Social media bots often tweet fake health claims about cannabis: study - happy-go-lucky https://news.usc.edu/164317/cannabis-health-social-media-bots-fake-claims/ <comment><AUTHOR> Worst of these claims are the (almost literal) "snake oil" companies and sellers that are selling 10mg of CBD to people as a 'dose' and implying or telling them it is anything other than placebo at this level. All professional journal studies that have made claims about CBD do studies that use at least 300mg and more often 600mg as the absolute minimum dose and repeat this daily for weeks. Unfortunately 600mg of CBD (with the THC removed down to <0.5mg levels) is expensive. Literally multiple hundreds of dollars. At the typical dosages sold in headshops and the like CBD is a placebo. It is snake oil.

It doesn't even have an significant affinity for the CB1 receptors at reasonable 0.6g doses. The mechanism of action is actually through binding to the serotonin-1a autoreceptor, much like the atypical antidepressant buspirone.

This unregulated wild west of CBD and non-THC pot products is only going to backfire on the charlatans and ignorant users caught up in it. It's going to hurt the legalization movement.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately we don't have enough research to establish much of anything beyond the current FDA approved usage. However, that usage is 600mg/day for an average person (10mg/kg/day). So the claim of 600mg being the "absolute minimum dose" is absurd.

Plenty of studies have occurred at levels as low as 25mg/day and shown effects. The quality of those studies isn't great, but there aren't any good quality studies on CBD to begin with. But considering those poor quality studies together with the body of anecdotal evidence which suggests that CBD's anti-anxiety effects kick in between 15mg and 50mg, I'm inclined to believe that CBD is not a placebo at these levels.

My dose is between 5 and 10mg a day, and I can feel as little as 1mg (I'm hypersensitive to the stuff).

All of that said, I agree with you on your last point about charlatans. There's plenty of woo-woo and snake oil in the CBD "industry". But there are real benefits here that I wouldn't want drowned out.

<comment><USER3> > I can feel as little as 1mg (I'm hypersensitive to the stuff).

What gives you the confidence that this isn't the placebo affect at work?

<comment><USER2> Nothing with any scientific rigor. Of course I, like I'm sure everyone else, believe I have a decent "placebo detector" and to that end CBD isn't behaving like a placebo for me.

But I'll try to add a little more strength to my claim for CBD not being a placebo at the original comment's supposed "low doses".

I've used it in balm form to treat physical pain. I use it at ~50mg topical doses (again much lower than 600mg) to treat carpal tunnel, TMJ, tweaked back, etc. It's been many times more effective for me in that regard than anything else I've tried previously, which includes placebos. I've tried everything from "real" treatments like NSAIDs and menthol rubs, to Chinese "medicines", to snake oil off Amazon. Nothing has worked as well as the CBD balm. So if CBD is a placebo at these doses then it's the best placebo I've ever found.

I had no reason to believe that CBD would be any more effective than my previous snake oil attempts, and indeed I had every expectation that it would be snake oil because of the many comments on HN saying as much.

Besides that we know THC, a related cannabinoid, is effective at these doses (e.g. 5mg). Why wouldn't CBD be? Most drugs that interact with the CNS are active on a wide spectrum, and in fact have different overall effects based on dose. Even in extremely low doses, for example LSD micro-dosing which we've seen a few studies reporting as effective. Is CBD the one special one that cures epilepsy at 600mg but nothing else at any other dosing?

So my general argument is that, though we lack concrete evidence, everything else from related chemicals to anecdotes to weak studies points in the direction of CBD being effective at doses as low as 15mg. So, why would we assume that 600mg is somehow an absolute minimum? And why would we assume that my claim of being able to detect the application of 1mg is entirely placebo? None of this precludes the absolute necessity of rigorous scientific study and deferring to said studies when possible. But I see absolutely no basis for claiming that anything less than 600mg dosing is bunk.

EDIT: I'll add the addendum that most of my CBD usage is "full-spectrum", which highly conflates my personal anecdotes. That doesn't negate any of my other arguments, though. In fact I think all the "weak" studies that we have on CBD are done with pure CBD. I do have CBD isolate that I've tried a few times. I can feel that at low doses as well, but I've never assessed it for pain relief or anxiety so I can't personally make any arguments for or against pure-CBD. Sibling comments suggest that it has effects at low doses though, just like all the weak studies show.

<comment><USER4> > Nothing with any scientific rigor. Of course I, like I'm sure everyone else, > believe I have a decent "placebo detector" and to that end CBD isn't > behaving like a placebo for me.

This statement invalidates everything that follows after. Do multiple blind trials with a control substance at varying threshold doses, then you can say whether these "feelings" are from the drug itself.

Placebo creates a very real, measurable physiological effect, so relying on your subjective experience is more than "scientifically unrigorous", it's actually flawed reasoning. And citing a lack of evidence doesn't mean you can suddenly use your own anecdotal data as evidence.

<comment><USER5> I understand where you're coming from, but do you expect all people to discount their own experiences because they don't meet some threshold of validity? Humans don't live daily life like that. I think there's value in anecdotal data, especially when presented with the appropriate caveats. Otherwise, is my entire life a sham unless it is backed up by double blind trials?

<comment><USER4> It's not about the threshold of validity. It's about the threshold dose used, whose psychoactive effects are generally placed at higher doses.

There is no value in anecdotal data when this is something that can be properly measured, especially when it has to do with medical science and people's lives are involved. OP is making bogus, unsubstantiated claims and does not need to be defended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are so many complications when it comes to REALLY understanding the health effects of weed. The science is really tough, and underdeveloped.

One problem is that there are so many varietals, and so many different vehicles for administration (smoking, vaping, eating, tinctures, lotions, etc) — that make it hard to announce, globally, that "marijuana does X to your brain."

Really, the most we can say after a given experience is something like "Strain Y, when inhaled as a combustible, appears to show effect X."

Another problem is the weed that's available for experiments in the US. There is one — and only one — weed crop that the FDA will approve for clinical studies. From a farm at the University of Mississippi. ([https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pot- monopoly-20140529-s...](https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pot- monopoly-20140529-story.html))

And according to a weed researcher I spoke to (Sue Sisley - [https://medicalcannabis.com/about/faculty/suzanne- sisley/](https://medicalcannabis.com/about/faculty/suzanne-sisley/)), that Mississippi weed is very low quality — aged, with a lot of stems, seeds, and adulterants.

None of this is to say that weed can't be beneficial.

But I'd argue that anyone making any global claims about weed's health benefits are, at the very least, overgeneralizing.

<comment><USER7> >> None of this is to say that weed can't be beneficial.

There might be a non-trivial impact of weed on climate change if weed consumers produce less kids which according to UNESCO is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint.

<comment><USER8> Depending on which ideology you follow one could also make the case that this happens in first world nation that already have a problem with lower and lower birthrates.

<comment><USER7> Of course. Because my definition of rich/poor is w.r.t. people around and not some world's mean/median. Many people in first world nations cannot afford to have as much kids as even 40 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You don't have to go and look on social media, just come here to HN and say "perhaps weed is not completely safe and we should research whether it could damage the brain" to get downvoted

<comment><USER10> There's lots of pro-cannabis and pro-LSD comments everywhere. My cynical view is that the "power" wants us all sedated, and it's investing its media to promote the "new" batch of drugs to get another generation hooked up.

I do think that there are probably quite beneficial uses of drugs, but probably not in a ludic way as most people prefer to use them.

<comment><USER11> I think at least with regards to HN, it's that the average user is, just being honest, wealthy and from a very privileged background without too much lifetime difficulty. There's a disproportionate number of people here who can and did walk into Silicon Valley and said something along the lines of "give me 10 million dollars and I'll make a phone app", then have the free time and comfortable fall back to write a failure report about "their journey." I'm not saying that's all or even most of the people here, but it's a larger proportion compared to probably any other community on the internet.

I mention this because many of the strongest "let's decriminalize (or even legalize) all drugs" commenters have similar backgrounds. Comfy financial situation and room to experiment with the peace of mind knowing that they have people to help dust them off should they get a little sloppy with their drug use. These people can afford to take a week to enjoy an ayahuasca resort, follow it up with a beach vacation and a little MDMA, then return home to a daily bowl of weed to relax from their hard month of partying and pop a couple addies to get focused and pull an all-nighter on their new web app. They can financially and mentally afford to use drugs as mood and mental enhancers. Loads of people who aren't so comfortable use drugs to numb the rough edges of life. Having been on this site for over a decade, I've seen loads of comments that make many users here seem completely out of touch with what average people go through--many HN users on another plane of existence.

I think a considerable number of people who promote drugs everywhere have good intentions, but they don't really consider the effects for most people. The aspect of being locked up for drugs does do a lot to tarnish lives, but the mere act of having easily available mind-altering substances is also enough to ruin the lives of many.

<comment><USER12> I agree, drugs can have a negative effect on people but I believe that this affect regarding marijuana use pales in comparison to the negative effect its continued prohibition causes. In the United States it is wielded as an oppressive tool with use "roughly equal among Blacks and whites, yet Blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession."

Those arrested are then affected for the rest of their lives, their criminal history hurting both their social and economic future. The fact that the rich know they are able to get away with it is proof that there is a separate legal system and that legalizing marijuana should be done. I am not arguing that pot cant be detrimental but its very much in the same ballpark as alcohol.

