Ask HN: What's healthcare like in Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR>

Here's an odd question.  What's healthcare like in Silicon Valley?
I don't live there and from what I tend to find is doctors and healthcare personnel around my area's don't like inquisitive people like me.  Every time I ask them a question about my condition and so forth, they try to find whatever they can to escape hoping I'll just follow instructions blindly and get better.
Now in an area filled to the brim of inquisitive people, what's the healthcare there like?  Do the doctors enjoy spending the time necessary to answer the questions?  Are the hospitals filled with technologies that everyone is curious about using?  How is it like over there? <comment><USER2> I'm from the north bay area, its a bit more sparsely populated than the south bay but have been around the whole bay area a lot. Actually, also my dad is a doctor so have had probably have had more exposure to medical people than the average person. I've found most doctors I came into contact with willing to answer questions, etc but doctors still always seem a bit rushed and want to move on to the next patient. However, for the most part they didn't seem to get annoyed with asking complex questions or me showing assertiveness, they just had the general attitude of "not wanting to spend too much time on a patient". I haven't had any major health issues, however, so these weren't necessarily serious life or death issues either, which may have contributed to some of the brevity

</comment><comment><USER3> I've found doctors in the Sunnyvale/Mountain View to be very receptive to my geek questions. I can think of 3 positive examples and no negative examples. I once asked a doctor if he would get my Strep Throat test results in "real time?" He asked me what other time was there and we spent a lot of time talking about batch jobs, real time processing, etc.

I recommend PAMF.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know about the Valley, per se, but my cousin in the greater East Bay area absolutely hates Kaiser after several major SNAFU's in her personal life. Among the worst: A Kaiser physician misdiagnosed her friend's cancer for two years, and also refused to refer for a second opinion when symptoms persisted and worsened. That friend subsequently died.

I mention this because, as I understand it, Kaiser is a big force in California -- that would include in the Valley. And at times they seem to receive significant positive press for what is touted as their program of... "cooperative" patient management combined with "effective" cost controls.

Anecdotal, but from my cousin as well as other people in my own life, I've heard rather a different story.

P.S. I guess I can mention that my cousin is a rather successful and well- connected health care practitioner, herself. So she's approached and dealt with this from something other than a clueless perspective. (I don't know about her friend, though.)

<comment><USER2> Some people love Kaiser, others hate it, it seems you never find someone in the middle. I've never been a member of theirs myself so don't know first- hand.</comment></comment>


Quill – A cross browser rich text editor with an API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/quilljs/quill/ <comment><USER2> Hey HN - project creator here. Pleasantly surprise to see Quill picked up again on HN. We built Quill to because my previous company needed a modern editor with an API to manipulate the contents (our use case was collaborative coauthoring). Before I left we open sourced Quill and I have been working on it since. I recently posted about Quill's 1.0 roadmap: [http://quilljs.com/blog/the-road-to-1-0/](http://quilljs.com/blog/the-road- to-1-0/). AMA.

<comment><USER3> Could you compare and contrast Quill with some of the other editors that have popped up on HN recently? Are there philosophical differences, or major differences in approach between Quill, Trix, and ProseMirror?

<comment><USER2> I would say the old approach was to add contenteditable=true to a <div>, call execCommand for formatting, and try to fix the issues this would cause. Editors in the last couple of years simply avoid using contenteditable in as many cases as possible. So the major differences would probably be when and where each of these editors tolerate native contenteditable behavior and which implement it themselves. But it's near impossible to not use contenteditable at all and all editors that I know of (including Trix and ProseMirror) use it to some degree.

For example to handle paste, I've found the best way is to detect a paste, shift focus to another invisible contenteditable div, interpret the pasted content, and insert that into the actual editor through the editor's API. That way no weird/unexpected markup ends up in the editor (whether or not the editor also utilizes contenteditable).

Another trend is a focus on the document model, which is the editor's main data structure to keep track of content. Older editors just use the DOM (or HTML strings) and hand that to you as their API. These editors really don't know themselves precisely what content they contain and cannot offer an API for the simple task of inserting text in a specific nth position. Extensibility becomes quite limited and often leads to a lot of edge case code. I think ProseMirror is right to have the document model as a focal point as I've reached the same conclusion with Quill and have worked on to improve for some time now. The upcoming 1.0 version boasts a much more powerful document model that is being open source separately as Parchment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a previous discussion on Quill [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7716376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7716376) and a recent discussion on Trix, another rich text editor: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10410879)

The most comprehensive/updated list of editors I know of is here: [https://github.com/cheeaun/mooeditable/wiki/Javascript- WYSIW...](https://github.com/cheeaun/mooeditable/wiki/Javascript-WYSIWYG- editors)

(It doesn't do much to compare/evaluate the options, but it's pretty up-to- date/comprehensive, which is a start)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the list. [https://github.com/NextStepWebs/simplemde-markdown- editor](https://github.com/NextStepWebs/simplemde-markdown-editor) (not technically a RTE, then) really seems to stand out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use quill in my big internal CMS / forum mashup project that's not (quite) ready to share yet. It's pretty rad. There's a related library [0] that is the rich text specification for operational transforms. By wiring the OT stream into a websocket, I can get pretty decent multi-user simultaneous editing on the cheap. It's not perfect - I don't properly handle some cases with simultaneous edits to the same region, but it's good enough to prevent locking and clobbering in a multi-author environment. It also means I have per- keystroke autosave and the ability to reconstruct who typed what in a given document on my site, which is important to some of my users.

The module system is reasonable for adding in extensions as well. I personally don't miss access to tables, since really most of the time tables are misused anyway (for structured presentation of data, there's a ton of times I see tables where bulleted lists or other structures would be a lot more space- efficient anyway). It's on the list of nice-to-have features, but not a requirement.

0: [https://github.com/ottypes/rich-text](https://github.com/ottypes/rich- text)

</comment><comment><USER7> All of these new browser rich text editors look really nice, but without basic table support there is no way anyone can switch from TinyMCE (which is about as horrible as you can get).

Are tables really hard to support? Every time I see one of these projects I check excitedly if they do but am always disappointed.

<comment><USER2> Tables are hard to do well and there's ambiguity as to what constitutes basic. After being able to create an NxM table, should you be able to add/remove rows/columns? What about resizing the width or height of rows or columns. Does using <th> violate the promise of semantic output? Merging rows/columns? And of course now there's copy/paste support for tables to contend with. What if that table had merging and yours didn't? Tables also require more complex UI than just a button like most other formats.

But outside of word processing, tables are just not used very much. How many times have you added a table to an email? A task manager description? A blog post? None of the big sites using Quill are clamoring for tables.

For the other newly launched editors out there, I can only imagine they made a similar calculation to not included in the launch shortlist.

<comment><USER7> > But outside of word processing

I'm not sure what you mean by that, surely word processing is exactly what Quill is meant to be used for? Table use outside of word processing could just be achieved by something other than Quill entirely.

> tables are just not used very much. ... None of the big sites using Quill > are clamoring for tables.

That's fair enough, I doubt they would be used in the context of writing an email, blog post (but that is debatable, I often include tables of figures/results) or a task manager description. But there are many, many back office applications that take user input through a WYSIWYG editor and put it into some kind of report. I think tables are critical here (I was also surprised to see nested lists[2] are not supported in Quill, that's also pretty important). Maybe Quill isn't aiming for those kind of use cases though, but it's just such a shame that TinyMCE is the best solution.

It's possible to do right, we used to use Redactor[1] and that handles the basic use cases extremely well while producing super clean output.

1\. [https://imperavi.com/redactor/plugins/table/](https://imperavi.com/redactor/plugins/table/)

2\. [https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/118](https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/118)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if I'm using the terminology correctly but to me Microsoft Word and Google Docs are word processors. They offer a whole new level of formatting capabilities with thousands of options to support that goal, with a feature set so complete they are products all by themselves.

The use cases I mentioned utilizes composing text, but that's not the main product. If you want to build a CMS, add in app messaging, add formatting to textboxes, then Quill could be the answer. If you want to build the next Google Docs, out of the box Quill will probably not be enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a gzipped CDN version? The [URL]([http://cdn.quilljs.com/0.19.10/quill.min.js](http://cdn.quilljs.com/0.19.10/quill.min.js)) provided in the readme is not gzipped.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the catch! Looks like my new CDN provider does not provide gzip automatically like my old one. Fixing this now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A clean, modern RTE has been needed for a long time - would this be the one? Unless of course RTEs are really not needed anymore, which may well be the case.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps this one: [http://prosemirror.net/](http://prosemirror.net/)

Anyway, it would be nice to have at least an overview of the architecture of this editor. I'm a bit hesitant to use an editor as a "black box" plugin, because it means that a minor customization may take days of work (or even tossing away the whole editor) in case the architecture is bad.

