Why is stackoverflow turning so negative? - <AUTHOR> Whenever I search a google many of their questions pop at the top. A lot of these questions end up closed. However some of these questions have a ton of votes. Some questions are down voted or closed and obviously where asked by someone who just started programing.<p>You can't even answer them because they were closed. Everyone is there at some point. <comment><USER2> I like lurking around SO as there is a lot of good knowledge flying around, and I've seen my share of closed questions.

Honestly, I hate the abuse of power you see on many forums, but I've never seen a topic closed without appropriate justification.

SO is meant to be a place to ask for a solution to a specific problem you've narrowed down as best as you could, not copy-paste a bunch of stuff you don't understand for people to analyze. I think it's awesome, because it keeps the quality very high, and makes it an extremely useful resource to quickly find solutions to not-so-obvious problematics.

Posting links to some of those threads would help having a better look at what you've witnessed though, maybe as someone said it's specific to certain areas of the site?

</comment><comment> V-2 Okay - any examples? To back up your assertion that they were closed merely because the OP was a beginner?

<comment><USER3> here's one example i remember arguing against: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5486945/asking-for- algori...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5486945/asking-for-algorithm-to- solve-the-eight-queens-puzzle/5487538#5487538)

the question was "closed as duplicate" in a knee-jerk manner, whereas if you note that the questioner is a beginner, and read what they're actually asking, pointing out the duplicate is useless.

<comment> V-2 Closing it as a duplicate is only debatable, in worst case. Hardly an impressive example of how SO is generally getting "negative". I see no element of malice or bad will at all.

I can't see how the alleged prejudice against new members was involved, either.

The OP had asked nearly 50 questions before asking the one that got closed off as a duplicate - only 2 out of the 50 were closed, and some were highly appreciated by the community (+16 votes).

The misjudgement itself is also far from obvious.

Furthermore, the question is 2.5 years old to start with - not a short time, given that SO itself is 5 years old, and it didn't gain its wild popularity from day 1. And if I understand well, SO "turning negative", which is what magic_man is alarming us, is not supposed to be old news, but a recent troubling phenomenon.

Also before the question was closed, the OP was given an answer that he himself marked as accepted - so he got his problem solved!

As for the duplicate thing - well, the other question contains a fully working (after corrections) code sample that does precisely what the OP wanted. The "ok" function is testing the diagonals.

Note that this guy "garima" wasn't specific about what exactly he struggled with trying to implement the algorithm that checks diagonals. He only asked "how to do it". Broad question - broad answer: here's code that does just that, go figure.

Had he had further doubts (eg. understanding the code from Mister Bunker's question), noone would stop him to ask another one question, targetting some particular difficulties.

Many people in this thread supported the notion that SO is so negative (sharply chosen words like "snobbery", "arrogance" etc. were used), but the example you gave is EVERYTHING I got that's supposed to substantiate this claim, even though I specifically asked about examples...

This is why I remain unconvinced

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The issues appear to be symptoms of the gamification employed by the site. There are users with high scores that are eager to protect their position, and dominance of their particular subject area. These users are putting their scores on their resumes and online profiles to advance their careers. You could create your own new stack overflow site focused on helping beginners.

<comment><USER5> Personally I like Quora. It has a community feel to it. Has a ton of smart programmers who aren't arrogant with beginners. I really think that Quora is the future of knowledge sharing.

<comment><USER6> Content discovery on Quora is hard. I only come there once a week when they send me their perfectly fine tuned weekly dose of content related to my interests. I wish I could view a live stream of that, on their website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This totally infuriates me as well. Some bizarre snobbery over there. Nearly every time I follow a Google search link to stackoverflow I find the topic closed for one bullshit reason or another. Rarely does the logic make common sense.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's likely that this viewpoint depends on the language you tend to view – I haven't seen much evidence of this trend. SO is a large site now and has different subcultures within it.

</comment><comment><USER9> What to do about it? ..... I often wish I could get points for pointing new users in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think stackoverflow is just following the normal curve or market dominance - first you solve the problem, then you become the problem.

I think it is a side effect of the way some policies that were needed are now culture/institutional memory.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you look at some of the older question you can see there has been a general shift in the way people help others. They used to be a lot more helpful and there was less "arrogance." Something what you think might be trivial might not be for someone else.

<comment> V-2 There are people who just drop their homework assignment on SO, not even bothering to write a single word from themselves. They just expect users to serve them solution on a plate, doing their homework for them. And apparently they're sure it goes without saying. Now _that 's_ arrogance, no double quotes necessary

<comment><USER11> Who cares if they do? They're only hurting themselves and many others may find it useful.

It's like going 65mph in the fast lane, when the person behind you wants to do 80mph. "They shouldn't be going that fast," but they are and they're going to. Best not worry about it yourself, and let them get pulled over and learn the lesson on their own.

I personally agree with the sentiments of the OP. I am often shocked at some responses, and threads closed marked as "non-constructive." It seems counter- intuitive for learning and sharing knowledge (to me).

<comment> V-2 Who cares - the OP, perhaps?

I have no way of knowing whether cases like that aren't the ones he's referring to.

Noone (including yourself) has come up with any examples yet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adwords - adsense earnings tracking - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I was just wondering if there is any tool (way) to track how much money adwords campaigns produce via adsense.
For example, I have a classifieds website, I create an adwords campaign for keyword "free ads". Then some visitor clicks on adwords link (costs me 50c let's day), he posts on my website a free classified that will produce from other visitors 1$ => profit = 50c
So I need a report that will say: campaign x = cost 50 usd, adsense from campaign x = 10000 impressions, 200 clicks, 30 usd earnings.
Is there such a tool? Or would you be intereseted in one, cause Im thinking to develop one. <comment><AUTHOR> or this can even be achieved?</comment>


Ask HN: Why are web services still emailing me? - <AUTHOR>

I am a member of various job boards, mainly from when I was out of work (somewhat employed now as a consultant for Samsung).
What I don't understand is that nearly all of these job boards, and plenty of other services I have signed up to have all been sending me emails despite the fact that I explicitly checked "Do not send me updates or emails from the team", or "Do not send email results, I will login and check for new jobs".
My question to web service developers:
Why do you do this?  I genuinely miss getting emails from actual people, and it's somewhat shocking now that I treat an email from a human being the same way I treat a handwritten letter from my best friend in D.C. because it seems they're becoming a rarity.
At least outside of the office environment. <comment><USER2> This sounds like you have two questions:

 _Why are web services emailing you when you have explicitly asked them not to?_

I do not know the answer to this, but have noticed it as well. Normally, I receive an email for a service when I signed up for an account several months ago. Despite the fact that I unchecked the email notification box, they have assumed that my absence made it okay for them to contact me. Whenever it happens, I become more likely to either delete my account or blacklist the entire domain in my mailserver.

 _Why don't actual people at web services send me personalized emails?_

I would be concerned if a job search website sent me a personalized email that included job recommendations.

Humor aside, I am tired of websites sending me faux-personalized messages that are really attempts at getting me to buy things. Better was the email from Derek Sivers sent to my CD Baby email address (about various projects he was working on). It ended with:

"Please let me know what's going on with you (really!), in case I can help in any way, and to keep this from being a one-sided conversation."

It seemed like he cared less about getting me to click on the earlier links, and more about actually caring about the people he sent the messages to.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know of any project with the goal to log and map a human life? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for some kind of undergoing study that follows an individual with the goal to completely map that individual's life.
Measured data could include: - Exact daily diet proportions - Daily air quality
- Steps per day - Minutes of physical exercise per week - Monthly vitamin readings - Weekly blood pressure - Hourly/Daily blood sugar - Minutes of social interaction per day - Monthly wage - Daily self-estimated happiness - Daily self-estimated worth etc.
What I'm looking for should be trying to map all possible long term health contributing factors in an individual's life.
Do you know of anything like this? Mayhap not even a study, but someone's personal project that they publicize on the web? <comment><USER2> This sound like Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Chronofile.

 _The Dymaxion Chronofile is Buckminster Fuller 's attempt to document his life as completely as possible. He created a very large scrapbook in which he documented his life every 15 minutes from 1920 to 1983_

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

Wonder if you could grab a hand on it through it's foundation archive.

<comment><USER3> That's... god damn impressive. I can't even maintain a simple diary for over 2 weeks without lapsing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not exactly what you're looking for, but related: [https://camlistore.org/](https://camlistore.org/), see also [https://camlistore.org/doc/overview](https://camlistore.org/doc/overview)

I thought of Camlistore because it's goal is

> _Camlistore is your personal storage system for life._

However, it's more of a general storage system or diary than a quantified self application.

From the homepage:

> _Camlistore is a set of open source formats, protocols, and software for > modeling, storing, searching, sharing and synchronizing data in the post-PC > era. Data may be files or objects, tweets or 5TB videos, and you can access > it via a phone, browser or FUSE filesystem._

Camlistore was started by Brad Fitzgerald (Golang core member and Memcached author)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ask this on [https://forum.quantifiedself.com/](https://forum.quantifiedself.com/)

or check QS :

\- [http://quantifiedself.com/2017/05/qs17-preview-dashboard- lif...](http://quantifiedself.com/2017/05/qs17-preview-dashboard-life/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Every Facebook user, ten years in the future?

Seriously though, that does seem to be the direction things are headed.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's called "quantified self".

I wish there was a systematically way to do that. I'd be the first to opt-in.

