One Guy Who Has Seen It All Doesn't Like What He Sees Now - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916592206646195.html?mod=psp_mostpop

<comment><USER2> This is a great example of a major benefit of extending human life: Having people that have witnessed history to guide us through future problems.

<comment><USER3> Well, we still have quite a few wise folks who witnessed the Great Depression. Nevertheless, we didn't listen to them or consult with them or else we wouldn't be facing the current economic crisis. Life extension is good, but it will just mean that more people will witness history repeating itself.

<comment><USER4> The one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

<comment><USER5> Spoken like a man familiar with the problem of induction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _It is, in fact, going to be a wonderful environment in which to take risk, because there aren't going to be any excesses._

I certainly agree with this, but I wonder if we'll actually see any more posts than usual that say "@#$% my job, I'm doing a startup."

</comment><comment><USER7> "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk,"

Damn good name for a book!

Anyone notice; if you selected text then right clicked, WSJ throws up some css box with information relating to that text>? kinda neat.

<comment><USER8> "Kinda neat", like, "I hope there's a Greasemonkey script to turn it off?" Or "kinda neat", like, "possibly a useful way to monitize my site and annoy my users".

Do you honestly think that anyone has ever selected some text on that site, and then randomly right clicked on it hoping that related search terms would pop up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If the majority of investor will minimize the risk they take, there will be more opportunities and profit at hand for those who will dare to take a bit more risks. The good news is that it is much less risk as before.

The other good news is that the economy is much more fluid as before. The market has extended in size (Asian country) and the access barriers is continuously lowering (as for launching a startup). I'm optimistic. But not of the "wait and see" kind ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is no one else going to comment on how ridiculously long his tie is?</comment>


I got fired from Facebook (for having a YouTube channel) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pIJoPkh9IU&t=574s <comment><USER2> Rough. His wife also left earlier this month.

It's interesting though in both videos, he seems to place the blame on them (his wife, facebook). His wife was a gold digger and facebook didn't like his youtube channel.

Both could be entirely possible, but one does have to wonder if maybe all the money and the YouTube fame changed him. Perhaps he wasn't that easy to work with anymore. His ego outgrew his position, both in the marriage, and at Facebook.

From his wife leaving video:

"My funny personality, my charm ... carries no weight against the best thing about me - I'm successful".

Just a thought. No disrespect to the guy, he's clearly very smart and knows how to succeed. Best of luck to him.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wondering how this isn't in the top of hacker news...</comment>


When You Electronically Sign Documents, Always Keep a Copy - <AUTHOR> https://twocents.lifehacker.com/when-you-electronically-sign-documents-always-keep-a-c-1838286630 <comment><USER2> Headline is off topic. The article is about a case where the contract was never signed by counterparty, so having a copy was wholly irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER3> Store business documents in a place. Got it.</comment>


Britain Used Spy Team to Shape Latin American Public Opinion on Falklands - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/02/gchq-argentina-falklands/?utm_content=buffer8c3c9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> The US did this to Australia. That's why the spy whose story is portrayed in the book and movie "The Falcon and the Snowman" started passing US secrets to the Soviets.

He didn't like it that US propaganda was being used to steer once-leftist Australia to what we have now, far more right-wing in many respects even than the US.</comment>


Ask HN: Did my poor choice in higher education hurt my career permanently? - <AUTHOR>

I attended a local business college that turned into a diploma mill experience. They were later snatched up by Kaplan University and morphed into one. I finished out my BS because by the time I realized how bad the decision was, it was better to just finish it up and graduate than quit and pay off a debt with nothing to show for it.<p>I'd like to think I'm a little more self-aware now, and definitely have picked up on much more knowledge since then. Does it really matter that I attended a diploma mill in relation to looking for great jobs down the line? I currently have an average junior DBA/development gig that is decent for the area, but would love to do something more inspiring someday soon. Does anyone have similar stories to relate that might give me some insight on how I should treat my career?<p>(Just a note that I've been out of school for about 6 years now, and now have about four years at said gig under my belt, if that helps clarify a bit.) <comment><USER3> Maybe not permanently, but yes, it definitely hurt your career. I'm not sure why everyone wants to deny that what college is on your resume matters. It really does matter. Google hires from "top-tier schools" (you can get in via other paths, but that's the easy one, and the only way you can get to work at Google straight out of college). Likewise facebook and all the other hot places to work in technology.

I was unaware of this fact when I made my school decisions, and my parents were mostly unaware of this fact as well (having been the first in both their families to attend college of any sort; to them the distinction was "went to college" and recognized little difference between "went to a good college" and "went to a bad college"), so I somewhat aimlessly attended a community college for four years. It took me about 5 years from finishing school to get to the point where I could work in high-paying jobs alongside people who had degrees from MIT, Caltech, Duke, etc. And the most important element in that process was probably writing a technical book and getting it published by a well-known publisher. I wouldn't have needed that book and other experience and getting such a job could have happened immediately after college had I attended a good school.

I've rarely let this bother me, as I've always known I wanted to work for myself, and I don't need to see a diploma to know what I can do. But, I can say that there have been a few occasions in my life where I desperately needed to be able to get a job in order to pay my bills (running your own business when you don't know how can lead to running up a lot of debt), and the jobs I could get were simply awful. Without a good degree, and without a solid trail of work-experience, you don't get the callback on high-paying jobs. There are always candidates with a good education who will edge you out in the selection process.

I believe you're going to need to take the initiative and fix your situation yourself. It won't happen by accident, and it won't happen by staying in one low-level position until your superiors deem you worthy of promotion.

I wrote a book, got involved in numerous Open Source projects, spoke at conferences, and did really good work whenever I found myself in a contract position at a really good company (on a few occasions that led to full-time employment offers, including an office with more Ph.Ds per square meter than any other place I've stepped foot). I feel pretty confident that at this point in my life, I could get a job working at almost any tech company in the world, because I have so much to show for my time since college. But, I've been out of college for 12 years...that's a long time to wait to start getting good jobs and making a good salary.

You don't have to go back to school to "fix" the problem, but you do need to do something dramatic. Start a successful company. Write a book for publication (preferably a good one). Start an Open Source project and make it really successful. Just going to work every day will not cause the world to begin to agree with you on your value in the workplace. If you believe you're being undervalued and underutilized, you're going to have to do something about it.

<comment><USER4> I'm very nervous about this. I'm a rising sophomore at Virginia Tech (best in- state engineering school for ECE), and, while it's not a diploma mill, it's also certainly not "top-tier". I wonder whether my job prospects (or, worse, my education) suffer because of it. I take it your advice would be to get moving on the OSS/Company-starting as soon as possible? What other methods might make me a more impressive candidate?

<comment><USER3> Virginia Tech is far from a diploma mill or a community college, and is probably on Google's accepted school list. It's not Stanford or Caltech or MIT, but it's not a problem you need to fret about.

<comment><USER5> Actually, one of the most productive programmers I know at Google is a Virginia Tech alum...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are very few career mistakes that hurt you permanently, if you make an effort to recover from them. Usually, the way it works is that a low-quality degree shunts you into a low-quality initial job, which then makes you lower your expectation about what you _can_ achieve, which prevents you from going for better opportunities as they arise. This cycle is very much breakable, it just requires that you do something unexpected.

Basically, if your degree sucks, it will force the hiring manager to look much more closely at your other accomplishments. If you have none, you're screwed. If you have a track record of shipping products that other people want to use, nobody is going to care about your degree.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're not regularly getting unsolicited offers of employment, you're not spending enough time on career development. Start a blog, contribute to open source projects and hustle like a motherfucker.

If you want to work on exciting things, work on exciting things. Demonstrate that you're halfway good at it and people will offer you money to do it for them. It really is as simple as that.

To me, the idea of a software developer seeking employment based on their degree is as ridiculous as a rock singer trying to book a gig on the basis of his BA. We work in a field where theoretical understanding is no guarantee of practical ability, but proving practical ability is straightforward. Developers who rely on credentials can't code and employers who rely on credentials can't hire. You want to keep the hell away from all of them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, my company, an enterprise agile dev consulting firm, could really care less if you had a degree.

My guess is that most places you REALLY want to work won't care where your degree is from. Work on cool stuff, share what you do on github, and look for ways to learn and grow. It will be evident.

<comment><USER8> So if they could care less, they do care a little?

<comment><USER7> No, they don't care. I have heard them say to college interns that they should stop spending money on school so they can work sooner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Your degree and what school you went to don't matter. What matters at this point is what you have accomplished. So what have you? If you have no publicly available proof of your work (open source, or web app, business ...) then get started. It is never too late. At the age you would be by now, people will judge you on your accomplishments.

I am 41 and have a couple of small companies (30 employees total). For my education, I barely graduated from public high school. I had my sister write a special make up paper so I could pass French. Without that I would not have made it. I am married now to a professor. I go to many parties with academics, and they are mostly impressed with the fact that I am self employed. I am impressed with all the degrees and publications they have. Nobody asks me where I went to school because that is not relevant to figure out if I am successful or worth talking to.