<comment><USER10> Wow, ProseMirror is really great. Thanks for pointing it out! It's wonderful that it uses CommonMark as its document model, and especially that (to quote):"ProseMirror adjusts to your site, not the other way around". :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We've been using Quill with great success on [http://www.twlng.com](http://www.twlng.com)

<comment><USER12> my company has also: www.getfetcher.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What kind of markup will this produce? Currently, I'm left guessing as to whether or not it will be the same as I see when I inspect the editor itself. It claims "semantic markup", yet it offers styling tools alongside semantic ones.

<comment><USER14> I use Quill on my site to allow trusted but non-technical users to write rich text. It was easy to configure so it only allows a strict subset of tags. My users have been using it for a few months and haven't managed to slip in any disallowed tags, attributes, or styles.

<comment><USER5> I did the same. But those non-technical users still ask why they can't paint their text red, right-align paragraphs and insert as many line breaks as their good taste suggests. So it can't really work unless they agree to get a bit technical and understand what semantic markup and CSS are. And then, I'd really prefer to teach them some basic markdown and have them use a markdown editor, only so they can stop believing that "what they see is they get".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks rather neat, the bad thing is, that some kind of "inline" or "Medium- style" editing is not possible, as it seams (at least no example shows something like that).

I think, in some cases, text-input boxes are just looking awful.

<comment><USER16> Not sure what functionality you are talking about, but you can embed a Quill in any div. It doesn't have to have a border.

<comment><USER15> Where to put the toolbar? The medium editor has a toolbar that only appears when it is really needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ah, another to satisfy our insatiable desire for browser-based, WYSYWIG text editors.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been using this on a project recently. I've had to modify its source to make it work in a Shadow DOM environment and it's been slow-going. The future is hard. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> fill justify doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER20> Another rich text editor that doesn't enforce good typographic rules: You shouldn't underline text, except hyperlinks. Text shouldn't be both bold and italic. The text alignment of the body should be block or left (right instead of left in right aligned scripts).

Also no semantic information like what is a caption at all.

<comment><USER21> Why would the editor enforce those rules? Does Microsoft Word enforce those rules? Pages? Google Docs? This is a library that brings WYSIWYG editing to the web in a fairly clean way, and it shouldn't enforce any specific rules. If you want to enforce rules on your implementation, you can do so, but the library should be full featured and allow customization to have as much utility as possible.

<comment><USER22> Hmmmm. The defaults should be good. And some horrible things should maybe be off by default and strongly discouraged.

Underlining is a good example. It's a no-no on the web (looks too much like a hyperlink) and if your destination is print even then it's ugly and amateurish. I can't see it being too much of a stretch to just leave it out of an editor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> All kidding aside, is there a genuine reason to name a development after an arcane, difficult to use tool? I've got a few quills. I used them as part of my graduate thesis on slowing down writing so that students can learn to appreciate the permanence of scribing down things. A quill is not a text editor, it's a one-shot, hard to use object. I'd like to be constructive in this criticism, so I'll sign off here.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I start learning physics? - J-H Hi,
I'm a high schooler who wants to learn physics but our high school doesn't offer anything past a very beginner physics course. How do I start learning - Khan Academy? or something else? Tips from anyone who learned physics thoroughly? I'm looking for something free or pretty cheap (so not really print textbooks)? <comment><AUTHOR> I recommend you the "Intro to Physics: Landmarks in Physics" course made by Udacity (<http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/ph100/CourseRev/1>). I'm currently halfway through it and I'm having a lot of fun doing it! Here's the syllabus of the course:

Unit 1: How can we measure the circumference of the Earth? Basics of geometry and trigonometry

Unit 2: How do objects move? Data analysis and kinematics

Unit 3: What causes motion? Forces, acceleration, and Newton's Laws

Unit 4: How can we use motion? Work, energy, and simple machines

Unit 5: How can we determine our longitude at sea? Simple harmonic motion

Unit 6: What is electricity? Charge and electric fields

Unit 7: What is left to discover? Modern physics and open questions

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html> is a great starting point. That page is written and maintained by a Dutch Nobel Prize winner who believes that it should be perfectly possible to learn physics from the internet if you know what you're looking for. If you go down the page he also includes references to print texts but the idea is for the web links to be sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER3> I taught the physics core curriculum at Caltech for five years, so I'll do what I can to help. For many of the classes at Caltech, we never found a truly satisfying textbook, but when you're learning on your own that's still the route I recommend. This means putting textbooks back on your list for consideration. Buying a textbook for a full 1-2 year college-level physics sequence costs less than $200, _much_ less if you buy used. You have parents, right? Now they know what to get you for your birthday.

Your immediate goal should be to get a firm grounding in classical physics, which will be important for everything else you do. When choosing a textbook, the most important thing is to pick one that's aimed at scientists and engineers. That means it should be calculus-based, "algebra-based physics" being a contradiction in terms. If you don't know calculus, you should start there. (This will set you back some more money. Sounds like a plan for Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.)

To my knowledge, none of the introductory texts are truly great, but I did some poking around and _University Physics_ by Young, Freedman, and Ford looks like a good bet. If you need to learn calculus, _Calculus_ by Larson and Edwards looks decent. Get the most recent editions if you can afford them, but I'm sure older editions are fine. Those two books alone should take you a year or two to consume, and they are likely to be _very_ challenging unless you have an exceptional preparation in mathematics. But even if you get stuck occasionally, you'll still be _way_ ahead of the curve. (I wish someone had put a calculus-based physics textbook in my hands when I was in high school. I would have been _unstoppable_. Unfortunately, though it now seems impossible, I went to high school before Amazon or even the Web, so it simply never occurred to anyone.)

I recommend supplementing the textbooks with liberal use of Khan Academy videos and Wikipedia articles. More than anything, it is essential to solve a large number of exercises. Developing a good physical intuition is important, but physics is a quantitative discipline, which means being able to do calculations.

One more thing: if you want to demonstrate your competence to the world (and to college admissions committees), it's a good idea to take the AP Physics exam (B or C) at some point. The AP Physics C exam is the best one to target if you only have enough time to take one, as it will let you test out of introductory courses at many schools. (Not at Caltech though—we have a separate system of placement exams.) Take a look at the AP Physics C website to see the syllabus. If you decide to take the exam, buying a test-prep book such as _5 Steps to a 5 AP Physics B &C_ is probably a good idea. If you go this route, try to negotiate with your school to get course credit for your independent study.

P.S. At some point, read _The Feynman Lectures on Physics_. FLP doesn't make for a good introduction, but after you have a foundation it's gold.

<comment><USER4> I used Calculus (4th edition) by Larson, Hostetler, and Edwards for my calc 1 and 2 courses and I would not recommend it for independent study.

Consider Calculus by Briggs and Cochran instead ( [http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Early-Transcendentals- Briggs-...](http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Early-Transcendentals-Briggs- Cochran/dp/0321570561/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344038334&sr=1-1&keywords=calculus+cochran) ) for good explanations with example problems and for the superior images, which are particularly helpful for multivariate calculus.

<comment><USER5> Another calculus and all around math guide is here for free. <http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/> I've been using it ever since I was in high school. To this date, I have only rarely had to pay attention in my math classes due to this resource. This will take you to calc 4 and even cover linear algebra. The best part is he progresses in a methodical way, everything is downloadable in pdf format, and his examples are great.

For physics, the Feynman lectures are a great once you have a bit of foundation, but really any course from MIT OpenCourseWare or Coursera will do. The key is definitely doing examples, and I find it is particularly useful to apply it to real life by asking questions. Rainbows? Cameras? Bubbles? Spear- fishing? All great examples of optics. Deep sea excavations? Pulling out the Titanic? Diesel-filled bags? Perfect for studying bouyancy and forces. Have you played Tanks? (seeing as you're in high school, I'm sure you have. If not, you should!) Projectile motion! Just keep your eyes open.

Since you're doing it on your own, I highly suggest learning physics Calc based, instead of algebra based. Everything will tie in very nicely, seeing how calculus was apparently invented FOR physics (courtesy of Professor Covault at CWRU).

Kudos, and good luck!

edit: After trying to use Wikipedia for physics in college, I don't recommend it if you're trying to learn. They use weird terminology, and sometimes weird notation. Sometimes it is good for examples though. Also, check out the International Baccalaureate exams, an alternative to AP. The main difference is that AP expects lots of breadth and little depth, vs IB is vice versa. My physics teacher used to say "IB wants you to be able to answer a question the same way someone with a PhD in the field would". You can find practice exams online. By the way, for Higher Level (HL) exams (equiv to C-level in AP), around a 65% is a 7, the best score you can get.

edit2: Don't forget public libraries! Especially at large colleges or universities. They have many textbooks available, even the old ones at times (which I prefer, there's something about picking up an old textbook and learning from it that's not captured anywhere else. It feels like you're learning from the major players in the game, and I get more motivated to do well). I'll stop with the edits now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Depending on how ambitious you are, for a more rigorous introduction to basic mechanics I recommend Kleppner & Kolenkow. Though if you choose to start with a more basic book like University Physics I strongly recommend K&K as a second book. This assumes you have passing familiarity with calculus.

