Ask HN: Looking for beta testers for receiving cooking help via text - <AUTHOR> I started a site where you can get cooking help from chefs via text and am looking for a few beta testers.
How it works is through the day if you have any questions, you can text the number for whatever questions you have.  For example, you might ask about a good salsa recipe, what a recommended knife is, or how to cook a particular vegetable.
Currently the plans are $20/month, but for the beta testers it will only be $1/month.  I probably only can support about 5 testers at the moment so if you are interested feel free to post below or email daniel @ cookingmayday.com . At the moment only US numbers are active for the beta testing plan.
The site to check out also is https://www.cookingmayday.com <comment><USER2> Some friendly suggestions:

1\. The domain name could be different. It is a little longwinded and it does not convey the value of the service clearly. It places it in a SOS context, whereas you will be able appeal to a larger customer base if it were positioned as a Chef-on-tap service.

2\. How do you throttle chatty customers? How do you rebate non-power-users?

3\. $20 per month is on a high side (I can get A family plan of Google Music and Netflix for ~3$ more per month). I am not saying everything should be pegged to these services, but as a customer I think this way. May be charge per question?

4\. How have you implemented the chat? Curious to learn.

All the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Point taken. I'll think about swapping the domain name over in the next few days (as yours was the second comment already mentioning this.

2) That's a good question. Right now I don't have any data to examine the trends (hopefully I'll have more after the beta testing period).

3) I did a Google Survey and saw that a subset of the population would be willing to pay $20

[http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/view?survey=6...](http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/view?survey=6sx6ti2kqfh3c&question=1&filter=&rw=1)

But this assumes people want on demand answers. If answers aren't on demand (maybe can be answered nightly), then I might be about to drop the cost down to $2 or $3.

4) Chat is currently integrated with twilio.com. I provisioned a Los Angeles based number (213) where anyone can text it (but it would be targeting towards the US market).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's your rationale for making beta testers pay?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is half technical and half psychological. Coding wise it would take me too long to implement a free plan (as it actually goes through Braintree's gateway to auth the card).

And just imo, but charging $1 helps filter who is really serious who might use the service. And there is something about charging people money which makes them more involved in the transaction compared to free.

<comment><USER4> +1 Good call here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are cooking and have a May Day event or other urgent need, would you not be more likely to ask Google and get an immediate response? Sorry, still trying to get my head around the value proposition. Can imagine price resistance when you get get many professional opinions for free via Google.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess perhaps the domain name wasn't the best choice. What the service offers is a an authoritative opinion of the best response in a cooking situation. If you search Google, it is really hard to filter out what the right response to an answer is.

The best value proposition of the service is to use it as you go through your cooking journey, and not necessarily as only in mayday situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool idea. I'd be down to pay after the 14th of this month as a beta!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good! Can you drop me an e-mail at email@example.com ?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to start learning PHP? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for the best resource(s) to learn PHP, and I have absolutely no idea where to start. Ideally, this resource will:<p>- Be for a complete beginner - Embrace Simplicity - Be down to earth - Be a good way to develop a foundation to move on to more intermediate / advanced things<p>I know a lot of you are PHP gurus! Thank you for the help, there's just so much out there and I'd love an opinion on where the best place to start is. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Don't. Edsger Dijkstra once wrote:

 _The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence._

I'm not sure I'd go quite that far in describing PHP since it actually _does_ have most of the facilities of a modern programming language. I will say that it isn't a good choice for learning the basics of programming, for reasons that are more cultural than technical.

A large amount of the example code that can be found around the net in PHP is less than exemplary relative to what's typical for other languages. To make matters worse, the language itself has a large number of inconsistencies and bad practices in its design. It feels like something that has built up over the years a hack at a time with no coherent design philosophy behind it because, if I understand the history right, that's about how it happened. While many real-world systems are like that, it should be your goal as a programmer to avoid it.

What do you want to get out of learning PHP? Maybe we can suggest some alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER3> Get a book and just get stuck in. Do all the exercises, do not copy and paste.

Search Quora/Stackoverflow/Amazon for recommendations.

<comment><USER4> Sounds good as a resolution, but sticking to a book may not work for all.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I found Youtube videos very helpful as well. If you know where to look, you can find Lynda.com videos around too..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had no programming experience outside of VBA Excel macros and just jumped in with a project. I googled everything I needed. Within a month, almost everything I needed was exclusively in the online PHP documentation manual.

Start with a project. Build a login system, from user sign up to sign on. That will teach you sessions, user input validation and interacting with your database.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is no single recipe that fits everyone's needs. But it's safe to go step by step, from basic tutorials to coding practice to understanding more complex code. Invest in a good reference book later when you know you will stick to the language.

As an absolute beginner you could first have a look at these pages: <http://www.php.net/manual/en/getting-started.php> and <http://devzone.zend.com/article/627> Then you could play around with some code before learning a simple but powerful framework like Kohana or Codeigniter.

</comment><comment><USER6> Come up with an idea for a project and write down the process. For instance say I want to build something like HN. I would write down something like I would want all post titles displayed , if someone clicks on the link display the entire post. Not sure if that makes sense but writing it down especially if it is a complex project you have in mind will help you see the flow of things and will make coding it a bit easier.

Next step is to build your project and google your way through it. With your guideline that you wrote it will help you look up things and once you see the code matched with what you wrote things will click more. Don't just copy and paste what you see but learn what the code is doing and if need be look up things you do not get like "die" or why echo instead of print.

Lastly read up on security since what ever you build will probably not be able to go live. Read why that is and how to fix it.