There are people currently non violent offenders spending decades in jail for selling marijuana, something that those same people from comfy backgrounds are now getting rich from. The genie is out of the bottle, its far less detrimental now to just legalize it federally, apply rules similar to those applied to alcohol and let all non violent marijuana offenders out of prison.

Society often looks at people through an odd lens. A rich white guy sitting drinking a couple of scotches at night is approved of, a group of black guys sitting around drinking a couple beers is reason to call the police. Marijuana prohibition does nothing but entrench this view.

[https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/sentencing- reform/...](https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/sentencing-reform/war- marijuana-black-and-white)

<comment><USER13> elon musk smoking weed with joe rogan is really just a slap in the face to every poor black kid in jail over pot

<comment><USER14> Hopefully you realize then that the solution is to stop punishing "poor black kids" for smoking weed, and not to throw Musk in prison.

<comment><USER12> I believe that's what OP is saying, That neither party should be in prison for a crime that is just a crime for some people in some places and legal in others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Recently, a friend came to me with a list of all the health benefits that are attributed to cannabis. I sent him back a list of all the health benefits attributed to good old ginger - and they matched almost one to one. Health claims concerning cannabis are usually just for those who want to consume a drug and feel better about themselves.

<comment><USER16> Can you blame them? Last time I checked ginger wasn't subjected to 70 years of war on drugs propaganda. Never heard of anyone thrown in jail for consuming ginger.

Maybe people want to consume a drug without being labeled and stereotyped by people who say all drugs are bad and that getting high is a sin.

<comment><USER17> Propogating false health claims doesn't help people either.

I can claim that good old whisky is the cure for cold if you are mountaineering in extreme climates, but it certainly isn't going to help anyone.

<comment><USER16> Of course but I don't think there's any debate about which side has been subjected to more propaganda over the years.

Regardless this furthers my argument - that there is not enough research because of said propaganda for any claims to be made in the first place which is the real travesty.

<comment><USER18> There's idiots on both sides, and peddling unsubstantiated rumors as medical fact doesn't somehow make up for anti-reefer madness. Rather, it legitimizes the fearmongering.

I've seen dispensaries coming dangerously close to claiming it eradicates cancer. Heard activists _encouraging_ driving under the influence because "it makes you chill out and take your time, man." There's no excuse for this shit.

<comment><USER16> > Heard activists encouraging driving under the influence because "it makes > you chill out and take your time, man." There's no excuse for this shit.

Eh this doesn't bother me. You know how many people are on the roads dosed up on legal pain killers way worse and more sedating and addictive than weed?

My point was that idiots on one side are putting the idiots on the other side in jail.

Like I said I don't blame people for being defensive. I think it's clear which side is more in the wrong - the people fear mongering on the government's side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The worry is that all the online chatter about cannabis's beneficial > qualities will have offline consequences, ultimately influencing attitudes > and behaviors, Allem said

I doubt this is a realistic consequence... I mean, who is following these bots? Would people really listen to a bot? I presume most people would be able to tell bot-controlled Twitter accounts from friends and legitimate followers.

I think the study should have included impact from those tweets, such as number of likes, retweets, quotes, and replies, as well as count of human followers.

<comment><USER20> > I mean, who is following these bots? Would people really listen to a bot?

It certainly helped get Trump elected

<comment><USER21> Is there any actual evidence of this? I've heard that claim, but it seems like most trump voters were Republicans, not democrats who got duped by bots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well yeah. So long as the federal government keeps classifying cannabis as a tier 1 controlled substance (cocaine is tier 2), no research money will flow to academics to do the relevant research.

In the meantime, we will continue seeing claims like RSO curing all cancers and other diseases ([http://www.trueactivist.com/this-is-the-cannabis-oil- recipe-...](http://www.trueactivist.com/this-is-the-cannabis-oil-recipe-rick- simpson-used-to-heal-his-cancer-and-recommends-to-others/)). Being able to research effects of cannabis is reason number umpteen to decriminalize/legalize it at the federal level.

<comment><USER23> The main component of RSO actually has been studied and proven to kill cancer. You need RSO with very high THC concentration. [https://youtube.com/watch?v=1miGzTwK28U](https://youtube.com/watch?v=1miGzTwK28U)

<comment><USER22> What kind of cancer? That's like saying "RSO cures illness". Fire cures cancer too I'd you apply it directly to just the cancer cells, but we can agree that setting a can we patient on fire isn't exactly a worthwhile therapy. Also any actual sources aside from KillYourCancer.org? I am not saying RSO doesn't work. Just that it has not been proven or disproven by anyone reputable.

<comment><USER23> Kinda difficult to prove and research when the criminal governments of the world make and keep a plant illegal. Yet there are some facts as shown in the above linked video mentioning research at universities in Spain and Israel showing THC kills cancer cells. Evidence of people using it and curing various forms of cancer (brain tumors, lung tumors, etc) are also everywhere on the Internet.

<comment><USER22> Flat earthers are everywhere on the Internet too. Does that mean the earth is flat?

Loads of things kill cancer cells if you expose cancer cells directly to them. Fire, alcohol, radiation, etc. The trick is to expose just the cancer cells to them. I agree that a lot more research could be done, but at this point we know that RSO is about as effective as ethanol at killing cancer.

As for the rest of your comment, I don't know if you will find this place particularly friendly towards the rhetoric that there is some illegal world government controlling everything. Try /r/conspiracy.

<comment><USER23> I actually have RSO in my fridge this very moment. The guy who made it told me about a little girl he was helping out right now who developed a brain tumor causing her to go blind. He advised her mom to try RSO but she refused initially. After things got worse and she basically had nothing to lose, she decided to give it a shot. After two weeks of small daily dosis, she called my friend at 4am in the morning telling him her daughter stood up by herself to go to the bathroom. She was able to start seeing again. Try that with ethanol.

<comment><USER22> I am not saying it doesn't work. I am saying it isn't studied by anyone that anyone should trust. How do you actually know that girl's change in vision was actually the result of RSO and not some other factor?

<comment><USER23> Well I guess it's up to each individual who or what they trust. Personally I trust the researchers mentioned in the video combined with the evidence of people using it and actually getting cured. Not just from stories on the Internet but also from closer at home. I'm also for complete legalization so that research can be done freely so we can get even more confirmation. The fact that it is still illegal is a serious crime against humanity. So much suffering could be prevented and lives saved by something growing freely in nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cannabis and THC aren't particularly bad for you.

The addiction potential is low to none. Obviously, you shouldn't get high and then drive or load ordinance onto fighter planes on an aircraft carrier, but the direct harm potential of THC is quantitatively lower than the risk you take when you climb a ladder or drive to the store.

</comment><comment><USER25> I do agree that cannabis health "benefits" are often exaggerated but this happens with any substance. Also, social media bots spam about many things all the time. Should we then talk about all the topics spam bots post about?

<comment><USER26> Those bots are expensive and complicated to operate at scale. Some topics are there to make them look legitimate, others because you have large clients supporting a change in opinion and willing to spend social-media agencies to promote it — or discredit it with a ham-fisted campaign.

It's hard to sort them apart but that example, for me, echoes a BBC documentary/sci-fi speculation from 10 years ago about cannabis legalisation and more generally licensing psycho-active molecules for entertainment purposes. The title was "If drugs were legal" or "When" as most specialists had little doubt this would happen soon.

Both cigarette and pharmaceutical companies came out as very ready for the idea, with teams dedicated to lobbying for it, of course, but marketing, products ready for the day. Overall, they were clear large players with established industrial assets and experience in large-scale distribution would completely take over.

They even speculated that some tests on new drugs were done without permissions. A couple of years later the "Bath salt" craze and the mention most of those were molecules no one had seen before also echoed quite loudly.

</comment></comment><comment> Digit-Al > "We want the public to be aware of the difference between a demonstrated, > scientifically backed piece of health information and claims that are simply > made up."

The problem is that many of those spreading these kind of messages are the type of people who are convinced that the entire medical industry (Big Pharma) are trying to make everybody ill so they can sell them expensive treatments and that they don't want to develop a cure from cannabis because they wouldn't be able to make money from that, or other such nonsense.

It's quite sad to see home many people swallow such bullshit.

I know a woman who was successfully treated for brain cancer and she is an anti-vaxxer and one of those who spreads memes about the medical industry wanting to keep everyone sick. I just sit there thinking "you're literally living proof that the medical industry is saving lives and yet you sit there at your keyboard insulting the very people responsible for saving your life."

</comment><comment><USER27> The article seems quite happy to jump in and call these claims "false" rather than "unproven" or "unscientific".

Additionally, neither the abstract, nor the article bother to actually name the strength or statistical certainty of the effect.

Neither of these serve to give this article much credibility when talking about how to responsibly talk about science.

</comment><comment><USER28> So, Twitter should not be considered a reliable source of information, on its own?

</comment><comment><USER29> Are statements of the form "Social media bots often tweet fake claims about <insert more or less anything you like here>' really newsworthy? Asking for a friend who bought a course from Siraj Raval...

</comment><comment><USER14> These comments highlight why I never feel like I fit in with other engineers.

<comment><USER4> Yikes, I know what you mean. You've got engineers, and you've got hackers... Hackers place enormous emphasis on personal liberty and sovereignty. Sometimes I feel like a hacker in an engineer's body. At any rate, I looked through your comment history and I think we would get along fine. Got a point of contact?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So who's bothering to run cannabis-promotion bots? There's no one dominant seller, so it doesn't make sense as advertising.

