communiq...](http://www.festival- cannes.com/fr/infos-communiques/communique/articles/communique-de-presse-du- festival-de-cannes) in french, not in english.

And the original interview with Le Film Francais in which he explained it - <USER2> french - is not even online. He hates online media and the internet. Hollywood Reporter is just the most major copycat.</comment></comment>


Beginners' guide to learning Ruby, Rails and related technologies - <AUTHOR> http://learn.rkcudjoe.com/

<comment><USER2> Hey OP, I've got a couple design tips for you.

\- Work on the typography. You need more leading aka the line-height property in CSS. If you only fix one thing, this should be it.

\- Everything is squished together. White space is your friend. Use lots of padding. I recommend a grid system of some sort. 960.gs is good for non- responsive websites and easy to use and understand. If you wanna to responsive check out Foundation or Bootstrap's grid system. Though I really don't think that's necessary.

\- The colors aren't working. Especially the border colors on the box. Way too harsh with the mellow background. I'd look at a site like ColorLovers or Adobe Kuler to get nice pallets.

Useful resources:

[http://www.fivesimplesteps.com/products/a-practical-guide- to...](http://www.fivesimplesteps.com/products/a-practical-guide-to-designing- for-the-web)

[http://nicewebtype.com/](http://nicewebtype.com/)

[http://alistapart.com/article/more-meaningful- typography](http://alistapart.com/article/more-meaningful-typography)

[http://webtypography.net/](http://webtypography.net/)

[http://alistapart.com/article/on-web- typography](http://alistapart.com/article/on-web-typography)

[http://colorlovers.com](http://colorlovers.com)

[http://kuler.adobe.com](http://kuler.adobe.com)</comment>


Nielsen: Android most-wanted platform by those looking to buy a smartphone soon - <AUTHOR> http://moconews.net/article/419-nielsen-survey-apple-slips-in-desire-stakes-to-android/

<comment><USER2> This could simply be a function of sales. Android is now outselling iPhone by a two to one margin. Most of these sales are to people who have never had a smartphone before, and they're totally wowed by Android. So it would make sense that these users, when polled, would prefer another Android phone--after all, it's miles better than the dumb phone that they were previously using. They've never used an iPhone and don't see why they need one, especially given the higher price of the iPhone (most Android phones are dirt cheap, relatively speaking).

The Android installed base is 37% but only 31% of smartphone buyers want Android to be their next phone. The iPhone installed base is 27% but 30% of users want the iPhone to be their next phone. Whether or not this indicates the strength of Android, or the weakness of Android, depends on how many of those polled already own a smartphone. If most of the polled group don't own a smartphone at all, then it's pretty good for Android. If the polled group reflects current smartphone market share, then iPhone looks relatively strong, because that would indicate more existing Android owners want to move to the iPhone than vice-versa.</comment>


Ask HN: Why isnt there a syscall to read/write to multiple file desc. on linux? - <AUTHOR> I am currently playing around with linux epoll interface in order to better understand boost.io and libuv. Upon epoll returns, It looks like the ready file descriptors have to be processed in sequence with one system call per ready file descriptors. Is there a better pattern to process multiple ready file descriptors?<p>PS : Linux has a vectored/io interface but it does not seems to support multiple fds. <comment><USER2> Linux is based on the idea that system calls are cheap (whether this idea is correct or not), so they prefer to avoid system calls that perform multiple operations.

But there has been research on this topic: [https://www.usenix.org/node/170841](https://www.usenix.org/node/170841) [https://www.usenix.org/node/186147](https://www.usenix.org/node/186147)

</comment><comment><USER3> No, there's no better pattern than select/poll/epoll/kqueue-then-multiple- read.

Using many threads or async I/O can allow you to handle multiple file descriptors, but these are hardly convenient - and it's easy to end up with less-performant code.

<comment><USER3> Fwiw: you can, however, send multiple datagrams to multiple hosts with sendmmsg(). Still one socket at a time, but...</comment></comment>


Vote 10,000 times.  This contest relies *only* on client-side validation. - <AUTHOR> http://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/north-america/united-states/best-towns-2014-tournament

<comment><USER2> Title should be "This contest relies _only_ on client-side validation"

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. Updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What exactly is the point of ruining their contest?

<comment><USER4> Having an accurate voting system makes it more fun. The contest isn't fun if I know someone else can rig it.</comment></comment>


The Internet Isn't Just Another TV Pipe - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/01/the-internet-isnt-just-another-tv-pipe/ <comment><USER2> _The Internet isn't just another pipe. The Internet is an open distribution platform available to anyone, a fundamental change to the business landscape in which we operate. And the Internet is bidirectional, which should fundamentally change the product we offer._

I agree, and that's the first thing that the Big Media Companies (and I have to include Microsoft in this category) are working to change. That's what DRM (Copy Protection) is all about, both physically and economically. That's what keeping people ignorant about how web browsers work is all about. That's what port blocking is all about, and that's what bandwidth caps are all about.</comment>


Towards a production quality open source Git LFS server - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2015/08/13/towards-a-production-quality-open-source-git-lfs-server/# <comment><AUTHOR> Update from [https://github.com/github/git- lfs/issues/584#issuecomment-13...](https://github.com/github/git- lfs/issues/584#issuecomment-130817175) GitHub has no plans to release production ready git-lfs server and suggests we start over, or fork it. GitLab will do the fork as already mentioned in the blog post.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll be here in the comments to answer any questions.

<comment><USER2> Since Git LFS support in GitLab is targeted at both CE and EE, do you expect to open up the EE-only git-annex support to CE as well since the two features serve similar purposes?

Edit: "GitLab," not "GibLab," haha.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking. Right now the plan is to keep git-annex EE only. Git Annex can do some neat tricks (multiple storage interfaces, etc.) that Git LFS can't do. But I agree it is not a very congruent situation. We might reconsider when Git LFS is production ready.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This just sounds like whining about having to write an implementation from scratch.

<comment><AUTHOR> GitHub is free to keep their implementation to themselves. We wanted to prevent a duplication of effort and wanted some context about what to expect. Good thing is this was resolved in [https://github.com/github/git- lfs/issues/584](https://github.com/github/git-lfs/issues/584)</comment></comment>


One Year After Quitting My Job - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/2012-year-quitting-job/ <comment><USER2> First of all, congrats Nathan! Cheers bro :)

At the same time, while all this sounds so promising, in my humble opinion, I would say this wouldn't apply to everyone. Whether you know it or not, Nathan _seems_ to have a solid plan - 'This is what I should do. This is _how_ I should do it. And this is _how much_ what I do _might_ generate.'

I see a lot of people quitting their jobs just because it's become more of a cool factor now and most importantly because they think they could become like Nathan _easily_ or rather _quickly_ (like it's some get-rich-quick scheme). You should understand that Nathan has put in some significant, rock-solid hardwork (like developing his own apps, writing some quality books, etc.) into all this. If you just quit your job dreaming of cash flowing in the very next minute, that might not happen.

FYI - I quit my day job too. I wrote some apps too, dreaming of becoming someone like Nathan someday. Here I am, commenting here on Nathan's success story instead. Life ain't that easy dudes :D

<comment><AUTHOR> When I quit my job last year I had a couple things going for me:

1\. I had freelanced before in college, so that life wasn't totally new.