</comment><comment><USER7> The way I became a journeyman PHP-er was to mess around with Wordpress. There are enough resources out there that Wordpress will give you the basic knowledge.

That's not to say it's good or talented knowledge, but it's basic knowledge. (People don't like that Wordpress mixes templating with code. It's unelegant and sorta gross.)

<comment><USER8> This is not an attack on you personally but I absolutely abhor the inner workings of wordpress and would thoroughly recommend against it for a beginning developer.

A much better approach would be to start a simple html/css based website and start abstracting out common elements, building a templating system, get content from a database, dispatch http requests with a front controller until you've got something that looks like an MVC based system.

Then you start from scratch and do it again, learning from the horrible code you wrote the first time.

Eventually you realize that a framework does it better than you and learn to use rails, zend etc.

<comment><USER7> For me, it was really about speed. I used Wordpress because I could learn it quickly and I had a modified blog (my goal) as quickly as possible. I didn't have to worry about learning how to connect to a DB, etc.

Today, I actually hate Wordpress as much as you do. I now use Crowd Fusion whenever possible, but Wordpress's introduction to PHP helped a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I asked a similar question a while ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1697995>

Going off the suggestions there, I decided to use the ZEND framework and I've been using the following book: <http://amzn.com/1430218797>

If you want to build a CMS project, I would highly recommend this book. The examples and code are really easy to follow. Good luck and feel free to email me if you have any questions!

 _(Note: I did have some RoR experience, but I was completely new to PHP)_

EDIT: Curious to know - how does HN feel about starting with the ZEND framework?

</comment><comment><USER10> I am also in the same situation! I googled and found some intresting resource:

1\. List of books stackoverflow.com/questions/90924/what-is-the-best-php- programming-book

2\. Book tuxradar.com/practicalphp

3\. Community and much more phpkode.com

</comment><comment><USER11> You need to suggest to us at what level you're at. Are you familiar with HTML/CSS? Are you competent with any other languages at all?

Guessing that your familiar with HTML, I'll mention that you'll probably find it easier if you set a target end-product for your efforts. Like, planning to make a simple blog system or a rss parser. Don't overplan it. Just sketch it out, so to speak, try to find a guide for it (there are plenty of guides for creating a simple blog or rss reader in php) and then try to tackle each part of it in turn.

You might also want to try using a PHP framework like Codeigniter (which is nicely documented), CakePHP or Kohana.

</comment><comment><USER12> When I decided I wanted to learn coding, this is the first book I purchased, and I can't recommend it enough:

[http://www.amazon.com/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-Step- Step/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-Step- Step/dp/0596157134/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1294110146&sr=8-2)

It goes through a good amount of material while still being a beginner's book, assuming only that you know a little html. It's very thorough in what it does cover, and should give you enough confidence to decide what you want to learn next, ie, more in-depth PHP, another language, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd recommend this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Build-Database-Driven-Using- MySQL/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Build-Database-Driven-Using- MySQL/dp/0980576814/ref=dp_ob_title_bk)

It assumes you are comfortable with basic HTML and text editing, and nothing more. In the process of building a basic CMS, you cover pretty much everything you need to know to build whatever you really want to build, as far as the language goes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Do you have experience in another language or is this your first? Any CS knowledge?

</comment><comment><USER15> this is a good question. why is there a bunch of fun challenges/books for python, and a bunch of fun books for ruby, but with php everybody just laughs at you?

</comment><comment><USER16> Don't learn.. If you are gonna learn something, learn ruby or python.. PHP is a dead-end..

</comment><comment><USER17> Hack around with wordpress.</comment>


On board the world's first 'gigayacht' - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=541299&in_page_id=1811 <comment><USER2> I feel kind of sorry for the person who will buy such a ship. There are so many more interesting things in the world, yet for all that persons money, those things seem to be out of reach.

</comment><comment><USER3> I heard somewhere the annual maintenance cost for a megayacht is around 10% of its price. That would mean each year the money that goes into maintenance alone could buy you 7 Eclipse 500 jets. Somehow I think I may have trouble sleep at night, even if I'm a billionaire.

</comment><comment><USER4> A large cruise ship (2600 passengers) costs about twice as much:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Princess>

</comment><comment><USER5> Check out Wally's site over at <http://www.wally.com>

They really do some interesting designs, very different and very stylish. I'm into yachting (I live on a boat) and all the younger guys in this segment are in total awe over the Wally 118 foot poweryacht.

They are the Apple of yachting: Different, daring and beautifully designed.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I find a designer for my side project? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on a side project called Avid (www.avid.io/playlists/billboard100) for almost 5 months now and I'm looking for a designer to help me step up the look of the site. It's a website that revolves around creating better playlists for YouTube and making it easier for bloggers/users to create "channels" for others to watch.
I'd love to find a designer to partner with to build out this project for fun, but I have no idea where to look. Do people normally go to Dribbble? Meetups?
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Best, Ed <comment><USER2> I'm interested in discussing your project. Please check out my portfolio at www.lwgraphicandwebdesign.com. . Also, there are many places to find designers: behance, sortfolio,dribble, and twitter are a few great places to start. I hope this helped! -Loryn</comment>


Six minute nap 'may boost memory' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7254555.stm

<comment><USER2> My standard nap is 15 minutes - it works great to reenergize, especially when I'm not getting enough sleep in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm...I'll let you know what I think about this in 7 minutes.

<comment><USER4> You said that 3 hours ago... I guess you have the same problem I do: Nap = Sleep.