So to summarize - your place of education has an order of magnitude less importance than what you have accomplished. And the gap will get wider as you get older. So do something that people can see, and prove to the world that you are capable.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you have been out of school six years, where you went to school should at best only be a minor consideration regarding your qualifications - <USER2> track record will nearly always trump academic credentials in the business world.

In addition attending a mediocre local school due to limited options is different from traveling across country to do so as an explicit choice.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone, the personal anecdotes are the fuel I need to keep me motivated. It's tough when you see lots of big news about developers at startups doing amazing things and you just think 'well, I didn't do x,y,z perfectly, so I'm not eligible for this kind of project'. I work for a fairly small company that's existed for over 10 years but is still in startup mode, probably for the wrong reasons. But it's convinced me that startups and other small outfits are definitely where I want to be. Thanks everyone!

</comment><comment><USER11> I agree with what everyone says here, but I think that reflects the OP's concern that he will have to prove himself by going the extra step, developing a worthwhile portfolio of work before being accepted as a person who knows his stuff. On the other hand ,a person with a degree from a known institute would be assumed by "most" people to have those skills , even without having anything to show for them.

<comment><USER12> I doubt you'll find any company that hires solely based on a degree. They all have an interview process designed to force you to prove you actually know how to code. Some use in-person interviews, some require code samples, but all require proof, and a degree is never proof in this field.

So no, I don't think he has hurt his career at all. Maybe slowed down the initial job, but with a decent portfolio (which he'd need anyhow) then his second job will be right back on track.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Consider getting a master's degree from a recognized institution.

Also consider joining some large company that will pay for that master's degree.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think that depends on what you want your career to be.

If you're looking to work for startup and/or small firms, it's probably not going to matter. You've got a gig right now, they're going to care about what you did and learned at that gig. I know that my company doesn't care about what your degree is in or where it's from. Hell, all that has become is a measure of how much debt you and your parents were willing to accomodate.

If you're looking to work for a big firm, I dunno, Google or something, it's probably going be something they'll use to vet resumes.

This is not new advice, but now that you have your degree focus on creating stuff. Do something in the open source community. Blog the things you learn here and there. Your experiences and your portfolio of work is far more important to a smart hiring authority than some damn diploma.

<comment><USER5> Google will hire people without big-name degrees if they have big-name accomplishments. I know folks from SJSU or with no undergrad degree at all that are working in pretty high-up positions. They can't get hired straight out of school, but there're a bunch of things you can do in the meantime that increase your desirability to employers.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, Google was a bad example. IBM maybe? I can't think of a big company that I know for sure requires specific degrees from specific institutions.

<comment><USER15> I used to recruit for several "large" firms including top-3 finance, a few smaller hedge funds, then the top eCommerce firms (sans Google). The finance hedge funds had the most strict req's. Target school, CS degree (nothing else but CS), no Masters or higher degree, 0-2 years of experience etc.

This was due to "taint" from over-education, etc.

Otherwise, you needed a degree or some very solid accomplishments to be looked at for a top eCommerce / tech firm. Many financial firms require a 4 year degree or a sign-off from a Senior Manager.

Most of my roles were $90-140,000

You only "hurt" your career if you wish to stay in a corporate climbing-the- ladder world. EG: progressively moving up in pay / title, non-degree's seem to have $5-$15,000 less salary in my experience.

The most important long-term indicator of income was (my Google skills are failing me for citation) the first position. If you started low ($30-$35,000), in 10 years, you will of course still be behind your peers who started at $50-$60,000. The first position out of school also tended to keep you "stuck" in that track.

But, these are "averages" and nothing is limiting but your own ambition and drive.

<comment><USER16> "The finance hedge funds had the most strict req's. Target school, CS degree (nothing else but CS), no Masters or higher degree, 0-2 years of experience etc."

haha, I had considered this route since I have a BS in CS/math and MS in math and I figured they would like that more. apparently not. I like working 40 hours a week anyways at an employer that pays more more for the MS.

...and will just take the financial actuarial exams if I want in that route anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can compensate for a less-sexy degree by demonstrating excellent career growth. The time to act on this is now. Six years out of college, and four years in the same job - you're on the threshold of appearing stale.

Take some time to set long-term goals for yourself, determine what steps you would need to take to get there, and then execute on the steps that are feasible for you at the moment.

I have found that the career growth paths at many companies are quite immature - there are more options available when you consider changing employers versus busywaiting on the scarce promotional opportunities available in your career track at a single company. Doubly so if you are trying to overcome prejudices about your skill set, like if you are trying to make the leap from software testing to development, etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> Where you were educated matters much less when you have an awesome list of projects/experience to refer to.

</comment><comment><USER19> Define "hurt my career." Working for Google or Facebook? Maybe fresh out of school it would be a problem, but six years after? I find that hard to believe.

In any case, there is more to the employment world than Google, Facebook, or Apple. Want to work for a Fortune 500 business? Well there's _500_ employers right there, most of whom aren't too concerned with where you went to school 6 years ago, but care more about what you did since.

I've been interviewing people for a few years and the only time the university is noticed is if it's Harvard or MIT or something well known. And even then it counts for absolutely NOTHING.

</comment><comment><USER20> Harvard has a merit-based remote Master's program for Software Engineering[1] if you're interested in continuing education.

A strong professional network will help overcome most deficiencies. Companies are concerned with reputability and a school name or a degree are just a part of that. In that same vein, there are other areas of your professional reputation you can bolster as well.

1: [http://blog.markwshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters- degree...](http://blog.markwshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters-degree-in- software-engineering/)

<comment><USER21> Wow $20,000 is a lot of money. I really feel sorry for those i the states, when you consider I could enter a residence masters program in Sweden for nothing (coming from the EU) you really wonder where the cost of education comes from.

<comment><USER22> You know it's not really free, right? You and everyone you know will be paying taxes to pay for that "free" education for the rest of your careers.

Not saying it's a bad deal, but it's not free.

<comment><USER23> It is also not really free to you directly; there is an opportunity cost to being in a full-time graduate program vs. remaining in your job, advancing in your career, or starting a company.

It still might be the right choice for financial and non-financial reasons, but school isn't free even if you don't have to pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> By my own experience, if you have the appropriate skills and knowledge, most companies could care less on where you graduated. Some larger companies' HR departments can be university snobs, but I never encountered that on all the startups that I've applied to.

Just keep studying, do great work, and grow your portfolio; and I'm sure you'll do fine.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nobody that matters will look at your schooling after a few years of experience. Those that do you should avoid, as they care more about superficial credentials than what you can actually do.

</comment><comment><USER26> You don't have to put it on your resume.

</comment><comment><USER27> You seem a bit like myself, a few years back. You are worried about "School Names" or how it looks to others.

Don't even worry about what school you attended, worry about the things you know. Did you learn anything?

Worry about what your skills are, good companies could careless if you went to no school and know the skills instead.

Worry about what projects you have done and what you learned from each one, even if the project was by yourself.

My point is people are so hung up on schools and degrees, they forget the skills and experience out-way any degree.

So worry about skills and experience even if its on your own experiments. The passed is the passed, hopefully you learned something at the school at the least.

You just don't learn in schools.</comment>


Ask HN: Do I need to learn React before applying for a new job? - <AUTHOR> I have been working on AngularJS at my current company for last two years. While in the background, React took over the world!
Now wherever I am applying, react-redux is kind of a must. Do I need to learn them before starting the applications?
How do you, in general, keep yourself up-to-date with latest technologies out there? <comment><USER2> Not sure I'd you say "need" to learn them, but given the popularity of React and other similar component-based UI libraries, understanding the concepts is probably a good thing.

If you do want to learn React, I keep a big list of links to high-quality tutorials and articles on React, Redux, and related topics, at [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) . Specifically intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem, as well as a solid source of good info on more advanced topics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing! This looks as a great starting point. Will surely take a look.

<comment><USER2> Sure. I'll also toss out the rest of my standard advice for learning React:

The article "A Study Plan to Cure Javascript Fatigue" ( [https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-study-plan-to-cure- javascr...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-study-plan-to-cure-javascript- fatigue-8ad3a54f2eb1) ) is a great place to start. It gives an excellent series of steps for tackling modern Javascript concepts one piece at a time: Javascript, React, ES6, and state management.

On that note, definitely don't over-complicate the learning process by trying to learn many different things at once. Some people will say you should use a "boilerplate" to learn React, and they're wrong - boilerplate projects almost always come with too many pieces configured, and are confusing for beginners.

Instead, the best advice is to focus on learning React itself first. Once you have a good understanding of how React works, you will better appreciate why a state management library like Redux can be useful, and you can learn about other tools later.