</comment><comment><USER7> You could always take the Newtonian approach and just sit under an Apple tree ...

<comment><USER8> And develop calculus, no less :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can get University Physics 11th edition, which mhartl suggested for about $35 used.

This will be about 1500 pages and 40 chapters. If you do a chapter per week with problems, you will know basic physics in 3/4 of a year. However, you're going to need to learn calculus as well, so pick up a used calculus book.

This is by far the cheapest route. A couple of books, some paper and pencils. My problem with online video courses are that they are SLOW. They take a tiny bit of subject matter that would fill a single page and stretch it out to a 45 minute video. It's far worse if the teacher is a slow speaker. A good solid book is open road, fast as you want to go learning.</comment>


Hashdown stores your text content in url hash, nothing is stored on server - <AUTHOR> http://www.hashdown.net/edit.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel its tadpoleCode encode mode is more insteresting. /゙ًًًًًًًًًًٌٌٌٌٍٍٍٍٍٍٍََََََُُُُُُِِِّّّّّّّّّْْْْْْْْْْٰٰٰٜٜٕٜٕٜٜٜ۪ٕٕ۪ٜٕٜ۪۪۪ٜٜٓٔٔٔٓ۠۠ٔۤ۠۠ٔٔ۠ۤ۠۠ٓ۠ٔٓۤۤ۠ۤۤٔ۠۠۠

<comment><USER2> I have never seen it before, and that was awesome.</comment></comment>


How to work with offshore developers and not get screwed - <AUTHOR> https://pulsemetrics.io/blog/how-to-work-with-offshore-developers-and-not-get-screwed/ <comment><AUTHOR> The primary belief is that by going offshore, you somehow get lesser quality work. I totally disagree and have found quite the opposite to be true. Google, Facebook, etc. are primarily built on the backs of developers from diverse backgrounds and with a high density of developers from these exact 'offshore' regions.

Why do so many people have bad experiences with offshore developers? Quite simply it's because of project and product management. The industries are learning the advantage of having a great PM / PjM team to help have smooth product launches + development.

Ok but the freelancer or vendor I work with has these roles included? That's the first issue. You must have your product and project management team here in the United States or whatever country you live in.

Why does my Product/Project Manager need to be in U.S or local to my country? Product and project managers help to communicate your needs to the developers and make sure those needs get executed. All product/project managers have design + technical experience or dealt closely with developers in the past.

So how do you make sure that your U.S. based product/project manager is successful? Your team needs to have direct access to the developers themselves. If your product/project manager tells you that the vendor will not let them talk directly to the developers then fire the developers immediately. Imagine if at Google the product team had to go through the director of engineering to discuss every single feature or issue!

At Reliable Bits, we pride ourselves at having strong product/project teams that are skilled with managing products and communicating with developers. We also have direct access to all of our developers which means better results for everyone.</comment>


Dian Fossey, the primatologist who transformed the way we see gorillas - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151226-the-woman-who-gave-her-life-to-save-the-gorillas <comment><USER2> I worry that the author of this article seems to leave out key facts about Dian Fossey and her "research". These facts are unpleasant. Without those facts, the general public, like myself ( before learning of these details), may significantly misunderstand why why the system (conservation/politics/charity) has continuously failed gorillas and the people living in the same habitat.

Firstly, there's the matter of Dian's falsified qualifications.

"Fossey had failed to gain a degree in veterinary medicine from the University of California at Davis and transferred to San Jose College where she gained a BA degree in physical therapy in 1954. "

[http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Dian_Fossey.aspx](http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Dian_Fossey.aspx)

She was selected and provided funding despite having obscured and falsified her qualifications. However, this was not unknown to her employer, Louis Leakey. Why he chose her is rather scandalous.

"This lack of scientific training did not concern Leakey, who believed women uniquely possessed the patience required for long-term field studies"

Why he believed this is perhaps better explained by his actions.

"Louis had extramarital affairs and fell ardently in love with his young proteges, chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall and gorilla-watcher Dian Fossey." [http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-684-80192-6](http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-684-80192-6)

Then there's the matter of Dian's horrific racism and actions.

"Fossey defended her policy of encouraging the apes to fear black Africans because nearly all poachers were black."

[http://articles.latimes.com/1985-12-29/news/mn-25922_1_karis...](http://articles.latimes.com/1985-12-29/news/mn-25922_1_karisoke- research-center)

"she habitually referred to Rwandans as "wogs," never in all her time recruited a single black African as a researcher and even burned the crops of neighboring peasants whom she suspected let their cattle graze in the reserve" [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1015200880517583680](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1015200880517583680)

The sad thing is that this is not unique. For example, WWF's leadership has few if any representation from humans who cohabit the regions where species they seek to protect live. Instead, they send what seems to be mostly their college/family/country club friends to lead these actions. Is it any wonder why these conservation efforts fail so spectacularly when there's no emphasis on engagement with the local populace.

<comment><USER3> Shame on you for one-sidedly assassinating the character of a woman that was murdered for her cause 30 years ago.

Your first two links do not paint Fossey in a bad light, you are very selectively quoting. The last link is an op-ed from a political hack.

She was a radical conservationist of mountain gorillas and a complicated person. I have no doubt whatsoever that her overall impact on the visibility of the plight of mountain gorillas was a positive one.

Got any citations for your claims about the WWF?</comment></comment>


This creepy puzzle arrived in our mail - <AUTHOR> http://gadgetzz.com/2015/10/12/this-creepy-puzzle-arrived-in-our-mail/ <comment><AUTHOR> Reddit post following the decryption of this video. [https://www.reddit.com/r/creepy/comments/3ongx1/this_creepy_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/creepy/comments/3ongx1/this_creepy_puzzle_arrived_in_our_mail/)</comment>


I know what you're waiting for - <AUTHOR> http://randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/10/02/hurry.html

<comment><USER2> This is the best takeaway for me, which I've been thinking about a lot recently:

 _Don't worry if someone else is already working on your idea. I'm certain they are, but they are decidedly not you and it's the you that makes your idea unique._

Giving your creations a character of your own is a great way to differentiate and keep going.

<comment><USER3> Does this only apply to a profit making projects? A project or startup with business model? Or does this also apply to personal projects?

<comment><USER4> It applies to everything. Don't use uncertainty about the future as an excuse to remain frozen today.

<comment><USER5> Nicely put, it's better than the original quote!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "You need to discover the moment when you actually know better than everyone around you — when you make the first move without asking permission."

I love that line - it says it all.</comment>


64-Bit Google Chrome Coming to Linux - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5342631/64+bit-google-chrome-coming-to-linux

<comment><USER2> I just want to know when it's coming to BSD Unix.</comment>


The New York Times is buying the Wirecutter for more than $30M - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/10/24/13381002/new-york-times-wirecutter-purchase-30-million-briam-lam-consumer-guide <comment> et-al The Wirecutter worked because a reader could understand that its source of income was affiliate links for quality consumer goods. And we trusted that it'd be critical and honest.

On the other hand, a media company that relies on advertising for a significant chunk of its revenue naturally seems like it will have a conflict of interest between its advertisers and the products it may be reviewing.

Anyways, congrats to Brian Lam and co., but I'm curious how this would benefit the Times in the long run.

<comment><USER2> It's definitely concerning, but doesn't an affiliate link business model also have potential conflicts of interest? There's a direct financial incentive to recommend products from sellers with more generous referral programs, as well as a bias toward more expensive products (assuming the kickback is percentage based).

Hopefully the NYT is smart enough to realize that all the value is in the reputation and maintain an open and transparent hands-off editorial policy. Keeping the articles as detailed and comprehensive as they are is also important, but still leaves room for advertiser pressure through omission of viable alternatives while retaining the appearance of objectivity.

<comment><USER3> Yes you will notice that the related site thesweethome rarely includes Ikea products or any other company that does not have a lucrative affiliate program in the comparison.

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is true. Ikea is often included in Sweethome comparisons for which Ikea has products, but the overlap between what Ikea sells (mostly furniture) and the Sweethome reviews (lots of tools, small appliances, kitchen electronics, etc.) is not that great. But Ikea products seem to have been included in all the reviews related to mattresses or bedding, flatware, dishes, pots and pans, etc.: [http://thesweethome.com/?s=ikea](http://thesweethome.com/?s=ikea)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Except for an extremely minor purchase (can opener, never again oxo), I've been extremely happy with the recommendations from Wirecutter/Sweethome. Even if you don't end up buying the recommended item (or anything related), you get very detailed article about the pros/cons, manufacturing decisions, etc of a particular product and can apply those in your other searches.