2\. I had a lot of connections so finding work was never a problem.

3\. I had almost $30,000 in savings to even out the slow months.

4\. I had iPhone apps that I had built in my free time while I was employed that were making $2k+ a month.

So quitting my job was not risky at all. In fact, I really dislike risk.

All that said, I did come fairly close to running out of money this last August when I had put all my time into the first book and a consulting client didn't pay a rather large sum of money. Now had I not been working on the first book, I never would have used up my reserve cash.

<comment><USER3> point 2 is the most important one in the long term - once your initial sources run dry, you need to find new clients/customers. this breaks a lot of freelancing careers, have seen this time and time again in my circle of friends.

going solo means you not only spend time on building/creating stuff but also devoting time on building up a pipeline of work - which is initially a lot of unpaid work.

good luck to you nathan!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Checking email, Twitter, and Facebook on my phone has also been a constant interruption of time spent with family. I think this is the biggest issue I need to deal with in 2013._

Man, do I ever sympathize. I was finding myself standing in groups of friends, outside on beautiful sunny days, and we'd all have our phones out looking at Facebook and commenting (out loud) on people's statuses (and the comment is always the same - "yeah, I saw that"). Its so lame!

For me the answer was really easy - just uninstall the app from your phone. You don't have to do anything drastic like quit FB, just uninstall the app from your phone and stop letting it fill up every free moment you have.

Do it now, before you do anything else. It will take 30 seconds and could change your life. Uninstall the FB app.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Do it now, before you do anything else. It will take 30 seconds and could change your life. Uninstall the FB app."

That's actually what I really needed right now. Both Twitter and Facebook are now gone from my phone. Thank you!

<comment><USER5> Facebook. Twitter. Uninstalled. What about a moratorium on Hacker News? Personally, I could have launched several apps with the time I've spent reading Hacker News. However, I get a lot out of HN ... Damn ...

<comment><USER6> I am a bit late to this thread, so you may not see my response. Regardless...

I have wondered about this as well. I am considering two strategies:

1) Stop checking HN at all, and subscribe to Hacker Monthly (<http://hackermonthly.com/>), which is the best articles of the month in a nice format.

2) Schedule a time to check it once a week, and only look at the list of posts with over 200 points. <http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=200>

We have to stop spending time on these sites, even when it seems valuable. Nothing is as valuable as actually building something and interacting with users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Clients being unable to pay has been frustrating and made me want to do less consulting... That's why I love selling products, I get paid up front and don't have to worry about collecting payments._

This is exactly why I left the consulting biz too. I had a web development agency with a bunch of friends & ex-colleagues that was about to make $1M in profits after 3 years. That number would be much higher, had it not been for clients (mostly startups and small businesses) that weren't able to pay (so they claimed) or went out of business. This is despite collecting a deposit of 50% of the estimated costs up-front.

Before we broke $1M, I saw a great opportunity to develop a product, so I shifted my focus and have been doing that ever since.

Consulting is good for getting (relative) immediate cash up-front, while products can take a long time to begin earning that same amount of cash. However, if done well, products can scale and earn much more revenue in the long run.

Nathan is definitely taking the right approach for an individual entrepreneur. He's diversifying his income (consulting, apps, books) while presumably moving his focus away from consulting as his income from apps and books increases.

Good luck man!

<comment><USER8> I have a couple long term, open-ended contracts right now that I'm consulting on, billing out anywhere from 10-40 hours per week on each. The deliverables are frequent, communication is open, I invoice every two weeks with detailed line items, and get paid within 7 days. There are no up front deposits - honestly, it goes against my own values, I'm uncomfortable getting paid for work I have yet to do. The terms are clear in the contracts with work stoppage clauses and all. It's worked well going on about 6 months of doing this. Maybe I'm lucky, and maybe this is the nature of doing long-term gigs or just having clients you mesh well with, but is this really all that unusual?

<comment><USER9> > I'm uncomfortable getting paid for work I have yet to do.

But you're happy furnishing work to people they've yet to pay for?

<comment><USER8> In these small increments for projects of this scope, absolutely. For smaller things I have yet to cross that bridge, but honestly I'm going to try to steer clear from that type of work unless it comes from trusted connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to point out that most of his income came from the ebooks. His income from consulting and apps came in less than the job he left. Self help has always sold very well the last three decades.

I 'believe' that many who come here and quit their day jobs are usually doing it for _startups_ and/or _app dreams_.

Nathan is working hard, doing as many things possible. Not many people can do this (unless/until they reach some desperation factor which makes one realizes the need to _hustle_ and get stuff done).

Bottom line, it's hard work and all sweat. Of course, knowing what industry sells and finding what niche your skills fit in work too.

<comment><USER11> "doing as many things possible"

That's my takeaway from this article, and your comment. Trying to go solo with only one source of revenue/income is foolish. Do as much as you can, as long as the return on investment is sound.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't try to do as many things as possible. Work on one till it is making money (or needs to be shut down because it is failing) then move on to the next thing. Be careful not to spread yourself to thin. That said, get another income source (besides consulting) before you quit your job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats, succeeding on your own terms is what it's all about. Thank you for sharing your story, we need more of this and less of "hot new shiny mobile- social-blah raises 69 million, hires XYZ hotshot and fires ABC hotshot."

</comment><comment><USER13> Nathan, firstly congratulations - it looks like you have definitely made a successful transition from company employment to self-employment. It's also great to see the variety of income streams that you have.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your book and also learn a great deal from your blog, especially as you are so transparent with your failures and successes.

It would be great to hear a little more about how your time management differed in both roles. Are you working less, the same or more hours now? Also it would be good if you could divulge a little more on how the networking you've done has affected your success (if that's possible to describe or even measure!). Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty similar hours (40-50 a week), I just get to pick what I work on now.

<comment><USER14> I think that this is the most impressive fact so far. Being successful on your own as well as maintaining a good work/life balance (especially with a family) is an incredible feat. Way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "In May I made a commitment to write 1,000 words a day. [...] That slow, consistent progress is what allowed me to write two books, almost two dozen guest posts, and over thirty posts on this blog in the last year."

Very well done that man.

I was just wondering how many hours each day it took to crank out the thousand words? I'm assuming that research time was minimal as these appear to be howto books - the research was in launching two successful applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours depending on how inspired I am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, that sounds great! Thank you for sharing such specific numbers on financials.

What I'd also like to see is a breakdown on the time spent doing things you'd rather not be doing (i.e. doing work), and how that compares to your previous salaried position.

<comment><AUTHOR> I still waste a lot of time when I should be working. Especially on sites like Hacker News. ;)

Generally I work about 40-50 hours a week, spread out throughout the day, 7 days a week. Most of that time is spent designing or writing.

<comment><USER17> Great question and thanks for answering. I think that a lot of us have this dream where we work 20-30/hours a week and have the same results that you've achieved. Starting off, as with anything worthwhile, takes a lot of effort, hard work, and focus on what you want to accomplish. Thanks for the update, and please keep posting -- its keeps us motivated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazing, congratulations. And congrats on writing a post like this and coming off as a down-to-earth, regular guy. These posts (along with the people who write them) can often come across as "Look how great I am because I don't follow the status quo!" kind of stuff, but you sound completely humble about it all.