<comment><USER3> It works great! I was so refreshed, I coded for 5 hours straight before I realized I forgot to come back here.</comment></comment></comment>


Mapping Mountains - <AUTHOR> https://mapzen.com/blog/mapping-mountains <comment><USER2> Neat!

Annoyingly it seems every time you scroll pass one of the maps a browser history entry is pushed

<comment><USER3> They always keep 2 iframes loaded; when you scroll down (or up) the old iframes are unloaded by setting their src="" and the new ones are loaded by setting their src attribute to the correct URL (kept the "source" attribute of the iframe).

However, when you change the src attribute of an iframe, for some reason your browser creates a new history frame. I suppose so you can navigate inside of an iframe and go back/forward as expected.

The correct solution is to create/remove the entire iframe element instead of reassigning the src attribute.

See discussion at [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14737365/modify-iframe- sr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14737365/modify-iframe-src-without- entry-to-history-object)

You can see it in the HTML source of the page around the "check visibility every half-second, hide off-screen demos to go easy on the GPU" comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Super awesome writeup and use of leaflet, very pretty maps! I work for a drone company and we deal with DEM data all the time, I recognized your first image of the clamped PNG.

Here's one of our office: [http://kespry- experiments.s3.amazonaws.com/elevation/valueFo...](http://kespry- experiments.s3.amazonaws.com/elevation/valueForPixel.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> The author keeps referring to "Gak", with which I'm unfamiliar. Is it this? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelodeon_Toys#Gak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelodeon_Toys#Gak) Is it just because of the color?

<comment><USER6> Yes, it's most certainly that. See also [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gak](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gak)

<comment><USER7> But also the freeform sprawling shape that Gak was packaged in: [https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MSDVImHZsFU/hqdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MSDVImHZsFU/hqdefault.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm really glad someone is producing a service like this and will start using it as soon as coverage is at least national!

I wrote a webapp hillmap.com that does client side slope shading for travel in avalanche terrain a few years ago using a usgs webservice that has since broken. I've looked into building a replacement but it is amazing how hard it is to find consistent elevation data across the globe.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's cool. It's amazing how much overlap there is with gamedev concepts.

</comment><comment><USER10> It'd be cool if there were more maps you could play with on their site.

</comment><comment><USER11> Back button breaks (Firefox).

</comment><comment><USER12> From the article: "Fly with me now, on a tour through the world of elevation data"

Basically a nice article talking about how the data is gathered, stored, and sometimes used.

<comment><USER13> The article has nothing to do with how the data is gathered, stored and sometimes used. It's about real-time rendering of elevation maps in the browser. It's really impressive work.</comment></comment>


Megabox will replace 15% of ads on websites with Mega's own ads - <AUTHOR> http://bbgamer.co.uk/post/26156196488/megabox-why-its-not-so-awesome

<comment><USER2> This sort of ad replacement has actually been done plenty of times before, by malware and by shady toolbars. Pretty much no one is going to be okay with this: the music industry and the US government hate the guy's guts; it's directly stealing money from Google; it wants to directly compete with iTunes; it's directly stealing money from every random blogger and press outlet that might cover it; and other companies doing exactly this was responsible for destroying Microsoft Windows' reputation in the eyes of consumers. Oh, and it's a backdoor held by someone considered wildly untrustworthy. So on the list of parties that have a vested interest in seeing it fail, we have:

        - The music industry
        - The US government
        - All ad-supported press outlets and blogs
        - Microsoft, Apple, and Google
        - The computer security industry

Oh, and it's also probably illegal (under copyright and tortious interference grounds). I think this is really just a signaling ploy; Dotcom wants to be able to say that he tried to come up with a monetization model for the music industry. But to say that this is doomed a fairly significant understatement.

<comment><USER3> You're generalizing too much. To say that noone is going to go for this is absurd.

People who pirate songs in large part are clueless. If they download a torrent with an exe in it, they're still going to click on it because they don't know better.

If you willingly give the public a chance to replace a small amount of ads for free stuff, they're going to go for it, because they dont care about replacing ads that were already there, and they benefit.

It's like if someone plastered over your billboard every other night. Sure there are people that care, but it's not the people driving on the freeway.

As far as the legal aspects, no doubt that will be a large discussion. But, is adblock illegal? If this is illegal, should adblock also be illegal? Will this be enforced the same in all countries?

It's not going to take much for this service yo take off, and while many projects may come to an unceremonious end, I predict this will be a massive success before it becomes a failure, but we shall see.

<comment><USER4> You're talking about the product, jimrandomh is talking about the business/legal environment. He doesn't mention the fact that it wont be appealing to consumers, just that it'll have a handful of very large entities gunning for it's demise.

<comment><USER3> It's not unreasonable to think that MegaBox was one of the reasons behind the raid.

After all, MegaBox was almost complete when it happened, and we now know that the FBI had been monitoring Megaupload for 4-5 years.

If they had that much time to gather evidence of wrongdoing, yet fuck up their execution so badly, it leads one to believe that the operation was rushed, perhaps by some influential people "gunning for its demise"

Now, if that were really the case, it would be because they actually fear the product's release, and they would have to feel that the existing legal framework wouldn't be enough to stop it.

<comment><USER5> I highly doubt much of anything is going to come of this. The US Gov't was that afraid of MegaBox to rush a raid on Dotcom? Not likely IMO. Grooveshark hasn't been paying artists for a long time and isn't enough of a threat to raid as of today.

Most likely more BS self promotion from the Head BS'er.

<comment><USER6> The US Gov't as an entity isn't afraid. But lobbyists and other politicians might be afraid of not being able to buy that second house if they don't act in the interests of the RIAA/etc.