You should start out by reading through the official React docs and tutorial at [https://facebook.github.io/react/](https://facebook.github.io/react/), and I'd encourage you to use the official Create-React-App tool ( [https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app](https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app) ) for setting up projects. It creates a project with a solid build setup, with no configuration needed on your part. There's an excellent post called "Simple React Development in 2017" ( [https://hackernoon.com/simple-react-development- in-2017-113b...](https://hackernoon.com/simple-react-development- in-2017-113bd563691f) ) that gives some more specific instructions on the actual steps to follow.

Besides my links list that I mentioned in my first comment, I also published an "Intro to React (and Redux)" presentation at [http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation- react-...](http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation-react-redux- intro/) , which is a good overview of the basic concepts for both React and Redux.

Finally, the Reactiflux chat channels on Discord are a great place to hang out, ask questions, and learn. The invite link is at [https://www.reactiflux.com](https://www.reactiflux.com) .</comment></comment></comment>


Major Service Outage at GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/?date=now <comment><USER2> Github is down --> check out the unicorn --> refresh hacker news --> refresh again --> shitpost in comments

<comment><USER3> The coding equivalent of accident rubbernecking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Obligatory Gogs plug: [https://gogs.io](https://gogs.io)

It also has an awesome automatic mirror mode that can remain sync'd to a remkte repository. I don't care what your company does or how you run it, but please don't just rely on Github to host your code without a mirror somewhere. There are drawbacks to this incessant centralization.

<comment><USER5> Just this week I setup gogs on my VPS to mirror all of my repos on github. It's part of my new year goal to avoid my dependence on 3rd party apps. Of course I still am depending on my VPS provider so...

<comment><USER6> Just set up a Banana Pi or whatever at home to mirror your mirror.

<comment><USER7> The specs for a beaglebone black are worse than a raspberry pi 3 in every way except the eMMC storage. Am I missing something? (I've actually been looking for something stronger to include in my raspberry pi cluster at home, but this doesnt seem like it)

<comment><USER6> Whoops you are right, I meant the Banana Pi m3([http://www.banana- pi.org/m3.html](http://www.banana-pi.org/m3.html)).

<comment><USER7> Banana pi is probably overkill for a low-key git repo. Its double the price of a raspberry pi.

That said, I'll actually be looking into this to possibly run arm stuff that needs more power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How am I supposed to do any work if I can't copy and paste code.

<comment><USER9> My builds are broken because they have dependencies on github repos.

<comment><USER10> This is a teaching moment for you then. Minimize external dependencies when you've moved from "thank god it works" to "this is production ready."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how many companies are unable to deploy new updates now because they rely on Github?

<comment><USER12> Friends don't let friends deploy on Fridays... it's always a horrible idea.

<comment><USER13> Deploying on Friday is fine if you can rollback quickly :)

<comment><USER14> I think the point was that you don't want to be messing with production when people are going to be gone for days. Even if it's easy to roll back I'd just as soon not deal with it. If your application is of such importance that rolling a change out Friday v. Monday makes a different in the business's bottom line, that business can almost certainly afford to have weekend staff that could cover it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Currently 98.9212% app server availability in the last month.

That means 7h 52m 49.7s of potential downtime/unavailability [1] in the last month.

And the trend of that percentage doesn't look that rosy.

[1] [https://uptime.is/98.9212](https://uptime.is/98.9212)

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope everybody on HN is doing okay with this recent outage, I'm here if anybody wants to talk.

Seriously, Github Outage Syndrome (GOS) can be horrible. If you don't talk about your outage feelings, they will eat you from the inside out.

Obviously anything you tell me will be kept in the strictest confidence, all without judgement.

Stay strong HN, Github will be back soon!

Edited to Add: Why they hate guys? Didn't mean to offend, thought the post said it all and could probably do with a little levity. My bad. Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've configured one remote with two pushurls and set this remote to all my branches. This way I always push to BitBucket and GitHub at the same time. Just wondering, how this would work if I was not the single user contributing.

<comment><USER7> You'd have to either coordinate with the other users to have them do the same, or officially declare which one is "official" and which one is "backup" and set up something so the backup tracks the official (and then you only need to push to the official as well)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> …and this is how we remember how much we rely on GitHub, and how much value it provides. Every day.

<comment><USER18> It sort of becomes your Internet and computer. No computer no work. No Internet no VPN no work.

But in this case I guess investing in local mirror is a great investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A little bit OT, but having colored favicons based on the status is a nice touch!

[https://status.github.com/images/status-icon- green.png](https://status.github.com/images/status-icon-green.png)

[https://status.github.com/images/status-icon- orange.png](https://status.github.com/images/status-icon-orange.png)

[https://status.github.com/images/status-icon- red.png](https://status.github.com/images/status-icon-red.png)

</comment><comment> sahin-boydas Long live Gitlab...

<comment><USER20> Except. Pushes of new repos are still broken in the CE. No fix for over 3 weeks.

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support- forum/issues/207](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support-forum/issues/207)

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/26369](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26369)

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/21502](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/21502)

Only work around is to create a README on empty repos via the GUI and which then opens up the Protected Branches page. That said the rules around who is able to commit on the repos are broken.

<comment><USER21> Hey there, thanks for bringing this up. First, I want to apologize for the inconvenience you've experienced as a result of this issue. Second, I'd like to apologize for the delay in getting back to you on this as well.

You're right, 3+ weeks is a pretty long time for something like this to be affecting people. Unfortunately I don't have an ETA on when this issue will be resolved, but I'll be keeping tabs on it going forward. Please feel free to add additional comments to the issues if you haven't already, or you can reach out to me directly. Again, I'd like to apologize for any trouble this caused you and others affected by this issue.

<comment><USER22> This issue should be fixed as of today in 8.16.3

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm envisioning some kind of caching forward proxy for git. Point your clones/fetches at it and it will proxy the connection to the source fork. If the source fork is down, it will serve its cached copy of the fork.

I found this[0] but it's prerelease and looks like it hasn't been touched in five years. Anyone know of any other solutions like this? Good idea? Bad idea?

0\. [https://github.com/rohanpm/ngitcached](https://github.com/rohanpm/ngitcached)

</comment><comment><USER24> GitHub adds value. They have a few engineering issues to solve given the negative attention such a popular code versioning system attracts. Although there are some outages due to this condition, the value added to our organization far outweighs these minor inconveniences.

</comment><comment><USER25> Been working on a down detector type app, its like half baked at the mo, hopefully I can build up a data set that allows people to fairly compare the reliability of different SASS products such as github and bitbucket

[https://young-forest-39406.herokuapp.com/sites](https://young- forest-39406.herokuapp.com/sites)

</comment><comment><USER26> Has anyone heard what might be the cause?

<comment><USER27> > 09:14 MST Major service outage.

It's been 4 minutes, so I highly doubt anybody at GitHub even knows yet. Maybe _one_ guy who's thinking a lot of "oh crap, oh crap, oh crap" right now.

<comment><USER28> Pretty sure devops at a service like Github have slack alerts and/or something like pagerduty. They'll be drowning in alerts.

<comment><USER27> Knows the cause, that is. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So there was an outage yesterday which required failover to another data center. Wonder if both are related. Either way I want to read their postmortem. GitHub's postmortem is usually very educational.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use JSPM on my projects and I have several dependencies on github repos that aren't in NPM. Anyone have any ideas on a fallback solution for when github goes out like this?

<comment><USER29> Have a local git server, with an automatic process for pulling in the repositories that are your dependencies. Then use the repos from that local git server instead of github directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hacker News Time! :)

<comment> joatmon-snoo I count 4 threads on /new referencing GitHub down :D

<comment><USER31> but we are keeping this one :) I like it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Problems at quite a few places actually - [http://downdetector.com/](http://downdetector.com/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Friday the 13th...

<comment><USER34> The day following a full moon...

<comment><USER35> The day github had a major outage...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> GitHub's Twitter status post at the start of the outage:

[https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/819940738452615168](https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/819940738452615168)

Currently 442 retweets, 266 likes.

⋯

OK, they say it's back up:

[https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/819947685503442945](https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/819947685503442945)

<comment><USER37> Still getting 503 First Byte Timeouts when trying to view content on raw.githubusercontent.com so definitely not all back yet

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> OAuth API is still down.

</comment><comment><USER39> Someone was faster: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13391883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13391883)

</comment><comment><USER6> Again.

Affects both the website and git.

<comment> joatmon-snoo Affects push to GitHub*

I really hope that your copy of git isn't broken because GitHub went down :p

<comment><USER6> Haha got me. :P

No I just tried both the website and a `git pull`.

<comment><USER40> It's back :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Seems back up now.

</comment><comment><USER42> "Github is down" is the new compiling.

[http://xkcd.com/303/](http://xkcd.com/303/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Site came back online, but ssh/git still down.

</comment><comment><USER44> looks like it is back up now

</comment><comment><USER40> It's back. [END OF THREAD ?]