Best of luck for the coming year!

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone made a comment to me last year about a blog post I made "bragging about how much money I made." :( That's really not my intention at all. Just trying to be open and honest. So I'm glad this post didn't come across as bragging.

<comment><USER19> It's human nature to feel uncomfortable, even angry, when a taboo is violated. Talking publicly about your income is taboo.

<comment><USER20> Why? Just because lots of people don't do it for their own personal reasons doesn't make it taboo. Lots and lots of people really like seeing these posts (as evidenced by this and patio11's post being at the top of HN all day) and they can be very useful. Patio11 for instance said he started doing what he is doing in part because of a similar post by someone else.

I think it's more likely that it's human nature for people to be jealous. Some people keep it to themselves, and others lash out on forums like this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As always, I'm happy to answer any questions. :)

<comment><USER21> When I see young men and women consulting, I'm always curious how it's working for them. Do your consultation customers care that you are so young?

I'm genuinely curious about this. Most successful consultants (that I know) have decades of experience in a specific industry or specialty, thus they have a large amount of knowledge based on actual, real-world experience and that is why clients seek them out. They are very successful, but that success seems solely based on their years of experience and insight.

<comment><USER22> I think the confusion comes from the term 'consulting'. In my opinion: Freelancing is not consulting. Technical problem solving (e.g. scaling db, infrastructure improvement, assisting in migrating to a more recent version of a framework, etc. borderline. Providing advice to a team of developers, and doing a little of that work is consulting.

I see so many people claiming they consult, when infact they freelance. They get assigned work, as a temporary employee. Nathan sounds like he started freelancing and now he gets a bit of consulting in the mix too.

<comment><USER21> Very well put. I agree. Freelancing is a much better word. After gaining many years of experience, then one will have the insight and ability to actually consult.

<comment><AUTHOR> Based on that distinction (which I think is accurate) I probably do 50% consulting and 50% freelancing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thanks for sharing this, Nathan. I co-own a web development agency and share your consternation about accounts receivable. Our strategy has actually been to vet clients much more carefully and (as the agency has grown) to begin limiting the clients we take to larger, stable organizations where the accounting department and the product owner we're working are not the same person (so that a discussion about payment does not become a discussion about project status and vice versa).

Overall, congratulations on your success.

</comment><comment><USER24> Congratulations Nathan. I've been a customer since 'The App Design Handbook' - and have never had an ounce of buyers remorse. I wish you all the best going forward.

I do have one question regarding consultancy though - how did you crack this one? How did you make the transition from web designer to consulting for clients and what does 'consulting' entail? (thanks to Swannie for providing a nice outline initially)

Thanks again for the transparency and inspiration Nathan.

</comment><comment><USER25> Congratulations Nathan, it seems like the past year has been even better than you could have imagined.

I thought the write-up was great. There is something about your writing that comes across as humble and thankful for what you have, which is pretty refreshing seeing so many blog posts come across as a little too "know it all".

</comment><comment><USER26> Hi Nathan, Congrats on the amazing achievement. Being in a similar situation as you, I'm curious as to how you and your wife divide finances. What does she do? I am mobile and me and my fiancé want to travel long term but I'm wondering on how to handle the money issue because she can't have a job on the go, and I don't mind bearing the expenses but are there any pro tips that can help me avoid money issues?

Like could we work on a plan for her to help with my apps, etc. ? How do you guys do it ? Great family btw :)

</comment><comment><USER27> What do you do for health insurance? I'd love to be self-employed, but I have to take care of health expenses for my family, and they _require_ health insurance.

<comment><USER28> This is one of the reasons why I'm an advocate of good public universal health care. Too bad it's not available everywhere. But this is a discussion for another thread/post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Your great success is very encouraging! I'm not sure if I could write a book, but the results from consulting and programming are very impressive for a first attempt.

I'm in the middle of making the jump myself, and am currently paying that $4000/mo for our family of two. Did you simply save up enough to live on that for a few months to make more of it? How did that work?

Thanks for the inspiration and congratulations again on your successful year!

</comment><comment><USER30> Congratulations! Not only are those excellent numbers but the fact that you were able to do more of what you wanted to is wonderful.

Quitting a job isn't for everyone — no matter what anyone says, it requires tremendous discipline and focus so props to you for pulling it off. The key thing you are doing here, something that will hold you in good stead in the future, too, is the diversification of income sources.

Once again, congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER31> Congratulations! Being solo myself, I find that your posts are all very inspiring, although my story has been much less successful.

</comment><comment><USER32> Would be great to hear more less successful stories i.e. first freelance making less than the previous job.

It's tricky - and my first year isn't over yet, but not living in a concentrated tech city has made it difficult. Have been considering moving to a bigger city. I prefer working in teams, which is also an issue as most freelancers seem to prefer to work solo.

</comment><comment><USER33> At the age of 22 if he can manage to do all of this (including great looking family). I am in awe. This man is definitely gifted.

</comment><comment><USER34> You have inspired me to start writing 1000 words per day. While I'm typically satisfied with my finished written product, the process of writing usually isn't enjoyable for me. Hopefully, I will find a love for the craft of writing with this challenge. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER35> Do you write and edit at the same time? I found that separating the two tasks made it much less painful.

<comment><USER34> Not a bad suggestion! I'll give it a try.

<comment><USER35> Thanks! Let us know how it goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Nathan, Great inspiration you are. I've read your thinktraffic posts and always enjoy. You have many great things to say.

Concentrate has helped me save thousands of hours. <http://www.getconcentrating.com/>

Keep up the hard work, and stay writing.

</comment><comment><USER37> Good job Nathan, following the right path to being a successful solopreneur.

Do you use a publisher for your books and/or do marketing yourself to sell them?

Also, you should have visited Glasgow instead of Edinburgh, we are a much friendlier place :-P

<comment><AUTHOR> All self published and marketed on my own.

Next time I'll visit Glasgow. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Congratulations, I've read your other posts and always impressed by your concise way of describing the processes you are undertaking.

One thing troubles me though, why did you goto Swansea on your UK trip of all places!?

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend grew up there. Also, have you been to the Gower Peninsula? It's beatiful!

<comment><USER38> I was born in Cardiff but strangely never been to Swansea, currently consigned to the grey skies of London though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great work landing on your feet and got it going great. It's very impressive to do it for the first year, even more so for doubling over your old salary in the first year. Keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nathan, congrats. You seem incredibly focused (even though you said that focus was an issue). What is your workflow process like? In other words, how do you seem to get so much done? :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Love this article - your transparency is commendable. Thanks for sharing the numbers, it's something I wish more people did.

</comment><comment><USER42> Congrats, it's always nice to see things work out well.

Next goal is probably increasing the share of passive recurring income. :)

</comment><comment><USER43> I would love to hear about how you wrote / published the eBooks and launched and marketed them.

</comment><comment><USER44> Well done Nathan. Hope you continue to do well. And thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER45> Congrats Nathan - really appreciate the openness & honesty :)

</comment><comment><USER46> Congrats, brotha!

</comment><comment><USER47> Inspirational :)

</comment><comment><USER48> Reality: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chicago_Hobo.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER49> Why do you have $4000 a month in expense in Idaho??? That's like bay area expense level and a sr. anything makes like 150k...