 _edit_ On the surface this sounds like the stuff of tinfoil hats, but lobbyists _do_ influence politics. A well-placed word with someone on high could have tipped the action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article is just wrong ! It's not unwanted software or a malware it's something users decides to install or not knowning what that entails: ad replacement in exchange of music. Now you may like or dislike this approach but it's not a malware !

<comment><USER8> It's malware, pure and simple. Website operators can be victims of malware just like end users can be victims.

<comment><USER9> Is Adblock Plus also malware, then? What about Greasemonkey?

The uncomfortable truth is that website operators do not have the right to control what sort of software users use to view their websites.

<comment><USER8> I'm not interested in arguing about what the end user does concerning ad blocking. Everybody falls into one camp or another and I've never seen anybody change sides.

I'm talking about malware and it's effects from the perspective of the website owner. Let's take some hypothetical numbers to make it easy. Operator X has a website that displays 1000 ad impressions in a month, for those 1000 impressions he receives 100 dollars. Now megawhatever diverts 15% of those impressions, net result is the Operator X still serves 1000 ad impressions but only earns 85 dollars for the month. 15 dollars has been stolen from him.

The aggregate value of the delivery of those ads is what matters, not who saw the ads. So it doesn't matter if it's 100 people, none of whom have Adblock or 200 people, 50% of whom have AdBlock. This is strictly from the perspective of the website owner. If you lose 15% revenue from one month to the next while your audience stays constant then you are definitely going to view megawhatever as malware.

Edit: for further clarification, I wouldn't view somebody who did not use adblock in month 1 and switching it on in month 2 as stealing from the website owner because the revenue is not being diverted. The audience, in the context of the ads, has simply decreased from one month to the next.

<comment><USER6> Your definition of the word "malware" goes against the common definition. IMO, most people would consider malware something that is installed without the user's intent. Just because a piece of software negatively impacts website owners doesn't make it malware.

Website owners would probably consider AdBlock malware, but almost 25 million users across Firefox and Chrome would disagree with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If, against all odds, this scheme works and becomes acceptable, it can't last too long before competitors offering different kinds of service/values copy the same scheme. At which point, it becomes a real estate grab, and before you know it, this new meta layer of ad-serving apps become the ad network itself. I'm not sure that's good thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Gator/Claria did this 10 years ago. Replacing existing ads is a big no, and is quite different than popping up ads over someone's existing site.

Based on what happened with them, pretty much any one who owns a website that shows display revenue can be a plaintiff again Megabox.

</comment><comment><USER12> "I'm very kinda unsure", "I guess", "will maybe have", "Maybe not, maybe so", "Hopefully there'll probably be".

Is this what passes for an article? Or even hacker news?

<comment><USER13> Granted the quality of the article isn't amazing, but the points it brings up are certainly interesting/warranted.

<comment><USER14> Also it's two months old

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If my AdBlock software blocks the MegaAds as well then what? Will I still have access to free music? Certainly an interesting business model!

<comment><USER16> Either AdBlock or the ad-blocking-hosts-file block all Comedy Central ads (including Daily Show, Colbert, and South Park), so their shows play without commercials. Sometimes weird things happen, ie. after a commercial break, the show will play for 30 seconds then jump to after the next commercial break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One can wish that Google would block them from the SERPs. Let's see if they can succeed while being invisible.

</comment><comment><USER18> The real question for me is how MegaKey will interact with other 3rd party software, such as ad-blockers - and how much / what / information they'll be collecting about my surfing habits (I'm assuming they'll be collecting all of it so they can better target their ad-serving)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's fine, I'll use MegaAdblock. Is this even legal? Replacing content providers' ads seems wrong.

<comment><USER20> If adblock is legal, this is legal. Instead of ignoring ads, its simply replacing a websites ads' with their own.

Is it ethical? That is an entirely different question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So he is making you a proposal along these lines:

-hey man, come over here, I'll let you listen to music for free if you let me steal money from the websites you visit...do we have a deal?

totally legit.

</comment><comment><USER22> Pardon me, but where has the 15% came from? I don't see that number anywhere in the article.

</comment><comment><USER23> Haha, wow. That's an incredibly novel approach. I won't be surprised if many here oppose it as it strips revenue from deserving websites and redirects it to Dotcom.

Is it any worse than AdBlock, though?

<comment><USER24> And what if I make something that does this too? If you have 10 applications all trying to replace 15% of ads on the web what will happen?

<comment><USER25> A situation similar to the Birthday Problem: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't wait until Project Glass takes this approach with our vision :-)

<comment><USER27> I can't wait until I can install AdBlock-AR and replace real ads with pictures of adorable kittens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How long until someone cracks it to prevent the url rewriting?</comment>


Machiavelli 2.0 — The Fundamentals of Network Society - <AUTHOR> http://hir.harvard.edu/machiavelli-20 <comment><USER2> If you have the time and interest, check out _The Wealth of Networks_ by Yochai Benkler. It's a much better and thoughtful piece—and of course, much longer.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr?

<comment><USER4> Hard to read incoherent self serving rambling which insults the name of Machiavelli.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.unt.edu/honors/eaglefeather/2007_Issue/kniatt6.sh...](http://www.unt.edu/honors/eaglefeather/2007_Issue/kniatt6.shtml) "Machiavelli's The Prince as a Satire: An Exploratory Look at Machiavelli's Works to Determine His True Political Inclinations"

<comment><USER4> Wonderful, thank you very much.