The full paper is paywalled ($24).</comment>


Hacker Who Busts Child Pornographers on the Dark Net - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbmyb/meet-the-hacker-who-busts-child-pornographers-on-the-dark-net?utm_campaign=broad&utm_source=mbfbads <comment><USER2> Me thinks thou doth protest too much.

As an attorney I can tell you that child pornography (now known as "child abuse imagery, a term with which I disagree) is turning up absolutely everywhere. Some crim defense lawyers call it the new crack. Want to see a very interesting perspective, one that we almost never here? Here is an interview with some victims. It's not what you might expect.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2MIKX5VVd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2MIKX5VVd8) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALupJt2OjXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALupJt2OjXo)

I used to teach a course for cops that covered the definition of child porn. I've had to amend that definition in recent years. In short: teenagers are now taking pole dancing lessons. They are going to national competitions, putting their vids on youtube, and getting screaming mad at any suggestion that they be taken down. Standards change.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yet another sub-par Vice article. Why even give this guy a platform? He clearly doesn't understand how law enforcement sting or undercover operations work.

Further, this was already discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425906)</comment>


Ask HN: Have you tried teaching coding by starting with a functional language? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> FWIW this was common in British universities in the early 2000s -- the intro CS courses would be taught in a functional language like SML or OCaml. I think the professors liked that you don't end up with this situation where half the class already learned C and is bored, and half didn't and are going to need to spend a few months understanding what a pointer is. Everyone's equally unfamiliar with SML.

I think they've all switched to Python or Java now, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking it would be an interesting experiment to have two groups of complete beginners. Teach one group with "functional language first" approach and the other one with "non functional language first" approach.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If so, what were the results? How did people react when you showed them non- functional languages later?</comment>


WebTorrent – BitTorrent over WebRTC - <AUTHOR> https://webtorrent.io/ <comment><USER2> I feel like I've seen this pop up a few times now, but this is really, really cool stuff. The only thing that concerns me about the growing popularity of using WebRTC is the security concerns around unknowingly joining a p2p network like this for potentially any site you visit. It's not hard to imagine what a bad actor could do to content before passing it along, or more simply, the fact that your true IP is exposed.

Curmudgeony security issues aside, this undeniably feels like The Future™ and a big deal to watch out for. It's also one of those cases where a creator / maintainer makes a huge difference for long term viability in my opinion. Feross is crazy smart and has been working with all the related tech for a while now (via PeerCDN, Instant.io, etc, etc), and is just an all around respectful, nice guy, which is important for the continued development / community aspect.

<comment><USER3> Seems like this is an opportunity for a tor like network over a webRTC peer to peer network, maybe? (Dunno maybe that's a bad idea for some reason...)

<comment><USER4> Why Tor-like? Why not just Tor? Seems like a great way for people to send messages that don't involve a cloud-based server.

<comment><USER5> Same reason webtorrent isn't quite bittorrent. WebRTC gives you P2P in a webapp, but it doesn't let you connect to arbitrary hosts and ports.

You could have an onion routing protocol derived from tor or i2p that uses the webrtc data channel. You could even, like webtorrent, have the concept of hybrid nodes that existing network to the new webrtc-based one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amazing project, really! But _please_ , for the sake of users (like me) who live in countries where ISPs set a "quota" on DSL connections: ask the users whether they want to start downloading Sintel before doing so :) Now I'm afraid of opening the website again.

<comment><USER7> Author of WebTorrent here. Sorry for surprising you with a large download. To be fair, YouTube autoplays videos too, and the video size is comparable.

Good news, though! Looks like we can use detect users on a metered connection with `navigator.connection`, or worst case look for a mobile user agent. Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER8> Or, you know, you could ask users if they want to download it :-).

It seems to be done as a demo right now. Why not just add a big red "click here for a demo" thing?

There are very few things that you can reliably find out over the web. Whether or not a connection is metered isn't one of them.

<comment><USER9> Or a "The download will begin in 10 seconds. Press the pause button to stop it"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this site really start downloading a 124MB torrent right after opening the page (sintel.torrent)? If so, why would that be a good idea to do?

<comment><USER11> It's a relatively small download (for desktop) and it demonstrates its simplicity.

<comment><USER12> 120MB is no small deal when you're using a 50MB data bundle on a crappy Kenyan ISP, on your phone. There should definitely be a prompt, I just lost half my day's data (before I stopped it).

Edit: changed "your" to "you're" ;)

<comment><USER13> WHAT? You mean you're not sat in a cafe in San Francisco?

<comment><USER14> oh the horror, the horror!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This makes me so happy. If we can get good support for WebRTC and getUserMedia the web will be able to keep going as a decent platform for apps.

[http://caniuse.com/#feat=stream](http://caniuse.com/#feat=stream)

[http://caniuse.com/#feat=rtcpeerconnection](http://caniuse.com/#feat=rtcpeerconnection)

We're really at the mercy of open platform-minded engineers at Google, Apple and Microsoft though! I wonder what we can do to help support those folks.

<comment><USER16> Well, there's also Mozilla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very curious about the legal implications if every site that I visit can transfer files to unknown peers in the background. P2P is, AFAIK, a big source of costly cease-and-desist orders in Germany. With WebTorrent, I guess I could tell the right holder to bring the matter to court and plausibly state that some malicious ad iframe must have distributed that MKV without my knowledge.

<comment><USER18> Not just that, but why wouldn't ads start using your bandwith for this sort of thing ? Do you get a legal claim for your bandwith costs (especially on mobile) against the site owner for doing this without your permission ?

Do you get a claim against your browser maker ?

<comment><USER19> Is there a difference between using bandwidth this way, or loading say 150MB image? (bandwidth costs wise)

<comment><USER18> I would certainly say yes. They're using your bandwidth to serve another one of their customers, for free, without compensating you in any way.

Whereas loading a 150MB image from their server is using their bandwidth (that they're paying for) to serve you.

Legally, I have no idea. Morally, it'd be nice if they at least asked and actually had a working site if you say "no".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can try out WebTorrent at Instant.io[0]. It's probably the easiest ways to share files with someone, as long as both people have modern browsers.

Unfortunately, after a certain file size it'll just crash your browser. It'd be great if there was a way to work with large (+2GB) files.

[0] [https://instant.io/](https://instant.io/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Very interesting. Figured the day would come but the dev finally did it. Re- decentralizing the web is a great goal and with simple demonstrations like yours, we'll get there! Cheers mate

</comment><comment><USER22> This seems very interesting already! I now have some more technical questions:

\- Where is the downloaded data being stored? With a traditional bittorrent client I the data is written to disk. Since JS doesn't make raw disk access available, I'm assuming it's being kept track of in through some js api that tells the browser to store this data. What API is it using?

\- Even when I finish downloading the video, the player doesn't allow me to seek to random positions in the video. It displays a "this is how much is buffered"[0] bar that is way smaller than the green bar at the top of the page indicating download progress. Why is this the case?

\- As you can see in the screenshot[0], there's lots of nodes that are labeled with ip addresses that are not visible to my computer at all. Is this because the displayed ip addresses are self reported?

[0] - [http://nacr.us/media/pics/screenshots/screenshot-- 17-46-37-2...](http://nacr.us/media/pics/screenshots/screenshot-- 17-46-37-2016.png)

<comment><USER23> Presumably the data is stored in RAM (or potentially on a swap disk) by the browser. Most likely they are feeding the data into the Media Source Extensions [0] APIs.

I'm not sure why you can't seek to random positions. It seemed to work for me, after a few second delay (presumably to issue commands to start downloading different blocks).

Those IP addresses are private network addresses. The machine you are connected to is probably behind a NAT and is connected to you through a different address. The UI is probably just showing the local address that that node reports.

[0] [https://w3c.github.io/media-source/](https://w3c.github.io/media-source/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Question: I see there are some local network IP addresses in the graph ? I suppose external IP addresses are hidden for privacy/security purpose but how well are there hidden ?

Anther question: How do I open the file once downloaded ? (I use ublock, should the file be displayed in the rectangular area next to the graph ?

</comment><comment><USER25> Page wants just a tiny bit of explanation about what's going on. Firefox 43.0.4 doesn't play the movie; it just sits there with a black box.

<comment><USER26> I've had the same issue. It seems h264 support is turned off by default in FF43. Just go to about:config and set

media.peerconnection.video.h264_enabled => true

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's great, but BitTorrent over JS is also dangerous, at least where I live.

C/D letters come with a 200-1000 € fee depending on the content and now it's trivial to make someone download stuff illegally in the background.

<comment><USER28> See it the other way around:

One big website in your country could implement this in the background with a list of know "C/D letters" triggering torrents, and the business model of these C/D letter writing laywers would be broken in half a year. Because if they target people that really didn't download anything knowingly, they will get lawyers themselves and go to court. And when the courts figure out that the old way of "proving" a download doesn't work any more, the business modell is broken.

Unfortunately there is collateral damage :/

<comment><USER27> In theory, yes, but you have no idea how incompetent German courts are. They believe everything copyright holders feed them.

There was a similar case last year that, fortunately, went very badly for the copyright attourneys. Thousands of users were redirected from an ad to copyrighted porn videos and then C/D'd. The attourneys got into a lot of trouble and even lost their license, but their clients still ran off with the money.

The case was only reviewed when it got media attention, but using torrents makes it even more difficult to prove the scam.