<comment><AUTHOR> We travel quite a bit.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are there no surprising innovations in PC hardware/software? - <AUTHOR>

There's vast numbers of computers and components for sale from any number of companies.  Largely only compatible with Windows and Linux.<p>Where are the surprising innovations that transform and revitalise this ecosystem? <comment><USER2> There's no demand.

<comment><AUTHOR> For what, an unthought of innovation?</comment></comment>


"It's done in hardware so it's cheap" (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/its-done-in-hardware-so-its-cheap.html <comment><USER2> Another benefit of specialized hardware, besides dispatch costs, is the cost of moving data around. As your chip gets wider you want more physical (rather than architectural) registers with more ports meaning super linear growth. And your bypass network also grows quadratically in transistor terms. And as your core gets bigger physically you lose more power moving data longer distances.

But in dedicated hardware you can just gang your operations into dataflows where the output of one stage feeds into the physically adjacent next stage with no need to make a trip through the register file or bypass network.

A lot of the benefit of hardware vector operations over scalar operations is in the dispatch cost, but most of the benefit from hardware matrix operations over hardware vector operations is from reduced data movement.

EDIT: Of course, the post is from 2012 back when nobody was doing hardware matrix multiplication so it's understandable.

<comment><USER3> I recall a demo app from my teen years (late 1908s to early 90s) that demonstrated, after installing your coprocessor, improved 3D performance by rotating at "high" speed a 3D sprite on the screen. This was an Intel 80386 with an 80387 coprocessor - I thought it was doing matrix math. Nope, the 8037 was an _external_ floating-point unit that arrived two years after the processor with which it was paired. Cringey.

<comment><USER4> Math coprocessors worked fairly well due to much slower clock speed minimizing the latency issues. Off chip level 2/3 cache was still a thing into 486 days. And x86 ASM still treats floating point as if it's on a separate processor.

PS: Got a real chuckle out of that 1908s typo. I would probably keep it.

<comment><USER5> L2 cache only got packaged with the chip in the Pentium 2, and even then, wasn't on chip, hence the weird packaging.

<comment><USER6> They were packaged closely together in the Pentium Pro (two dies in the same processor package). The Pentium II was a cheaper downgrade that preserved the separate bus but just put the cache next to the CPU in the weird packaging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds of when I was doing firmware development and the ASIC team would ask if they could toss in a extra Cortex-M3 core to solve specific control problems. Those cores would be used as programmable state machines. For the ASIC team tossing in a extra core was free compared to custom logic design. However for the firmware team it would be another job to write and test that firmware. We had designs with upwards of 10 Cortex-M3 cores. I've heard from a friend at another employer had something like 32 such cores and it was a pain to debug.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Why have multicore chips if it saves no energy?_

In addition to TFA's reason, bluntly, because we have the transistors. Dennard scaling has ended which has meant that we can't continue to increase clock frequencies. However, transistor counts have continued to increase. This has basically forced CPU manufacturers to focus on multicore _because we have the transistors_.

Also, big/little, gating off unused silicon and other approaches can save energy even as they use more transistors.

<comment><USER9> There is also a heat aspect to this. You can run many cores at lower frequency to save on heat. This makes perf more consistent as you can avoid thermal throttle vs a single bursty core.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, to do higher speeds(switching cost, F) you need higher voltages (V) so your power/heat goes up by non-linear variant of F*V.

Depending on what your savings are for idle power it can either make sense to run long and slow or try and burst to a deep sleep state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Imho the article misses a _key_ point which is data locality.

If you look at specialized processors for say, convolutions, the majority of the benefits are coming from data locality being exploited.

(And no I've never heard the term "dispatch" be used for data movement)

<comment><USER12> The "extract bits 3 to 7 and multiply by 13" example is about data locality, to some extent. It's cheaper to keep data in a local circuit, than to ship it around between general-purpose registers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Done in hardware" means "done _directly_ in hardware"; the _directly_ part is understood, because everyone knows that everything is ultimately done in hardware.

Something not done directly in hardware is done in software. That means it's done using _more_ hardware resources compared to directly in hardware.

QED; directly in hardware is cheaper.

Cheaper to operate, anyway, not necessarily cheaper to produce. You have to move a decent volume before it becomes economic to optimize a solution into hardware. Also, a mistake discovered in the field in hardware is more costly than a mistake in upgradable software.

</comment><comment><USER14> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339024)

</comment><comment><USER15> I immediately thought of Nvidia RTX when I saw the title. "Faster" does not always mean "fast enough".

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't agree with the tone of the article. Doing complex functions in hardware is a lot cheaper, often by 100X, compared to doing them in software.

As an extreme case, to do a simple 32-bit add, you light up tens of millions of transistors if the addition goes through a CPU pipeline. The adder itself of course only requires a few transistors...

Saying that "specialization saves dispatching costs" is minimizing the savings by orders of magnitude. Of course, the article is correct in pointing out that hardware doesn't make things free.

[source: my day job]

<comment><USER17> TFA author. How does the word "dispatching" hint at the order of magnitude of anything? What orders of magnitude do depend on is your competition. Outdoing a CPU at operation X is easier than outdoing a GPU at X [assuming the GPU does X reasonably well] which is easier than outdoing a DSP at X [assuming the DSP does X reasonably well]. If your competition is reasonably optimized programmable accelerators, your opportunities to beat it start shrinking.

Source: my day job

<comment><USER16> For me, dispatching refers to a very specific piece of the CPU micro- architecture, by far not the most complex or largest area. So by focusing on "dispatching", you make it sound like the overhead is small. Maybe you meant to use another word.

My point stands that from a silicon area perspective, 99% of the CPU is overhead when all you need is a fixed function.

Based on your background, I know you know that. A lot of details in the article show that you know what you are talking about and have specific use cases in mind. I can guess those and for those the article is correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Its done in hardware because its faster, and tech support can just switch it on and off in case of panic, and flicking the switch is a moment of anxiety relief, for those with a tendancy to flick a switch in times of absolute pannick.

</comment><comment><USER19> Its a good article but the author missed the third reason hardware can be vastly cheaper, which is lack of abstraction.

You can use google search to add 0x9 + 0x2 and get hexadecimal 0xb... however that involves dozens of layers of abstraction and endless formatting and parsing that are fundamentally useless in the long run for something like a GPU display.

The 4th reason hardware is vastly cheaper is it needs less testing.

In the example above you can either trust your FPGA/ASIC software to implement a byte-wide full adder properly, because thats kinda a basic task for that technology, or you can whack the byte-wide adder with all possible test cases in a couple ns on real hardware, all possible binary inputs and outputs are quite well known and trivial. When you ask google, or worse, alexa, to add two hexadecimal digits there are uncountable number of theoretical buffer overflows and MITM attacks possible spyware/virus infections and similar such nonsense at multiple layers you probably are not even aware of.