<comment><USER38> Since I can't push to my repo, I'm gonna say no, it's not back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Github has been down (or very slow) a lot the last few months. They used to have a good engineering reputation (at least with me), but it's been tough times over there.</comment>


Show HN: Summerian – A book summary app built with "Eureka effect" - <AUTHOR> https://summerian.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN folks, I'm Alan, co-founder of Summerian, a book summary app.

I have used a lot of book summary services before and the biggest pain point for me is that the summaries are either too simple or are cut off so excessively that I couldn't understand the subject.

Therefore, my team and I tried to make summaries that have nothing but very high-quality content that can spark an "aha" moment in any reader. To achieve that, we spent a majority of our time working on the summary framework and intensive quality-check rounds. Summerian is born out of such passion. It's currently available on iOS, TvOS, and Web, and will be on Android very soon!

I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially about the content of the summaries. Are they comprehensive and enlightening enough?</comment>


Tesla Now Has a Serious Challenger - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/tesla-now-has-a-serious-challenger.html <comment><USER2> Having a business model and money does not make one a "serious challenger" \- by that logic, Ford and every other car manufacturer is a serious Tesla competitor.</comment>


Trademark lawyer to 3-man startup: hand over your domain–or else - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/trademark-lawyer-to-3-man-startup-hand-over-your-domain-or-else/

<comment><USER2> This is exactly how trademarks are supposed to work... he used and protected the name first by several years and there is some similarity. It's unfortunate you didn't know that 2 years ago.

<comment><USER3> Well. . . it isn't as clear as all that.

To protect a mark, you have to do more than file a registration and buy a domain. You have to actually use it "in commerce" which is a rather stringent legal standard that changes on a per industry basis.

It isn't clear that he is actually has been "using" the name in the manner required by trademark law, and you can't just have "token use" and keep a TM forever. It doesn't seem like any products are actually for sale under his mark, and it isn't being marketed, so it seems like he isn't using it "in commerce" in the way that TM law requires.

Second, if you search the TM database there are approximately 40 registered names with "Case" in it, in the area of legal software; ergo it is a very common term in the legal software field. The standard for TM infringement is "likelihood of confusion", in other words, is a typical consumer going to be confused about the origin of the software.

Even IF his marks were being used in a way which satisfied the "use in commerce" test, with all those Case* names out there there is no likelihood of confusion. In other words, if a consumer of legal software services is looking for his Case* mark, they are not going to be confused by the other 40 Case* marks, because consumers of legal services know that "Case" is a common term in the field and not all products named "Case*" are owned by the same person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> CaseRails should patent their processes if they can and when the other person tries to enter that area, sue right back.</comment>


How I make the best of my leisure office time - <AUTHOR> http://www.letpenspeak.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a way of making business out of this?</comment>


Humble Book Bundle: Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/books/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-books <comment><USER2> > Bitcoin payments have been disabled for the Humble Book Bundle: Bitcoin, > Blockchain & Cryptocurrency.

Weak.

It doesn't look like almost any of these can be bought with bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER2> Looks like they just updated it to allow for BTC purchasing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On the cybersecurity bundle, my new hero dsacco posted[1]:

 _So, I 've read most of these. Here's a tour of what is definitely useful and what you should probably avoid._

Anyone read enough of these to do the same for this bundle? If so, thanks in advance for saving me a truckload of time!

edit:[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791601)

<comment><USER4> His comment was excellent, but I kind of disagree with his comment on The Art of Memory Forensics.

Its basically a book about learning to use volatility to perform memory forensics. If you want to do that, its one of the best ways to learn. However, if you want a more general, non-tool based approach to the concepts (rather than performing memory forensics), perhaps his other suggestions are better sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are any of these any good? I don't know anything beyond the basics, but I'd like to learn.

</comment><comment><USER5> Remember that you can select entities like the EFF for charity donations!</comment>


Hacking the Industrial Economy - <AUTHOR> http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/2008/05/last_week_i_asked_how.html

<comment><USER2> You'll find the word "hack" serves no real purpose when you're put into administration. Detroit's problems are related mainly to old union agreements and oil prices, as well as scewed demand curves related to mpg requirements that didn't apply to light trucks and artificially low interest rates. Using the word "hack" 200 times in an article just obscures a subject.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be curious if you posted this comment over at HBS (although Umair has been known to lurk here)...

What you're missing is that "administration" as you're grokking it is optimized for industrial economics, not the low cost, low risk, high speed world of networks (globalization, mobile phones, etc).

Also suggest that you go back and read the previous article on "Hacking Detroit" with a keen eye on the "auto making platform" strategy.

To borrow a meme from today's Venture Hacks:

"Bug Labs for cars"

BOING!

<comment><USER2> Administration, ie. administration by a bankruptcy court, which is the pressing issue facing Detroit carmakers, rather than mobile phones or whatever.

There isn't anything new in the auto industry. Hybrids are typically laughable. Diesel electric power systems (that is, "hybrids") are basically what replaced the steam age. Everything else is marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you see how the argument you're making proves his point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good article, but seems to lack any concrete substance. It seems to imply that "Hacking" stands for everything that's good and modern.

Now, I'm all for good and modern, but it doesn't have to be labeled "hacking" to be so.

<comment><AUTHOR> He's using "hack" as a management/strategy heuristic.

You may find that his articles "lack substance" because Umair generally works within a kind of Socratic method that demands more of the reader than spoonfed pedantry like TechCrunch, et al.

PG has said a lot of this implicitly or explicitly in his essays.

<comment><USER3> Don't patronise me. I put plenty of my own in while reading this article. I'm familiar with many usages of the word "hack".

The first thing I did as I started reading this article was share it on Google Reader. I was obviously putting plenty in.

Then, after I got to the end, I removed the article from my Google Reader, for the simple reason that this article doesn't just require you to put something in - it requires you to put the entire substance in.

There is no discernible pattern in what it describes as "hack". "Hack", going by this article, is anything that the author (and the reader) consider good and that was done in the last 10 years. So effectively, it means "good change". It provides no pattern which could be used to help generate more of those hacks, however.

The best way to expose this is to summarise the article.

The summary is: "Cool stuff, wow, please do more."

Now, I have nothing against an article which conveys that message - but it needs to do so honestly. This article pretends to be presenting a good idea, when in fact it is completely idea-free.

This is my opinion and you may of course disagree, but please formulate that disagreement with fewer TechCrunch innuendos and other patronising devices.

Also, if you disagree, it'd be good to hear what ideas you think Umair actually puts forward in this essay.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a world of inspiring thoughts in the article. I'm not an engineer at all, but I love the mindset and have learned an incredible amount from YCombinator, Ray Kurzweil, et al.

I'd point to the link on P&G's Connect & Develop strategy as something that has a TON of concrete value for startups/hackers/etc.

Finally, I probably get more excited about this kind of thing than hackers who already practice the naive idealism, pragmatism, and humble irreverence that Umair describes for the reason that I outlined in my comment on the original article: the more people that look at problems through a hacking-esque mindset, the better off the world will be.

(Also, I didn't really mean the tone of my comment to be directly at "you" per se, just in general...there's a lot of "this lacks substance" blowback about Bubblegeneration...I was just trying to be short (but not curt); sorry!

<comment><USER3> Ok, fair enough. Sorry for getting prickly, but somehow in a few very short lines you managed to make me feel like you were implying that I'm "one of the TechCrunch masses", I "need to be spoonfed", I "don't know what 'hack' stands for", and, incidentally, that I missed the point of the article.

(Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesperson for hackers at large, nor do I intend to suggest I am, and so I'm speaking for myself)

I don't think the hacker idealism is naive, or humble for that matter. You could call it naive, but only in the sense that it's willing to question everything. As for humble, there's nothing humble about believing that everyone else might have had it wrong for the last 50 years and that you might know a better way :-)

Being a proponent of that approach, I certainly agree that the world could use even more idealism, pragmatism and not-so-humble irreverence, though :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL! I suppose I was naively idealistic about describing naive idealism!

Your last sentence really sums it up for me. THE POWER of what Umair is saying is: "I have done the research, and it is razor-sharp, economically-grounded strategy to be idealistic/irreverent/naive/etc."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great insightful article. Top notch. Thanks for posting quality stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love the example given in the article of real-world hacks, especialy kiva.com Really great idea.