Privacy is overrated. It does more harm than good. Transparency is clearly the way forward, and what we'll lean from large-scale quantified-self will show that.

I'm confident that the model will soon switch from companies paying users (usually with services) to collect their data, to users paying companies to collect their data.

<comment><USER6> That's a very interesting expectation! What makes you confident in that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As long as it's volontary, fine. If you map me behind my back though, be prepared to defend your butt coze I'm definitely kick it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Public Gyroscope profiles show some data like: [https://gyrosco.pe/aquilax/zero/](https://gyrosco.pe/aquilax/zero/)

I'm using command line tools with text files as storage to track as much as possible, ledger for finance and two more tools I've built for tracking daily nutrition and timed events. Have a bash script generating a report every hour but don't make these public.

</comment><comment><USER10> I built something in this vein 6.5 years ago, and used version 1 daily* since, capturing data on myself to measure intent vs reality and what factors improved/screwed up my own life, all the while building in self awareness.

Here's why: [http://meometer.com/why/](http://meometer.com/why/).

Version 2 — which I worked on for the past 3 months — comes out in a few weeks and we're looking for beta testers.

[edit: clarity]

*almost

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://exist.io](https://exist.io) is making a good start (not affiliated, just a happy user).

</comment><comment><USER12> I know this project has been going on for a while: [http://aprilzero.com](http://aprilzero.com)

<comment><USER13> They have already created Saas based on that : [https://gyrosco.pe/](https://gyrosco.pe/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Try Facebook? There is someone out there ocd with themselves ?

</comment><comment><USER15> Facebook.com

</comment><comment><USER16> entire.life !

<comment><USER17> Aw thanks, @thebiglebrewski! I'm the creator of [https://entire.life](https://entire.life), and I'm happy to see people are finding it from this post.

While at this point in time Entire.Life is a rather poor fit for what @tdist is looking for, I think its approach works better for most people who aren't looking for such nitty gritty details of the minutia of every day. It's good for getting perspective and documenting The Big Things, but so far isn't great for tracking _everything_.

That said, my ambitions are larger than that. There's the whole Entire.Life Emporium ([https://entire.life/emporium](https://entire.life/emporium)), which right now has a very humble offering of things I hand-built, but which I aspire to open up to other developers in the future. I think integrations with Fitbit, Strava, etc would make complete sense for Entire.Life. And in that way, if you're as comfortable as @miguelrochefort with having corporations collect all of your data for you and then rent it back to you, you'll be able to use Entire.Life as a window into all such data.

<comment><USER16> Hi Chad!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mathup - <AUTHOR> https://runarberg.github.io/mathup/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mathup is a mathematical expression authoring tool that translates from an AsciiMath-like language to MathML. It was previously called _Ascii2MathML_. Mathup is a complete rewrite that includes changes in the grammar of the language.</comment>


Lost in clocks: non‐canonical circadian oscillation discovered in Drosophila - <AUTHOR> http://msb.embopress.org/content/14/9/e8567 <comment><USER2> This would put the last year's Nobel prize at risk.</comment>


Show HN: get location from tweets - <AUTHOR> http://tl.linkstore.ru

<comment><USER2> The background color of the page is irritating my eyes. May be it is happening only to me</comment>


Npm outage post-mortem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodejitsu.com/npm-post-mortem-01-24/

<comment><USER2> Getting fed-up with "post-mortem". It seems like this term is now everywhere, it's turned into a nerd analysis buzzword.</comment>


Show HN: Statuscoder, easily get any HTTP status code for testing - <AUTHOR> https://statuscoder.com I recently wanted to test how a part of a web app responded to a 502 HTTP status code from a remote site from which it was pulling data. When I came to test it, the remote site was working fine, but I still wanted the 502. So I created statuscoder, just append your desired status code to the URL and it'll respond with that code.
http://statuscoder.com
It's my first single-use project and I like its simplicity - it does one job and (hopefully) does it well. Is there anything else that you'd want to see it do? <comment><USER2> Also <http://httpbin.org/>. It can handle more test cases and the source code is on github.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bad SSL configuration on this server. Looks like it's missing an intermediate certificate.

Instructions for the site owner are here: [http://www.alphassl.com/support/install-root- certificate.htm...](http://www.alphassl.com/support/install-root- certificate.html)

I'm not adding an exception to view it, and non-SSL redirects to SSL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, didn't pick up on this - it works fine on my machine (without adding exception). I've removed the non-ssl redirect while I get it sorted. Thanks for the heads up :)

<comment><USER3> Intermediate certificates are easy to mess up, and they don't always show up for everyone as a problem.

Just thought I'd help out!

Test with `curl' is where I noticed it broken -- seems to work in Chrome, possibly because they cache intermediate certificates or something?

~% curl '<https://statuscoder.com/> curl: (60) SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK. Details: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://httpstat.us> does this too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not very familiar with X-Frame-Options and X-XSS-Protection headers. Do they actually do anything for errors or empty responses, or does this stack just add them by default?

</comment><comment><USER6> <https://statuscoder.com/418>

Thanks you made me smile. :) Can I ask you what your motivation for this project is?

<comment><AUTHOR> A part of our core app at work pulls in data from a remote source and the other day the remote server was giving a 502. When I came to test it, everything was fine again but I fixed the problem and wanted to see how it reacted again to a 502. I thought it'd be nice to have something where I could specify a status code and get that code back.

<comment><USER7> This is a great idea ... Thanks for sharing your test rig. Obviously this can't really be ad supported so maybe a network of us could donate bandwidth if it becomes an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty cool! I'm just disappointed that 420 doesn't say Enhance Your Calm, but then again, you're not Twitter <https://dev.twitter.com/docs/error- codes-responses></comment>


You're 16. You're a Pedophile. You Don't Want to Hurt Anyone. What Do You Do? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/youre-16-youre-a-pedophile-you-dont-want-to-hurt-anyone-what-do-you-do-now-e11ce4b88bdb

<comment><USER2> I sometimes think pedophiles are as much persecuted and hated today as homosexuals were 500 years ago.

When science can't explain things, it's up to society to be the judge. Never pretty.

<comment><USER3> The difference between the two is that homosexuality can be acted on between consenting adults. One can argue about exactly what the age of consent should be (18? 17? 15?) but it's difficult to argue that the difference in levels of maturity and in control over ones own life between an adult and a young teen makes their relationship sufficiently unbalanced that it can be impossible to prove that there is no coercive element. And pre-pubescent children are not emotionally mature enough to engage in sexual activity with full understanding - most would not choose to voluntarily and those who do participate even without coercion are typically traumatized.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do your programming notebook entries look like? - <AUTHOR> There have been many posts of what medium to take programming notes in, but I am more curious about what people's notes actually look like. What things do you find useful to keep? How do you organize the material inside each entry? Any actual examples would be amazing!
I've come to realize the benefits of notetaking, and I have started to do it myself. But right now I have entries by day in which I keep notes from any project in, and it ends up looking like an unorganized brain dump and something not really useful in the future.
Thanks for the info! <comment><USER2> I haven't kept any programming notes for years now, everything is just a quick search away when I need it...</comment>


How to market your startup - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/889/Pithy-Insights-On-Startup-Marketing.aspx <comment><USER2> Ignorable.</comment>


Turkey Now Has Swarming Suicide Drones It Could Export - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34204/turkey-now-has-a-swarming-quadcopter-suicide-drone-that-it-could-export <comment><USER2> To all the talented developers and researchers who work on this kind of tech. Please change careers and do something useful.

<comment><USER3> The nuclear bomb brought nuclear reactors, providing affordable electricity in many places. Drone swarms also have the potential to turn into useful applications.

<comment><USER4> Are you suggesting that nuclear reactors could have never been developed independently, and that the nuclear bomb was a necessary precursor? It sounds almost as if you're giving these deadly, weaponized drone swarms a pass because it's possible to do non-deadly things with drone swarms as well.

<comment> 0-_-0 > Are you suggesting that nuclear reactors could have never been developed > independently, and that the nuclear bomb was a necessary precursor

An uncontrolled nuclear reaction is significantly simpler than a controlled one. We still don't have fusion reactors, while fusion bombs were developed 10 years after fission bombs.

<comment><USER5> That's a very unconventional use of the words "uncontrolled" and "simple". The reaction inside a nuclear bomb (fission or fusion) has to be incredibly tightly choreographed down to the microsecond in order to work as intended, whereas a fission reactor is (egregiously oversimplifying) put some fissile stuff next to some other fissile stuff for a while and let it get warm.

The Chicago Pile came way before Trinity. Rock formations have even been known to come together accidentally to form natural nuclear reactors, but I think it will be a very long while before the first natural nuclear bomb.

<comment> 0-_-0 [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between- control...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-controlled- and-uncontrolled-nuclear-fission)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The naming is a little strange. I would call them Homicide drones

<comment><USER7> True but it's just following the form of "suicide bomber".

Maybe kamikaze drones would be more apt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's so obvious this is the next stage of conflict. China could have thousands of these sleeper drones in the US. To preempt before a real conflict, it could simultaneously take out most of the heads of state, causing chaos.

<comment><USER9> >China could have thousands of these sleeper drones

Why is China your example and not X? There are other countries that use killer drones, do secret killing and kidnapping operations on other countries territories etc.

I have the impression that a few years back you would have said Russia, then N Coreea and today China, like the big bad enemy is changing each few years depending on what politics need.