The 5th reason hardware is vastly cheaper is environmentalism and energy costs. I have trouble estimating the energy cost of a byte-wide adder in a ASIC or a CPU, surely it can't be more than charging and discharging a couple sub-pF capacitors... takes billions of transistors switching like crazy to dump the 100 watts a server motherboard can dump and a full adder doesn't take many transistors. On the other hand the infrastructure and environmental damage required to ask Alexa to add two hex digits is very high. You can piggy back on it by passing the buck; well, we need that environmental damage and economic cost to enable netflix at which point asking alexa questions is a drop in the bucket, but people have polluted for centuries on the same argument (well, its just a little extra lost plutonium and compared to above ground nuclear testing its a drop in the bucket, etc)

<comment><USER20> > The 4th reason hardware is vastly cheaper is it needs less testing.

This goes against all experience I had with hardware, and everything I have ever heard from every single embedded/electronics engineer.

<comment><USER21> It may be because, outside of a few domains, we just accept software failing all the time, and hence do little testing of it.</comment></comment></comment>


SpaceX CRS-5 Webcast - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

<comment><AUTHOR> Musk from the AMA: There is a great quote by Churchill: "If you're going through hell, keep going."

</comment><comment><USER2> Hold Hold Hold Abort :(

<comment><USER3> Too bad... but a lot better than losing a rocket.

<comment><USER4> The one second launch window made any hold an abort :(

<comment><USER3> Why was the launch window that short? Matching trajectory with ISS?

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Given that the ISS passes overhead at ~7km/s, a little delay in launch time would mean _a lot_ of catching up to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Expected launch timeline:

T-0:00:00: Liftoff

T+0:01:10: Mach 1

T+0:01:23: Max Q (maximum aerodynamic pressure)

T+0:02:37: MECO (main engine cutoff)

T+0:02:41: Stage 1 Separation

T+0:02:49: Stage 2 Ignition

T+0:03:29: Nose Cone Jettison

T+0:09:00: First Stage Landing

T+0:09:27: SECO (second engine cutoff)

T+0:10:02: Dragon Separation

T+0:12:00: Solar Array Deployment

Landing barge location: [http://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=367017460](http://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=367017460)

Additional streaming options:

\- Youtube official stream: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohnnl4nOcGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohnnl4nOcGU)

\- NASA stream: [http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv](http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv)

\- Spaceflightnow stream: [http://www.livestream.com/spaceflightnow](http://www.livestream.com/spaceflightnow)

</comment><comment><USER7> Elon Musk on Twitter: "Need to investigate the upper stage Z actuator. Was behaving strangely. Next launch attempt on Friday at 5am."

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/552437001291841539](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/552437001291841539)

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't see any video, just the twitter? feed when I view this. What am I doing wrong?

I've had to fall back to NASATV

edit: I bet that's what the 5 mins remaining on the countdown is waiting for. I'm really stupid.

edit2: Stupidity confirmed, video is now live.

<comment><USER9> I clicked "somewhere" and got this: [http://new.livestream.com/spacex/events/3665355](http://new.livestream.com/spacex/events/3665355)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's weird, this post and it's comments appeared on the site hours ago, but seems to have re-appeared in an early form with the comment ages reset.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Last I heard they gave a 50/50 chance of landing the first stage...so quick poll: do you think they'll do it?!

<comment><USER6> From Musk's AMA on reddit:

Q: Previously, you've stated that you estimate a 50% probability of success with the attempted landing on the automated spaceport drone ship tomorrow. Can you discuss the factors that were considered to make that estimation?

A: I pretty much made that up. I have no idea :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic! Give the man a fag packet to write on the back of and we'll see what he comes up with next!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Was at Canaveral this AM... total bummer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here we go again...!!

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the launch that will actually try to land on the ocean platform ! [1]

Also, the boss is doing an AMA. [2]

[1] [http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/12/16/x-marks-spot- falcon-9-...](http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/12/16/x-marks-spot- falcon-9-attempts-ocean-platform-landing)

[2] [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Did I really wake up early for that?

<comment><USER3> Would you feel the same way if you didn't wake up and you missed it? This is not some two bit web app and there are plenty of people that can't manage to make those work.

Instead of being irritated the lesson to learn here is that it is better to abort 10 times than to blow up in mid-air even once.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, if SpaceX rockets move to carrying people, having that perfect record is even more important.</comment></comment></comment>


Security with Angular JS - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ifoT-Id54

<comment><AUTHOR> A brief look at some common-sense ways that you can secure a web application written with Angular JS and Laravel 4. By watching this screencast you can expect to learn about:

* angular.constant

* ng-init

* ng-sanitize

* Laravel 4 CSRF support, route filters, and built in protection

Resources Bundle: <http://bitly.com/bundles/dmosher/6>

Source Code: [https://github.com/davemo/end-to-end-with- angularjs/compare/...](https://github.com/davemo/end-to-end-with- angularjs/compare/370eddc83f...f2e04b5c9a)</comment>


Here Is The Main Reason Why You Suck At Interviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.skorks.com/2010/12/here-is-the-main-reason-why-you-suck-at-interviews/

<comment><USER2> Just make sure you can solve this puzzle:

A hundred prisoners are each locked in a room with three pirates, one of whom will walk the plank in the morning. Each prisoner has 10 bottles of wine, one of which has been poisoned; and each pirate has 12 coins, one of which is counterfeit and weighs either more or less than a genuine coin. In the room is a single switch, which the prisoner may either leave as it is, or flip. Before being led into the rooms, the prisoners are all made to wear either a red hat or a blue hat; they can see all the other prisoners' hats, but not their own. Meanwhile, a six-digit prime number of monkeys multiply until their digits reverse, then all have to get across a river using a canoe that can hold at most two monkeys at a time. But half the monkeys always lie and the other half always tell the truth. Given that the Nth prisoner knows that one of the monkeys doesn't know that a pirate doesn't know the product of two numbers between 1 and 100 without knowing that the N+1th prisoner has flipped the switch in his room or not after having determined which bottle of wine was poisoned and what color his hat is, what is the solution to this puzzle?

Source: <http://www.cartalk.com/content/read-on/2008/08.23.2.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Basically, he's saying you don't do enough interviews to get good at them.

That's not really news, since I've heard so many people say to do more interviews just to get the practice.

And if you've somehow escaped hearing that, let me fix that:

Do more interviews! The practice will make you better at future interviews. Even if you don't really want the job, take an interview. The more you do, the better you'll be at them.

<comment><USER4> That is not what the article is saying at all.

His main point is that you need to practice the things that you know are going to trip you up in an interview. Do some preparation. Don't wing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great posting. Helped me a lot. Basically means that preparing for interviews is HARD WORK. Get to it !</comment>


Jr WEb App Developer - <AUTHOR>

Rocklin, CA based company seeking part time jr. level or beyond employee for web application development.
Requirements are as follows: * Able to code in languages: PHP, Ruby, Python... * Good working knowledge of logic flow in general * Experience with some of the more common web frameworks like RoR, CakePHP, Symphony, Django, etc... * Ability to write clean, concise, and at least somewhat moderately documented code * Communicates well with others and works well in a team or solo * Able to communicate well with clients
Optional Skills (not required, but any of these are a bonus): * Experience with general MVC architecture concepts * Experience working with software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign * Experience with revision control systems such as cvs, svn, git, hg, etc… * Decent level of comfort with unix-type systems. * Any kind of professional IT support experience * Skilled with HTML5 and CSS3 and it's predecessors * Design and layout skills -- ability to make visually appealing pages/templates and UI components * Well versed with coding in Javascript and using the jQuery framework * Be able and willing to develop pages with high levels of compatibility (don't worry, we don't care about IE6 -- just IE7+, FF, Safari, Opera, Chrome) <comment><AUTHOR> Email email@example.com with cover letter, resume and qualifications. Thank you.</comment>


What happens when you divide by zero on a mechanical calculator - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFJUYFlSYsM <comment><USER2> My mother, a statistician, used a motorised mechanical calculator at the UK's Royal Aircraft Establishment around 1965.