</comment><comment><USER6> Call me skeptical if you will, but the article's flavor contains a hint too much breathless exuberance for my taste.</comment>


Who Competes with VMware Now? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwebster/2016/09/08/who-competes-with-vmware-now/?partner=yahootix&yptr=yahoo#c22c9946b81d <comment><USER2> Oracle's VirtualBox [https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads)

QEMU [http://wiki.qemu.org/Download](http://wiki.qemu.org/Download)

I like QEMU because it supports different processor types. Can run Solaris for SPARC, can run Windows NT 4.0 for MIPS, under MacOSX can run an older MacOSX version.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for publishing an Ebook - <AUTHOR>

Short Version: I've nearly finished my first book and would love to hear first time tips for publishing/layout/marketing :)
Long Version: I'm about 2/3rds of the way through completing my first book (synopsis below) and am now reading through as much material as I can regarding publishing it. The plan is to go with an Ebook for now and publish a hard copy later if there is demand.
I know a few people here have published their own books so is there any advice you can give to help out?
Specific things I am still undecided on:
- Where to publish (i.e. self publish or try for an online publishing house)
- Tips on format and layout? I have a very basic layout in PDF at the moment but the design isn't stellar - any cheap services to improve that?
- Advertising, any tips? I have a target market in mind (computer forensics) but also it should be a good general reading book for anyone.
- Pricing. It's going to top out at about 150 pages - so my thinking currently is about $9.99
- Are lite versions a good idea? I've considered paring down a lot of the technical info and producing around 70 pages for "joe public" type readers. But I'm unconvinced there is a market there.
And for context here is the book details:
Tentative Title: What does your computer know about you?
Synopsis: Your computer knows a surprising amount of detail about you. Find out all the different ways a computer stores information about your activities, ways to find it and ways to stop it. (aka the book I wish existed when I came into computer forensics)
The written-in-10-minutes-for-this-post introduction gives a little more detail: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6026865/Book-Introduction.txt
I have read a load of information so far but first hand accounts are always useful :) <comment><USER2> Short version: never published but built two PhD PDFs directly and helped friends do so. Use LaTeX.

Long answer: I've researched this for my own publishing dreams a while back. When you have a PDF you're happy with (again, LaTeX is your friend), you can use any one of several digital sales routes. If you're planning (hoping) to publish in print, use a service that also generates the ISBN for you. From memory, Amazon does this automatically and LuLu provides it as an extra for- pay function.

Also consider self-hosting the download. Briefly: set up a secure area on a website that people are granted access to after they pay. The download is protected that way, plus you can use this to provide errata and build a private community around the book (e.g. using a forum).

One thing that will annoy you and may become a serious cost: people pay, download the PDF, and then reverse the charge under your money back policy (and yes you're likely to need one). From reports I read, this is a bigger problem for expensive ebooks (like $100) not your price point. Still...

Build a blog dedicated to the book. Post interesting relevant articles so you get links and establish yourself as an authority. It's also one heck of a lead gen channel.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I've been looking into LaTeX - so far everything is in .txt format (in a mercurial repository :)) so conversion should be fairly easy though I've avoided it so far.

Im _very_ tempted to self host. The technical side of things is easy enough for me to put together and, on reflection, I much prefer to control that side of things. The only downside I can think of is that you don't have an "instant market" compared to publishing on Lulu, Amazon etc.

> people pay, download the PDF, and then reverse the charge under your money > back policy

I've decided not to let it worry me much because the book is hardly going to be a massive revenue stream (it's as much about getting my name out there as a serious author! :D)

(thanks for the tips)

<comment><USER2> +1 for text files. The number of people I know that have had horrible experiences with using just text in Word is frightening.

For LaTeX, I preached about it in a recent thread that has tons of suggestions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173438> .

With Amazon publishing, you also get automatic listing in their catalogue IIRC. Perhaps you can use them _and_ self-host?

Have you thought about DRM? I'm not saying do it (on the contrary), but prodding you to see if you've made a concious decision.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Have you thought about DRM?

Yeh off hand; and I decided against it. Partly for "moral" reasons but also because there doesn't seem much point/use to me.

Thanks for the link; trawling through all that info now :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to echo the "use LaTeX" advice, but add to it the following: use memoir (<http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/memoir/>). Not only is the manual for that package a great (but basic) tutorial on layout and page design for the total beginner, there are lots of example layouts included that you can more or less copy and paste into your .tex source and it will look good with minimal effort.

As for hosting, I'd consider self-hosting in combination with one of the PDF -> POD sites. I don't have any specific experience with any of them, so I can't really recommend a particular one, but if I were publishing a book, I'd like the idea that people could get a physical copy of my book that actually looks and feels like a book.</comment>


Want To Work In Video Games? Get An MBA - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/want_to_work_in_video_games_get_an_mba <comment><USER2> What they mean is: "Want to make more money at a video games company? Be a business or marketing person, not a developer."</comment>


Citi's Chief Economist Recommends a Universal Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://futurism.com/links/citis-chief-economist-recommends-a-universal-basic-income/ <comment><USER2> When people on the far left and the far right agree, they're usually onto something. My favorite examples are the NSA spying stuff, and this.

Lefties hate the NSA spying and love a universal basic income because the spying tilts the power away from the people, and the income tilts toward the people.

Righties (well, go far right enough) hate the NSA spying and love a universal income because of government overreach in the first case, and the ability to drastically simplify government welfare--cutting out a ton of means-tested programs and their agencies, and replacing it all with a check each month.

Gotta love it!

<comment><USER3> >and the ability to drastically simplify government welfare--cutting out a ton of means-tested programs and their agencies, and replacing it all with a check each month.

As someone that leans left, this is one of the big arguments I make in favor of UBI.

Frankly, I'm tired of arguing over the minutia of welfare, unemployment benefits, the minimum wage, social security, etc.

Fine. Scrap most of our social assistance programs outside of healthcare and replace them with a UBI.

The progressive in me likes it because it gives everyone a minimum safety net and the capitalist in me likes it because it opens up entrepreneurism and the ability to pursue potentially innovative businesses -- especially in an economy increasingly geared toward service and information work -- to huge portions of the population that are otherwise locked out. Active, small businesses are good for everyone.

<comment><USER4> The problem is, when you scrap all of those programs you immediately create more unemployment. There are a lot of jobs supporting social services, the hard part is going to be finding a way to phase in UBI without wrecking the economy.

<comment><USER5> Just for once, I want to hear a truly honest conservative politician: "We need to drastically shrink the government, which is why when I'm elected, one- eighth* of my constituency will be immediately unemployed!"

(Not that there isn't a good case for eliminating federal waste; but the reality I never hear uttered in the conservative bubble is that the largest government expense is federal employees and subcontractors.)

<comment><USER6> By that measure, the "truly honest" progressive politician would say: "we need to drastically raise social program spending and taxes, which will dramatically increase unemployment!"

(Not that there isn't a good case for improving federal social programs; but the reality I never hear uttered in the progressive bubble is that the largest government expenses are social programs like social security, medicare, and medicaid.)

<comment><USER7> I don't understand your rebuttal, how does increased spending on social programs lead to higher unemployment? Are you suggesting that increased social spending leads to people tactically becoming unemployed in order to gain benefits while not working?

<comment><USER6> Romer and Romer showed that higher taxes lead to lower growth and vice-versa; the additional taxes required to finance the social program spending will sooner or later lead to reduced opportunities for employment.[1] Others have shown that a larger "social safety net" leads to higher unemployment for a variety of reasons.[2][3] It is also logical that people's aversion to unemployment is proportional to its cost (to them), and that if it is less costly, they will expend less time and effort in the stressful, taxing, and unpleasant task of looking for work.

[1] [http://eml.berkeley.edu/~dromer/papers/RomerandRomerAERJune2...](http://eml.berkeley.edu/~dromer/papers/RomerandRomerAERJune2010.pdf)

[2] [http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr646.pdf](http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr646.pdf)

[3] [http://time.com/9009/unemployment-is-worse-than- death/](http://time.com/9009/unemployment-is-worse-than-death/) (the point is made more thoroughly in the author's book)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A challenge to anyone who thinks we should have a UBI: do the math. Show how it can work given the current population and output of the United States.

It's not easy.

<comment><USER9> I've done the math and you can get it to work. You need to make implementation choices that will make some people very unhappy though.

First, you start with non-institutionalized adult citizens that brings you down to a payee base of ~210M (this part will be unpopular as parents will want to get more than other adults). Next you set the basic income at the poverty level for a single person, $11,700. That gives you a total nominal cost of $2.47T. You do not exempt the basic income from the normal taxation rules. That means you get some of it back in taxes. If you figure 20% that gives you a net cost of $1.97T. You then take a buzz saw to all social spending aimed at US citizens, including all parts of social security (this would be very unpopular among the elderly, near elderly and disabled). With all parts of social security adding to more than $800B/year It's fairly easy to find a $1T in savings there. That brings the total to under a trillion dollars. You take a buzz saw to tax expenditures, e.g. exclusion of fringe benefits, preferential rates for capital gains and dividends, mortgage interest deduction, state and local tax deduction, etc. (this is also going to be very unpopular). If you add it up, that's good for another $550B.

That leaves you with another $420B in new non-offset spending. I'm certainly not going to to claim that's a small number, but it seems achievable. It's about 2.3% of GDP. Maybe you can get states to kick in (or force them to through reduced grants in aid) given that some of their social programs can also be largely reduced or eliminated.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I might quibble with some of your numbers a bit (for example I don't think you'll get 20% back in taxes) but I'll agree that you're in the ballpark. I think this is a good demonstration of how massive the changes we're talking about are. Particularly:

* The hit it will mean to many seniors standard of living due to social security cuts.