I love Discourses - it is some of most insightful and inspiring writings ever. I feel sad for people who just read The Prince and then dedicated their career towards analyzing Machiavelli's motives and tarnishing the name of Nicollo, while in reality making fools of themselves.

For the record: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2095855>

Also as a shameless plug, I have realized that The Prince is a tongue in cheek piece even before reading The Discourses.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Functor and Monad in Swift - <AUTHOR> http://www.javiersoto.me/post/106875422394

<comment><USER2> This is a great article. It captures the essence of functors and monads in programming really well without the usual nonsensical analogies from other similar tutorials.

There are just a few tiny pieces missing from the puzzle: the functor and monad laws. They're pretty straight-forward - one would think they're common sense.

For functor, there is the mapping with identity law:

functor.map({ $0 }) == functor

which says that mapping the identity function over a functor results with a value equal to the one we started with

and the law for compositionality

functor.map({ f2(f1($0)) }) == functor.map(f1).map(f2)

which states that mapping a composite function yields the same result as mapping the first function then mapping the second function onto the result of the first map.

For monad, there are 3 additional laws (left identity, right identity and associativity).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I think that would make for another interesting article. I purposely ignored those details to make sure I kept my article more practical and less academic :) I also didn't mention the unit function of Monads (is that equivalent to one of the laws that you refer to?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is an excellent article, I think it explains the monad pretty simply, starting from an understanding of functors.

For those that are struggling with understanding (or feeling like you understand) monads, here are some articles like this one that I found very useful (note that the links are for haskell, but obviously, monads are a generally applicable concept).

A visual explanation of monads:

[http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_...](http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html)

The chapters on Functors, Applicatives, and Monoids that leads up to the chapter on monads (read the functors, applicatives, and monoids chapter first THEN the monad chatper and things will start to make sense):

[http://learnyouahaskell.com/functors-applicative-functors- an...](http://learnyouahaskell.com/functors-applicative-functors-and-monoids)

<comment><USER4> Personally it clicked for me after reading "You Could Have Invented Monads"[0] and LYAH (in order as you suggest).

[0] [http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented- monad...](http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monads- and.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice article, well done!

Minor question/comment regarding the implementation of Result.map: Why do you create a new Result in the error case? Result is immutable (or am I missing something specific to Swift here?), so the old and new Result are the same and stay that way.

I'm not familiar with the internals of Swift, but e.g. in Scala, there is only one "None". If you call map or flatMap on it, the same None will always be returned.

<comment><USER6> I'm not familiar with swift, but in Haskell, you can't write the following:

        flatMap :: Either e a -> (a -> Either e b) -> Either e b
        flatMap x f =
          case x of
            Left _ -> x
            Right x' -> f x'

In the case expression, you have to write `Left err -> Left err`, because `x` here has the type `Either e a`, but `Either e b` is expected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this is correct. This would be wrong:

        func map<U>(f: T -> U) -> Result<U> {
            switch self {
            case let .Value(value):
                return Result<U>.Value(Box(f(value.unbox)))
            case let .Error(error):
                // self is Result<T>, but the return type must be Result<U>
                return self
            }
        }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone help me bridge the gap between this understanding of the definition of functor and the ocaml version?

In ocaml, a functor is a module that takes another module as a parameter. In this, a functor is a type that implements the map method. Is there something I'm missing that explains how both of them are functors?

<comment><USER8> The simple explanation is that the word functor is being used for two different concepts.

I found this question on Stackoverflow.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16353066/how-are- functors...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16353066/how-are-functors-in- haskell-and-ocaml-similar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there return type polymorphism in Swift? Without it monad-generic operations are limited.

<comment><USER10> Yes.

      func f()->Bool {
        return true
      }
      func f()->Int {
        return 5
      }

      let i:Int = f()
      let b:Bool = f()

      println(i) // Prints 5
      println(b) // Prints true

      // This would be compile error as ambiguous
      //println(f())

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure I could implement monadic APIs in another language based on this post.

</comment><comment><USER12> For more articles on functional programming and Swift:

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?q=functional&age=10...](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html?q=functional&age=10000)</comment>


Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable - <AUTHOR> https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/investors-find-agroforestry-isnt-just-climate-friendly-it-can-also-be-profitable/ <comment><USER2> I think that "mixed" farming like this article describes has a huge potential for automation by the software field.

Monocrops[0] (homogeneous fields of crops like corn or soybeans) are easy to build automated robots for. We've been doing that for generations now, starting with combine harvesters[1].

But there are many problems with growing monocrops[2]. Pests are a problem -- they breed and spread disease. And on the soil nutrient side, you have to keep re-fertilizing (and often over-fertilize[3]) every year to keep it going. And still nutrients continue to decline in the food that Americans are eating[4].

If, as a field (of software engineers), we can figure out a way to build robots that allow growing and harvesting plants in heterogeneous environments, that will be a significant step forward to fixing these problems. I'm optimistic that it will be possible in the next decade to build it and make it profitable. :)

If you don't have to use fertilizer and pests don't eat your crops because you haven't created the ideal breeding ground for pests + disease, then this problem should be solved by market forces alone. At least, I hope so!

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping)

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester)

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping#Monocropping_diff...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping#Monocropping_difficulty)

3: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Environmental_effec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Environmental_effects)

4: [https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1...](https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml)

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't it be easier to just plant something else every other year?

I thought this was solved literally 1000 years ago: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- field_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system)

<comment><USER4> I was always confused by this as well. Then I spoke to a person working in agriculture, apparently chemical fertilizers are cheap enough to make crop rotation redundant.