<comment><USER28> Believe me, I have a pretty good idea how competent or incompetent German courts are.

Still, you're right. This would only work at scale, after quite a long time and cause a lot of damage on the way. The website implementing this would probably also get sued into the ground.

Better get a Netflix subscription and/or install Kodi on some FireTV thingie...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What a coincidence, I was just playing with this for the first time last weekend! They also have an npm package that can be used for both torrent streaming via node and the browser ([https://www.npmjs.com/package/webtorrent](https://www.npmjs.com/package/webtorrent)). Awesome project.

</comment><comment><USER30> WebRTC __requires __the use of a centralised signalling server for the initial connection between two peers. I feel many miss this point when reading about WebRTC-enabled projects. Even if you do have Universal Plug and Play which port forwards automatically (and thus you can communicate directly between two peers), you still need this centralised signalling server.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this poses a problem if you ever want to take WebRTC further (i.e. in a self-hosted mesh network).

<comment><USER31> You need a server for holepunching/STUN via IPv4, but not for IPv6 since each client has a unique IP instead of being behind the router's address.

<comment><USER30> I've setup Minecraft/web servers which required no server for holepunching. Just plain old IPv4 with port forwarding.

<comment><USER31> The "with port forwarding" is the problem there. That assumes you have access to your NAT resolver to add the rule, which isn't a fair assumption to hold. People at colleges, businesses, hosted events, etc. need to do NAT traversal (or be on IPv6) in order to do P2P.

I didn't see that you mentioned UPnP in the OP though, sorry. I'd assume downloading metadata from a signalling server if you don't need it for traversal is completely optional - most P2P networks have an initial list of peers to connect to to bootstrap new clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting, if the player never starts you never connect to additional peers. I'm running this in firefox 43 with flash disabled and the video never starts.

</comment><comment><USER33> 1 Pretends to work on a browser not supporting WebRTC. This got me thinking so I went to webrtc.org and all the examples/samples also pretend to work and/or fail silently - is WebRTC API really not able to even ascertain level of support of the running browser? .. looked under the hood and found [https://webtorrent.io/bundle.js](https://webtorrent.io/bundle.js): throw new Error('No WebRTC support: Not a supported browser'), so it definitely can, but fails to catch those errors and do anything/inform user.

2 looked at network traffic and it seems to open separate TLS sessions per transferred data packet, not the most optimal thing to do, might be an artefact of being hosted on https. Probably a cpu bottleneck right there.

3 doesnt store anywhere (local/session storage).

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting, I'd be curious to some speed tests. I was seeding to around 22 peers for a while but did not get over 5Mbps up, while my internet connection is capable of around 530Mbps. Wondering if this was an inherent WebTorrent problem or simply that not enough people were online with strong connections.

</comment><comment><USER35> Like many, I thought about this since a couple of years.

My idea was a browser-plugin for youtube, that would take the downloaded video and start seeding it. On the other side, if a video has been blocked by YT, it would automatically use the torrent version.

</comment><comment><USER36> How come the download was already completed but the video only buffered around 50%?

</comment><comment><USER37> Can't wait to see a popcorn time in the browser. :)

</comment><comment><USER38> I was toying with the idea of doing something like this a couple of days ago, but two things stopped me:

\- No support even in modern browsers by default [1]

\- Don't want to [maybe] get into legal troubles if it's wrongly used

[1] [http://caniuse.com/#search=webrtc](http://caniuse.com/#search=webrtc)

PS, apparently the caniuse info was wrong, since now it appears in green

</comment><comment><USER39> What is the animation on the left full of RFC 1918 addresses ? I assume those are really NAT-ed at some point, aren't they ?

<comment><USER40> That's what caught my eye as well. I didn't know that was possible to get via the browser and started to think about its implications. I wonder if exposing private IP to any website is a very good idea when router firmwares have all sorts of basic security bugs in their web panels.

<comment><USER41> There is also [https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc- ips](https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc-ips) ( harmless(?) demo here: [https://diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/](https://diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Very cool, but what annoys me is it starting the p2p download and upload without asking authorization?

</comment><comment><USER43> Other companies like [http://streamroot.io/](http://streamroot.io/) are also using WebRTC to help content hosting sites like YouTube and Netflix deliver VOD and live streams. Really exciting!

</comment><comment><USER44> >Error: No WebRTC support: Not a supported browser

Funny, Fx44 does support WebRTC

</comment><comment><USER45> If I use Safari on that site it's just downloading from your server, right? Since Safari doesn't support WebRTC.

</comment><comment><USER46> Looking forward to see Popcorn time on WebRTC

</comment><comment><USER47> it is so fucking obvious that this idea is exactly how browsers will work in the future. A browser is going to just be something like node- webkit/webkit/electron etc. so compatability won't be an issue, then you just connect to a ton of different clients that are running narrow crawls of shit you are searching for. The browser will then not take you to the page, but just display the information directly without loading a shit ton of js.

You can tag or organize the data locally and cache it, or return it sorted to the nodes which serve it to others. People don't give a shit about webpages for search, they care about information. The web is a big rss feed, and our old feedreader "google" stopped doing that well, and also we pay a massive privacy tax for that now.

I see this happening in ~2 years for really techie people and being standard in 5.

edit: elastic search, webkit, real time, distributed file systems, apache spark, google tensor flow. These ingredients will be used to make the new browser which browses information and _returns that information_ not the actual web pages.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but there is no reason to wait ~2 years. It can be built now.

<comment><USER47> obviously. I think it will become mainstream with technological people in 2 years. It will take time to, of course, actually be built. Then, have enough data fed into it to actually be useful. That will take about 2 years(ish).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> How does this project differ from ipfs?

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice tech!

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice demo.

</comment><comment><USER50> are you a wizard?

</comment><comment><USER51> WebRTC will anyway become obsolete with IPv6, right?

<comment><USER52> No. For security reasons, nobody wants Javascript to be able to open actual TCP connections – Javascript is supposed to be sandboxed, and if it can open TCP connections it can do any number of malicious things. So this whole Websockets thing have been invented, which is _just like_ TCP sockets, except it's understood that Javascript can access it, so nobody should implement any service accessible on a Websocket which could be misused by malicious Javascript. I'm not sure this is a solid plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> -1

Complains it cannot play the file for not having Chrome with Mediasource. Why not serve an ogg or webm for crying out loud?

Also, why auto-start the download?!

After the download is finished, where can I watch the video? There's no link for watching it anywhere.

If I refresh the page the download starts again.

I realise this is just an experiment and kudos for that, but the author could have made some better choices re above.</comment>


Women, Men, And Other Things Done Wrong By Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/02/23/women-men-and-other-things-done-wrong-by-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> Not too long ago, founders were often seen as mere grist for Silicon Valley VC mills - essential but hardly most vital to a startup's success. This has changed.

Founders today have significant control of their company's formation and development. They no longer have to locate in the Valley but can operate from almost anywhere worldwide. The web has given them _vast_ amount of knowledge about how things work, where they were once relegated to trying to pick up scraps around the water cooler. The infrastructure build-out has significantly reduced their capital needs, where they once routinely needed immediate large funding just to launch their basic product. The desktop PC is no longer a primary software development platform, where it once dominated and defined the range of startup opportunities available. The barriers are down, and there is much more room for sheer drive and talent to hold sway and define the path to success.

The dark side has always been there, as noted in this fine piece, and it will remain - doing startups does "suck" if one compares it to conventional ways of making a living but that is why the rewards can be large as well.

But demographic diversity is today quite pronounced in terms of racial, ethnic, and cultural mix (the white males among the founders I work with are today a distinct minority). Only on the gender side does it continue to lag. On that side, I am not sure how much will change in the near term. Given the otherwise radical changes that have occurred, _whatever_ is causing this state of things to persist must be pretty deeply ingrained.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really enjoyed this. To me, the crux is here:

> My beef with the discourse of "diversity" in a nutshell: it screams "give us > more women" and whispers "give us more women like us".

The real lack of diversity in startupland doesn't seem to me to be in chromosomes or melanin, but in experience and target markets. Everyone's building general-purpose to-do lists and twitter clients instead of researching and finding underserved markets.

<comment><USER4> Exactly, I think the prevalence of to-do list type apps shows a huge bias in the startup world. Looking at the successful website few of them target people building startups. EX: Facebook / Twitter (extroverts and stalkers), EBay (people who have or want stuff), Google (people looking for things), Fark (people with nothing to do).

IMO, the most important questions are "what type of person would actually use this?" and "Why would they use this?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a bit of spectacularly poor planning I resolved to write this after I got home for the day. Then I got off work too late to get home for the day. So I thought I would dash this off at the Internet cafe and then check into the hotel before they close the doors at 2 AM. That will be inconvenient for commenting -- my apologies in advance.

On the subject of social pathologies and the idiot men who sign up for them: T minus 30 work days until I am no longer a salaryman.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is a lot of lively discussion going on last couple of days on HN about diversity, and I very much like Patrick's take on the whole issue, putting it into perspective.

I was a contractor at a large company that prided itself on diversity, and from what I could see, the were successful in their hiring and promotion. What they were not successful in is accepting or promoting diversity of _thought_. Once you were in the door, you needed to get on board with their way of thinking.

<comment><USER6> In "Built to Last," Collins observes that the great companies have a certain uniformity in who they hire. "Fits like a glove or ejected like a virus" was something along the lines of how he described it. So lack of diversity of thought is not necessarily bad.