* The massive tax increases this will be on the middle class (primarily due to changes in tax deductions)

* The massive tax increase this will be on the upper middle class to rich (primarily due to changes on taxation of capital gains and dividends. Changes, by the way, that most economists oppose.)

* The additional massive tax increase that will come from somewhere to close the 2-3% GDP gap you mention.

I can see how some people might be in favor of this plan. I myself am not.

<comment><USER9> I agree the what comes back in taxes is a bit of hand-wave, it's hard to find stats on the average marginal tax rate.

I think the non-elderly middle class net effect will be close to if not a wash. They'll lose various tax deductions, but they'll get $11,700 x num_adults_in_household x (1 - marginal_tax_rate). And tax deductions only kick in when they are larger than the standard deduction to begin with. You need to be closer to the "upper middle" side of things to get there or have an unusually large deductions.

I don't think you need to get the gap amount wholly out of new taxes, as I said I think you can get some of it out of reduced aid to states, and/or as suggested by the poster below, military spending cuts.

As to your overall point, I concede that it is a tough sell.

<comment><USER8> Ya, you and I are definitely within the margin of error in our analysis of the situation. Thanks, by the way, for the very substantive comment. This is exactly what I was hoping for. I think a lot of people just say "UBI!" with close to no understanding of what they are proposing. I think it's very educational for them to take a look at the real tradeoffs involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It feels like everything is getting priced exactly at the point where it feels like I'm barely scraping by.

I make a low six figure income and live in a one bedroom apartment. I don't drive a luxury car, or take vacations, or have many indulgences except eating out one or two nights a week. I also don't have much money left over to save or invest. I don't see home ownership in my future, or much improvement in my standard of living. I'm getting older, but the idea of paying for a wedding, or the cost of raising a child, or the cost of sending them to college scares the hell out of me.

This is probably due, mostly, to living in an area with a high cost of living. There are perks to living in a nice city -- my girlfriend shudders at the thought of moving to the suburbs -- but the city bleeds us dry. It's exciting to live in a technology hub, but the higher salary seems to be mostly an illusion.

My point being, I wonder how quickly everything will adjust to swallow up that basic income? Then again, I guess it's not really aimed at present-day me, but rather at someone with a lower income for whom its utility will be much greater.

</comment><comment><USER11> > It's becoming clear that increased automation as well as the rise of > artificial intelligence is threatening ever more jobs.

This sentence is absolute FUD. Every technical revolution over the past 300 years has been made with automation and productivity, and yet people are still employed in new jobs in sectors that did not exist before. Employing people to do menial obsolete jobs serves no purpose other than to delay the next evolution of ideas and products.

With this thinking we would still be handwriting books and riding horses. In the future when driverless cars are prominent, people will ask in astonishment "So you used to DRIVE your own car to work?"

<comment><USER12> I think the economist is concerned about both pace and kind of disruption taking place. I tend to agree with you all jobs lost due automation have been replaced with other types of jobs. Usually bullshit service sector jobs to cite a common example. Mind you we already have some forms of universal basic income. Social security... child credit... all conditional but nevertheless are tax transfer

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When you know something isn't going to happen it's ok to suggest it. This is particularly useful if later it can be used as example of how your company is not actually an abusive parasitic organization but really cares about meeting people's basic needs.

</comment><comment><USER14> Contrasted with China's shifting to population growth from economic growth, this is definitely going to resonate with Western leaders.

Honestly though, if we are go with UBI, can we ask ourselves what is really _necessary_ in life?

Currently large sections of the population engage in secondary and post- secondary education for the purpose of gainful employment -- to have a job brings social and financial stability.

That will no longer be necessary, so what does that means? Will tuition rates go down? Will universities no longer be in such demand globally?

How will this affect population growth and movement? Large sections of the population across the world utilize visas whose conditions are tied to education or employment, and now they will not have such opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER15> The Basic Income doesn't address the systemic issues which we usually lump under the category of "inflation," although by that what we're really talking about is power and privilege.

[http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/miller20120327](http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/miller20120327)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd like to see a an article about the potential downsides of Basic Income, written by advocates of Basic Income. Is it all "there are no downsides", "there are only minor downsides for the ultra-rich", "there are no possible implementation issues", etc.. Or has someone written a thoughtful article on what might go wrong?

<comment><USER17> Inflation? what is the incentive for someone to work? How basic is basic and who determines what basic is? If any one observed Venezuela or for that matter Saudi Arabia with their social welfare paid off by Oil wealth, you would be skeptical of these social programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Off topic but I like how that website shows a new article, as you scroll down the page. Even the URL changes to the appropriate link, so it's easy to share. Pretty cool.

Does anyone know what the term for that technology is? I'm referring to a term that's similar to how "responsive HTML" is a term for a website that changes based on view port.

<comment><USER19> "infinite scroll"

<comment><USER18> I figured infinite scroll was more a term for twitter and Facebook news feeds, where the content is the same but you're seeing more of it. In those examples, the URL stays the same.

I guess it would be " _infinite scroll of articles where the URL reflects the content_ " but that still seems like a mouth full. There should be a better term for that.

<comment><USER20> Infinite scroll with stateful routing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is one of my favorite ideas. It sounds great in theory, and I'd love for it to be tried somewhere.

Just as a note, I'm pretty libertarian leaning, but that idea is, I think, the best compromise between pure libertarianism and the bureaucracy mess we currently have in the world.

<comment><USER17> Its been tried in Oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia, but given the massive growth in population and mostly relying on immigrant workers for long time, they are now trying to balance things and once you take away some welfare from people they do get angry and so, the royalty of Saudi Arabia are facing many challenges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well this will not work until 90% of the jobs are automated and we actually don't need this many people to work anymore to produce all the wealth and food needed or in demand.

And this will take a long while.

<comment><USER23> I think it's already the case, the 90% you're talking about is debatable, we already live in an age where producing food and shelter requires so few people that you can consider those jobs are already automated in some way.

The result is that only the educated and the owners can work and be included in the economy, and unless higher education can include everyone, well you will always have uneducated people who will have no other opportunity jobs than fast food and cleaning houses, which is a problem, in my opinion, for a nation.

The UBI is just a minimum people will get no matter what, so if they get a job it's an added income. Depending on its amount, it's a compromise between inflation and stimulating the economy without having parts of the US not develop. Consumer spending always has been the basis of a healthy capitalism, and the UBI follows that logic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious what HN readers think the yearly UBI would be (in US dollars) if it were actually implemented?

<comment><USER25> I'd guess about $10400, paid at $200 per week to the head of a household, plus an additional $75 per full dependent.

That works out as follows:

      Household Size | Annual UBI | 2014 Poverty
      </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---+</comment><comment></comment><comment>+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-
                   1 |    $10,400 |     $11,670
                   2 |    $14,300 |     $15,730
                   3 |    $18,200 |     $19,790
                   4 |    $22,100 |     $23,850
                   5 |    $26,000 |     $27,910
                   6 |    $29,900 |     $31,970
                   7 |    $33,800 |     $36,030
                   8 |    $37,700 |     $40,090

That's a compromise. The UBI is less than poverty level, so that the conservatives can say that no one is getting a free ride, and people will still need to work to get by. But it's still around 90% of poverty line, so that the liberals can say that the government is still providing a great safety net.

There are 123M households in the US, for a population of 319M, so the total cost would be $200 * 123M + $75 * ( 319M - 123M ) per week, which is $39.3G, or $2.1 trillion per year.

The U.S. had official income of $3 trillion in 2014, so UBI would cost about 68% of the federal budget.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been in favor of this for a long time, but I do have a more nuanced opinion in that I'm not sure if it's "time" yet.

IMHO we're getting there, and when the (very likely) big wave of automation hits it will be time. The true automation wave has not happened yet, and when it hits it will make the outsourcing wave look like a minor disruption to the employment market. I fully expect that by the year 2100 most non-skilled labor will be obsolete.

\--

Edit:

There's one more "elephant in the living room" that I'd like to bring up in this thread before I'm outta here. I'll leave it here at the root since it's part of the core point I was making. Few bring up this fact since it leads to areas that many consider non-PC or impolite to discuss.

The average IQ is 100, and intelligence and other abilities are normally distributed within the population.

This is pretty much fixed on short-term human timescales unless we can widely deploy genetic engineering and brain-augmentation. Not only are these things massively hard -- probably harder than any of the crazy automation anyone is predicting -- but they're also going to face intense opposition on both religious and secular-ideological grounds. If you think the furor over GMO foods is excessive and irrational, imagine the furor over GMO humans.