She used to say if you accidentally divided by zero, it jammed itself and you had to call a repairman...

</comment><comment><USER3> I once did something like this once on a mechanical Olivetti... only it was a million times a million.

Not even unplugging it would reset the mechanism. We had to open it and find and pull a master release bar, forcing it to end calculation and print a partial answer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perpetum Mobile ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> Captian Kirk would be proud.</comment>


Sorry Windows, Android is now the most popular end-user operating system - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/sorry-windows-android-is-now-the-most-popular-end-user-operating-system/ <comment><USER2> And just as liable to malware apparently.</comment>


Ask HN: What process do you use when building a modern Web/Mobile App? - <AUTHOR> I'm researching the processes used to design modern web and mobile apps:<p>(a) In particular, is the PRD -> SRD -> Design -> Implementation -> Testing flow still used?<p>(b) What do you use to capture the UI aspects and requirements?<p>(c) How are tool choices made when similar tools exist?<p>Pointing me to a set of "starter" web links would be just fine. <comment><USER2> Not sure if this is what you are after, but we run the following process for user facing features & apps:

1\. Product Owner creates mockups of desired flow/functionality in Balsamiq. Including acceptance criteria for QA.

2\. Architect questions, reviews mockups, annotates with API calls (existing or new)

3\. Mockups passed to UI designer who provides design and resources for developers

4\. Development

5\. Release, QA & UAT once passed

Key to this approach is (a) a product owner who is has a technical background so you start from something sensible, (b) not letting the product owner build UIs but rather flow & functionality (so the designer has free reign), (c) not taking on too much within a single project (eg a fully fledged app from scratch would be multiple iterations of this).

If it is an incremental change or a change related to a growth experiment, during step (1) we set the hypothesis (Eg increase conversion rate through funnel X) and on deployment is evaluated.

If the change has significant architecture / backend implications the architect specs these out separately using either a checklist or a functional spec which is then broken down into JIRA tickets.

We are a small team, but I have found this approach works in larger orgs too. Any time we have started with BRD/PRD etc I find they get outdated fast. Documentation heavy methods have been helpful work for architecture backend changes though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your insightful comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Find out what the customer really wants.

2\. Try to hack it with as fast as possible - Google Forms, spreadsheets, PowerPoint, Evernote, WordPress. For a lot of things with a database, you should be able to prototype faster with a spreadsheet.

3\. At some point, it will fall apart. Design a _disposable_ prototype. Plan to throw this prototype away completely.

4\. Hack away at the prototype for max 1 month. This should be enough to present to a investor or even release to a customer. (one of my prototypes got 10k downloads, good cash flow, crashed on average 3 times a day)

5\. Build a proper design around this. If you have released your prototype to the client, you know clearly what they want.

6\. Break down customer requirements into test cases. As in plaintext tests, not code or Word documents.

7\. Design a plan for development to launch. Try to launch as soon as possible. Cut features out ruthlessly.

8\. Launch. Iterate.

In the early stages, pick the fastest tool. Pick a tool you know or can learn fast.

Every design, scale up 10x. Your spreadsheet might handle 10 customers. Your app prototype might handle 100. Your first non beta release might handle 1000 customers. Future releases handle 10000, 100k and so on. Don't scale too early; tools that scale well are generally less efficient, and this includes marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your insightful comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not contributing to the answer but a related question: Also when you start afresh on a new web/mobile app, do you use in trend technologies or the ones you (team) is comfortable with. Is there a process / guidelines to this?

<comment><USER5> usually, the fastest route between two points is... the one you are familiar with. I always go with the stack i'm comfortable with. If i want to try something new ( lately, flutter.io and dart2 ) i build a proof-of-concept / side-project / toy. Won't bet my living on trendy tech... i'm all for "boring proven stuff".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Off track answer still worth focusing on modern web applications. I see some companies use pre built common services (for example identity service, notification service). Product companies now using micro service architecture to achieve product development seamlessly and in time. This helps developers to focus on pure business logic. Try to evaluate this approach as well if you think single company sells multiple product under same umbrella.</comment>


Run an Ultramarathon - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Run_an_Ultramarathon?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

<comment><USER2> I did 36-miler as I recall four times, found it to be essentially an extended marathon. I did a 50-miler once and did not feel the urge to go back for more --just too long. I did meet a friend in the last hundred or so yards, a woman for whom I later served as handler at the Old Dominion 100; however, she was an unusual type, one who came into her own out past about 40 miles.

I will say that one would be reckless to do a road race out beyond 40 miles with a support crew of at least one person to bring dry clothing & fluids, perhaps snacks. At the Old Dominion 100, the runner could have a companion starting at mile 75 one year and 66 another--people were crossing Massanutten Mountain in the dark and exhausted, and the organizers were aware of the hazards that presented.

</comment><comment><USER3> So for those who haven't seen it - have a look at Cliff Young: [http://www.my- inspirational-quotes.com/inspirational-stories...](http://www.my- inspirational-quotes.com/inspirational-stories/cliff-young/)

At age 61 he showed up at the start of an ultramarathon (from Sydney to Melbourne - 544 miles/875km) in overalls and gumboots. He then goes on and smashes the old record and wins. His secret - everyone else stopped and had naps - he just kept on going and going.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ultras rock. There is no better experience than running as the sun goes down knowing you've been running since it came up. And all your friends have awakened, watched reruns, eaten pizza, and gone back to sleep while you've been running ;)

That and they give out awesome t-shirts :D

But, aside from the "masochistic" part of it, the community is unbelievable and the atmosphere at races is what got me into them to begin with. It's like one big family in a way. One big family that gathers at the most beautiful places in the country before sunrise so the

<comment><USER5> Man, I'm addicted to the buckles!! All those "short" races have puny medals!! 100's have belt buckles, some times the size of dinner plates!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're interested in such ultra-endurance events, but you aren't sure if your body can handle such pounding, try out randonneuring--essentially, ultra- long distance (200+km) cycling. You can achieve the same sorts of mental and physical suffering without jarring your joints so much.

<comment><USER7> Or another alternative is multi-sport, you can get a good mixture of activities so you can spread out the physical punishment.

A good example: <http://www.coasttocoast.co.nz>

3km beach run, 55km cycle, 33km run over a mountain pass, 15km cycle, 67km kayak, 70km cycle

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow leave it to a post about ultas to pull me outta my lurking shell. :)

I love running ultras, IMHO it is the single most self inspiring act you can do without having to spend a thousands of dollars(like say climbing Everest).

My goal is to complete the "Grand Slam" which is 4 100's in 4 months. I'm aiming for next year, pending I get in to western states again next year.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Most importantly: Drink continuously."