<comment><USER5> As a layman I assumed that was the case. But I understand the bigger issue now is that both soil and crop nutrients are dropping in farms due to soil depletion[0].

0: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion- an...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and- nutrition-loss/)

<comment><USER6> Yeah. And not only that, the "regenerative agriculture" mentioned in the article isn't just about sustainable practices, where we put back into the soilwhat we take out. Regenerative practices includes practices where soil fertility is built up year after year as a result of the agricultural practices. In other words, you can take a depleted land and bring it back up into productive land, and potentially, become more productive than non- regenerative practices.

You can grow more than a single plant together, and depending on the combination, they can synergize in a way that helps both of them grow. Some of that is due to pest management (where one plant species deters pests that raid the other). Some add nutrients (nitrogen fixers and other dynamic accumulators). Some can grow at different canopy layers (such as growing ground cover to help retain moisture while taller plants are used as trellises for vining plants).

Some plants have deep tap roots that break up compacted soil and help draw out nutrients to make them bioavailable. Many of them are pioneer plants and are considered weeds or considered invasive.

<comment><USER7> Much of big Ag is an effort to shortcut all this. Use a chisel plow to break up compacted soil. Add ammonia. Use earth movers to create more flat land with useful soils. Etc.

The advantages are clear: you can decide when to do these things, and do them on a short schedule. Its hard to argue waiting 5 years for some remediation project to maybe work, when I have a chisel plow right over there in the shed.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be regenerative. Big Ag is certainly not resilient. Its very reward system (like modern commerce in general) is based on the extraction of resources (whether that be in the earth, or people resources), and then controlling access to them. Overharvesting always happen, because we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people.

I think the main path out of this is to have decentralized food systems, and this is where regenerative and resilient design patterns really shine. I think it starts with a shift in the mindset, where instead of seeing wealth as coming from extraction and hoarding, to seeing wealth in terms of being stewards of regenerative processes.

We have pseudo-regenerative processes in the financial sector with compounding interest, but you can't directly eat money. I can eat the stuff from my backyard.

The beautiful thing about participating in building a decentralized food system is that I don't have to convince you, or anyone else on HN to affect collective action. I can start doing these things in my home, and trade things with other like-minded people. I can offer up the excess abundance to my friends, family, and neighbors. Some of them may want to take up the practices themselves.

Just to be clear, I used shortcuts too. I am using raised beds and importing compost and manure (buying them from big box stores). But I'm also taking the time to plant edible perennials. I only found out later, there are many ways to get even quicker turn around time -- sprouts, fast growing annuals, succession planting. I'm learning. Next year's growing season will incorporate more.

<comment><USER8> >Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be regenerative.

Can you expand on this point some? I'm trying to understand but I don't really see the problem. Whether the nutrition comes from the soil or the fertilizer doesn't really seem that important. I get what other posters have said about vegetables in the past being more nutritious but it's not clear to me that this matters terribly much compared to the accessibility gains from produce being cheaper and still nutritious (ableit less so).

<comment><USER9> ...where does the fertiliser come from?

Currently, there's a lot of fossil fuels involved.

<comment><USER10> Ammonia created from fossil fuels accounts for 2% of carbon emmisions, but it seems likely that ammonia created from air and water with renewable energy will replace it in the future. Theres some pilot plants in existance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The feds would have to stop distorting the markets in the West before any of this could happen economically, right? People didn't just forget how to grow orchards and pastures. They got run out of business by the California water projects and the BLM. As long as the BLM keeps leasing out grazing land for $1/acre and as long as Reclamation allows Stewart Resnick to grow 100k acres of nuts on otherwise worthless land, how can sustainable growers compete?

<comment><USER12> Just so people aren't confused, BLM == Bureau of Land Management

<comment><USER13> Hahaha I had this weird picture in my head of an angry mob of protestors leasing out grazing land for $1/acre.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The book that got me into this was Mark Shepard's 'Restoration Agriculture". [1] His "New Forest Farm" in WI has been making use of these ideas for some time now. [2]

Shepard got _his_ inspiration from Permaculture [3] and the books, "Tree Crops", [4] and "The One Straw Revolution". [5]

1: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16441733-restoration- agr...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16441733-restoration-agriculture)

2: [https://newforestfarm.us](https://newforestfarm.us)

3: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/381988.Permaculture](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/381988.Permaculture)

4: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714112.Tree_Crops](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714112.Tree_Crops)

5: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/976905.The_One_Straw_Rev...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/976905.The_One_Straw_Revolution)

<comment><USER15> One Straw Revolution changed my life. It inspired me to learn permaculture first hand. It's such an enjoyable book to read

<comment><USER16> Seconded, also a great read if you're just casually interested

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's really wild to me that investors realizing foresting exists and continues to exist because it makes money is a story. I did forestry related club stuff in high school for a program called Envirothon and there's a rich history of silviculture in the US and Europe going back a long ways. IIRC, we actually have more forest in the US today than 100 years ago because of silviculture. Notably, the Vanderbilt's started modern silviculture in the US and introduced all sorts of interesting measurements only relevant to foresters to the US like a chain (66 ft imperial) or Diameter Breast Height (the circumference of a tree at 4.5 ft, because that was right around the breast of your average heighted forester).

<comment><USER18> Fun fact, one of the first detailed concepts of sustainability comes from forestry in Germany by Hans Carl von Carlowitz in 1713.

[https://www.forstwirtschaft-in- deutschland.de/index.php?id=5...](https://www.forstwirtschaft-in- deutschland.de/index.php?id=53&L=1)

<comment><USER19> Japan also started protecting forests and managing them sustainably a long time ago[0], in the Edo period (1603-1868).