It's also likely that those with the strongest opposition to genetic enhancement (on largely superstitious grounds) would be precisely those for whom it would be most beneficial. Conversely, those most enthusiastic to adopt it would be those who don't need it. As a result it would probably accelerate the trend I'm discussing here.

This means that if automation and other factors are constantly conspiring to increase the median _skill level requirements_ of labor, eventually significant portions of humanity are simply going to fall off a cliff where the economic value of their labor becomes zero. From a purely economic point of view these are now worthless human beings. It doesn't matter if labor supply exceeds demand if the labor available to fill that demand can't do the work.

As automation gets better, this cliff will move up the bell curve. As it does, then due to the shape of a bell curve _the number of people thus affected will increase exponentially_. This is a recipe for blood in the streets -- and for totalitarianism as a response.

So we have a choice.

Option #1: consign those who fall off the edge to poverty and wall them off in ghettoes, and implement a totalitarian political regime with total surveillance of the entire population to deal with the perpetual undercurrent of crime and terrorism that this will create. The result basically looks like a B-grade cyberpunk film.

Option #2: admit to ourselves that we are entering a post-capitalist early- post-scarcity phase of development and implement some level of basic income.

I'd go with option #2. Not only is it better for humanity at large, it's also better for me as I don't fancy living world #1 even if I did get to live in one of the posh totalitarian enclaves.

<comment><USER8> If you look at what most people were doing in 1930 most of those jobs are obsolete. And yet most people are still working. I'd be pretty surprised if 2015-2100 turns out to be much different from 1930 - 2015.

<comment><USER27> That assumes that the automation trends of the next 100 years are going to look anything at all like the automation trends of the last 100 years. I don't think that's likely due to pretty obvious technological multipliers. Progress isn't linear.

Additionally, I think if you spend much time around the working classes, even today, you'll find that they're living in a world that's leaving them behind in a way that simply wasn't true even 30 years ago.

<comment><USER27> Also, "most people are still working" is increasingly less true:

* [http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddganos/2012/11/03/what-is-rea...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddganos/2012/11/03/what-is-really-happening-with-employment/)

<comment><USER8> A significantly greater percentage of the working age population is working at a job today than 85 years ago.

<comment><USER27> Yes, that's true, but that's almost certainly because more women work now than ever did before. That's a one-time (enormous) increase, but there's no reason to believe it's an indication of a longer-term trend. In fact, the data show otherwise.

You can play around with the data here:

* [http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000)

<comment><USER8> I am unmoved by the relatively tiny short term movements you are referring to. Basically all you have shown is that we had a relatively large recession in 2007-08.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> counting his sheep in his sleep, no doubt. Can't wait until humanity graduates from the clutches of these usurers.</comment>


WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wework-ipo/wework-parent-pulls-ipo-following-pushback-sources-idUSKBN1W12T6 <comment><USER2> DUPE: Active discussion => [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990156)

</comment><comment><USER3> Without the IPO they need to find a seriously insane investor to unlock more funding. Its a $10 billion train wreck.</comment>


Who Owns the Northwest Passage? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2019/05/22/who-owns-the-northwest-passage <comment><USER2> > America has long maintained that the Northwest Passage, which has up to > seven different routes, is an international strait through which its > commercial and military vessels have the right to pass without seeking > Canada's permission. It bases its claim on the case of the Corfu Channel, > separating Albania's coast from the Greek island of Corfu, that was brought > before the International Court of Justice in 1947. The court ruled that > Albania could not claim the channel as territorial waters because it was an > international route for ships between two parts of the high seas over which > no country had a claim. Similar disputes exist about the Strait of Hormuz > between Iran and Oman; the Bab al-Mandab strait between Yemen and Djibouti; > and in parts of the South China Sea.

If that's what the US is basing it's legal claim on then it will fail on technicality. The illustrated route through the Northwest passage clearly shows it traversing waterways surrounded on each side by Canadian territory, not between two neighbouring countries as listed in the 'precedent' examples.

It would seem more a case of something like the Makassar strait in Indonesia, or the Cook Straight in New Zealand, where the passage is bounded on each side by territory belonging to one sovereign nation.

<comment><USER3> > _If that 's what the US is basing it's legal claim on then it will fail on > technicality. The illustrated route through the Northwest passage clearly > shows it traversing waterways surrounded on each side by Canadian territory, > not between two neighbouring countries as listed in the 'precedent' > examples._

It's not just other country's waters but also the 'High Seas':

> _The United States position is that the Northwest Passage qualifies as an > international strait, thus giving foreign ships the right of transit > passage[6]. In order for a strait to meet the qualification of being > international, there are geographical as well as functional criteria. The > geographical criterion is that of a waterway between adjacent land masses > that links two bodies of the High Seas or EEZs [7]. Its functional > definition, not laid down in UNCLOS III but based on customary international > law[8], defines the criterion to be a strait used for international > navigation [2]._

* [http://www.arctis-search.com/Northwest+Passage+and+Jurisdict...](http://www.arctis-search.com/Northwest+Passage+and+Jurisdictional+Controversy)

See UNCLOS, Articles 37 and 38(1) & (2):

* [https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...](https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part3.htm)

So while it is internal to CA land mass, the argument goes that innocent passage is allowed through because there are 'High Seas' on either side, and so allowed for functional usage. This is why Spain, Morocco, and the UK can't simply close off the Strait of Gibraltar: there are international waters on either side, and so freedom of navigation is mandated. This is also why Greece can't just close off the Aegean Sea, even though they own the archipelago: freedom between the Black Sea and the Med.

I believe that that the Beaufort Sea (US EEZ?) and Baffin Bay (DK EEZ?) will be used for the purposes of the argument.

The US wants to open up the NWP, because in theory that would also open some waters around Russia as well.

I have no idea how valid this argument is, but that are the technicalities of it. IIRC, the EU holds the same position.

(Disclaimer: I'm Canadian.)

<comment><USER4> There are ultimately "high seas" on both sides of any passage of water connected to the ocean. This argument would seem to imply a territorial straight can't exist.

<comment><USER3> While the Bungo Channel et al connects the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean, you have to cross JP's EEZ and so it is counted as internal:

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

The Cebu Strait is between various islands, all owned by PH and with no competing claims:

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

The Alor Strait connects waters controlled by ID

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like Canada does.</comment>


Elon Musk and Warren Buffett Are Suddenly Trolling Each Other Over See's Candies - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/05/05/warren-buffett-elon-musk-trolling-sees-candies-moats/ <comment><USER2> I'm personally really disappointed neither of these individuals has a moat full of candy, or any edible castles. Either could plow $1M into a chocolate palace and make it back in interest within the month (or less). Where is the imagination?

</comment><comment><USER3> I was born in in Silicon Valley and there was a See's down the street from where I lived. Interesting how something from my childhood is now becoming this big.</comment>


Plotly.js Open-Source Announcement - <AUTHOR> https://plot.ly/javascript/open-source-announcement/ <comment><USER2> This is great news for Jupyter (IPython) Notebooks: [https://plot.ly/python/offline/](https://plot.ly/python/offline/)

It basically provides interactive inline visualizations, making it great for data exploration (without having to send any data to plot.ly)

I'm wondering if the success of Continuum (Anaconda) could've influence Plot.ly?

<comment><USER3> One thing I've been waiting for (and if I had the time, I'd love to work on something like this) is scientific javascript. I love es6 and classless oop[0] that javascript provides (and general dynamic-ness) but the lack of operator overloading makes mathy infix operators work with an array-like type not possible in native js. Something that had the "functional", dynamic semantics of javascript with the natural notation that numpy has (with its broadcasting rules) would be fantastic.

Stuff like plotly is great, but as far as I can tell, I'm not going to be able to use it any time soon because I'm not going to write a >10 term expression in javascript when every '+' becomes a 'add(a,b)' or 'a.add(b)'.

[0] [https://youtu.be/bo36MrBfTk4?t=33m45s](https://youtu.be/bo36MrBfTk4?t=33m45s)

<comment><USER4> To do that you first need to have a way of extending JavaScript with C and/or Fortran. No way numpy can be implemented in pure js or python without being excruciatingly slow.

<comment><USER5> You can do it with the nodejs FFI. It makes me cringe a bit to say that, but you _could_ do it in roughly the same way as how NumPy does it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Github pages reads: "Built on top of d3.js and stack.gl, plotly.js is a high-level, declarative charting library. plotly.js ships with 20 chart types, including 3D charts, statistical graphs, and SVG maps." \-- [https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js](https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js)

It feels a bit heavy in comparision to Highcharts or the open source Flotcharts. Though some chart types are pretty impressive, same can be said for d3.js in general.

But thanks for releasing plotly.js as open source.

<comment><USER7> If you're looking for something less "heavy", I heartily recommend [http://metricsgraphicsjs.org/](http://metricsgraphicsjs.org/), another charting library based on D3 and developed at Mozilla, which is very easy to use and renders elegant charts by default.