<comment><USER6> I agree, the Wirecutter/Sweethome is my most trusted source of product reviews.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. They're extremely good about detailed reviews with pros, cons, and options for different types of purchasers.

<comment><USER8> for most things, yes. i went looking to sweethome about ceiling fans, and while information, it was a bit lacking compared to other categories

[http://thesweethome.com/reviews/ceiling-fan-i-always- get/](http://thesweethome.com/reviews/ceiling-fan-i-always-get/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a reminder ... your MVP can be crude:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20111013114740/http://thewirecut...](https://web.archive.org/web/20111013114740/http://thewirecutter.com/)

<comment><USER9> OMG, I can't believe it. The current design is extremely modern/cool but the old one is so geeky, I loved that too and I also discovered an interesting website I didn't know... Although as a European, I'm probably cut off from many of the most interesting products (e.g. standing desks).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Extremely smart purchase by the Grey Lady, if you ask me. And a good deal for the price. Feeds naturally into their slick online presence, adds content in very popular topic areas—areas that people with disposable income like to read about.

</comment><comment><USER11> Really useful content that frames not just what but why they came to their conclusion and how you can adapt their evaluation to your own needs.

I can see how it could work because I have spent several thousand based on their advice. Several times through the Amazon link.

</comment><comment><USER12> Love both sites. Fear the worst. Hope I'm wrong. They've influenced many purchasing-decisions. Happy with 95% of 'em.

PS Wirecutter/sweethome replaced consumersearch.com for me. ConsumerSearch summarized meta-analysis of reviews. After they were sold to about.com (NYT) it became 'stale' so I stopped using them. Just checked, it's still a decent site.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know a way to see an overview of _past_ wirecutter recommendations for each segment? I'd like to know which used/refurbished products could be the best option.

<comment><USER14> Archive.org has the home page since 2012 [http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://theWirecutter.com](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://theWirecutter.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used The Wirecutter and the Sweethome to guide most of the major home purchases I've made over the past 3 years. So far, their advice has been spot on.

</comment><comment><USER15> What a shame. Happy for the founders as it is a great site, but hopefully the quality doesn't take too deep of a dive.

Right now they make all their money off of affiliate links, so let's see what happens when the parent company depends on advertisement.

<comment><USER7> > What a shame.

Is this just a default assumption that the NYT is going to ruin it? I'm actually not totally sure about comparable situations, but Engadget seems to have done ok after being acquired.

<comment><USER16> They were completely inept stewards of FiveThirtyEight, who do some of the most obviously helpful, objective, uncontroversial work you could possibly do in politics.

[http://www.cjr.org/analysis/fivethirtyeight.php](http://www.cjr.org/analysis/fivethirtyeight.php)

The NYT also has no idea how to deal with obvious digital journalism issues like how to flag when major substantive edits have been made to a piece after publication. It's a dinosaur of an organization, trying some new things but fundamentally out of touch with the modern world.

<comment><USER17> I do not think they are trying new things because they want change their core business. They have a strong subscriber base, which is growing, and a huge audience. They have a strong brand that is recognizable worldwide For example, they have close a deal with a Brazilian Tv network to deliver video and other exclusive contents that they produce.

Probably wanna have more ways to monetize from this base investing in digital plataform like Wirecutter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From self-funding to a $30M acquisition. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope the NYT doesn't screw up the Wirecutter!

NYT -- always late to the party, and under dressed. Although, not quite sure what party Wirecutter represents.

Previously, back in Web 1.0 days, NYT bought: \-- Abuzz.com [Jan 2002] [https://www.cnet.com/news/new-york-times-acquires- abuzz/](https://www.cnet.com/news/new-york-times-acquires-abuzz/)

\-- About.com [2005] for $400M [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/business/media/the- times-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/business/media/the-times- company-acquires-aboutcom-for-410-million.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, I'm assuming that the creators might not leave with fuck-you-money, but assuming they were relatively profitable or at least break-even, that seems like a great exit for a small-scale-content-company in today's environment.

Wirecutter, like Macrumor's buyers guide, have my admiration for building a vital content service out of a pretty simple idea. Gives hope that content- creators don't have to go the viral-spam-crap route to be a success. Or, at least worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow. 5 years of work. 30 million. That is like 6 million a year.

<comment><USER21> Plus I'm guessing they were banking almost all of the revenue from those 5 years as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This was just about the only site I trusted to be as critical of goods and services as I am. Not really sure where all those BS 5-star reviews come from on Amazon but these guys were sufficiently critical and it made for good content.

Hope being bought doesn't screw the quality, but if it does seems like a good business model for someone else to fire up. "We only give As to people who deserve As..."

</comment><comment><USER23> I hope the quality is maintained

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it written in React?

</comment><comment><USER25> I like the idea for the site and I like the actual site too, but I find it somewhat frustrating how often their recommendations are no longer available for purchase, or their articles say "hang on, this will be updated soon!" and you never know when "soon" is.

<comment><USER26> Just had this problem last week with the sweet home. I ended up being from a sporting goods store instead of Amazon, but I pretty much knew there was going to be some rust from the long storage time of the discontinued product. It turned out to be only a minor issue.

It's a little frustrating how really I can look at a website or product line and reliably make a judgment like "they made a good product in gen 1/2, but now they're in the gen 3/4 cash out phase where they cut costs and make huge margins on the product before their reputation catches up with the new cost- cutting." It shows how often I see it.

My wife and I are missing some significant things in our apartment, but I intend to keep dragging my feet so I can acquire high-quality things as I get the time to research and the money to buy them. Disposable crap isn't worth my time.

Then again, maybe all the mid-30-something's here are laughing at me right now because I'm just doing what everyone does once they mature and become experienced.</comment></comment>


Unix for Poets (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.upc.edu/~padro/Unixforpoets.pdf <comment><USER2> This is an excellent article. However, note that if you're using tr from GNU Coreutils, you have to use the 'A-Za-z' syntax for character ranges instead of '[A-Z][a-z]', since GNU tr doesn't use the SysV syntax [1]:

      GNU `tr' does not support the System V syntax that uses square
      brackets to enclose ranges.  Translations specified in that format
      sometimes work as expected, since the brackets are often
      transliterated to themselves.  However, they should be avoided
      because they sometimes behave unexpectedly.  For example, `tr -d
      '[0-9]'' deletes brackets as well as digits.

[1]: [https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Char...](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Character- sets.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a big fan of Allison Parrish's work using word embeddings and other techniques to write computer-generated poetry.

[http://portfolio.decontextualize.com/](http://portfolio.decontextualize.com/)

<comment><USER4> wow, this is mind blowing, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" I did a quick search in Alta Vista on Netscape"_ (footnote, page 2)

Sounds more like 1998 than 2013 ...

P.S. Actually 1994: [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=E6aqGvYAAAAJ&hl=en](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=E6aqGvYAAAAJ&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a lovely article. I used various ideas from here and other sources to make a little tutorial which was intended to explain the power of composability of small programs to a student audience. The details are here [https://thelycaeum.in/blog/2013/09/03/text_processing_in_uni...](https://thelycaeum.in/blog/2013/09/03/text_processing_in_unix/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Back in the mid '90s, I'd put it at 1995, there was a Hypercard bit of Unix- related poetry that I've never been able to find again. I believe it was an "ABC of Unix" sort of thing, with a poem or story for each letter. I recall the one about grep involving a woman whispering into her lovers ear how grep outputs matching lines unless -v is provided.

It was lovely, or at least my memory of it was that it was lovely. I've looked for it again over the decades, but I wonder if it was lost to HyperCard rot...

<comment><USER8> [http://www.redballoon.net/humor/unix1.txt](http://www.redballoon.net/humor/unix1.txt)

A is for Awk, which runs like a snail, and B is for Biff, which reads all your mail. ...

but the grep entry here is different from what you remember.

<comment><USER7> That one I'm very familiar with. :-) This was something entirely different...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Made me think of [https://www.emilio.com.mx/pdf/Code_Poems_2012.pdf](https://www.emilio.com.mx/pdf/Code_Poems_2012.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Is it valid literary criticism to point out pointless uses of cat on page 25?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11901790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11901790)

</comment><comment><USER11> My three favourite words in the title at the same time?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I'd put a preposition in my shortlist of favorite words, but you do you I guess…

<comment><USER13> The third "word" might be PDF?

<comment><USER14> Or "2013"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The misuse of smart quotes in the code example is very distracting to me because backticks mean something in Unix.</comment>


The future of surveys - meteor - <AUTHOR> http://www.marq.io I have been working on this over the holiday and I'd like to share it with all of you and hear what you think. Happy new year! <comment><USER2> super cool idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks</comment></comment>


Show HN: Apposer – How your competitors affect ur retention. Free. in your inbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.apposer.io/

<comment><USER2> This page is riddled with typos, grammar mistakes, and little bits of weirdness in the copy that immediately makes me distrust the service (or rather, makes me think that it's a scam). Even the HN submission title ("...affect ur retention. Free. in your...") is so blatantly wrong that I almost think this is a troll.