<comment><USER7> Yeah but he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about:

<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/88/built-to-last.html>

<comment><USER8> > "between August 1994 and August 2004 [...] Citigroup alone has returned a > breathtaking 848%

Because of their excellent management, right...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The modern definition of diversity is "people who look different and think the same".

<comment><USER10> Post-modern, really. We have long ago exited the modern era, which was rational, progressive, and all that. Or even, according to some far-out academics, completely by-passed it, and gone directly to the all-apearance and buzz post-modern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _you can hire a stay-at-home mom with a graduate degree in Middle America for less than $10 an hour. If you figure out a way to exploit that, you'll end up very, very rich._

First, just to get this out of the way, it's kind of embarrassing that pornographers are once again in the vanguard. Now that that's out of the way, the author has an excellent point. There must be a lot of educated moms who are having second thoughts about staying at home, for economic reasons or otherwise, but they look around and think, "Crap, how the hell can I get a decent job here? I'm stuck in Middle America, nobody cares that I'm an excellent writer and researcher, and even if I _wanted_ to work as a receptionist, I'd be ridiculed by my coworkers for the lack of return on my graduate degree in anthropology." When people have second thoughts about their lives, maybe they persuade their families to turn their lives upside down, or maybe they decide not to. Telecommuting from home is a great option for those who don't. I suspect there's a culture gap between educated stay-at-home moms and ragingly ambitious (and sometimes very _narrowly_ educated) twenty- something software entrepreneurs, but they're basically from the same class and should be able to get along without too much effort.

<comment><USER12> I'm lost. What's the connection to pornography?

<comment><USER3> I think he's saying that pornographers are doing a better job utilizing this resource than everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just finished reading "The Happiness Hypothesis" by Jonathan Haidt which has an interesting discussion of what "diversity" means and this post reminded me of that.

Haidt argues there's two kinds of diversity: demographic and moral.

People who want demographic diversity are arguing for he inclusion of previously excluded groups.

Moral diversity is a lack of consensus on normal norms and values, and Haidt argues no one can coherently want moral diversity (e.g., if you are pro-life, how can you want there to be a diversity of views on abortion with none dominating?)

In his article Patrick touches on this I think. Some people want Silicon Valley to be more demographically diverse for reasons of justice; but they would not feel comfortable if that diversity led to moral diversity. People want to associate with others who think and believe like themselves.

<comment><USER14> _...if you are pro-life, how can you want there to be a diversity of views on abortion with none dominating?_

I don't think it's incoherent to recognise that I don't always have all the answers, and that I need occasional or frequent reminding that I might be wrong---which will presumably not come unless there's someone who disagrees with me.

Furthermore, thoughtful people change their minds on things (which is why accusations like "flip-flopper" are so ludicrous), and if I agree with everyone now, what will happen when I change my mind on something later?

I, at least, really do value moral diversity as well as demographic diversity.

<comment><USER13> First off, I doubt you would say that about anything you feel very strongly about, otherwise what is the point of holding that belief?

To expand a little bit, Haidt argues that too much moral diversity leads to anomie, in which the condition in a society with no clear rules, standards or norms. This is the case of when there is "too much" individualism, and it is very difficult to achieve happiness without a coherent social structure.

"In an anomic society, people can do as they please; but without any clear standards of respected social institutions to enforce those standards, it is harder for people to find things they want to do. Anomie breeds feelings of rootlessness and anxiety and leads to an increase in amoral and antisocial behavior."

Though he is a liberal, one of his points in the book is that the relentless pursuit of individualism without regard to shared values leads to unsatisfying lives.

<comment><USER14> Dude, please respond to what I said, not to what you think I must have meant. It is not incoherent to acknowledge that one's beliefs, even one's very strongly-held beliefs, might be wrong. Yes, I think that I'm right, I'm pretty darn sure I'm right, but what if I'm not? And I'd never find out unless I, at least sometimes, let people who disagree with me try to convince me they're right.

<comment><USER13> Sure, that makes sense. That's not what I'm saying about anomie though.

Do you want to live in a world where your strongly held beliefs are dominant (not exclusive, but dominant) or in one where you are in the minority?

Haidt is saying a person would not want to be in the minority. They may _believe_ in a minority moral opinion but their goal is for that moral opinion to become a majority opinion, not for it to languish forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's a related take on why there are no more women in startups from an evolutionary perspective.

In reproduction, which is what evolution is made of, men and women are very different. A woman can only have one baby every nine months, and realistically maybe every other year. This limits her choices for reproduction so she has to find the right man for the job meaning someone that has the resources to take care of the kid and make sure he grows up and has offspring. Men on the other hand can reproduce as much as they like given they can find a willing woman. This has some interesting consequences on evolutionary selection.

\- Women are risk averse and look for security, knowing that they only have a few shots at successful propagation.

\- Since men can have many women, but women can have only one man (a women with many men will not produce more offspring, but a man with many women will) the offspring of the men will be unequally divided. The bottom of the pack won't have any offspring at all while the top of the pack will have a lot. Ghengis Khan had lots of children with many wives, and so do people with harems. This means there are men that have no offspring at all.

\- Women look for men that can take care of their offspring. They care more about them since they have fewer chances than men do. This is why women go for rich men, and why only rich men have harems.

What this means is that a woman is somewhat guaranteed to find a man that she can produce offspring with if she is conservative in her choices, and that she will tend to mate with the most successful man she can find. Men, on the other hand, don't have this guarantee and have to play a risky game of trying to make it to the top. The more success a man has the more women will want to mate with him. On the other hand if he is conservative there's a risk he won't find anyone to mate with at all thus ending his gene pool.

I think this combined with Patrick's post explains pretty clearly why there are no more women in Silicon Valley. It's simply too risky.

<comment><USER16> Or maybe it's possible that virtually none of what you wrote is meaningfully correct, which would account for the dearth of women in CS despite the huge market for practically risk-free CS/IT jobs in the US.

<comment><USER15> The article and my reply was in relation to startups, not women in CS.

Of course it might be pure gibberish, but I believe it does happen to coincide with currently accepted wisdom in evolutionary science.

<comment><USER16> I think if you re-read my comment carefully (with my apologies, as I seem to have worded it obtusely), you'll see that I'm actually addressing your point, and not changing the subject to CS.

<comment><USER15> Ah yes - sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In my experience people who've never been in a startup don't know what it's like. Therefore their decisions are based on prejudice. And since most men, as most women, also refrain from trying to start their own company or follow their passion (even though both are very common desires) due to their fears and the social context they've grown up in, I think that if one were to alter the growth of startups from women (as men) one must focus first on deconstructing the prejudices and, in particular, just helping people to start.

I think that YC has done a very good job of that.

<comment><USER18> Definitely. Regarding the "diversity" issue, I think there's verifiable evidence that first-generation immigrants tend to be far more successful in the startup / small business enterprise than those who've been in the US for many generations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Where I grew up, there is a saying for logic like this, "horse manure." I apologize -- I know you and Tom are cozy. He thinks very highly of you. You get an "A" for effort, but you're missing the point. Joining start-ups does not suck. Lemme 'splain.

I survived that whole dotcom boom watching all of my male internet buddies start, get hired at and then cash out of start-ups. As many times as I privately asked to be considered, I was denied. My male friends networked for jobs, got references. I asked for the same and got hems and haws and shufflings of feet. I had to marry one of them, just to get that opportunity. It worked: I've stayed with MTSO for 3 years -- longer than any place I've worked since I left high school. Sounds bitter, doesn't it?

The truth is, I never let myself be bitter. And I've always told the women who do whine to suck it up. Whining sets a bad example.

So let's review:

\- I'm exceptionally motivated. You put yourself through college scrubbing toilets and see how motivated you are. So far there is nothing I've tried that, in time, I did not excel at. Pardon my hubris. But it's impossible to be at the top of a game you cannot play, right?

\- I would have loved that job. I kept applying and kept getting turned down. The closest I could get was as a contractor, which is kinda like a temp who can script instead of type. Sun hired me to train full-time employees. Contracting came to a swift end when I became pregnant. To quote, "We think you should reconsider your fit within this organization." You don't forget words like that.

\- I used to program, decades ago. I quit, but I don't exactly remember why. It's a mystery, because coding does not feel like work, and I get paid for that, now. Instead, I spent those decades as a sysadmin. I have a lot of grey hair and innumerable scars on my arms and legs from running cable and shifting heavy equipment.

\- I worked 100 hour weeks, anyway. Even now I try to cram work into every small time slice available (today, that meant coding while waiting for an x-ray appointment). I always was paid less than my male peers, so the threat of being paid next to nothing is meaningless to me. I wouldn't trade what I do now for anything short of "independently wealthy." What does crushing defeat really feel like? When a famous do-no-evil company interviews you and asks what your kids will do all day while you're at work. Or a recruiter mentions she hears your kids in the background and asks for reassurance that you can work 40 hours a week. That's the moment when it hits you that all the blood, sweat and tears that flowed from you while you were paying your dues count for nothing. A friend of mine quit the industry for two years to work as a roofer. He walked right back into a six-figure salary. Note that I've never had a six- figure salary, but I know what most of my old co-workers made then and make now.

\- No, sir, the pinnacle of my career comes at the ripe old age of 40 when I really don't care if we ever cash out. I'm sure Tom does, but not me. Risk tolerance? All our eggs are in this one basket. Even though I know that, if something goes wrong, we can get "regular jobs," this is just too much fun. Not in it for the money... in it for the bragging rights.