[0] [https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03912/](https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03912/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I got quite deep into the article, but couldn't get through the morass of PR to understand the basic idea of their agroforestry initiative. At one point, they actually write that a lightbulb went off... but what is the new idea?

Is there anyone familiar with this field who tell a clear story of what their idea is, and how planting trees in existing farms will work in practice to accomplish all the results they predict? I'm sure it's an interesting story.

<comment><USER2> I think there are a few benefits that they're (poorly) trying to articulate in the article, so I'll fill in with my own (biased) thoughts. :)

\- Growing trees in rows alongside feed crops (like hay) is more profitable for farmers because they gain additional income from fruit trees + lumber sales.

\- More trees that get to grow pulls CO2 from the atmosphere and is good for the environment.

\- There is a symbiotic relationship with the soil and trees that is beneficial for the health of other plants. This also helps with soil blowing away due to wind barriers + roots holding it down. Less erosion.

\- Pests can't travel as easily between "segmented" fields of crops because they are obstructed by trees. This helps mitigate risk for farmers.

\- Higher income per acre when you intermix trees in the fields where livestock graze. You can go harvest the fruit trees while the grass grows for the cows to graze on.

The problem is that these changes require time to make. Trees don't sprout up overnight and that's a problem for farmers, but there is a big environmental incentive for it. Maybe the government should step in to incubate these kinds of projects? They may be the only institution with the long-term economic incentive to do so.

<comment><USER21> This is a great answer, thank you for articulating. My only disagreement would be in regards to government being the only institution with the economic incentive to do invest here, long-term. From my understanding of the federal governments involvement in agriculture subsidies, the government seems to be much more in support of the entrenched, large-scale industrial farming systems. I hope for a future where our department of agriculture comes around to support these holistic farming practices.

<comment><USER22> > My only disagreement would be in regards to government being the only > institution with the economic incentive to do invest here, long-term.

If not government what other sort of institution do you think has the ability to make such civilization scale investments, with the associated short-term risks? Corporations won't do it, nor will venture capital, private equity, investment banks, retail investors. What's left?

> From my understanding of the federal governments involvement in agriculture > subsidies, the government seems to be much more in support of the > entrenched, large-scale industrial farming systems.

Which kind of demonstrates that it's capable of supporting a long-term investment in agriculture, but that it is perhaps putting that support behind the wrong approach considering the threat of climate change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's really surprising to me that we tend to focus on sustainability rather than simple economic benefits when pitching initiatives to combat climate change.

Case in point: The US had a great opportunity to sell alternative energy sources as way to get off Middle East oil after 9/11\. Instead we continued to consume oil like there's no tomorrow while squandering trillions on fruitless wars.

<comment><USER24> The valuing of (short-term) economic benefit over sustainability is precisely what is fueling climate change.

<comment><USER25> I would go a little further and say that short term economic benefits of existing entrenched players is causing harm. Its taking too long to get those people out and replaced with fresh minds who can look at the same systems and find new ways to make money while having a sustainable earth

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "If farmers increased silvopasture acreage from approximately 550 million hectares today to about 770 million hectares by 2050 (1.36 billion acres to 1.9 billion acres), Drawdown estimated carbon dioxide emissions could be reduced over those 30 years by up to 42 gigatons — more than enough to offset all of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans globally in 2015, according to NOAA — and could return $206 billion to $273 billion on investment."

<comment><USER26> Note that silvopasture is a combination of livestock grazing pasture and trees. The opposite method it would replace is the factory farm where animals are much more concentrated (with all the moral issues involved).

The problem, I think, is one of volume- I don't see the factory farms shutting down in favor of techniques that require broader skill sets (tree harvesting, land management) beyond what they are already hiring for and investing technology in, especially since per-square-area production of meat is substantially smaller.

I would love to see factory farms convert to silvopasture, especially if that means lower prices for things like nuts, but the broader skill set and management challenges make me think they will continue to be niche competitors to, not replacements of, our current supply.

<comment><USER19> > if that means lower prices for things like nuts,

aren't nuts in the US stupid cheap as it is? American almonds are everywhere in Europe, and cost less than locally grown ones.

(And they taste of nothing, I am not sure if it's because they get harvested earlier, because of preservation or because of the cultivar)

<comment><USER26> As for almonds, probably a combination of cultivar and picking time.

Some nuts are still very expensive, though, and pound for pound beef can be cheaper than many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ever since watching the video on syntropic agriculture which I bumped into by reading a comment here in HN [1], I've been doing some research on the matter. The practice seems promising. It seems to work at both small and large scales, so it enables small farms, which are very hard to defend as a business in the US. It also has a component of improving the value of land, by making marginal (sandy) terrain into productive agricultural land. The other interesting fact is that the productivity per acre for the individual cultivars when planted together is higher than if they were the only thing being planted. I can see those things combining to drastically increase products.

The part of the video that was the most interesting was the farmer saying "this works. If I don't sell, I don't live, and I do sell" (not an exact quote).