<comment><USER10> Or or or... Every now and then the balance of power shifts, global/regional powers fade and rise and now it is China's turn.

<comment><USER9> How did it shift from Russia to China, the same guys are still in power, the only guy that changed is Trump(I think he has mentioned China a lot but no idea if he caused this shift of attention or just using it).

<comment><USER8> It's an axis to upset the normal order. The first time they've had the possibility of doing it in prob 50 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To play devil's advocate against the panic I'm watching unfold in this thread: I don't think there's an enormous categorical difference here from weapons that already exist.

We've had long-range (longer range than most drones) guided missiles for decades. We've had drones that can launch them, for decades. Those technologies already have the ability to wipe out targets anywhere, anytime, en masse, with little to no risk. Yet we don't see people (as one commenter suggested) wiping out entire plots of land so they can start a new country. We don't see (most) countries turning such weapons on their own citizens. We don't see (very many) heads of state being assassinated in this way. What this tells me is that there are sociopolitical forces that make such things un- advantageous or infeasible, for one reason or another.

The only true differentiator I can see with suicide-drones is a potential increase in precision, though that's not _really_ true right now because these in the article look to be basically flying hand-grenades. That's not really better than a missile; in fact it's probably a lot easier to intercept or shoot down. Now, many of us have seen that (fictional) video with the micro- explosive assassination drones. Maybe that would change the game in some way, but I still don't think it's a drone apocalypse we'd be looking at. Nation states have _so many ways_ of killing people at this point. When they don't, it's usually because it doesn't make sense to, not because they lack some key capability.

<comment><USER12> You are relying on the presumption that they won't become autonomous machines for wiping out "criminals".

A drone can be used for more than a singular purpose. There might be more efficient ways to kill someone we already know like you said but what if we don't know them yet?

What if they don't exist yet?

Imagine you have a crowd and there is one violent person inside it, how would you immobilize such a person without harming the others?

<comment><USER13> _Imagine you have a crowd and there is one violent person inside it, how would you mobilize such a person without harming the others?_

Hmm...a gun?

<comment><USER12> _without harming the others_.

Humans aren't good in stressful situations and their aim isn't great. A ground view isn't necessarily helpful in situation where the criminal might be inside the group ring.

<comment><USER11> A rooftop sniper, then.

<comment><USER12> You can only do that for specific situations. What if the criminal runs inside the building or grabs a person to shield himself from the sniper? Are you going to surround the person with snipers from every direction?

Also sounds like the cost for those snipers would be pretty high than manufacturing few drones to lock in a target and swarm under their head.

Cost of drones is only going to decrease while the cost of sustaining human life remains more or less the same if not increase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty sure all major powers either have or will soon have the capability but don't feel the need to blab around about it.

The issue I have is when this gets actually exported to countries that may want to use against civilians (to squash opposition) though it was know for a long time this must happen.

<comment><USER15> The issue I have is non-state bad actors acquiring or building them on their own to create flying IEDs. It would be pretty easy to fly a drone into a crowded stadium or protest and kill hundreds if not thousands of people with a weaponized drone. Getting the explosives is the hard part and many groups have already shown they can do that.

<comment><USER13> Why aren't they doing this now? Why haven't all flights been grounded worldwide because they keep getting brought down by flying IEDs?

<comment><USER10> Because that is an escalation that nobody wants, for now. Even piracy was tolerated for a while until it became economically too disturbing. I don't think it all disappeared but it is not that bothersome.

If anybody started threatening commercial civilian flight, countries would fall on them like bricks. Quarantine for a few months was devastating on many fronts. Now, think if all flights were grounded for months...

<comment><USER13> I agree, which is why I don't think this hypothetical future threat is really any different.

<comment><USER10> yep, it all fits in with M.A.D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> These weapons are so cheap that the cost of starting a country just fell by an order of magnitude. I could see a hacker warlord of the future giving everyone who is a citizen some sort of transponder to prevent drone attacks and have the drones kill everyone else in a given area.

<comment><USER17> This might be one of the most ethically controversial comments I've ever read on the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, that was a chilling and terrifying look into the future.

But, to be honest, I'm not really worried. It doesn't really change the tactical situation of today. It just makes the attack vector cheaper.

The USA already uses drones that loiter from 30 miles away, and has a high resolution camera that can see you. Then you're targeted and a Hellfire missile is locked on, and shot at the target.

Same effect. The target is killed.

However, this technology increases the critical retaliation magnitude.

If the attacker chooses to assassinate the political leadership of the enemy country by suicide drone, then the victim country can retaliate with an all out nuclear assault.

So, we are now basically at the same situation we were at before. MAD principles still apply. Nothing has changed.

</comment><comment><USER19> Dean Ing wrote a SF novel 'Butcher Bird' exploring this. Why is humanity stuck in the same story? We make something cool. We then commoditize it. We then militarize it. I think every tool/discovery/thing we invent/produce should also be introduced with its own antidote/kill switch. Clearly a malevolent state would be able to excise the the suicide switch in the chip, but at least this is a start. Deploying an EMP device at scale is a lot harder than activating a paralysis/suicide switch.

After all, not everyone can deploy their own custom cpu. And the REAL worry is when a script kiddy gets one of these and deploys them at the next protest. I dont want to say the 'T' word. By making commodity hardware fragile and defeatable, we protect ourselves against our dark side. And no matter how good an AI gets at face recognition/inference/etc, we will still be able to turn it off. Did we not learn the lesson of 'Colossus: The Forbin Project'

</comment><comment><USER20> Can't drones be jammed? If so what does it take to jam their signals, fry their circuits with some sort of electrical guns? Having these war flying tools advanced so much in the last decade, isn't there an incentive to develop some good defense against them? Or maybe it is happening but it's not made public.

<comment><USER21> > jam their signals

Only if they're remote controlled. Nothing to jam if they're autonomous and using the right navigation sensors.

> fry their circuits with some sort of electrical guns

EMPs are painful for everyone involved, not just the target.

> incentive to develop some good defense against them

Far as I can tell, autonomous drone swarms are the Nash Equilibrium.

<comment><USER20> They don't have full autonomy yet, there appears to be a human operator who takes key decision remotely.

But, even if that was so, is there no way to have some defense against such attacks, having that they're electric and rather slow? Tesla ray guns come to mind but I am not very knowledgeable in this field.

<comment><USER22> While its true that they have human operators currently, they don't necessarily need a lot of autonomy to attack someone jamming their signal. Most of the drone signal jammers I've seen take the form of a handheld directional radio "gun", so it would be pretty easy to just have your bombdrone just direction find the jamming signal and bomb the operator, freeing the field for the n other drones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Swarming drones and AI is the scariest tech and we are going to see the consequences. Because it will be so cheap and ubiquitous. This isn't even the atomic bomb — where the work was just _too sweet_ to stop. This is basic technology with small incremental improvements tons of people can do.

Drones are the first robots that are among us (overhead). Self-driving cars are at least very expensive to produce. But drones can be mass-produced and deployed anonymously.

Drones with live munitions is terrifying. Imagine an anonymous swarm descending on Union Square in SF.

Even under normal operation, drones can fall and hit someone by accident. Let alone a swarm.

This is one technology I should not want to be in anyone's hands, but if it is, it should be in the hands of the State and not everyone. Just like bombs.

PS: With cheap cameras being ubiquitous and people can be identified by their gait, heartbeat etc. consumer level tech can also include an AI that can cross correlate everywhere you've been. Businesses would use it to fine you when you park your car for too long and don't go into the store.

But governments and police departments can concoct tons of believable stories with parallel construction and put anyone they want away. In fact AI can also be adopted in other places in the policing and judicial process (as with Palantir) leading to a Kafkaesque experience for sentencing.

And with deepfakes it's worse than that. Anyone could create a believable video of a rape-caught-on-video or a damaging "speech at a private event" or whatever. Reputational attacks were cheap already (see CIA handbook) but with a swarm of sleeper twitter bot accounts and other bots you could introduce anything.

In short I am worried we are going to be entering a dystopia soon. This video nails the drones issue:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

</comment><comment><USER24> Turkey is slowly becoming a regional power. It is interesting how well they seem to be playing the political game with EU, US, Russia and Israel. I am not a fan, but I can't help but to admire that level of skill to balance competing interests.

<comment><USER25> Turkey has a unique geographic location of immense strategic value. There is a reason NATO bends over backwards to include a country that is culturally completely incompatible with the rest of the mostly European members and even openly attacking other NATO members like Greece. What you see now is heavy influence of China that wants to take complete control over Europe under the guise of something called the "Belt and Road" initiative with the heavy support of some European industrial leaders.

Assume that the leadership in Turkey is nothing more than a puppet regime fullfilling those interests.

<comment><USER10> Konstantinoble: [https://youtu.be/Wcze7EGorOk](https://youtu.be/Wcze7EGorOk)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 500 isn't a lot but I imagine having 10,000 flying suicide drones could be very effective in battle. Probably an EMP would bring them down. I wonder if something as simple as smoke bomb would render them useless if they couldn't see properly.

<comment><USER27> EMPs are too expensive to fight drone swarms:

[https://www.quora.com/How-much-would-it-cost-to-build-an- EMP...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-would-it-cost-to-build-an-EMP-that-can- damage-a-part-of-country?share=1)

Similar to tanks vs. machine guns, but the machine guns needed human operators.