When I went back to work full-time, Tom didn't quite have a sense of what I was up against. Though I think he got an inkling when I was interviewed by someone who showed me a picture of his ass during the interview. Heck, I was even SURPRISED to find out that it was illegal for to be asked what my kids would be doing while I was at work. And I called that recruiter's boss -- a woman, also. She peed all over herself, verbally, apologizing.

Your ideas to make startups more palatable are not bad, but they are expensive. Startups need to run lean. And as for women, a lot of the time we're trying not to aggravate bias by whining. As my grandmother said, "You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar." Nobody likes a whiner. It's a dignity thing. But I don't have anything to lose. So if you want to hear more of the gory stories of my work experiences, feel free to track me down and email me.

Oh, and sorry for the really long response. It was a long post.

<comment><USER3> > Your ideas to make startups more palatable are not bad, but they are > expensive. Startups need to run lean.

Zuh? His ideas are 'make products to sell,' 'locate somewhere besides SV,' 'don't seek funding,' 'don't overwork people,' and 'don't take advice too seriously.'

I have no idea which of those things you think is 'expensive.' Maybe the part about not overworking? From the rest of the post, it seems like you're responding to things other people have told you over the years, rather than the OP.

<comment><USER19> Yes, the part about not overworking people. And, to a lesser extent, the part about not taking funding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm sure the readers of this post, are skewed towards the work-life balance believers. I don't. Most of the best entrepreneurs I know, don't. Apple. Facebook. Microsoft. Paul Graham as well.

A few posts I like about this subject:

[http://blog.asmartbear.com/sacrifice-your-health-for-your- st...](http://blog.asmartbear.com/sacrifice-your-health-for-your-startup.html) [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/07/calacanis-fires- people-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/07/calacanis-fires-people-who- have-a-life/) [http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/20/european-startups- need-t...](http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/20/european-startups-need-to-work- as-hard-as-valley-ones-or-forget-it/)

<comment><USER21> Despite how much you might want to succeed, consistently working beyond 40 or 60 hours a week is going to degrade your productivity below the level you would achieve with 40 hours a week.

There are several factors

\- You make more mistakes \- You have trouble applying yourself \- You loose the ability to think creatively, so you don't see solutions \- You don't make the intuitive leaps that used to save so much time \- You stop coming up with as many great ideas

The best way I know to reduce this effect is to make sure you spend your leisure time doing productive business stuff. Network, discuss business plans, email, twitter, blog, research - just don't expect to do any one thing (code for example) 60-80 hours a week for months and not get bitten on the ass by your own exhaustion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This bit caught my eye:

> [...] it [Silicon Valley] has its peculiar jokes and rhythms and closely- > held shadow beliefs which owe a bit more to repetition than they owe to > empirical reality

The problem is that those beliefs include a broad perception of women as less than equal. Lack of diversity is a self-perpetuating prophecy in that way.

\--- Broader reply:

I also think that Patrick is severely underestimating the benefits of a diverse environment. There are reasons Silicon Valley is next to SF and not Dallas; many of them have to do with the vibrant mix of cultures there.

Personal anecdote: I've moved across the country in search, specifically, of greater diversity. I've turned down jobs because the workplace was a monoculture. And the single biggest negative for me of the space I'm currently co-working in is that it is entirely composed of white guys under 30. I may or may not be the best developer ever -- but the best programmers and businesspeople I've ever met share some of the same values. In other words a homogeneous environment will not only drive away 'diverse' people, but also may be doing the same for the best non-diverse people as well.

<comment><USER3> "There are reasons Silicon Valley is next to SF and not Dallas; many of them have to do with the vibrant mix of cultures there."

Erm.

As of the census[1] of 2000, the racial makeup of Dallas was 50.8% White, 25.9% Black or African American, 0.5% Native American, 2.7% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 17.2% from other races, and 2.7% from two or more races. 35.6% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Dallas>)

In 2000 the racial makeup of the 9 County Bay Area was 58.10% white, 19.01% Asian, 0.54% Pacific Islander, 7.53% black, 0.64% Native American, 9.24% from other races, and 4.93% from two or more races. 19.39% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Demograp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Demographics))

<comment><USER23> I think you're both missing Patrick's point here to some extent. A broad palette of skin colours does not equal diversity. How many evangelical Christians do you meet in the valley? How many stay at home moms? I think urban diversity is highly misleading - while you might look around and see the signs of diversity, how often do you have a conversation with someone who has totally different goals and aspirations to yourself?

I can only speak from a British perspective, but I think London is a good example of this - although it is one of the most racially and culturally diverse cities on earth, it is in practice quite strongly ghettoised by age and outlook. Most people will scarcely exchange more than a few words with anyone outside their professional and social circles. It seems to me that people living in rural communities tend to have more diverse contact as they are much more likely to actually spend time with people who live lives very different to their own.

Out of genuine curiosity, I ask all the folks in the Bay Area - when was the last time you had a conversation with someone who doesn't own a computer (and isn't your mom)? When was the last time you had a drink with someone who is barely literate? Myspace has 51 million users in the US, how many do you know?

<comment><USER22> > While you might look around and see the signs of diversity, how often do you > have a conversation with someone who has totally different goals and > aspirations to yourself?

If you are interested in doing so, you have the opportunity. You wouldn't if you were living in Kansas.

You seriously believe that London's ethnic and cultural diversity isn't a genuine attraction for many who end up there, nor a genuine asset for the city?

<comment><USER3> I seriously believe that when people say they want "diversity," what they mean is:

1) People where I currently am aren't like me, so if I go somewhere more 'diverse,' there will be more people like me

2) And the restaurants will be better

EDIT: That's meant as a generalization, BTW, not a pop-psych analysis of anyone in the thread.

<comment><USER22> I believe (1) may be true for some, but is absolutely false for others.

Also, I think it's safe to broaden (2) to mean "creative culture" -- as in not just restaurants, but galleries, plays, music, nightlife, and so on; along with the indirect repercussions of that -- in which case it remains true, but lacks the shallowness you tried to imply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The problem with Silicon Valley is that it doesn't respect intelligent women any more than the rest of the US. Sure, companies or "startups" will hire women as marketers to pass out badges or tshirts at big I/O events, answer phones, serve lunches, or vacuum the floors, work in the "massage" parlor . . . but being a female professional who actually has talent is about 1000 times harder than any guy who lives there can possibly understand.

<comment><USER25> I'm a man, but I'm happy to call bullshit on that. There are a long list of successful women who are taken quite seriously all on their own. Leah Culver springs immediately to mind. My wife, who owns a successful accounting startup is another. I've met countless others, including one particularly memorable engineer at Flock (I'll protect her privacy).

The reality is that there are simply very few women that hold the qualifications necessary to be successful in the startup world. When you do find one, the competition for their services is incredibly fierce. In a previous gig I tried desperately to hire a particular woman who had just graduated from MIT. We lost a pretty serious bidding war, not because she was a woman but because her skills were off the charts.

It's funny, there are similar articles written about certain disciplines in academia (like accounting). There too it's just a numbers game. My wife, until her latest birthday, was just 1 of 5 female accounting PhD's in the whole country (including foreign born) under 30. Of course there are precious few female accounting professors, there are very few females pursuing accounting PhD's!

Of course, that means she enjoys a tremendous advantage over her peers. The pressure to promote diversity means she enjoys a better salary and lot more job security than her male counterparts.

The same is true, from my experience, for the few intelligent and talented female engineers that I've met in the valley.

<comment><USER12> > There are a long list of successful women who are taken quite seriously all > on their own. Leah Culver springs immediately to mind.

That's interesting, because Leah Culver is someone who I've frequently heard discussed in the context of who she is dating or who she has dated, with the implication that she's riding on the coattails of her boyfriends. So, maybe that's not such a good example for you to use.

(Disclaimer, in case that wasn't clear enough: I'm relaying things I've heard other people say. I don't personally know enough about Ms. Culver to have any opinions on her abilities.)

<comment><USER25> I think it's an excellent example. She clearly has the programming ability. She's clearly incredibly intelligent. She's clearly taken seriously. That she also runs in higher profile (At least in the valley) social circles hardly discounts her accomplishments.

<comment><USER26> Does she clearly have the programming ability? Her blog suggests she is an average programmer at best.

[http://blog.leahculver.com/2008/11/couchdb-documents- python-...](http://blog.leahculver.com/2008/11/couchdb-documents-python- objects.html)

Using exec to access object fields? Really? There was also a fiasco a while back where she converted floats to strings in order to compute an average (!). She deleted that post, but if you google "leah culver star ratings" you'll find some discussion of it.

She's a great marketer, but I'd hardly say she has the programming ability.

<comment><USER27> Which I find quite interesting. I know plenty of men who are terrible engineers and post pretty bad stuff on their blog, but none get the kinds of evisceration that you are referring to - mentioned over and over again in blogs, forums, etc.

The 'Internet' was/is ruthless in laughing at her and putting her down, in a way that I just don't see happening to guys. Could be just that its more apparent with the fewer # of women - people are more likely to remember these faux pas. Would be interesting to hear of specific technical instances of the same occurring with guys.