On the off-chance that it's not a troll, it's definitely worth your time/expense to have a native speaker (I'm assuming English isn't your native language, or one in which you've done much reading or writing) go over the text.</comment>


StartupPR: It Isn't Just Buzz, It's About Relationships - <AUTHOR> http://www.onboardly.com/startup-pr/startuppr-it-isnt-just-buzz-its-about-relationships/?__lsa=c7f3ab80

<comment><USER2> Thanks to Tyler for this post. Good perspective. Agree 100%.</comment>


Ask HN: In what unexpected ways has writing a blog affected your career? - <AUTHOR> There are several reasons for maintaining a personal tech blog, among them:<p>- Create a personal knowledge base<p>- Learn something yourself by teaching it<p>- Improve your writing skills<p>- Build a personal brand<p>Besides that, as someone who started maintaining a blog quite recently (9 months ago), I was curious in what (unexpected) ways writing a blog affected your career, in both positive and/or negative ways. And if it didn't, that would be interesting to know as well. <comment><USER2> I got my current job on the back of it!

I don't interview particularly well (interviews are a lot of about first impressions, and I make a [ranging from poor to] indifferent first impression), and especially used to struggle with interview exercises that require you to think on your feet. For e.g., read this case study, present your analysis of the client's requirements, and draw up a technical design, all within about an hour.

During my interview process for my current employer, I had come across one such exercise, and in the follow-up interview, was challenged on some of my poorly thought through responses. I was a bit too exhausted then to play games, and said outright that I struggle do that sort of thing well under time pressure, especially one that's not representative of a real-life work situation where we've usually got more time than an hour to analyse the situation, prototype various approaches, and eventually arrive at a refined solution after a few iterations of build-validate-redesign.

The interviewer then basically wanted to know how I could prove that I was capable of structured thought, careful analysis, and reasonably cogent writing. At this point I spoke about a few blog posts that I'd done, and he wanted me to email links to them after the interview was done.

A few days later I got a call saying that they were happy to extend me an offer.

I met the above chap who interviewed me some time later over a few drinks, and he told me that it was the blog posts that had changed people's minds about hiring me. I've been happily employed there for nearly 5 years since, so I'd say it all worked out really well! (Although I did stop writing blog posts for mostly laziness-related reasons...)

<comment><USER3> Great story. Would you mind to share a link to your blog?

<comment><USER2> Sure, didn't want to plug it unnecessarily :) I haven't updated it since I got the job though, make what you will of that!

[http://tech.theswamp.in/](http://tech.theswamp.in/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found out that someone did their 4th year honours project focused solely on one of my blog posts: [http://extremelearning.com.au/unreasonable- effectiveness-of-...](http://extremelearning.com.au/unreasonable- effectiveness-of-quasirandom-sequences/)

This discovery was quite surreal as I only found out months later, because neither the student nor the lecturer contacted me at the time.

Also, despite being a math/IT guy working for many years in government, my blog posts have mainly got the attention of graphical computing people in the private sector (eg animation, game studios, digital imaging, etc). This has meant that my work has made some (small) impact in industries beyond those I have worked in or been formally trained in. This has been a nice surprise. It has also markedly increased the breadth of my professional network to now include practitioners and experts from a diverse set of industries.

Finally (like many technical people), although writing is a crucial skill in mid-level management roles as well as consultancy, for most of my career I have had a mental aversion to writing reports, and has been the cause of much work stress.

However, after writing intermittently for many months on topics that I have personally chosen, and on topics that I have some knowledge on, I have found that this has had noticeable effects on both my confidence and capacity to write reports in my day job. I can now write reports faster -- and with considerably less anxiety.

And thus, between all these points, I believe that I can genuinely attribute much of my recent career successes and opportunities to writing my blog.

;)

<comment><USER5> This is a really nice reply. I can imagine it. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got a book deal!

I answered a whole bunch of questions over on a Show HN a while back if you're interested: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033129)

I'm happy to answer any specific questions around this. My email's in my profile, or you can reach me on Twitter (@jstanier).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the availability!

Took a look at your book's content table and it definitely resonates with my current position, transitioning from being hands on developer to leading a small, growing team of developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was kind of "famous" in the embedded system community in my home country... I got a bunch of paid side projects from it, friends and job offers.

I never even considered any of the job offers as I was happy with my employer and they were in other cities.. but.. I did get a friend to one of them and he is still in the company (it has been 8 years now).

I don't blog anymore (has been 4 years :P ). I feel like I am super happy where I am with my career and would rather do other things in my free time.

<comment><USER8> That's very cool! Congrats on getting to a great place in your career.

I just started doing embedded work, and would love to read your blog if you're open to sharing.

<comment><USER7> It is in Portuguese unfortunately and I did abandon the embedded systems industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, it's not really a personal blog, but the main website I run has been responsible for at least two, maybe three of the full time jobs I've gotten so far.

Also given it used WordPress and a few past jobs were based around WordPress development, it also gave me the skills needed for those roles as well.

Plus practice with whatever other web development techniques I've needed to practice over the years.

</comment><comment><USER10> It made it easier for people to find me online. Not sure if that's a good thing though.

When I'm interviewing, it helps showcase my writing skills and previous work. A lot of potential employers will ask if for writing samples and if I have experience in SEO/blog platforms. I usually direct them to my website/blog.

I also cover my interests and activities outside of work. I think it gives them a better picture of who I am - activist, researcher, and taco enthusiast.

I didn't even start as a content writer and now, I write content for Startpage's blog: [https://www.startpage.com/blog/](https://www.startpage.com/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER11> A few of them:

\- I got a job on a new city

\- Some of my posts have been cited on thesis statements

\- I got new contacts and new projects through it

\- I've learned a few things that would not have been in my interest and that I looked it up just to write a blog post

\- It somehow has become a relaxing activity

</comment><comment><USER12> I know it's not exactly a blog, but academic publishing in journals has been interesting! It can get you invites to publish all sorts of other things. I think in this way success begets success.

I've also anonymously written a few small blogs with a couple of popular posts. What's amazed me is that sometimes a simple post with a question can drive consistent views (1-2k/views a week consistently). It hasn't been about the large numbers, but I have met a couple of people who have stumbled across these posts which have turned out to be interesting friendships!

</comment><comment><USER13> Personally, starting a newsletter/blog has been one of the most valuable personal development experiences I've ever had. It's allowed me to:

\- Meet tons of smart and friendly experts in a field I might want to work in some day

\- Gain a deeper understanding of what consistency and quality look like

\- Take my interest in my topic of choice (in my case, video games) to a whole new level

The only drawback I can think of is the scope of it all. There's always so much good content to write about, prioritizing and weighing personal vs public interest isn't an easy task.

</comment><comment><USER14> Beside sharing knowledge, I was able to get my current job and freelance gigs due to my blog which is 5+ years old.

</comment><comment><USER15> It depends on the target, really: consumer blog or professional blog? Value proposition and content seem very different to me... the former geared toward entertainment or synthesis, the latter toward information or analysis?

<comment><AUTHOR> Any target really. Most of the comments so far are from professional/technical blogs, but if you're maintaining a consumer blog for a personal endeavour I'd be interested in knowing your experience as well.

<comment><USER15> I spammed enough over here in the last three months but it served me well to calibrate, so thanks HN ehehe. My humble take is that indie influencers from any niche and target audience generally follow each other on Twitter, so a pool of styles / tones is available for direct mimicking while testing waters?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh boy, if you're ready to read it... I'll try to keep it brief, but it all seems to tie in. After graduating high school, knowing it all, working security for a few years, and going no where -- I asked for a raise and got a penny, which led me to go to college on company dime. In other words, I'd do my job, but now I fill the majority of my time up with school.

Off to college... wanting to make something more of myself, and as a former PC gamer-addict, and self-taught programmer, I wanted nothing to do with computers anymore. So I went opposite and studied psychology, really enjoyed it, and graduated with a degree in it. During my time there though, save for a year of taking off from work completely which was awesome, I became fascinated with why people go to work, why we do what we do, and how to make the workplace better, seeing and experiencing all that was wrong with it.

Graduated college... went to Israel for a year, teach English, and this company had a website they had "been working on for 2 years" and there was nothing there. At the time, I was just looking for something more to do other than teaching, so I volunteered to build their website and started learning more about web design and development and really enjoyed it. I could see myself doing this. My year is up.. come back home to student loans... apply to every job that requires a college degree. And I get nothing.