I'd think IR (e.g. [https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/139](https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/139)) could see through smoke, otherwise lidar keeps getting cheaper ([https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/tags/lidar](https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/tags/lidar)).

We'll need defensive drone swarms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most of the hand-wringing about this strikes me as pretty far-fetched. While I have no doubt that attack drones will be used extensively on the battlefield, I think their use beyond that will be isolated. There are few advantages to using drones as a weapon that aren't already available to both terrorists and states. If you want to hunt specific people down and kill them, you don't need a drone. And if you want to cause mass casualties, there are much better options _today_ than a swarm of hundreds of fragile one-time-use drones. Why don't we have more terrorist attacks using guns or truck bombs? Why don't we have drone IEDs right now? Why aren't drones taking down airplanes and helicopters all over the world? Why don't we have SAM attacks at every airport in the world?

The nightmare scenario most people seem to be worried about is the "slaughterbots" one from that video, but it doesn't make any sense to me. In some mythical future, we'll have the ability to use a tiny explosive charge to blow a hole in a specific person's head? I guess the person who came up with this missed the memo about the 300 million devices we have in this country that can use a shaped explosive charge to put a hole in someone's head.

And _who_ is the entity that's releasing these drones to kill half a city? If it's our government, they could clearly do this now if they wanted to. Why don't they? If it's another government, that's no different than any other act of war they could currently carry out. What advantage does this offer? If it's a terrorist organization, again, they have better and cheaper options available _today_. And it's not like we couldn't stop them: who was flying that giant plane? Who were those guys releasing these swarms from the van? Where did they buy these drones? Where did they get the explosives? Just like many other threats, we'd track them down.

I'm not saying there's no risk, just that I think it's completely overblown. Every new technology carries a risk that a malicious actor will use it for harm, but the same technological advancements also enable us to better defend ourselves. So maybe there is some future dystopia where huge swarms of anonymously-controlled "slaughterbots" roam the skies looking for targets to murder, but if we have the ability to do that, we _also_ have the ability to maintain defensive swarms, personal EMPs, chaff and smoke emitters, laser sentries, broad spectrum signal jamming, automated hacker entities, or whatever else we come up with.

<comment><USER28> "I could hire half the poor to kill the other half."

And in the end, even those jobs were automated.

Remember, how poorly people are treated now and in the past is how we are treated while the 1% needs something from us (our labor).

Do you honestly expect better treatment when we are useless eaters?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> USA has been operating drones since last decade in conflict zones in the Middle. The same drones that they use to "neurtalize" terrorists and dictators. Is there still time to oppose that or have we casually accepted them as a necessary for the war on terrorists?

<comment><USER30> The collective trauma experienced on 9/11 largely made anti war movements DOA. Combined with the sheer volume of conflicts and proxy wars were involved in, were probably too far gone.

<comment><USER31> not only did it stop anti-war movements, it also stopped anti-capitalist and anti-globalist movements. Seattle in 1999 to 2001 had huge protests and riots [1,2]. After 9/11, protesting the west almost meant supporting the terrorists. When globalisation used to mean the exploitation of the developing world by the west - now the west was under attack and so to attack imperialism via violent protest was to be sympathetic to the terrorist.

It's only now, 20 years later that the children of these protestors are repeating the same things their parents did. And it also explains why certain politicians try to associate protest with terrorism these days, that it's a different generation protesting explains why this association falls flat.

Today's protestors were not born when the towers fell.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests) [2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Mardi_Gras_riot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Mardi_Gras_riot)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seen one reference to slaughterbots already, but even without AI on board these are terrifying. These could be small enough to have little to no radar return, so just dropping them one by one out of an aeroplane would be a viable delivery method for stealth killers.

</comment><comment><USER32> Related: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK6IGG5zRU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK6IGG5zRU8)

</comment><comment><USER33> how robust are these systems to E/M interference?

<comment><USER34> Probably not at all. However I don't think any one has an EM defense aside from some really odd looking guns by the French and nuclear bombs. [https://interestingengineering.com/7-anti-drone-weapons- used...](https://interestingengineering.com/7-anti-drone-weapons-used-by-the- military-and-law-enforcement-around-the-world)

We're in a new arms race. Better drones. Better anti drone systems. Hopefully better pizza delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> funny how they cut the camera right before hitting the target. Probably cause it's not doing much at the moment.

<comment><USER35> It's anti personnel, so it fires before it hits the target to spread to a larger area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone out there working on affordable, autonomous, personal, portable anti- aircraft defense systems?

</comment><comment><USER37> It will take some sort of international agreement to regulate these bad boys.

<comment><USER38> Like the nuclear agreement, where only a small subset of countries rushed into having nuclear weapons and restricted others from having any, and now it is extremely unfair to other countries to not have the power but others do and enjoy having the weapon superiority.

No international agreement will survive war, they are just used to suppress and bully countries.

<comment><USER37> International agreements are not perfect but they are still necessary. They are more or less holding in the chemical-weapons area, which has really nothing to do with restricted technology.

Humans can (and must) agree to be better than frightened animals.

<comment><USER39> >They are more or less holding in the chemical-weapons area,

Tactical inconveniences that limit utility are what's preventing chemical weapon usage. Nobody uses chemical weapons because we have better, more effective ways to kill each other making them not really useful except in limited circumstances like terrorizing civilians (a static target that probably doesn't have gas masks) in areas where you have air superiority (e.g. Syria now, Iraq decades ago, etc.). Chemical weapons were mostly abandoned after WW1 because they just didn't work well enough for the effort and resources required to use them.

Edit: [https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use- ch...](https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical- weapons-anymore/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The good news is, the next war will be fought by drones against drones.

<comment><USER32> When one side's drones kill all the other drones, what happens to the people on the losing side?

<comment><USER40> The next genocide will be committed by drones too.</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla illegally leaked my startup data to my competitor - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dwebox/mozilla-illegally-leaked-my-company-data-to-our-competitor-9f8438bfdcab <comment><USER2> Hey.com is an email provider. Their _users_ have @hey.com addresses ... if the email came from an @gmail.com address, would you shout about them "leaking your startup data" to Google?

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting enough, I expected an email reply from @mozilla.com or its partners so it made it more confusing.

If you send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com you don't expect an answer from bob3218321798@whateverdomain because it may be someone who intercepted the email and may attempt stealing the identity.

Let me quickly quote what hey.com says about their emails:

"Can you read my emails? Technically, yes"

Your theory can be totally true and I may be wrong, however the fact that they dislike solo-founder companies stays in place.

Tumblr (acquired for $1Billion) started solo-founder, PoF (plenty of fish, acquired for $500+ M started solo-founder) and many more, check them on IndieHackers because there was recently a $1M ARR solo-founder organization documentary.

Nevertheless, every company is allowed to do whatever they want to do. We should also support minorities when it makes sense from an ethical point of view.</comment></comment>


Linda Liukas' Programming book for Children has Huge First Day on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://arcticstartup.com/2014/01/23/linda-liukas-programming-book-for-children-has-huge-first-day-on-kickstarter <comment><USER2> The comments on this thread make me want to quit HN for good.

I don't know Linda but I volunteered at RailsGirls in SF this past weekend. It was a wonderful experience and I'm hoping to organize one here in my area. I've got 4 kids (3 girls, 1 boy) and we do everything from LEGOs to making movies to programming to SnapCircuits to building robots.

I'm excited about this book. Even if I wasn't, I honestly can't imagine anything bad/wrong coming out of its existence. It's good to know many of you can. A woman who already speaks and organizes events is writing and illustrating a children's book about programming–and some of you sit and criticize her motives, pedagogy, and presentation skills from your desks. Bravo.

I generally don't swear, but some of you are jackasses.

<comment><USER3> So downvote and move on. You're not adding anything on topic with this meta comment and you could have foreseen it would hijack the top spot.

To add insult to injury, you're being drama-royalty: just because a few nobodies level unfounded criticism at her is not reason to "quit HN for good". Or you would've quit long ago. And instead of rubbing their face in their dumbness by explaining to them how wrong their criticism is, you're just going to stand on a soapbox and complain in general about how annoying the world is. Do something about it! And no, what you have posted is not doing something about it.

<comment><USER4> There's nothing wrong with voicing concern about the state of a community that you care about.

<comment><USER3> There is definitely something wrong with doing that with a top-level comment. It distracts from the actual topic. You should only do that if you have a _very_ good reason, such as noting the same behavior multiple times on multiple topics.

You should certainly not do it within two hours after the article was posted, to allow time for selfcorrection. That is the point of the voting system.

There is also something wrong with doing it in an appeal-to-emotion fashion, threatening how this is 'almost making you leave'. You should clearly address the problem at hand, citing examples and explaining the problem, instead of hiding the actual problem that the fuss is about in the third paragraph.

Too little content, too much drama.

<comment><USER4> _You should only do that if you have a very good reason, such as noting the same behavior multiple times on multiple topics_

A top level comment seems to be the only appropriate place to discuss the overall tone or tenor of a conversation. Responding to each dismissive/negative/unconstructive comment seems redundant and annoying.

<comment><USER5> How about you don't respond to tone or tenor at all? It's a bad argument on the best of days (PG's hierarchy has that near the bottom, one step above straight up ad hominem.)

It's a diversion _at best_. If you feel someone is being unpleasant, deal with it. You needn't be pleasant to be right. If they're being unpleasant and wrong, reply with why they're wrong, or alternatively downvote and move on. No need for meta noise in any case.