<comment><USER26> _I know plenty of men who are terrible engineers and post pretty bad stuff on their blog, but none get the kinds of evisceration that you are referring to - mentioned over and over again in blogs, forums, etc._

Most of those terrible engineers have not been featured in Wired and Technology Review. If Leah Culver were a man, no one would criticize her because no one ever would have heard of her. Do you really think anyone would have cared about her facebook/twitter clone if she weren't pretty?

 _Would be interesting to hear of specific technical instances of the same occurring with guys._

ESR wrote some crappy code a while back. Comments:

John Graham Cummings: "It's amusing to actually look at the source code of this...Reading it, it looks like a total hack job by a poor programmer..."

Other HN readers:

"He's [esr] certainly a talented self-publicist, but I'd go no further than that. He's the Michael Moore of software. Or the Paris Hilton."

"He's more Nichole Richie. He doesn't rise to the level of Paris, who was surprised by jail, but never surprised by wealth."

"Truth is, he is loud, but... he's not very good at writing software."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=923660>

<comment><USER27> Woah! Are you sure that pownce got attention solely because of "Leah's looks"? or do you think its more likely that its because it was founded by Kevin Rose, who has had _much_ bigger press (cover on Business week, TR is peanuts in comparison) and web exposure (like running one of the most popular sites on the Internet)?

(Will grant that ESR is a pretty good example, for Atwood I dont see the attacks reaching as low a level)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article is long and pointlessly avoids saying things in clear text. Your list:

Gay Jewish man in New York, an Englishman in London, a 4th generation zainichi kankokujin (ethnically Korean who was born in Japan), and an Irish Catholic dogmatist

Could be as diverse as anything, but they could also be very similar. I actually think they are very similar, because in foreign countries, the collaboration that usually falls in place is similar to that.

Real diversity happens when age, gender, culture barriers are crossed. English, New Yorker, Irish and even an Australian man of roughly the same age have very similar though processes, because they consume the same media.

It also points at a fundamental misunderstanding - intellectual diversity does not mean bringing in people that think the same as you, but have lived in slightly different neighbourhoods. Intellectual diversity actually starts when you find it difficult to understand the other persons point of view. When the cultural difference is so large that there is a difficulty communicating, then you have created an intellectually diverse place.

These oh-let-me-pat-myself-on-the-back posts are boring and offer exactly the same arguments as the other two posts. If you want to write a blog post where two other blog posts have been written, then make an effort to actually offer a viewpoint that is really unique to the situation.

</comment><comment><USER29> were all focused on what's happening at the "they are female and want to work for a startup" point. we really need to focus on the steps that happen before that point.

</comment><comment><USER30> _But my gut instinct has always been that people avoid joining startups because joining startups sucks. The question isn't what are we doing that's keeping ladies out of the Valley, gentlemen. The question should be why in God's name are we still here._

The startup failure rate after 5 years is actually closer to 60 than 90%. Two comparisons come to mind:

In a standard company job, career stagnation and unrecognized toil are the standard. If you don't become the protege of someone important-- someone who will look out for you and make sure you're on the best projects-- in the first two years, it's no longer worth it to go to work in a lot of companies. Most people don't become proteges.

So, if you're ambitious at all, there's above a 60% chance you'll be looking for work again in 5 years no matter what you do.

Second, although the boring corporate job is safer, the enjoyment of startups comes from the fact that you're doing relevant, useful work (so long as the product you're working on has a successful launch and trajectory). To do relevant work isn't an option for most people in their early-mid 20s; even if they're brilliant, most companies expect them to "pay dues" before they can do anything interesting, and there are so many arcane, IO-bound permissions systems before even the smallest technological changes can be made.

In the startup, you have a 100% chance of doing relevant work for a product that has a sub-50% chance of ever existing. In the safe corporate job, less than 20% of what you'll do in your first three years is relevant work. It's tough to say which wins.

Personally, I chose the startup route under the belief that, no matter what happens, I'll learn a lot more-- that's a lot more important than what job title I get or what my pay is (as long as I can stay afloat). I figure that I can rewrite my own story a million times-- I've never had to resort to "creative career repair", but if I need to invent more impressive titles or inflate compensation, I can. On the other hand, knowledge and skill are completely impossible to fake. So I focus on a path where I learn a lot, not one where I get my tickets punched.

<comment><USER16> There's a rationalization used by underemployed startup workers that goes something like, "you're going to lose your BigCo job anyways, so the startup isn't that much riskier".

It isn't valid.

When a startup fails, you are very likely to be broke. The only thing you've added to your resume is a company nobody has heard of. You've been working and networking with people who are going to stay in startups. It's also harder to leave a startup preemptively, because all startups look risky all the time.

When you leave a BigCo job, you are very likely to have a nest egg, because they paid you consistently and generously and you were able to tune your standard of living. You've been working and networking with people who then diffused through a variety of other BigCo's in your area. Everybody you interview with knows the company you worked for. And if layoffs are coming, you saw them coming at least 6 months ago.

The risks involved in startups aren't comparable to the risks of a BigCo career. That's why most people in our industry work for BigCo's, profitably, for the entirety of their careers.

Also, speaking as a long-term veteran of startups: career stagnation and unrecognized toil are the standard _everywhere_.

<comment><USER30> Fair enough. Your points are correct, and for this reason I'd advocate not working at a personal loss for more than 6 months, and only for equity (with the caveat not to put money or time into a business that you can't afford to lose).

I'm not advocating working in startups to the detriment of all else, but I think it's worth doing when young, if you'll learn a lot by doing so. That said, if my current project were to fail, I'd probably use the experience to get into grad school or a place like Google (on better terms than I'd be able to get without the experience, I hope).</comment></comment></comment>


Electric or Not, Big SUVs Are Inherently Selfish - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7q7eb/electric-or-not-big-suvs-are-inherently-selfish <comment><USER2> If you live in an area which regularly needs 4 wheel drive (snowstorms) and you have kids that need to go to school or go to various actives, having a suburban makes sense. Think of a mini-van that can handle the elements.

In this article I totally agree, that a Hummer, or type of vehicle that simply fulfills one's ego is a little silly and inherently selfish.

However trying to say that all big SUV's are inherently selfish without looking at the reasons someone who has a family may purchase one is quite disingenuous.

<comment><USER3> I grew up with station wagons.

Nothing about snow or children mandate vehicle height.

<comment><USER2> Live down a country road where the county/city doesn't plow and your kid is still expected to make it to the "main road" to get on the bus.

I do agree that the situation where you need this type of vehicle is quite niche and for the majority of people it's about status and not functionality.

<comment><USER4> Once again, still don't need it. I grew up eight miles from the nearest paved road. I drove a Suzuki forsa in the winter.

If the roads are too dangerous for a car, stay home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure why it's a surprise that people buy cars because of the image they project. That's been true from the beginning, and for more than about transportation.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bradsher described that portrait, comprised of marketing reports from the major automakers, as follows:

"Who has been buying SUVs since automakers turned them into family vehicles? They tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self- centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors or communities."

</comment><comment><USER7> "The electrification of the Hummer is not a signal of climate progress. It is a declaration that it's still OK to be an asshole."

As said by whom? Metropolitan coastal journalists?

Spends half the article critiquing SUV culture and people.

Try having a large family where you consistently get meters of snow every winter and your municipality never got the benefits of modern urban planning.

It bothers me that it appears despite making progress in a decades old climate narrative, nothing is ever enough so long as it doesn't fit one's own narrative of one's own world.

The news is actually positive! Critiquing is fine but don't attack a culture you don't fully understand or have empathy for.

I've lived in nothing but metropolitan dense cities and am pro-environment but also have empathy because I have friends and family who don't live like me and sacrifice without the niceties I'm able to afford with my lifestyle.

Kudos on the progress to Hummer TBH.

<comment><USER8> The article is pretty clearly critical of people who buy an SUV with zero intent of exploiting either the S or the U.

My bet is that if you are indeed off-roading or hauling your 4+ children around this author is going to give you a pass.

But there are a lot of people solo driving SUVs to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish something could be done about vehicle size and peoples driving characteristics. Parking spaces haven't gotten any bigger in my experience and vehicles are like millimeters of tolerance. People drive so crazy violently, too. You need to have something comparable in size to "get respect."

<comment><USER10> Road taxes should be made commensurate to vehicle size/weight (as they were originally intended to be, as size/weight of vehicle cohort is a major determinate in road maintenance costs). Most SUVs and pickup truck are specifically engineered to be exactly as large as they can be before some states' truck tax laws start to charge taxes by size/weight. With gas taxes shrinking due to EV sales, it's probably past time for states to reconsider these loopholes in their truck tax laws for "personal trucks" (as opposed to commercial vehicles), and start charging SUVs and oversized pickup trucks for the road maintenance penalty they deserve.

<comment><USER11> Even worse, they take advantage of the benefits and skip most of the drawbacks. For example, vehicles over 6000 pounds are prohibited on California streets. [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/08/california-s- sec...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/08/california-s-secret-suv- ban.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I lived in Tucson, I had a bicycle and a bus pass for three years.

Now I live in Rural Southeast Missouri on a dirt road. I have a Suburban. I'd love to have a Prius or something instead, but it wouldn't last and I couldn't move the things I need to move in a reasonable trip count.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is Vice going to write an article on how international vacations (which release in one shot as much CO2 as an SUV releases all year) are "inherently selfish?"

<comment><USER3> Like this one[0]?