I remember as they charged my card coming back home on the plane, for an overweight bag, which took $65 from me, leaving me with $10 in my bank account. Meanwhile, it's been a month and one of my payments is coming up... like $60 was due, so it wasn't too bad. I had a week to get a job and get something into that bank account. I applied across the boards and came across a programming job, visual basic 6.0 fixing bugs and supporting an app that well.. VB6 has been a long-extinct beast, but I knew it from when I taught myself programming at 12. Long story short.... tyrant boss, but it taught me everything I knew and prepared me for programming in the "real world". I eventually passed over a bribe for a lesser paying job, but that catapulted me into the field of web design and web development professionally.

And now I've caught you up. So where does my website, [https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com](https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com) come into play? So I studied some industrial-organizational psychology and social pscyhology course, more than just intro, and that's where I wanted to go, but unfortunately, no one was hiring someone with a bachelors and like I said: $10 in my bank account with student loans due. I had to get back to work. And eventually just saw more ROI in the experience of work than going back for a college degree. I've been in the field over 10 years. I have looked at the salary I'd be making if I had went after the career I wanted and it would've yielded slightly less than what I'm making now -- which is nothing to brag about at all. Keeps me paid enough but under the radar of not being the first person they look at when they need to start cutting salary. But also, considering the cost of college nowadays.. and the amount of credits I'd need for the program I'd want to take for the career I might have a chance to get into? Yeah.. absolutely no motivation. Knd of glad all this happened the way it did too. If I had been in that job sector, I would be out of work right now.

Confessions of the Professions was a blog that came to me one day a little over 7 years ago now when I walked into a bank and saw a teller, and for the first time in my life, I was working two jobs, making nearly a 6 digit figure a year, and sending everything full force at my student loans, paying them off in about 2 or 3 years. Of course, the IRS caught up with me, as I didn't report the job so I could keep the cash and pay it off. To report both jobs would have taken too much from that I would have just been working for free for the government, who'd be taking my entire second paycheck. Eventually, they did. But anyways, that's for another topic. I wondered what that teller of the bank saw: she sees what EVERYONE makes. She saw what I was making at the time, which was probably double or triple her paycheck. And they certainly are nicer to you when you have more of your money in their bank. So what does she get to see on the other side of the screen?

And so... the idea was born: I wanted to hear about what people were doing at work, what their lives were like, if they even liked their jobs. I would listen to my friends and family, take down all their stories, and that's where A LOT of my first few hundred articles came from -- just listening and telling people's stories. The site has since evolved into more than that, but it kept me connected to my psychology field. Of course, I couldn't write all of these stories, so I opened up the blog and started soliciting for guest articles. And while I spent a pretty penny investing in articles in the beginning and making a lot of people on Fiverr very happy, I am happy to say I did that only the first year and never have needed to do it again. The website keeps me busy and there is only so much I can do since it's technically a hobby site that I can only dedicate about an hour a day.

It also has other benefits: it has taught me about web design. It has taught me how to write better. It has taught me how to write for an audience that I could not see. The website got so popular in its heyday and was receiving around 100,000 visitors a month. Maybe not a lot to some of you, but I had never advertised the website--all organic traffic. Today, the website is still going strong, but has settled to around 30,000 to 40,000 visitors a month, though the quarantine has pushed that number up a bit more -- because what does my website focus on? A lot of things that are job and career related and have to do with making money.

Two of the biggest advantages that I hadn't even foreseen was starting it with passion and without thinking about the money aspect. Not making it for money is was has kept it going. I would keep it going for free, though having help to pay the bill to keep it running does help. Eventually, I would figure out how to monetize it to an extent, and to this day, it has pulled in around $1,000 a year, on average. Again, not much by any of your standards, and not enough to quit my day job, but enough to let me know that people validate the idea of it by emailing me new and unique articles. I publish for free and make most of the money by charging people a rush fee on it, or to slap someone's text ad on there every so often. Or some companies will pay you to publish articles, which has definitely helped cover costs of the server. But the ads I put on it do keep a little something coming in.

The other advantage was that before this website, I would have never thought I would be talking to people in India, Australia, South America, Phillipines, Canada, Brazil, Ireland, etc. While I can't say I've "benefitted" from anything personally, it has been awesome to see my website validated by universities, big corporations, law firms, and more. While there are so many other places to publish... my fans do see it as a type of central hub of articles for the workplace. The website is definitely a place that many freelancers and beginner writers like to submit their articles, so that keeps everything fresh.

I have been publishing non-stop between one to three articles per day, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Every week, I've got to go through about 10-20 emails and often get around 25-50 articles per month. I have written a lot of articles because my co-workers, my boss, and the job itself never stops providing me with things to write about. I write a lot about my experiences which are really never ending as long as I'm alive. I wrote about my interviewer's weak handshake... and walking in really wanting the job, but walking out, not really caring anymore. That article actually went viral. Feel free to read it: [https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/power-of-the- handsha...](https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/power-of-the-handshake/)

The website helps me get out a lot of my own thoughts about my experiences in the corporate world, as a college graduate, who came from working dead-end jobs without a college degree to working dead-end jobs with a college degree, but "dead-end" in the corporate world, meaning I'm kept where I am at purposely, but -- it has never stopped me from making the salary I want. It keeps me connected to the web, keeps me connected to a huge part of what makes us human: going to work. The website continues to inspire me and many others who come across it. The times I've wanted to give up on it, just let it go, pay for it--but no longer post, well... the emails have never stopped since... technically day one. So as long as people keep it going, they will keep me going.

As for how it has helped my career, well... I can't say whether it has affected it directly or indirectly, but it definitely has influenced me in my career.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great story. Thanks for sharing!</comment></comment>


Have fun - Fry your brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.foc.us/ I love the part that says: "Applying an electric charge to your brain should be considered extremely risky". <comment><USER2> I wish the marketing text under "Want to be the best" wasn't obscured by / obscuring the product photo -- it's very off-putting, and I'm not even a design nut.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if the product does exist or if the website is just a placeholder plugged to a google analytics account to check if there is any traction. However I think they are for real since the domain name must have cost a lot.

<comment><USER3> Hello, I'm Michael the founder of foc.us

Domain cost $6k, prototypes exist and yes, site was launched to gauge traction so as to help estimate first production run.

Apologies for the layout issues. Its a responsive design and I haven't quite got the hang of how to make it look right in all resolutions!

Thanks for posting on hn. Please tell me, do you think the general reaction will be that it could fry your brain?</comment></comment></comment>


Adobe explains how space images are Photoshopped - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2015/09/how-photoshop-helps-nasa-reveal-the-unseeable.html <comment><USER2> You'd think Adobe would know a thing or two about UX [http://i.imgur.com/QGnswcv.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/QGnswcv.jpg)

<comment><USER3> ...or web development.

<comment><USER4> Relevant -> [http://www.alphr.com/realworld/382765/dreamweaver-is- still-d...](http://www.alphr.com/realworld/382765/dreamweaver-is-still-dying)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Url changed from [http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/29/space-images- photoshop/#c...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/29/space-images- photoshop/#continued), which points to this.</comment>


Preparing a marketing plan for your startup - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I think it's great to brainstorm, and have a bank of marketing ideas that you can pull from. With a startup, things change fast, so I'm not sure a 'comprehensive time-phased marketing plan' is the route to go.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> How many of you have a comprehensive time-phased marketing plan for your startup that goes beyond getting on digg, techcrunch and delicious?

<comment><USER3> Plans? We don't need no stinkin' plans (particularly not a time-phased one).

Seriously: Marketing success (like software development success) seems to be highly correlated with getting something out there and iterating as frequently as possible based on feedback.

Writing a plan is fine (if that floats your boat), but it often creates the delusion that you can actually control and predict how things are going to go.

<comment><USER4> No planning? Heh... and then you'll wonder why everything around you is crumbling.

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower</comment></comment></comment>


SF to Establish Office of Emerging Technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sf-to-establish-office-of-emerging-technology/ <comment><USER2> Just one more nail in the coffin for SF/bay area as an innovation center. It's been really sad to see that rent seeking and bureaucracy have completely choked that place out. I'm not sure if there will ever be another time and place like existed in silicon valley from the 70s-2000s where forward thinking creative individuals can come together in a critical mass, with an environment that allows risk taking and innovation. Maybe it will/is happening outside the US but I don't think it's here anymore.

<comment><USER3> Silicon Valley proper (Palo Alto to San Jose) is still alive and well. All sorts of cool things happening in the corridor between Stanford and Santa Clara, as they have since radar and transistors were invented there a half century ago.

Startups locating in SF was done more recently because young startup employees wanted more of a city-based, young adult social life, vs the more college student or family-oriented one in Silicon Valley. But if SF is choking itself out, those startups will just move back down to South Bay/Silicon Valley or in some cases the Berkeley/Oakland area.

SF screwing itself up as an innovation hub isn't the best thing for the Bay Area, but it's far from the end of the Bay Area as a whole as an innovation center.