<comment><USER4> I respectfully disagree with the idea that we should simply ignore unpleasantness in the community. A healthy ecosystem is determined by a lot more than mere factual correctness.

<comment><USER5> But it's also determined by a lot more than a veneer of politically-correct pleasantness. I suggest that the best way to deal with such people is use the downvote button. Complaining about tone is just so much noise... it adds nothing to any discussion.

<comment><USER6> There is a very large gap between _not_ being a jackass and being politically correct. The OP of this thread suggested the former.

<comment><USER5> I see very little jackassery in this thread. Certainly nothing worth the amount of attention it's garnered.

I do, however, see a lot of useless, time-wasting, off topic tone arguments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is wonderful. I think some of the commenters here are missing the point by insisting that how they learned to code is how everyone should learn. If we're going to get to a point where coding is a basic type of literacy like math or reading (and I'm not necessarily saying I agree with that goal), then you have to start small when kids are young. Really young kids need some kind of framework. You can't just throw existing programming books at them and say, "have at it". Do we throw high school level geometry books at kids to teach them shapes? No, we give them all sorts of fun story books that incorporate shapes (and colors, and numbers...) so that they get the basics. I suspect this book is trying to fill in that early gap with respect to programming.

My youngest child could count to 10 at 18 months most likely because she insists on me reading the infernal book "Deborah the Dozy Duckling" all the time. It's about a duck that falls asleep while playing hide and seek. The whole book is frankly awful and I hate reading it, but that one page where Deborah's friends count to 10 turned out to grab her for some reason. Books can be very, very powerful learning devices.

<comment><USER8> Exactly!

I had a 1991-issued book called "Professor Fortran's Encyclopaedia" in my childhood. It introduced me to computers, modems, viruses and even several BASIC commands in the form of a comic book with funny characters:

[http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Энциклопедия_профессора_Фортран...](http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Энциклопедия_профессора_Фортрана)

I did not learn programming _from_ it (it contained no actual code other than a "hello world"), but it fired up my imagination and introduced me to computery things. I didn't get to have an actual computer until five years later, but when I finally got it, I got into programming immediately.

This kind of books is extremely underrepresented and I believe very valuable.

<comment><USER7> For me personally it was a book about William Pasteur and his development of the rabies vaccine. That book lit a fire in my mind for molecular biology (though that was not a well known "thing" at the time). To this day I can vividly recall the pictures of the "invisible army" marching through a sick kid's blood vessels. They were drawn as soldiers with bayonets and they stabbed the amorphous black blobby germs. A few years ago I located the book on Amazon. Interesting to see I'm not the only one whose career was influenced by this book: [http://amzn.com/0916392066](http://amzn.com/0916392066)

<comment><USER9> Awesome reading your post! My dad bought this book at a Goodwill when I was a kid, and I still remember how some of my friends thought the title was cheesy (you know, at that age when we're already trying to be adults and macho), yet my dad explained to me how it was actually very important, and how great and important Pasteur and the great lineage of scientists were. Awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like lot of comments have concerns with the programming part, so here is my view why indirect approaches can be also important:

When we started Rails Girls with Linda, we saw that there were plenty of programming workshops, books and education available. We didn't want to create one more. Instead we focused on creating easy, one-day workshop to get you to try and see what programming and technology is about, while also building your first sample application and getting meet the local tech scene. After the workshop we tell the people that you now have all the tools and contacts you need for programming or creating something. It's up to you to learn more.

The important part was that all these people (probably thousands at this point) got over the first step and of whom many wouldn't have touched programming otherwise.

In the same way I don't think this book should be about teaching programming that much, but more as creating stories and personalities for technologies to peak interest. Children's interest usually leads to questions and to more interest. You can then use that energy, answer the questions, teach more and extend the workbook exercises to more challenging things. You can also use those characters as a basis to explaining the technology world or talking about what you do for living.

The point is that when you're trying to get a new demographic interested, you need to find a way to get them over the first step, which is to get them involved and getting them interested. The earlier this happens, the better.

Why project like this and the Goldie Box are important, is that they create a story, a world and excitement around technology, for those who might miss or haven't found their innate interest yet.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for this reply.

It seems a lot of "problem solvers" in this thread couldn't quite imagine the problem you might be addressing, let alone the possibilities of the solution you chose.

Edit: Looks really promising btw. Best of luck moving forward.

<comment><USER10> Thank you.

(Just clarification that I'm not involved with this project but I have talked about it with Linda in the past. So my views are my own views, and not necessarily Linda's.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I was ~9, my parents bought me a book called "Wrote your own adventure programs for your microcomputer" [1] (Well, the Spanish version [2]) I remember reading and reading and reading it, and not understanding it... I tried to replicate some of the ideas, but I think it was quite dense (and the translation was not very good). The curious thing is that, when I properly started learning programming in college, I remembered that book, and a lot of things started make sense...

I say all this for two thing:

\- I think is brilliant that there are books specifically teaching basic programming to kids, so more of them is great news

\- Making a good programming book at that age is challenging, so please let it be good

This is, IMHO, an entry point, to give a taste of what programming is, so kids can try themselves later in front of a computer. Not sure what the best approach is, and I'm not convinced about the "story" approach, as I am not sure if it's interactive enough (as showing exercises). But, hey, there should be some options, and giving Linda's experience, I guess she has a better knowledge about teaching than me. So I'm sure it will be great

So, kudos to Linda... ;-)

[1] [http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3384/5718165821_2ce65d26fd_z.j...](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3384/5718165821_2ce65d26fd_z.jpg)

[2] [http://www.paraquenoseolviden.com/gallery2/v/electronica/pro...](http://www.paraquenoseolviden.com/gallery2/v/electronica/programa_aventuras/01.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1)

<comment><USER13> Those old Usborne programming books were very nicely presented. /Adventure Programs/ [http://www.worldcat.org/title/adventure- programs/oclc/104011...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/adventure- programs/oclc/10401114) and /Fantasy Games/ [http://www.worldcat.org/title/fantasy- games/oclc/12824029](http://www.worldcat.org/title/fantasy- games/oclc/12824029) had a nice balance between luring you with the game and its setting, and drawing you into how it was implemented as a BASIC program. The high-quality art supported both goals too. (You can see a zipped PDF of /Adventure Games/ here: [http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books/pdf/Write_your_own_A...](http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books/pdf/Write_your_own_Adventure_Programs.zip) at this site for computer-book abandonware [http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books- generic.htm](http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books-generic.htm) .) Still, there was a big old gulf between reading the colour section describing the program and actually trying to understand the big program listing at the back. /Introduction to Computer Programing/ [http://www.worldcat.org/title/introduction-to-computer- progr...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/introduction-to-computer- programming/oclc/20507511) is better in that respect, but unlike /Fantasy Games/ and /Adventure Games/ it stopped short of presenting any program as complex as a full interactive simulation.

<comment><USER14> Oh my goodness. I learnt to code using that book (Adventure Games)! It wasn't the only one, and as you say the big program at the back is somewhat mystical, but I remember it being instrumental in demystifying how a game was put together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Want to know how to teach kids to use computers? Give them an 8-bit machine from the 80's, and all the books for the thing that you can find.

My kids have an old 8-bit machine .. and they love the thing. They can type in their own BASIC programs from tons of sources, or load up a hundred games and other educational apps from a disk that I know won't contain anything weird or offensive .. on a machine with no access to the Internet. Its a wonderful thing, hearing a 6-year old tell his 4 year old brother how to make a sound eminate with just a few SOUND and PLAY commands ..

<comment><USER4> I've been thinking about the doing the exact same thing but have been afraid that the kids would ignore it and go back to playing Minecraft.

<comment><USER16> Minecraft, at least on Raspberry Pi, has a full API. It's likely a bit complex to get going with, but you might find you can build a layer your kids would find "useful".

[http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2013/04/minecraft-pi- edition-a...](http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2013/04/minecraft-pi-edition-api- tutorial.html)

<comment><USER4> I've been thinking about that, especially as my son keeps trying to do things that the game doesn't support out of the box.

He set up an "honor system" store where people were expected to asynchronously trade (by dropping) some commodity for some other commodity and got upset at people "stealing".

Either this generation of kids will be the best citizens the world has ever seen, or the worst.

<comment><USER17> > Either this generation of kids will be the best citizens the world has ever > seen, or the worst.

Both. Exactly as every past generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it _could_ be a great way of repackaging programming education in order to reach out to a different demographic, and we'll have to try out to see, so I wish this project all the best. Having said that:

> The book will be hardcover, 8x8 inches and 32 pages. The activity book is 16 > pages and paperback.

I don't see how you could cover even just the basics mentioned on the Kickstarter page in so few pages without going too fast (remember this is a picture book). Maybe turning it into a series with different adventures (topics) makes more sense?

<comment><USER19> I like and support the intent, but I feel the execution will be a let down in terms of usability.

How is it possible to teach even the basics of programming in 32 pages?

How would you explain a simple FOR loop to a child through a story?

<comment><USER20> ..... Forgetful George was crying in the corner.

"What's wrong?" quizzed Ivy Iterator.

"It's too complicated" moaned George, he continued: "Mr Main has asked me to deliver all of these invites to the birthday party but I keep forgetting which people I've given invitations to. I gave Sam three invites and Polly hasn't got one yet, it's no use! I can't remember which invite is which!"