This seems like bad advice. Many of the recent deaths in marathons have been due to water intoxication rather than dehydration.

</comment><comment><USER9> run an ultramarathon? maybe don't: [http://www.paleonu.com/panu- weblog/2010/3/21/still-not-born-...](http://www.paleonu.com/panu- weblog/2010/3/21/still-not-born-to-run.html)

<comment><USER10> This is some really interesting stuff. I've been experimenting around a baseline paleo diet(which has been pretty amazing), and I started doing short 15-30min morning runs as a way to induce a mild "wake up" stress, but I might switch over to doing some body-weight resistance(push-ups, situps, squats) instead.

<comment><USER11> The article is about a small group of elite long distance runners. I don't think you can draw any meaningful conclusions about your short morning runs here.

And it is worth noting that this is a blog post about an article about a study. The author of the blog post has not even read the abstract of the study, let alone the study itself. The article on which the blog post is based says _Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My good friend's dad did one of these when we was in his fifties.

You are typically allowed to have people pace you (run along with you), so my friend ran with his dad from the 60 mile point to the 80 mile point. I remember my friend making a comment that sounded to me as the most ludicrous thing ever. His dad was really struggling around the 75 mile mark. His comment was this:

"Dad, I know this is tough, but there is really only 5 more miles of hard terrain. After that its just 20 easy miles."

<comment><USER13> "It's all downhill from here!" is a very common encouragement called out by spectators at road races. I've heard it said by persons who could have looked back and seen that they were at the foot of a long uphill grade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most ultrarunners who can do 2-3 100-milers in a year are considered superheroes. Until now. Monica Scholz, an ultrarunner from Canada is attempting to run 30x100 milers in 2010. She's already a few races in: <http://www.monumentaleffort.com/monica's-3000-mile-odyssey>

<comment><USER15> And then you have the Marathon Monks:

<http://www.howtobefit.com/tendai-marathon-monks.htm>

<comment><USER14> Wow. Thanks for the link, I may have to read the book mentioned in that article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hmm... hadn't ever thought about runners needing to pee. How do they go about dealing with this during extended marathons?

<comment><USER15> Ironman triathletes train themselves to pee during the race. For instance, part of their training is to pee while cycling at 20mph+ in aero position.

<comment><USER17> So if I'm ever in an ironman race, I shouldn't follow another cyclist too closely...

<comment><USER18> There are always a few funny clips during long stages of the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, etc... where they show riders going to the back of the group to have a whiz. In some races, they all agree to stop and line up along the side of the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm neither a doctor nor an athlete, but these things cannot be good for your body.

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't worry about it -- the human body is made for long distance running. As long as you keep your limits in mind I'm sure it's fine. That said, I've never really tried running more than 10 miles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Or maybe don't: <http://arthurdevany.com/articles/20091028></comment>


Swiss finance guru sees hard times for the US and the world  (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/news/business/Dr_Doom_gives_gloomy_economic_forecast.html?siteSect=161&sid=6749727&cKey=1148914435000&ty=st

<comment><USER2> No fucking way? Really? Shit, that's news! Whodathunk? Is there some crisis or something? Has the president been told?

<comment><USER3> We're holding off until 2,000 more articles have been written on the subject, just to be sure. Don't want to spook the guy.

<comment><USER2> I have a better idea... just give him My Pet Goat to read, that'll soothe him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> * I would allocate at least 50 per cent of a clients' money in Asia and move it away from the US.*

Asian markets have fallen very badly almost 50-60%, I am wondering if this was the right advice.

<comment><USER5> He was putting them in things like high dividend yield utilities, not the broader markets indexes. I'm not sure how his Asian holdings have done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see an end to this crisis until the U.S. gets back in touch with reality about how to value things.

</comment><comment><USER7> WTF? Now there are two Dr. Dooms? Things really must be bad.

</comment><comment><USER8> The title "finance guru" automatically disqualifies anyone from an opinion.

<comment><USER4> That's media jargon, I am pretty much sure, he wouldn't address himself as "finance guru".</comment></comment>


New York Beats Out San Francisco to Be World's Best Tech City - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/new-york-beats-out-san-francisco-to-be-world-s-best-tech-city <comment><USER2> LOL, no. If you want to work in finance, the best city is NY. If you want to work in film/media, the best city is LA. If you want to work in tech, the best city is SF/Silicon Valley. It may not be the best city to live in, but it's where you go if you want to be at the center of the action.

SV is where you'll find the headquarters of Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel, Netflix, Oracle, HP, Cisco, Brocade, NVIDIA, Salesforce, Adobe, Seagate, Slack, Uber, Twitter, Quicken, Paypal, Gilead, Applied Materials, VMWare, Symantec, Juniper, Electronic Arts, Brocade, Xilinx and many, many others.

Of the 10 largest tech companies by revenue, 7 are headquartered in Silicon Valley (the others are IBM, MSFT, Amazon) [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/21/ten-largest-us-tech- firms-20...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/21/ten-largest-us-tech- firms-2018-revenue-seen-topping-1-trillion.html)

What major tech company has their HQ in NYC? Fog creek software? Reddit?

<comment><USER3> Why does it matter where the HQ is? I dont need to work in the city with 1000 tech employers, i only need one, the company i work for.

<comment><USER2> Think about what that means -- in the entire history of New York, not a single start up began in NYC and grew to be successful and market dominant there. Not a single one. Seattle has been much more successful -- it created MSFT and Amazon. What did NYC create? Best example would probably be fog bugz. Given that NYC has been so successful at creating other kinds of companies and has a lot of talented people, this is a conspicuous gap, no? Austin, TX, has been far more successful at creating tech companies than NYC. Both are tiny specs of dust compared SV.

So clearly there is some kind of difference between these places, no? Some reason why one place offers more opportunity than another in tech?

SV has an incredibly high density of headquarters of the biggest tech firms. This is where the leadership is, where the most experienced engineers are, and where the institutional knowledge resides.

Because attention is scarce and communication is costly, firms tend to keep the most strategic efforts closest and push less critical efforts farther out. As Dan Kaminsky used to say, "If you're not at HQ, you're not part of the conversation".

Individual contributors can be remote and support/sales/backoffice staff can be in satellite offices all over, but the key roles will be concentrated around HQ.

Now go back to finance. There are lots of bank teller jobs in Phoenix. Wells Fargo has a lot of staff there, so does Bank of America. But if you want to have a career in finance, you are going to have more opportunities in NYC where the HQ of so many FIRE firms is concentrated, and not in Phoenix, even though there are lots of bank tellers and back office managers that work in Phoenix.

The _types_ of jobs you can have are just different. The opportunities, institutional knowledge, mentoring opportunities, social networks, level of responsibility -- it's different. It may seem unfair, but that's how it goes.

NYC is basically Phoenix when it comes to tech -- a lot of backoffice and sales positions, and a bunch of engineering satellite positions, but not a single major tech company is headquartered there.

<comment><USER4> I kinda think DoubleClick should count, although I don't know how dominant they were:

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

Honestly I also think Bloomberg should count.

I also wouldn't go so far as to call them "major" but Mongo is headquartered in NY.