<comment><USER4>
      since radar and transistors were invented there a half century ago.

Radar was not an SV invention. There were many attempts at radar worldwide, but I (an SV native, BTW) would credit the UK first, especially with their invention of the cavity magnetron.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One problem with this is that's ex-ante, not ex-post. Eg, it asks a bunch of bureaucrats to evaluate a technology before it's deployed, before they and the public get to see how it actually works, as if they have some insight into the relative pros and cons and public reception of an innovative new thing in its formative stages. Not very empirical.

A better ex-post structure would be to blacklist/regulate something after the fact, only after it's evident that its public harm outweighs its public benefit. For things that are quite obviously harmful, like toxic/medical waste handling and stuff of that nature, there are already ordinances in place for that.

But most tech businesses are not that obviously harmful, and strict ex-ante regulation of them will stymie creativity more than protect the public.

It also prematurely shuts down possible systemic adaption. For example, the introduction of Scooters and eBike rentals in SF started a conversation there about whether the city should ban cars for anyone who is not a resident of SF.

Eg, build a bunch of parking garages ringing the outskirts of the city, and anyone coming to SF who doesn't live there, either has to take CalTrain/BART into the city, or park at a garage on the outskirts and take Muni/BART/train/car service/taxi/scooter/bike/etc. into the city.

That was an interesting discussion worth having, but ex-ante blacklisting of new tech will reduce the impetus for that kind of innovative solution finding and public discussion.

<comment><USER5> This is a great take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> finally the city is doing something about those whizz-kid whippersnappers and their goofy gizmos. i'm tired of shaking my cane at these freaks when they blast by me on an electric ouija board or whatever new-fangled gadget is in mode this week. between this and the city banning all new housing developments, we're finally going to clean up the problems that really threaten quality of life here.

<comment><USER7> This is about JUUL.

Also, if you don't know what's happening with development, please do not vote.

<comment><USER8> Pretty sure the parent comment was being satirical.

<comment><USER7> His point was well taken. Nobody is against development; this is misinformation.

<comment><USER9> Nobody is against housing development in San Francisco? It is not really a controversial position that it is very difficult to build new housing supply. There have been numerous well studied articles on this fact and a variety of first hand accounts from real estate developers who have had enormous difficulty in building new housing in the bay area.

edit: candidates may run on new housing development as it easy an easy thing to say and run on. But when rubber meets the road, local planning boards and strict zoning requirements mean translate into orders of magnitude less development than people would like or the market would have.

there are both city wide studies and the specific examples like the infamous laundromat or garage-door based house that are deemed too historic or architecturally significant (standards that would not hold up else anywhere in the nation)

for info on the two examples, google "Largent House" or "SF Mission Laundromat redevelopment"

<comment><USER7> Look at the D5 race. All the candidates are pro development, the discussion is about to what extent this should happen via mixed rate units vs market rate.

As for what people want... is there any good way to be run out of town because you don't have money? Unrestricted development wouldn't address the needs of current residents at all and would result in people being forced out in addition to creating more homeless.

<comment><USER10> I think you're missing the point. Everyone _says_ they're pro-development, sure. But what politicians say and what actually happens are two very different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Before any new tech device is used, tested or piloted in The City, the > office would coordinate the review with relevant departments and would > "issue a Notice to Proceed if the net result is for the common good," > according to the announcement.

This sounds like a fantastic idea. - The Rest of the Country

</comment><comment><USER12> This aside, it might be useful to have the opposite as well (or instead).

Ie: Some portion of some city designated friendly and relatively unregulated _for_ the testing of new technologies in public spaces... Like the Chinese special economic zones, but smaller scale.

Instead of arguing about what approach is unequivocally better, we can just have some of both. This isn't like housing where market fungibility makes it impossible (unadvisable) to have uncoordinated policies, There will still be people living there who don't like it, but you have that regardless. There will also be an element of choice, to the extent that people can/will move.

<comment><USER13> The actual function of China's special economic zones is control, not freedom.

Passing into one is identical to passing through an international checkpoint, with minor differences. When driving, the guards basically ignore white people and party members while non-party members have to pull over and go through full scanning and scrutiny to prove they are allowed to enter.

Once in the zone, setting up any kind of business that requires actual capital equipment is completely impossible for anyone who is not a party member.

Even for party members it is close to impossible. China is actually highly regional with provinces having a lot of power. You have to get permission from the province to do anything, and the local powerful elite will only permit those they can control to establish industry.

With this in place, they do not have to care about anyone outside of these zones, so they are free to enact whatever brutal policies they desire.

Special economic zones are only for powerful, rich, and well-connected. Everyone else loses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This really fits in the greater scenario that:

Once an emerging technology has gotten popular enough (no longer limited to few inventors and early adoptors). You've got people that understand barely anything about it trying to get a slice of a pie. This can come in any directions, some of it as job applicants/VC management deals, some of it posing as regulatory bodies, and it happens both inside and outside of the company/circle that created tech.

Sometimes it works out as the new tech is competitive enough to absorb the cost of these overheads, other times it just sink with edge/non-contributing members sucking the blood out of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here is the file for the proposed ordinance ([https://sfgov.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4160578...](https://sfgov.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4160578&GUID=A34634A0-B49E-4ED1-86A0-675FBF5A3476)). Any company operating an "Emerging Technology Device" is required to apply for a $2,006 permit prior to operating on sidewalks and public rights of way, and these devices are limited to 3mph, are prohibited from parking on the sidewalk, and are required to operate only on sidewalks wider than 6ft. Any violations are subject to $1,000 per day administrative fine, $500 per day civil penalties, and up to $500 per day criminal penalties. The definition of "Emerging Technology" means any new technology which has characteristics including a "beta" label or absence of a federal or state safety certification. The permit application is subject to a public hearing. The OET Director is required to evaluate, e.g., "effects… on public health, safety, welfare, and convenience," "whether the Emerging Technology … are likely to have a measurable economic and/or social impact in the three- to ten-year period following the use," "effects … on the labor market," etc., and the OET Director may reject applications on the basis of these potential impacts.

In my opinion, this definition of "Emerging Technology" is vague and expansive enough that Public Works employees could give you a $1000 ticket for playing Pokémon Go, wearing Google Glass, operating an electric skateboard, or perhaps even vaping.

The author, Norman Yee, is the councilman who in May 2017 became alarmed at autonomous delivery robots on the sidewalks and introduced an ordinance that required delivery robot startups to apply for a permit, capped them to 9 testing robots per permit, and required an operator to be present at all times ([https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/o0244-17.pdf](https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/o0244-17.pdf)).

Relatedly, councilman Aaron Peskin introduced ordinances to require permits for bike rentals on the sidewalk in Feb. 2017 ([https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/o0081-17.pdf](https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/o0081-17.pdf)) and for scooter rentals on the sidewalk in March 2018 ([https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/o0099-18.pdf](https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/o0099-18.pdf)).

</comment><comment><USER16> And this is how Democratic voters become Republicans..

Never pitch this office. These people are trying to centralize control and create a political elite-- insiders who may pass through their imaginary gates to the city. Pay to play.

<comment><USER17> > Never pitch this office

If you didn't get the memo, it won't be optional. If you come up with any idea on how to improve anything at all around you, better run it by Norman Yee first. Now get your ticket and wait in line for a few weeks to get reviewed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No mention of the scope. What types of emerging technology falls under this office? Will it require approving every new app used within city limits?

My cynical take is that this is just another gatekeeper to pay off and appease. The city wants more money from tech.

<comment><USER19> No the purpose of this legislation is to provide a one stop shop for businesses that would have to interact with city departments anyways: scooters with SFMTA, rental startups with DBI or planning. It is not in theory supposed to be a gatekeeper for businesses that can operate independently of local regulation, though Mar has written bad legislation before.

The Hacker News outrage is non-sensical. These are businesses that would have to interact with the city no matter what; a single department instead of many is a strict improvement from status quo. The United States used to have an office of emerging technology too, and it was for the most part very good. Their reports are fun to read.

<comment><USER18> I'm not ruling out that you're right. Only time will tell, I guess.

Though, if this is such a reasonable, common sense idea, there must be other cities that have also implemented something like it. What are their track records?

<comment><USER19> This is a great question, and I wish it were the direction the larger discussion took instead of hysteria. I'm not sure about other examples, and the USA's office of emerging technology was more of an advisory body to Congress than a regulatory invention. I'm not certain that any city has had quite the mix of bureaucratic morass and eager solutionism of San Francisco. A single point of contact with latitude to interpret existing law for new use cases is, per many, the advantage of more authoritarian governments. It would maybe behoove our community to capture this office and use it to preempt more conservative city departments.