"Don't worry" said Ivy, "lets work together to make this more simple! I'll remember which invitation we're giving and which one is next, so all you have to do is deliver the invite!"

George beamed, "Really? You can do that for me?"

"Sure thing George! They don't call me Ivy Iterator for nothing!"

<comment><USER21> So eh.. when is your book coming out?

(that's cryptic internet speak for, man I really like what you wrote, I can totally imagine the next chapter being about George asking Ivy how she did that!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> She's certainly very good at marketing, but based on the video and Kickstarter page I wonder how educational the book will actually be. A couple of sample pages would be helpful.

<comment><USER3> Your comment does not explain why you doubt that the book will be educational. So anyone that doesn't see a reason still won't see a reason.

      She's certainly very good at marketing

You're certainly very good at suggesting your criticism should be taken seriously, because you preceded it with praise.

<comment><USER22> I'd say it's up to her to build her case, not me. There aren't any sample pages, and what I saw focused more on story than programming concepts. They're not mutually exclusive, but her video seemed to me basically an emotional puff piece, a bit short on concrete details.

 _You 're certainly very good at suggesting your criticism should be taken seriously, because you preceded it with praise._

I think you're over-thinking it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here I was open-minded as ever, prepared to see something great, also prepared to scold at misogynistic crowd because there were hints in some comments that there is such crowd here... and then I watched the video.

Everything that can go in other direction related to stereotypes and gender roles - DID. It went so overboard that I think it's a part of marketing strategy for it. This is just sad, because I think the product could've done without it as well as it did.

<comment><USER24> I thought the same for a moment, until I realized I was basically watching a kids show. The colors, the enthusiasm, the fast cuts, this video was made by someone who knows how to get kids (we're talking 4-6 here) interested in something. If that's the sensibility she brings to her storytelling and illustrating, this book is going to be a wild success.

If it was a Kickstarter for an invention or a software product, I'd expect the presenters to be a bit more sedate. But given what she's selling, I think showcasing her personality helped make it clear that she's the right person for this job.

<comment><USER25> Had a similar initial reaction and came to the kid show conclusion too but it didn't make it okay in my book. Loved the idea of the book(s) and it's well put forward but her overacting this 'over the top happy go far' personality in the video was just distracting from the point of the whole thing. The video is targeting sponsors on kickstarter not kids who will read this. I think it would have been better to tone it down a bit and then just go all outboard in the promotional material after the book is done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Such an important project. Resources like this could go a long way towards solving some of the diversity problems we have in tech.

<comment><USER27> Also this is a good example of why we should have diversity in the first place.

<comment><USER28> Because men would never have thought of creating a programming book for kids?

[http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aprog...](http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aprogramming%20books%20for%20kids)

Or maybe because men can't draw as well as women?

Edit: probably I'll get downvoted for this so I'll just add that I think it's good this book is being made. Can't hurt to try different things to get kids interested. Just not sure why the gender comment was necessary.

<comment><USER27> "Just not sure why the gender comment was necessary."

I said nothing about gender nor did I intend to, that was your assumption.

<comment><USER3> Don't dodge criticism by retroactively changing the meaning of what you said. We all know damned well the major lack of diversity in programming is the lack of women.

Rather affirm that this is exactly part of what you were saying [1]. I'll one- up you: indeed, the chance of a male writing such a book is much smaller than the chance of a female writing such a book. Acting as if gender wouldn't influence choice of content and style is ridiculous.

And before anyone jumps on my back: I'm telling it like it is, which implies nothing about how I think that it should be.

[1] Why would 'diversity' be a good thing, if not for the fact that it results in, you know, more diversity? Differences in the input result in differences in the output.

<comment><USER28> "I'll one-up you: indeed, the chance of a male writing such a book is much smaller than the chance of a female writing such a book. Acting as if gender wouldn't influence choice of content and style is ridiculous."

So what aspects of it are female specific? Because women would be more likely to worry about educating children?

Seriously, answer the question instead of relying on prejudice, please.

I'd consent that female heroines might be more likely for female authors (didn't check, though), although in this case I suspect gender of author's children might be more important.

Edit: I have to go further - sorry, but you made me think about it. Of course the odds of a woman writing such a book are significantly smaller, simply because there are much fewer female programmers than male programmers.

<comment><USER3>
      Of course the odds of a woman writing such a book are
      significantly smaller, simply because there are much fewer
      female programmers than male programmers.

If you are talking about P(book written by female|book written by programmer). I was talking about P( _such a book_ written by female| _such a book_ written by programmer).

Which implies I assume P(female programmer writing _such a_ book) / P(male programmer writing _such a_ book) > P(male programmer writing book) / P(female programmer writing book). Also P(female programmer writing _such a_ book|female programmer writing book) > P(male programmer writing _such a_ book|male programmer writing book)

      So what aspects of it are female specific?

None. There are aspects more likely to originate from a female. As you say: female heroine. As you say: caring about education of children. You only need to look at the gender ratio in primary school teachers to affirm the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cynic hat on . . . I'm not sure I get this. Looks like an effort to promote an illustrator more than actually achieve the stated aims.

The reasoning is simple: Alan Kay and others have repeatedly demonstrated kids have a far greater aptitude for this stuff than is generally accepted. The packaging in this manner isn't the problem, the problem is the programming environments around today don't tend to do anything the kids are interested in without overcoming significant hurdles. i.e. unless you can do graphics easily forget it.

Back when I grew up in the 80s every 8 year old had to do Logo at school, partly to teach maths, partly to teach programming constructs. This was the part of the week almost everyone liked most. Make pictures, do maths, play with robots - what's not to love?

So, hope that theory is wrong, but it sets off too many alarms for now.

<comment><USER11> _> So, hope that theory is wrong, but it sets off too many alarms for now._

Yes. The the alarms bells are far too numerous when the co-founder of Rails Girls ("Our aim is to give tools and a community for women to understand technology and to build their ideas."), and community manager at Codeacademy expands her mission of education and inspiration to children via a book tailored to them.

Alarm bells everywhere.

Thankfully, you've caught the issues and rang the (many) alarms before the book has even been written. Very efficient.

<comment><USER29> The last thing needed in these comments is sarcasm.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for jumping in. Any thoughts on hyperbole?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Recently Chicago announced that they are going to make Computer Science a core subject for students K-12. And now this children's book is announced. It's really an inspirational time for not only diversity, but general exposure of CS to the mainstream. But seriously, what an amazing idea! Good luck with Hello Ruby!

<comment><USER31> I bought into Robot Turtles and found it to have been fascinating. Yet, I had real difficulty getting my ten year old nephew to even look at it and I wonder about how well a book, cutesy as it is, will fare.

For the game, it was "for kids" (he meant his younger sister), it was a BORED game, and did he mention it wasn't for little kids?

I am curious as to the format, book or board game, being relevant in this day

<comment><USER32> This is aimed at 5-7 year olds. My nepheices, who are about that age, _love_ storybooks - they must have a thousand or so.

Kids abilities and interests differ quite significantly between 3 and 5, 5 and 7, and certainly between 5-7 and 10. (I didn't realise how much until I watched these two growing up.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Link to the actual project page on kickstarter: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lindaliukas/hello- ruby](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lindaliukas/hello-ruby)

Her illustrations are really great.

</comment><comment><USER34> If not truly educational, it's at least great to get kids curious about programming, or more important: the mindset.

<comment><USER35> I think this is the most important point. She's packaging the concept of programming in a way that kids are likely to embrace (a la Sesame Street).

Whether the book is effective at teaching Ruby to kids remains to be seen, but I'm pulling for her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is a wonderful idea!

Was looking for exactly such a book for teaching my 7 and 8 year old brothers the theoretical basics of programming after getting them to create their own tiny games with MIT's Scratch.

As I'm also quite confident that Linda's execution will be of highest quality, I pre-ordered the digital version.

</comment><comment><USER37> What an incredibly important book for little boys, to normalize learning from women early on so they don't grow up to form stereotypes like "programming is for men". Bravo!

<comment><USER38> this comment is asinine. please leave HN.

<comment><USER11> I believe the point he was making was essentially that because this book eschews traditional stereotypes and cultural messaging about disciplines like science and math being the purview of males, not only do girls benefit, but _boys do as well_ by virtue of the fact that the values they are being taught are less selectively biased.

Not only do young women win (obvious), but young men do as well as they are less likely to both accept and perpetuate stereotypes.

It was a bit muddled, but that is how I read his argument.

<comment><USER39> I agree with the sentiment here, but please don't argue that boys benefit from this by having the chance to be obedient little utilities.

<comment><USER11> _> but please don't argue that boys benefit from this by having the chance to be obedient little utilities._

I wasn't arguing anything, merely clarifying the point of that poster.

 _But since you brought it up_ , the argument that boys benefit from being exposed to values like acceptance of diversity, and stand to gain by _not_ being exposed to gender prejudice as they learn about the world around them...well it is an argument I not only accept, but _embrace_.

What a cynical and devious re-framing of the poster's argument btw. Aren't you something.

<comment><USER39> Here we go... the delicate genius has been insulted...

Your use of quoting and italicised text makes you look so much more intelligent than me.

Btw, I wasn't reframing the poster's comment. That's what I was agreeing with, but I bet you couldn't see from behind all the red.