[0] [https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/a3xyjj/cheap-flights- envi...](https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/a3xyjj/cheap-flights-environment- damage-climate-crisis-ryanair)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> vice is one of those news sources that is pretty much guaranteed to bring down the quality of discuss on HN.

<comment><USER15> I wonder if we should lay blame at the feet of triggerer or the triggered, though. People seem to get really uncomfortable when you get close to outing their selfishness. NIMBYism/gentrification is another popular one that does it, for example.</comment></comment>


Marijuana use tied to higher blood sugar in middle age - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-diabetes-marijuana-idUSKCN0RG24I20150916 <comment><USER2> Paper: [http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/527/art%253A10.1007%...](http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/527/art%253A10.1007%252Fs00125-015-3740-3.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs00125-015-3740-3&token2=exp=1454866091~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F527%2Fart%25253A10.1007%25252Fs00125-015-3740-3.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Farticle%252F10.1007%252Fs00125-015-3740-3*~hmac=820cb834d7cb14af0057d3ced05ad18725b9e0e06896b7cda631e4119aea8010)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >Those who were current marijuana users were 65 percent more likely to have elevated blood sugar than people who never used the drug. People who reported using marijuana more than 100 times in the past were also more likely to have high blood sugar levels.

</comment><comment><USER3> Newsflash, people who smoke pot, eat a lot of candy.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is not what the article is saying. It is drawing other connections.</comment></comment>


EDHmeetup: Find commander play-groups in your area - <AUTHOR> https://edhmeetup.com <comment><USER2> Nice, this is a very good idea. Of all Magic formats, I have always been most interested in Commander and there isn't much "official" support for the format (although it has improved over the years), so it's awesome to see this filling in the gap.

I haven't had a large, regular playgroup since college, so I'll definitely try the site out and see if there is a playgroup near me.

One recommendation: I would allow people to put information in their profiles, especially about what competitiveness level(s) they are interested in and what their decks are. The latter should display the color of the deck, the commander name, and a self-reported power level.

E.g.

"Doran, the Siege Tower" (B)(W)(G) -- Competitive

"Vorel of the Hull Clade" (U)(G) -- Casual

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

I'm glad you like the idea. Hopefully you can find a group near you! If not, you can always create one for anyone else that comes looking for groups in that area after.

I like your suggestion about letting people have profiles. I will definitely add it to the task list.

Thank you for the comment!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> EDHmeetup is a platform dedicated to helping commander players find a play- group near them, no matter the country or city. You can either search for groups near you, or create your own! We also provide tools to use with your group members.

If you play commander (EDH) and need a group, or want more players in YOUR group, try out edhmeetup.com!</comment>


Dear Recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://dearrecruiters.com/ <comment><USER2> Recruiter here.

We do not tell you the company name for a few reasons:

1\. If we tell you the name of the company straight off the bat, the next recruiter will ask you some sneaky questions and get the details of the role under the guise of trying to find out where you are in the process of looking for a job. This works more times than you can believe.

2\. Candidates will apply for the role directly because they hate recruiters or they think they can get a better rate.

3\. Company has specifically mentioned not to disclose the name of the company until we are sure we have found the right candidate because of reason one, imagine getting calls from 10 recruiters in a day, not just that IT recruiters the worst kind of all!

Please note as well that most of these emails are not about this specific opportunity or getting to interested or compelled to apply its about finding out if you are looking for new work or open to new roles.

It works and its easy, its not right and it can be annoying but just email back the recruiter and mention you would like to see all the information you have on them as per the privacy laws in your country and they'll stop dealing with you pretty quickly.

<comment><USER3> > _If we tell you the name of the company straight off the bat, the next > recruiter will ask you some sneaky questions and get the details of the role > under the guise of trying to find out where you are in the process of > looking for a job. This works more times than you can believe._

Can you rephrase this? I don't understand what you're trying to say.

<comment><USER4> He means that all the recruiters are in competition with each other, sometimes even at the same recruitment company.

As a result, they will all back-stab each other in order to make their money... which comes from a surtax on your new employer, and thus reduces your bargaining position.

In the other direction, I've had the same person represented to me by multiple recruiters a few times. In all cases, the actual person was not at fault.

<comment><USER5> This. I live in a relatively small city, so I frequently see 3-4 different firms ping me on the same job. I'm the kind of person who feels guilty not sending a frendly no thanks. Usually by the 3rd or 4th recruiter on a gig, I'm able to respond with 'Oh, this is the <company name here> gig. Thanks, but it isn't a good fit for me.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Please, for the love of all that is holy, lead with the company's name. That's all we ask."

Not so. I also ask that -

You understand the role better than just a list of bullet points and so can answer questions.

You are in contact with the team that is hiring so that any questions you can't answer you can get me an answer for.

You have read enough about me to have proactively filtered the job; I'm not interested in a junior position, nor a lead position requiring a decade of experience. If you say you think I would be a "great match for this Perl position!" I will cut you.

You know enough about the industry to accurately sell the job. "An exciting Java opportunity!" followed by a description that makes it sound like it's writing business CRUD apps is an oxymoron. And any description that clearly shows you have no idea what you're talking about ("You must be familiar with the following languages: Java, HTML, CSS, JSON, OO, Functional") means immediate deletion from my inbox.

You actually remain in contact until a yea or nay is decided upon, either by me or the company. Don't just disappear. This also means if you change positions, you pass your leads to another recruiter. I filter email addresses of recruiters who don't do this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Or if you're a company being repeatedly contacted by recruitment agencies:

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

(and also kind of an ass - try just spamming a few letters in each text box)

<comment><USER8> Okay this one is hilarious.

I especially liked the box "This question is intentionally left blank"

<comment><USER9> > Do you agree with this statement? 'Recruitment is a art'

No, because grammar.

<comment><USER10> It's (presumably) a joke. See: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling+is+a...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling+is+a+art)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't even understand why you're trying to help them. Good recruiters don't need your help and the bad ones can leave.

Unless I can tell that an email has been custom tailored to my personal profile and experience I don't give it the time of day.

A recruiter, in one or two paragraphs, should be able to tell me about the company (without mentioning the name) and why several items in my personal history (work experiences, patents, articles written, code bases committed to, etc) are relevant to what they are trying to do. Anything short of this is garbage and should be treated as such.

<comment><USER12> Why can't a bad recruiter become a good one?

<comment><USER11> I didn't say a bad recruiter couldn't become a good recruiter. I said the, "bad ones can leave", which, I acknowledge, is quite dismissive. What I meant is, "pay no attention to the bad ones".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Seriously, we like you.

I don't. I'm not looking for a new job currently. Recruiters aren't any different than Viagra spammers to me (I'm also not looking for Viagra).

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't expect a recruiter to lead with the name, but if asked, they'll provide.

Hell, I'd be happy if they'd lead with the city, state, or country, half the time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Dear Entitled Software Engineers,

Take a step back. You're living during one of highest periods of unemployment and economic depression in recent history, and you're complaining about being bombarded with job offers. Usually this is happening on LinkedIn, a website entirely about having a public resume that shows you are a good candidate to be hired.

That staffing recruiter who is emailing you probably didn't dream of becoming a staffing recruiter - they took the job they could get. Most staffing recruiters are a recent graduates who were recently un/underemployed. They're working in a cutthroat, sink or swim environment where 40% of their coworkers won't be there next month. If they don't make their numbers, they're gone. Most of the jobs they work on are impossibly hard to fill jobs in an industry they don't know anything about.

Those annoying staffing recruiters also provide liquidity in the labor market. Remember that 20K salary bump your new employer didn't blink at? That's because they know how hard it is to hire good software engineers and they understand the competition they face.

Remember that time you were constantly being proactive about your career, always checking to see if there might be something better out there? Yah, I don't do that either, but a good recruiter will.

Yes, there are terrible recruiters out there and many of them are annoying. But they do serve a purpose to both you and the companies you will work for.

With every good there is a bad. You're lucky enough to be in a position where thousands of companies are desperate to hire somebody like you. It could be worse :)

XOXO

</comment><comment><USER16> Its annoying when recruiters email you especially when the job description doesn't quite match your expertise but they think all 'backend roles' mean the same and you are a perfect match!

The best people to connect talent to job roles are the ones who work in the same field. aka Referrals!

With that in mind we are creating a platform where you can can bring right opportunities to talented folks you admire and earn a referral bonus for it (instead of the recruiters getting rewarded for spam)

Checkout the initial version of [http://referralhire.com](http://referralhire.com)

<comment><USER17> I actually tend to hate the exact opposite: When they need someone very experienced in a specific technology, but do not consider a very similar and related technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Or better yet, demonstrate that you have done the most basic research into what the real job entails rather than a vague paragraph submitted to you by HR. You know, something silly, like spending 5 minutes on the phone with the manager being recruited for. 10 minutes for extra bonus points.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Awesome companies are facing a talent crunch, and finding the most awesome software people out there is hard." \- that is the biggest misconception: looking to buy cheap something that simply is expensive.

</comment><comment><USER20> Only in the valley...

<comment><USER21> Applies to just about every industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was expecting something different, although the part about desperation rings true.. My "Dear Recruiters" letter would beg them to just Google me, or look at my LinkedIn... something, anything, spend 10 seconds to find out that I have a great job at a huge company... then think twice about sending me a lead for a short-term contract opportunity using a technology I haven't touched in years at a no-name company in some other random state.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's usually pretty easy to find out the company by simply Googling a line or two of the description as well.</comment>