Interesting list: [https://www.builtinnyc.com/2017/11/07/nyc-top-100-tech- compa...](https://www.builtinnyc.com/2017/11/07/nyc-top-100-tech- companies-2017)

<comment><USER2> I would count doubleclick. I missed it because when I looked at my various lists, it didn't account for acquisitions. Google bought doubleclick, but yes it was market dominant when Google bought it.

Thanks for your list, which is interesting. No way would I consider 'vice media' or 'buzzfeed' to be tech companies. We are well past the stage where delivering something over the web makes you a tech company -- a tech company uses some advance in technology to gain a key competitive advantage. So you can argue that the Bloomberg terminal was bloomberg's key advantage and thus makes Bloomberg a tech company, assuming they were the ones who invented information terminals or did some technological innovation to radically improve them.

But there is nothing like that in vice media or buzzfeed. These are media companies. That also means the definition of a tech company changes over time. If I start a company selling books online today, that's not a tech company. Even though Amazon was a tech company doing just that in the past.

Take Blue Apron -- what exactly is technical about it, other than they have a website? Take, as a comparison, Amazon. You can say "both Blue Apron and Amazon sell stuff over the web". But selling stuff over the web in 1998 was technically innovative whereas doing the same in 2018 is not. And you can tell that Amazon is a technology driven company by looking at AWS and all of the innovations they have created since then as well. Amazon makes money by inventing new technologies, whereas Blue Apron makes money by selling prepared meals. That's not a slam on Blue Apron, because there are many drivers of a company. Maybe Blue Apron has the best chefs. Maybe they have the best quality food. Maybe they have the best customer support. Maybe the best prices. There are lots of legitimate business approaches other than focusing on technological innovation to gain a market edge.

Similarly, nowadays every taxi company has smartphone based dispatching. But that's not going to convert taxi companies into tech companies, but Uber will remain a tech company and it continues to rollout other tech innovations even as others catch up to them with smartphone dispatch.

<comment><USER4> Yep, I agree with all of these points. Casper and Capsule also come to mind (both headquartered in New York, probably get lumped into these kind of lists, and probably aren't really _tech_ companies).

But there are other ones that "feel" more like tech companies, just nothing quite nearly as big as DoubleClick. e.g. Songza (acquired by Google), Cockroach Labs, Vimeo (acquired by IAC but still operating independently) have not (yet) been mentioned.

EDIT: I see Vimeo was covered below.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The actual report is here: [http://pdf.euro.savills.co.uk/global- research/tech-cities-in...](http://pdf.euro.savills.co.uk/global- research/tech-cities-in-motion.pdf)

Obviously they will get more attention if they don't rank the SF Bay Area #1 so didn't do so last year ether (but chose _Austin_ \-- I've lived there and it's great, but it's small, even if you don't compare it against Dallas or Houston).

There are reasons for preferring to live other places than the Bay Area, but the overwhelming volume of investment, people willing to work for startups, people willing to try out new stuff, and the dense network really put it in a completely different class from NY (which has very dense networks -- perhaps even denser -- in other sectors). There's a lot more to to in NY but if what you care about is tech-tech-tech it's hard to beat the Valley (which I assume is swept into their classification of "SF").

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there widespread agreement on what it means to be a "tech company"?

Is a tech company or tech city just a company or city with a lot of software jobs? Or do people generally construe it to encompass more than software (batteries, nuclear reactors, pharmaceuticals)? Are some kinds of software excluded because they aren't novel enough?

Can Uber, FedEx, and Walmart all have the same level of technological sophistication and still one be regarded as "tech" and the others not?

I have the same question when it comes to investing, where "technology" is identified as a sector (for example Personal Capital uses it as one of 7 sectors across which to balance its portfolios). How do you decide what companies fall in or out of that sector?

</comment><comment><USER7> I bet that the people doing this, don't work in Tech nor live in SF. I'm not in SF, don't even like the place, but it's the World's best tech city.

</comment><comment><USER8> New York is definitely finance. It's not to say the tech scene is small though. You have to work a little harder to network but that's nothing new to NYers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The actual report that forms the basis for the article can be found at:

[https://www.savills.co.uk/research_articles/229130/274944-0](https://www.savills.co.uk/research_articles/229130/274944-0)

<comment><USER9> Looking at the bar chart on that page - NY scores a lot higher on "Business Environment" than SF, enough to pip SF (#2) at the post.

They have a bunch of categories and add up the scores, that's all. Pretty arbitrary, like any such list. Most of the comments sound here like it's someone's personal opinion, or deliberately fixed, or an insult to SF, or a joke etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As always, ask "Best for what?". If your goal in life is tech and nothing else matters, the SF Bay Area tops everything.

If you want to raise kids in a reasonably safe environment, have them attend good schools, live in a house or equivalent condo, commute less than four hours per day, etc., the Bay Area is simply impossible. (Maybe if your spouse also draws a tech salary.) Do the research. In this sense, it's not "best", but rather one of the worst places in America.

(And don't even get me started on the public defecation...)

</comment><comment><USER11> This article and ranking seems interesting - "best tech city"? I still can't comprehend how they came to that conclusion, but it must have to do with finance. Tech wise neither NYC nor London would attract me for tech jobs. Even Seattle is ranking higher in my books compared to those when it comes to "best tech city" and it's not even listed.

</comment><comment><USER12> Having spent time in all the US cities on this list, I feel that Seattle should be ranked much higher.

</comment><comment><USER13> New York Beats out San Francisco to Be World's Best City.

Drops mic.</comment>


Time: 50 Best Websites of 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2012721_2012728,00.html

<comment><USER2> Full List: [http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2012721,00.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't that a little premature? There are still 129 days left in 2010.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last year's was posted on August 24th. [http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016,00.html) Last year's decision probably had some influence on when to post this year's. I wonder how meticulous the time editors are in consistency vs revising to what makes sense

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to say I find that time.com site pretty awful to use. It is difficult to know where to look, where the main page content is and how to navigate around.

Very messy !

</comment><comment><USER5> So foursquare was one of 'The 50 Worst Inventions' ever? [http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1991915_1991909_1991739,00.html)

But gowalla is one of the '50 Best Websites of 2010' [http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2012721_2012915_2012909,00.html)

With that context, this is just great: _Foursquare may be getting all the attention, but Gowalla - its scrappy Austin competitor - is more fun._</comment>


China's Hybrid Spaceplane Could Reset the 21st Century Space Race - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/chinas-hybrid-spaceplane-could-reset-21st-century-space-race <comment><USER2> If it's anything like they're over-traffic bus then I doubt it. It'll probably have a home AC unit bolted to the outside, and some "hybrid" roman candles for propulsion.</comment>


Never Mind, Tesla's Not Going Private - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-27/never-mind-tesla-s-not-going-private <comment><USER2> I wonder if Elon Musk is going to start buffering his tweets to send out later... like after he sleeps on it, or his lawyers weigh in?</comment>


The Q-BAL programming language - <AUTHOR> https://mirrors.talideon.com/articles/qbal/ <comment><USER2> I haven't fully read through the article yet, but on the topic of FIFO-based models of computation, there are queue automatons and Post-Tag systems:

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_automaton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_automaton) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_system)

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of a CPU architecture that Bill Wulf did back in the late 80's.

[http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?ty...](http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=362312)

It had some really interesting ideas for hiding latency.</comment>