<comment><USER11> Again, I think you may be confused. The poster's argument that you're claiming to agree with is the same argument that you're taking issue with when you say:

 _> I agree with the sentiment here, but please don't argue that boys benefit from this by having the chance to be obedient little utilities. but please don't argue that boys benefit from this by having the chance to be obedient little utilities._

That boys benefit is _precisely_ the argument the poster is making (your framing them as "obedient little utilities" notwithstanding).

Additionally, the usage of italics simply indicates emphasis. It's one of the most mundane aspects of written English. Nothing fancy about it, FYI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm really pleased about this. I've been dismayed by the computer education my kids receive at school - Powerpoint basically. I've provided them with more, but it's so welcome to have the materials from an educator.

Backed.

</comment><comment><USER41> Good, good, good. More of this. Inspiring children to learn how to solve problems is very important. I don't know if it'll work out or not but we certainly need more people that try.

That robot-parent programming in the gym blog post was one of the more inspiring posts I read in the last couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER42> After reading the comments here, I am glad none of them are writing this book. If they had their way the kids would have gotten CLRS.

<comment><USER43> Yes, clearly the only way to teach things to children is with crayons and bright colors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Most people who know how to program attempt to teach their kids how to program. That being said, we need many more resources of all kinds directed towards teaching children. I hope this leads to 100 more programming books/videos directed at children.

I think these are awesome too [http://kidscodecamp.com/](http://kidscodecamp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER45> I expected more harsh comments based on all the meta comments.... I was disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why Ruby? Python would be a much better choice -- for that matter, C or assembly language [1] would be a better choice than Ruby! Here are the problems with Ruby:

\- It is hard to get Ruby running on non-Linux systems.

\- Ruby programs are incredibly hard to understand because the Ruby language is not _compact_ [2]

\- Rails is such a big part of the Ruby community, it is hard to find Ruby programs that aren't Rails webapps. So anyone who becomes interested in Ruby from the book, and searches online for more resources, will probably mostly get Rails-related hits.

\- These hits will not just be useless to a beginner, but intimidating and misleading. Web application programming is a poor area to direct beginners into, because even the most trivial web application requires understanding a dizzying array of complicated, interconnected ideas such networking, HTTP, URL's, databases, template processing, HTML, browsers...

[1] I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anyone who started programming in these languages, and I'm not saying it's impossible to start there even today. I'm just saying that today there are much better choices available, such as Python.

[2] [http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch04s02.html](http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch04s02.html)

<comment><USER47> Despite the title, I don't think the book actually teaches Ruby. It seems to be more about general programming concepts, with the main character being named Ruby because a) the author herself likes Ruby, and b) Ruby is both the name of a programming language and a common girl's name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hatin': most of the video she's fidgeting around and flirting with the camera, anyone else find that odd?

<comment><USER11> Any thoughts on the project itself?

<comment><USER48> Sure, it sounds just fine.... I couldn't sit through the video though

I don't quite understand why kids need to be taught to want to build things. Most kids already want to build things. They just need an easy interface to accomplish a task and incrementally improve their creation.

Before legos, did we need a kid book about masonry? Of course not, we just needed an easy and approachable type of block.

I'm not meaning to sound so negative. It's a good project with a worthy cause. But, it's value is in the fact that parents want to impart their interests on to their kids and will spend money on artsy little books. So, I'm just questioning whether this is the right product to accomplish the stated cause.

<comment><USER49> > I don't quite understand why kids need to be taught to want to build things. > Most kids already want to build things.

I'm reminded of this quote by Neil Degrasse Tyson in one of his speeches: "Stop worrying about the kids! They're fine, they're already interested in Space. It's the grown ups I'm worried about."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A children's book about programming is a great idea and it's very nice to see the market encouraging this kind of work.

That said, I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable giving this particular book to a young child. From the sketches it seems as if it will be light on fundamentals like logic and data structures, and a bit heavy on Ruby-specific abstractions and borderline political value judgements. I don't want to tell the younger generation which application stack they should be using, to say nothing of the completely out of place "Apple is selfish, Python is fascist" storyboards.

If you're interested in honest advice I'd remove the parts about what is wrong with all the other technologies and substitute material related to the history and engineering that made all of these tools possible. Mention how strings and floats are encoded as bits, for example. Young children are not going to be wondering _why_ they are learning Ruby instead of C or assembly, but they will be wondering _how_ it does all that cool stuff.

<comment><USER47> How on earth did you get any of that from the illustrations? I got the "Snow Leopard is a loner" reference (hah), but I don't see anything deprecatory towards Python or anything suggesting the book will actually teach Ruby syntax or idioms as opposed to general programming concepts. Anyway, the references to operating systems and programming languages are clearly meant for the adults who are reading alongside their kids. I very much doubt a young child with no prior exposure to computer programming will pick up on the jokes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> in a similar vein, I highly recommend people check out "Mostly Lost: Lauren Ipsum - A story about computer science and other improbable things." [1]

[1] [http://www.laurenipsum.org/mostly- lost](http://www.laurenipsum.org/mostly-lost)

</comment><comment><USER52> Why do you need a kickstarter before you write a 50page book? Just set up a preorder list, and bill when ready to ship the printed books.

<comment><USER53> Would you have heard of her book if she didn't have a kickstarter?

That's why she needs a kickstarter.

It's a marketing tool, possibly moreso than it's a crowdfunding tool.

<comment><USER54> If everyone was to use Kickstarter in this way, Kickstarter would lose the appeal it has for hosting niche / innovative projects. Diminishes the tool for the rest of us.

<comment><USER55> I back a shitload of kickstarter projects that are basically 'help me collect enough preorders to get a print run', and I'd much rather kickstarter be a hub for that kind of thing than another bottle opener / wallet / watch design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm surprised there aren't many books like that already in English. It was a Russian children's book that spiked my interest in programming when I was a kid. I didn't even have a computer, and neither did my school at that point. I don't remember the details too well, but it was basically about some boy in some imaginary land learning about algorithms, computer viruses, etc. in a really fun way. There were tons of very clear analogies, like algorithm and a cooking recipe.

</comment><comment><USER53> One line of code on the whole page, and the syntax is wrong. (Need quotes on "hi computer")

But besides that, I think this has the potential to be great... but I honestly didn't get much from the video about the content of the book. It's a story, and it's about Ruby. How? What does it teach? How does it encourage kids to interact with technology, or program computers, or whatever the goal is? All I saw were a bunch of pretty pictures and a promise that kids will learn something.

</comment><comment><USER57> This sounds like a fantastic book. I only wish that I had thought about this before. I want one for my kids and for my niece and nephew.

It is sad that both sides of the gender gap here have decided to make this book about gender. No one made this article out about people and they great things we can accomplish. I'm disappointed.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord I think children will be better off reading __why 's (poignant) guide_ instead, as it will teach them both the basics of common programming and give them a primer in avant-garde literature.

That or stop treating kids like kids, give them some standard and classic books, bootstrap an environment and let them dive in.

<comment><USER58> Not sure about everyone else here, but I'm definitely not smart enough to learn anything about programming from _why.

_why's (poignant) guide is awesome and entertaining... but I'm not learning programming from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Just donated. Programming should be thought as early as possible and should be in the curriculums. This project servers the same vision. I don't know if the book will be structured properly or will have a great impact on kids, and I don't care, I support this vision.

</comment><comment><USER60> This looks like a great project!

I'd also remind people about HN user aristus' Lauren Ipsum book ([http://www.laurenipsum.org/](http://www.laurenipsum.org/)) for kids. Every one you buy he donates one to schools, etc.

</comment><comment><USER61> Cool. Clearly there's a huge demand for this, so good to see it's being done. It occurred to me that this may be just as effective (maybe more?) in promoting coding for women who have kids, rather than just the kids themselves.

</comment><comment><USER62> Quality of execution is a big uncertainty but this is a wonderful idea.

</comment><comment><USER63> But Ruby is bad for children (and is known as the preferred language of brogrammers/women haters). Read Land of Lisp instead.

</comment><comment><USER64> Typically a publisher would like to see a sample chapter or a few sample pages before investing. That would be nice here.

</comment><comment><USER65> it would also be nice to see books and resources for children going up to about 14/15\. It would be a shame to see a gap in their education when they can really get going.

</comment><comment><USER66> She is adorable! I was mesmerized by her than the message. I I was too distracted by her overall cuteness. Is this too "boyish" to admit?

Overall, I think the book idea is for a good cause, regardless of the author.

I also think this comic was very good too for learning ruby. too bad the author disappeared mysteriously.

[http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant- guide/book/chapter-1.htm...](http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant- guide/book/chapter-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER67> For your consideration: Her last name means "slippery" in Finnish. She's puzzlingly good at pretending to smile and acting cutesy. Both are far from natural for a Finn. (Source: I'm a Finn)

<comment><USER11> _Shhh._ Here you go:

www.reddit.com

<comment><USER67> You know, if you really think about what kind of people this most _civilized_ of discussion forums finds desirable among its ranks, you'll realize that self-important snobs don't make the cut.

Oh, and I bet you're on Reddit too, just like most people here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> a boys one would be great too, screw equality let's just get as many kids programming as possible.

<comment><USER4> What? It's not for girls, it's for "children". I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure that boys are children too.

<comment><USER65> then why is the top comment banging on about solving problems for equality.

<comment><USER4> Because roughly 50% of children _are_ girls, while less than 50% of programmers are. I just backed this to give to my son _and_ my daughter.

<comment><USER65> ...so if it's targeted at children, 50% of children will take it up, thus the ratio of male:female programmers will remain the same, there'll just be more of them.