This is coverage of the proposal from a year ago. It is the outcome of a process to actually _improve_ what everyone can agree was a totally disastrous rollout of scooters in SF, with blame to be assigned to both the city and operators: [https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/01/11/eme...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/01/11/emerging- technologies-scooters-uber-lyft-robots.html)

Furthermore, the above makes it even more clear that the proposal only applies to people who are trying to test products that use sidewalk and road spaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Before any new tech device is used, tested or piloted in The City, the > office would coordinate the review with relevant departments and would > "issue a Notice to Proceed if the net result is for the common good," > according to the announcement.

This is exactly how the Amish do it. The elders evaluate new technologies and decide if the technology will help or harm the community before authorizing it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Too comical. Scooters are a threat to society but not record level property crime, car break ins, and opioid addiction and mental health issues among the homeless

<comment><USER9> Not to mention re emergence of medieval diseases like Typhoid [1], large and widely spread amount of human feces (which is a biohazard), and lack of housing supply which contributes to untenable housing costs.

[1]: [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/typhus- tu...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/typhus-tuberculosis- medieval-diseases-spreading-homeless/584380/)

<comment><USER21> Yep. Can't wear sandals anywhere either for fear of stepping into a used needle and contracting something.

<comment><USER19> Counter-point: every fourth person wearing Birkenstocks this weekend.

<comment><USER9> Counter-counter-point, of course you'll see people in open footwear but in many busy, populated areas (especially near where people work) such as around market, civic center, soma you'll see needles and feces everywhere. Open toed shoes near those things is probably unadvisable

<comment><USER19> That's not a counter-point, it's movement of goalposts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Needs an office of picking up trash. That city is disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER23> I sometimes watch SFGOVTV [https://sfgovtv.org/](https://sfgovtv.org/)

You can literally see the sausage being made.

You know what? These folks don't seem like mustache-twirling Machiavellian monsters to me. They seem like people just like you and me that are doing their best to manage a city. It's not easy.

We techno-elite have been shouting "Disruption!" in their faces for about two decades now, eh? So here's the counter-reaction, the pushback. If you don't like it, participate. Maybe I'll see _you_ on SFGOVTV.

<comment><USER18> Not saying SF politicians are monsters per se, but Machiavellian monsters don't look like it in real life.

That's one of the first rules of Machiavellianism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If anyone wants to actually participate in the public comment portion, check out this thread: [https://twitter.com/YvonneLeow/status/1183231713843077122?s=...](https://twitter.com/YvonneLeow/status/1183231713843077122?s=20)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is incredibly demoralizing for somebody trying to pursue their dreams in San Francisco as an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER25> > in San Francisco

Why would you choose that city of all places though? The bay area as a whole is dysfunctional and San Francisco doubly so. You can do more elsewhere. I can understanding staying for the sake of family ties or an existing bigcorp job, if you're free, why would you use that freedom to walk into a nightmare?

<comment><USER17> What is the alternative?

SF is flush with VC money and rich customers eager to try new products. Add to that the perfect weather, quality of life, and ability to get around without a car. There's no better place still, by far.

As somebody who lived in Europe, China, Israel, and the US, I have no attachment whatsoever. I would move in a heartbeat I there was viable alternative. I sincerely wish there was one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hmm - will the OET offer NDAs for companies, or perhaps be able to leak plans and details to prospective competitors? Staying tuned.

</comment><comment><USER27> Welcome to New York! [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0N3C6DsisQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0N3C6DsisQ)

<comment><USER17> Too hot in summer and too cold in winter. Not enough VC money relatively to SF. Otherwise I'd move.

<comment><USER28> Lack of humidity is a huge advantage for the west coast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This legislation has only been introduced. It will take months before it is passed into law, and in the meanwhile you can protest at its hearing dates, whenever they get scheduled, and lobby your local Supervisor to defeat it.

I do put its chances of passing pretty high, though. The veto-proof majority of the Board of Supervisors are anti-capitalists who hate individual freedom. They've been agitating for this law for quite some time now.

<comment><USER7> Excuse me, we hate individual freedom of rich assholes such as landlords, developers, and JUUL. You're free to blow vape smoke in Tom Ammiano's face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Void for vagueness.

</comment><comment><USER31> Directive 10-289:

In the name of the general welfare, to protect the people's security, to achieve full equality and total stability, it is decreed for the duration of the national emergency that:

Point One. All workers, wage earners and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment, under penalty of a term in jail. The penalty shall be determined by the Unification Board, such Board to be appointed by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. All persons reaching the age of twenty-one shall report to the Unification Board, which shall assign them to where, in its opinion, their services will best serve the interests of the nation.

Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business, under penalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of any and all of their property.

Point Three. All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, processes and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift by means of Gift Certificates to be signed voluntarily by the owners of all such patents and copyrights. The Unification Board shall then license the use of such patents and copyrights to all applicants, equally and without discrimination, for the purpose of eliminating monopolistic practices, discarding obsolete products and making the best available to the whole nation. No trademarks, brand names or copyrighted titles shall be used. Every formerly patented product shall be known by a new name and sold by all manufacturers under the same name, such name to be selected by the Unification Board. All private trademarks and brand names are hereby abolished.

Point Four. No new devices, inventions, products, or goods of any nature whatsoever, not now on the market, shall be produced, invented, manufactured or sold after the date of this directive. The Office of Patents and Copyrights is hereby suspended.

Point Five. Every establishment, concern, corporation or person engaged in production of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth produce the same amount of goods per year as it, they or he produced during the Basic Year, no more and no less. The year to be known as the Basic or Yardstick Year is to be the year ending on the date of this directive. Over or under production shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification Board.

Point Six. Every person of any age, sex, class or income, shall henceforth spend the same amount of money on the purchase of goods per year as he or she spent during the Basic Year, no more and no less. Over or under purchasing shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification Board.

Point Seven. All wages, prices, salaries, dividends, profits, interest rates and forms of income of any nature whatsoever, shall be frozen at their present figures, as of the date of this directive.

Point Eight. All cases arising from and rules not specifically provided for in this directive, shall be settled and determined by the Unification Board, whose decisions will be final.

<comment><USER32> I agree with the goals of this directive, but it's written in a deliberately silly way. No non-fictional agency would put restrictions on _increasing_ production or _creating_ new technology. On the contrary, abolish the USPTO and let people invent all they want, but the new inventions can be used freely by anyone for the good of the country, too.

Preventing people like d'Anconia from shutting down their manufacturing sites seems reasonable in the abstract, but in a world where so much interesting technology is digital and therefore copiable, what's the need? If Steve Jobs wished to torpedo Apple, that's fine, we've got enough other OSes.

Moreover, it's quite clear that much of the interesting and productive technology of our generation has come from people with no profit motive. AT&T was legally forbidden from profiting from UNIX, so UNIX became a standard. Netscape failed to make money and became reborn as the donation-supported Firefox, which immediately became better than Netscape could have been. And so forth.

<comment><USER33> Googling "Directive 10-289" would give you more context.

<comment><USER32> I'm aware of the context, as you might have been able to tell from my mention of d'Anconia.

<comment><USER33> Sorry, I missed that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Boost for Java on the Client - <AUTHOR> https://gluonhq.com/a-boost-for-java-on-the-client/ <comment><USER2> This is really cool! Native (no JVM) JavaFX applications with GraalVM.

I fear however that due to the title most people on HN will miss this article...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cool. I have not done Java UI since awt days. Kudos to JavaFX community for having kept the java client side development alive even though quite a lot of people, including I, gave up on it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool! A couple questions: Is Swing supported? Also, how does this compare to javapackager which has been shipping with the JDK since 1.6 (I think).

</comment><comment><USER5> Will in be possible to compile JetBrains products (WebStorm, IntelliJ etc) with this?</comment>


A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2015-MSR-Unix-History/html/Spi15c.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to Github repo:

[https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history- repo](https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo)</comment>


Bored People Quit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/keep-learning-keep-growing/bored-people-quit-7354792e0e6e <comment><USER2> This was submitted 4 years ago, when it got a huge amount of discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2754986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2754986)

It was also submitted 500 days ago, when it got moderate discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7618657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7618657)

It was submitted 9 hours ago. That got _no_ discussion, but 14 points:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10190251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10190251)

And here we are again. Will anyone say anything new?

</comment><comment><USER3> Did the author ever quit because he was bored? Did he know he was bored?

How would I know if I'm bored?</comment>


Show HN: Monitor Your AWS Cost in Slack - <AUTHOR> https://cloudforecast.io/slack.html <comment><AUTHOR> Happy Friday! Tony here, one of the co-founders of CloudForecast (www.cloudforecast.io). We help companies monitor and optimize their cloud spend with a simple daily report that saves you time and money.

We know you and your team are busy building software. In less than 15 seconds, you'll know if there is a significant cost increase with your AWS cost with our easy to understand reports. We surface and summarize the exact problems areas so you are not caught by surprise at the end of the month with your bill.

Would love to get your feedback with our Slack integration!</comment>