<comment><USER8> Does it support dual axis line charts? Didn't see it in examples. It's a must- have for any charts that display multiple metrics over time.

<comment><USER9> While dual-axis plots can be useful to have, there are some strong arguments from the data visualization community about how they are sub-optimal. [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAAahUKEwi20Ym9p5jJAhWLbT4KHWUzBBo&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.perceptualedge.com%2Farticles%2Fvisual_business_intelligence%2Fdual- scaled_axes.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEo-chqvKnQm6dWHefPBL- nU3BT2g&sig2=-W0tli53hxhaMO9zHXLFvg&cad=rja)

<comment><USER8> Being able to display 99p latency and transaction volume on one chart is invaluable. Generally, if the metrics are correlated, dual-axis charts is the right solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How well does plot.ly do with plain old equation plotting? In particular, I'm looking for something that can produce mobile friendly plots that scales diagrams automatically to show relevant features (x, y intercepts, inflection points, etc) for simple function families - y= mx + b, ax^2 + bx + c, etc.

Any suggestions on available libraries, or am I better to start from scratch on this?

<comment><USER11> You could compute a few [x,y] values for an equation y=f(x) and plot them using any line chart plotting library

<comment><USER10> Well, yes, that was the question! Got any favorite line chart plotters?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome, however I don't understand their motivation to opensource or their business model following this. Any speculation or comments are welcomed.

<comment><USER13> Speculation: They get their revenue from on-premise installations and support plans. Big businesses don't buy software from lack of open-source options, they buy it because they don't want to deal with it themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wait how does jQuery decrease cross-browser compatibility?? "jQuery has been removed from plotly.js for significantly better performance and improved browser compatibility."

<comment><USER15> Native JavaScript can be up to 10–100X than the equivalent operations done through a compatibility layer like jQuery.

<comment><USER14> I didn't ask about the performance claims.

<comment><USER16> Maybe the performance was bad on specific browsers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've looked into plot.ly and found the feature set pretty impressive, although I was not happy with the way they handled data. Now that it's open sourced, I'll definitely try to make use of it in practical data visualization applications.

That being said, I'm not 100% sold on interactive charts. Way too many libraries (Highcharts especially) break or function poorly on mobile devices, which is a serious problem in 2015. I'll have to give plot.ly another QA audit.

<comment><USER18> It really is too bad that it's such a problem. Have you considered rasterizing the graphs and only displaying that version on mobile?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the most interesting part of the announcement may actualy be the JSON schema for interactive charts. If broadly adopted this could be a really useful interchange format for charting between environments and languages.

<comment><USER20> AFAIK Vega already uses the same technique for interactive charts. [http://vega.github.io/vega/](http://vega.github.io/vega/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Github link: [https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js](https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js)

</comment><comment><USER22> I've used plotly.js the last months (about 3 or 4), the needs of my application are basic: pie chart, bar chart and line chart. I first tried Chart.js, very easy to work with, but some situations make me change to plotly: -The user needed numbers to be outside the pie chart when the space is limited. -The user print the chart so svg is better than canvas for this purpose Plotly has plenty of configuration options and is well documented on [https://plot.ly/javascript/reference/](https://plot.ly/javascript/reference/) but for me, the most useful part is the playground (You need a plotly account). You can make your layout for a chart, view the JSON layout object and apply it on your project. The experience has been positive to me.

<comment><USER23> joelburgarini I'm one of the maintainers of Chart.js. Version 2 (currently in a beta release, [https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js/tree/v2.0-dev](https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js/tree/v2.0-dev)) supports multiple x or y axes.

<comment><USER22> You are right, i've edited the comment to clarify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thank you! Was using FusionCharts in production, but I've been looking for something with the features I need already built, that's open source. This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very cool! Love the inclusion of SVG and not just canvas, I'm personally very invested in that format so it's nice to see the tech being pushed forward.

<comment><USER6> ...most chart libs use SVG. Beside Highcharts (not open source) I have yet to see a SVG based charting lib that is fast and lightweight. d3.js and chart libs based on d3.js (like plot.ly) are very heavy weigth in comparision (= more than 100KB minified JS code; plot.ly is 1.05MB huge: [https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js/blob/master/dist/plotly....](https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js/blob/master/dist/plotly.min.js) )

SVG wasn't supported until Android 4 and only Internet Explorer/Edge is really optimized for SVG (thanks to their VML investment). On the other hand Chrome, Safari and Firefox render Canvas much faster. (only relevant if you want to render thousends of objects on a battery powered device)

<comment><USER24> Also, canvas support can be turned off. We have clients who have the latest version of Chrome, however they run on VMs and the system admins have canvas turned off (no gpu rendering at all). Out of our control...

<comment><USER4> Can't canvas be rendered in CPU?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thanks! It's surprising how we still don't have a good open source charting library. I've checked most of them out and Highcharts/FusionCharts blow them out of the water.

<comment><USER23> What features are missing for you?

Full Disclosure: I'm a maintainer of Chart.js

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does this mean if I build an R-Shiny application, to be hosted on-site with Shiny Server, I can now include plotly charts without paying for an account with them?

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be good if the library was marked as Libre so that LibreJS would easily recognize it: [https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/html_node/Free-L...](https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/html_node/Free- Licenses-Detection.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Awesomely feature packed! And thus a bit beefy at ~1MB minified, but I guess that is the tradeoff.

<comment><USER30> ~1MB, wow! I think I'll stick with metrics-graphics (~80kB). It's really a very nice and under-recognized chart library by Mozilla. Also based on d3.

<comment><USER7> A big yes! I discovered and adopted MetricsGraphics today, after having tried so many alternatives in the past days (Chart.js is missing some features, C3.js charts are ugly, Plottable.js is too low level, NVD3 is not stable, Epoch has not rollover, etc.).

MetricsGraphics is at the same time easy to use, quite powerful, and creates beautiful charts out the box.

It made my day.

But for "explorable" scientific charts (the kind of charts I was used to do using matplotlib), I think Plotly.js can be fantastic.

<comment><USER23> What features did you find missing from Chart.js? I'm one of the maintainers, so getting this kind of feedback is great!

<comment><USER7> Hi, and thanks for asking :-)

Charts.js is a great library. These are the problems I had that made me switch to MetricsGraphics:

\- No support for time series. I need to chart 100 data points, one per day. It's difficult to correctly label the ticks on the time axis without library support, and without overlapping labels. (It looks like support for this will be added in 2.0.)

\- When I rollover, instead of highlighting and showing the tooltip for the closest points, many points are highlighted. (There is an issue about this in the bug tracker.)

\- I'd like to remove the dots, when drawing a chart line.

<comment><USER23> \- Time scale support will be added in v2. What we've got so far uses Moment.js for parsing dates and times with dynamic scaling to different tick sizes (hour, day, week, etc). \- Tooltip modes in v2 can be configured between 'single' which highlights the single closest item and 'label' which highlights all items at the same x value. \- Removing dots is still something that cannot be easily done. I'll dig up the issue and target it for v2.0.

<comment><USER7> Regarding the first two issues that will be solved in v2, is too early to use v2, or is okay?

Regarding the last issue, I'd expect it to be the easiest to solve :-)

<comment><USER23> I know there are some users using it in production. The biggest challenge is that we're still in the process of writing documentation for the new features and the config object changes.

I can think of lots of workarounds to hide the points (such as setting the fill and stroke colours to 'transparent'). I think it should be fairly easy to add in something to simply prevent the drawing of the point objects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Any thoughts on how this compares to MPLD3? [http://mpld3.github.io/](http://mpld3.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder where this is going and if python+numpy+scipy+matplotlib will one day be replaced by tools written in javascript.

<comment><USER4> I think it is more likely that some Python library which outputs javascript code in addition to still images will starting to replace matplotlib. Or matplotlib evolves to have that capability itself.

<comment><USER33> Is that what mpld3 is for? ([http://mpld3.github.io/](http://mpld3.github.io/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> At 1mb+, maybe it should be modularised?

</comment><comment><USER35> I was beginning to learn d3 today, the plotly API seems far more elegant and easy to work with.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how hard it would be to add basemap support to [https://plot.ly/javascript/choropleth- maps/](https://plot.ly/javascript/choropleth-maps/), a-la Leaflet.js.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd love it plotly.js could work Medium for integration. Medium still doesn't have way to do rich, interactive charts. It makes me sad...

<comment><USER17> As an off-topic data visualization tip, I strongly recommend against using Medium for writing about data visualization. Medium's compression _murders_ the quality of high-res charts.

<comment><USER36> Medium's lack of embeddable visualizer is frustrating. But getting interactive charts to play nicely and responsively on desktop/tablet/mobile is immensely painful. I did it manually once but it merely adequate on phones.

I just want to have my cake and eat it. Is that really so much to ask?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've really enjoyed using plotly in the past for several projects. I can definitely recommend it if you haven't had the chance.</comment>