The book is aimed at girls. It would be nice to think that children were not conditioned by gender stereotypes at the age of 6/7, but unfortunately they are.

<comment><USER4> The current gender ratio is the result of decades of gender stereotyping that things like math and science and programming were "for boys".

I'm going to believe the author when she says that this is for _children_. I just don't buy the idea that boys can't enjoy stories with female leads. Look at Brave or The Hunger Games. My son loves those.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Automobile Engine Disabling Device - <AUTHOR> http://www.public.navy.mil/spawar/Pacific/TechTransfer/ProductsServices/Pages/AutomobileEngineDisablingDevice.aspx

<comment><USER2> > _The device is composed of a fluid delivery system coupled to an electrical > power source, which propels streams of conductive liquid onto a target > vehicle. The streams act as tethers creating a closed circuit for pulses of > electrical energy to be delivered, disrupting and disabling the vehicle's > electrical systems. The device can be outfitted to various mobile and aerial > platforms._

So this is a "car taser" that uses a liquid instead of wires. It sounds like you have to hit the car with 2 of these conductive streams at once. And please, do not cross the streams!

I'm a bit disappointed. I was hoping that the Navy had weaponized the recent CAN hacks (that has recently been used to disable a Jeep and other cars) for LEO use.</comment>


Ask HN: How hard is it to hire Rust developers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> From prior experiences, such as using Python from 1999 through 2005 and Common Lisp between 2005 through 2012, you have an _advantage_ when recruiting for a language considered "exotic" by standards of the given day.

At two different startups circa 2007 and early 2008, we received many, many very high quality candidates with a one sentence description posted to the right place (e.g., planet.lisp.org) saying, "Use Common Lisp in Seattle."

I've had comparable experience with that approach for Rust in Vancouver, BC last year when looking for devs that were merely "familiar" with the language, even if no professional work experience with Rust but "Ideal Candidates" having "Rust, Go, C++, C, Python or Lisp family of languages". That was posted via this-week-in-rust.org.

That one was posted with relatively poor posted salary, yet we still saw high quality candidates for the senior level role. The intermediate level dev that was ultimately hired apparently worked very well for the company after I left.

</comment><comment><USER2> Also consider viabale options for Plan B: on the job training worked well for us even before Edition 2018 landed.

We had a senior level Java developer learn Rust on the job and be very productive within a couple of weeks. I joined shortly after and was experience with Rust. This former Java dev and I shared knowledge equally: I learned the Diesel ORM and our PostgreSQL integration from him with a few short conversations, and I perhaps helped abbreviate his remaining Rust learning curve with maybe three 1-2 minute conversations.

Another person at that same company was primarily a React developer, and he picked up Rust in fairly short order as well, but I had less involvement there.

A third person was fresh out of an extended bootcamp-style co-op program, and knew Java and React & React-Native, but this her first position after graduating. Note that she came from a non-programming background prior: goods trading industry. Also English is her third or fourth language. I walked her through potentially tricky bits of syntax and semantics (such as descructuring-bind for Structs) in an afternoon. Edition 2018 had long-since landed by her arrival, so that helped.

Modifying existing Rust code and following the patterns worked well. She started small but progressed quickly. Within a few short months, she was adding back-end API endpoints (actix-web pre-1.0) for her front-end needs, and she was creating new .rs files with most PRs merged as-is.

</comment><comment><USER3> A related question that I would argue is equally relevant: how hard is it to become productive on a Rust code base if you're good at other languages? And how much does it vary by language?</comment>


Ask HN: Resources for finding short term projects? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a webdev in the midst of a work dryspell although I anticipate having plenty of work in 2mos or so. Im wondering what resources are out there for finding shorter term project work in the 1-3 mos time frame. My interests are Python, Django, Server side JS. <comment><USER2> As someone in a similar position, I can offer a few tips.

First, realize that the search process is totally different from a job hunt. Good tech companies hire for _talent_ , not skills. However, developing talent into something comercially useful isn't a short-term proposition. Unless you have extensive project management experience/have shipped several impressive things, your best bet is to become expert at a particular skill/tool, and sell that expertise, than being a good "back-end developer".

You need to get comfortable around non-techies. This means: explaining how your contribution reduces expenses/increases revenue, realizing the client often doesn't know, or frankly give a damn about the technical merits of the project ("python? you mean, like, the snake?"), and that you'll have to network a lot with non-technical people. Tech people might be a source of referrals, but most of them default to "building" vs "buying" (paying you) to get the job done.

Get off the internet. Seriously. Business-to-business commerce is still very telephone, referral, and relationship-driven. Elands, craigslist, etc. puts you head-to-head against undeniable idiots, offshore guys whose cost of living is about 1/10th that of oakland

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://djangogigs.com/> has worked out well for me

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd stay away from elance and other similar sites if I were you. Focus on getting your name out there as a freelancer in certain niche communities (Django, for instance) rather than competing mostly on price for any kind of work.

<comment><USER5> I highly and wholeheartedly disagree with this. Yes, there are a number of projects on elance that are only concerned with price, but I've managed to pick up a few good clients via elance who were willing to pay a higher fee for quality work. My suggestion: don't apply to the jobs that say their budget is $5-10/hr for 3-6 mos.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestions, thanks everyone! Ill give those a shot (esp. the area specific ones such as djangogigs.com) and report what worked and didn't work for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Various websites exist to connect project creators and programmers. You'll pick up work if you dig around.

www.elance.com (better fixed jobs) www.vworker.com (better by the hour) www.ifreelance.com (don't know it well) www.scriptlance.com (smaller?)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've had some good luck with <http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com>. It requires a subscription (< $10/month) and you can cancel and re-subscribe at will.

</comment><comment><USER8> Checkout the gigs section in craiglist. There are lots of short term projects there. You never know what will happen...

<comment><USER9> Amen. I found a three month software gig on craigslist that turned into two more years of really interesting work with great people.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This thread is really inspiring. I havent found anything yet (only posted this morning :) but Im feeling confident that something cool will turn up out of all of the linked resources. The craigslist gigs idea seems like it has potential. For some reason I never considered it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm currently working on a project devoted to hooking up devs and developers based on projects that they want to work on - what sort of work are you looking for? Have an academic interest in what sort of criteria you're using to choose what to work on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Im mostly interested right now in python web apps and node.js type projects. A couple things I whipped up recently:

      whosreppin.me : A site to connect voters with their local reps (django)

      hckrn.ws : A mini hacker news targeted for mobile devices (node.js / couchdb)

Is that what you were looking for?

<comment><USER10> Yes, exactly!

What drew you to these projects?

<comment><AUTHOR> hckrn.ws was a class project that I used for getting my hands dirty in some server side js + nosql technologies so it was an opportunity to kill those 2 birds w/ one stone.

whosreppin.me was built for an NPR KQED iPad hackathon event. So it was super simple and streamlined and I used a more familiar set of technologiess (postgres, django) in order to mash something up in a weekend. The neat part is that whosreppin.me shared 1st place w/ one other team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://jobs.plasis.co.uk> aggregates freelance jobs from 9 different job boards. programmermeetdesigner.com is also good.

</comment><comment><USER12> Where are you located?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oakland, CA. Oh but I should add I'm ok w/ remote.

<comment><USER13> You couldn't be better placed than here (well, anywhere in the Bay Area).

I would try attending some meetups on the areas/languages you want to work in as there are always non-tech people turning up to them looking for people to help build a prototype for investment/etc.

To be honest, it's a good idea for anyone who regularly has up-and-down work (eg freelancers, independents, etc) to attend these types of events as you can always have work lined up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These fine folks give $1,000 for small projects on a monthly basis: <http://awesomefoundation.org>

<comment><USER15> Do you have any more info about this? FAQ&about sections of their site is under construction, and it all seems too good to be true.

<comment><USER14> I applied a while ago when their site had more details and they were just based in Boston. I learned about them from a Reddit ad. Seems like it's some tech people who made money and want to give it away in exchange for having you do awesome stuff. Maybe it's under construction because they're expanding to new cities now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meeting people.</comment>


Ray Bradbury is Not Dead - <AUTHOR> http://wordholmes.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/ray-bradbury-is-not-dead/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR - Ray Bradbury is dead.

<comment><USER3> That's a really poor comment, and is not at all a fair assessment or summary of the item in question.</comment></comment>


Who are you "quoting"‽ - <AUTHOR> http://www.cooper.com/journal/2010/12/who_are_you_quoting.html

<comment><USER2> I have no problems with quotation-marks used to denote sarcasm, questioning validity, or academic curiousity (the first three categories described in the linked article), because they all communicate the same thing: "I'm deploying this word because it's well-recognised, but it might or might not be the word I personally would choose".

The fourth category in the article, quotation-marks for simple emphasis, really irritates me because it's the exact opposite of the above: endorsement of the quoted words, rather than dissociation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely a "strange" world. I can't believe that Target would use the quotes in that way. It's really surprising given their emphasis on design.</comment>


Show HN: Daily condensed MLB games, delivered direct to your inbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailybaseballupdate.com <comment><AUTHOR> This was my weekend project. Pretty straightforward, uses clojure + amazon SES + amazon SimpleDB to send links to MLB's public condensed videos, every day at 7:00 AM EST. Hope this is useful for somebody!

</comment><comment><USER2> thanks mate, I just subscribed, also shared with friends. Hope it will work for you, great idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>