Intriguing indeed.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23631196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23631196) / [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE)

</comment><comment><USER28> Why many buzzwords? In simpler language: trees surrounding farm land keep strong winds from blowing nutrients away and have other benefits. For that and other benefits Before 1989, a lot of farm land in Bulgaria was surrounded by tree belts as they also provided shade for farm workers. In the US much bigger efficiency has been achieved by farming large fields with giant automated machinery. Effect on nutrients is unclear. However what this company is suggesting is to pair farmers of different types and plant productive trees between flat crop lands to enable multiple types of production happening at the same time. An underlying premise is a carbon offset system may pay for such investment. The part that's missing is how much harvesting efficiency will be lost when you lose the ability to use big machines to harvest single crops. That said, there may be lands suitable for mixed farming that were underused before. Hopefully those farmers don't get into too much debt trying to pursue potential carbon credits.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article doesn't mention permaculture. Permaculture has been used commercial settings (and its design principles includes agroforestry). Permies have been talking about resilient and regenerative systems for a long while now, going beyond sustainability.

Permaculture design looks at the whole system. So not just trees, but also things to plant with the trees. With planting along contours and adding swales to catch rainfall, and direct it to flow through everything. Incorporating animals into the system, such as grazers (cows, sheep, goats), and micrograzers (chickens, ducks, geese).

Probably the biggest thing not discussed in the article is how permaculture design can lead to decentralized food systems. A decentralized food system is not something that VCs can invest capital in and expect multiple returns on, but I think in the long run, that is where we as a civilization need to move towards.

<comment><USER29> Not just food. Let's "localize" all of our needs. Every single one of them. Note that is "needs", not wants.

There will always be room for trade in things that you cannot produce locally such as coffee, but for almost every other thing, there are local solutions.

Open Source Ecology [1] attempts to go the high-tech route and they may get somewhere, but they are only one of many approaches to localizing. With the internet we can have many groups working on localizing their own needs and sharing their successes and failures with the world. Add some gamification and wholla we have people competing to actully figure out how to live on this planet while leaving the place better afterwards.

Note that a completely local system would probably not have much need at all for state backed currency except for trade. [1] [http://www.opensourceecology.org](http://www.opensourceecology.org)

<comment><USER30> Does local production entail urban areas having smaller or less dense populations? Mightn't energy used for extra passenger transport outweigh energy saved by reducing freight transport?

<comment><USER29> Don't know. There are people in cities working on local food production such as aquaponics, vertical farming, rooftops, etc, but I live in a small town in western North America and that is the system I am attempting to analyze and influence. Its the low hanging fruit (ahem), in that if a small town can't do it, how can you expect a city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a weird piece in that it seems to completely ignore the massive subsidies [1] the agriculture sector of most (?) industrialized economies relies on.

Then when you read:

> [Someone] estimates that agroforestry systems can create eight times more > profit than conventional agriculture.

you have to ask yourself: "Profit after subsidies? But who said you'll get the same subsidies? If you can actually turn a profit, they might not subsidize you at that point?"

\----

[1] - For more information on these subsidies (which I'm not opposed to, it's complicated):

* In the EU it's apparently 59 Billion EUR/year , according to this: [https://farmsubsidy.org/](https://farmsubsidy.org/)

* Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy)

<comment><USER32> I like the European farm subsidies, I think they are a great example of how to share wealth among a lot of citizens and maintain high quality food. Btw, 59 Billion seems like a large number but compared to the actual GDP of the EU thats a very very small number. Also in the US for example farm subsidies are pretty high and generally funnel to rich people, there is both farm related subsidies that go direct to farmers and insurance companies (among others) and then the farm bill which is another huge subsidy.

<comment><USER31> I actually didn't say I oppose them. However, note that better-off Europeans and US citizens are subsidized, then their products flood the markets elsewhere and farmers all over the world - who also don't have access to appropriate technology - can't compete against it. So the farmers in poorer countries get screwed. Not such a great example of wealth sharing...

<comment><USER32> Did you edit your original comment? I recall there being more emphasis and an exclamation point or two :)

<comment><USER31> Yes, I did...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Gabe Brown has been doing regenerative agriculture for over two decades on Brown's Ranch, over 2000 acres, in Bismarck, North Dakota successfully. Food crops plus cover crops plus livestock, all integrated. Lot of good results compared to neighboring farmers doing the traditional synthetic fertilizer / pesticide / tilling / monoculture approach.

There are others like him too.

And he's been invited to and giving a lot of talks about it at many confs for years:

Watch "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health"

[https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A](https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A)

</comment><comment><USER34> This seems like a scam to me. The reason VCs don't fund "normal" crops like wheat etc. is that commodities don't generate the high profits that make "unicorns" possible. There have been fewer people employed in agriculture in USA every year for the last 150 years. The only long-term successful firms are selling "picks and shovels", and even they have to resort to evil to generate reliable profits (Monsanto, etc.) All of the crops under discussion in TFA are also commodities. Where is the profit going to arise? These venture funds will not return investors' money.

<comment><USER35> It seems fishy to me as well knowing that most farmers operate at a loss each year. Whatever profit a system like this might generate would have to be enough to offset those losses whilst still providing enough to keep the farmers happy along with the investors?? Seems pretty damn unlikely that this "agroforestry" is capable of doing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone here have some woodland and use it for growing food crops (mix of fruit trees, nut trees, root vegetables, berries and mushrooms?) This is something I've been thinking about trying for a while. Or maybe converting pasture land to more mixed purpose?

I realise it's not something you can scale or automate easily, but I'm not really looking for that. Just a few hectares for personal use. I understand it will take many years for the trees to grow

<comment><USER33> Check out permaculture, food forests and Geoff Lawton videos (he covers both, and food forests are a subset of permaculture). He is a permaculture boss who learned from Bill Mollison, father of permaculture. Check (his) Zaytuna Farm video tour parts 1 and 2. Australia is big on permaculture but many other countries' people are doing it too. Huw Richards (Wales, UK), Maddy and Tim Harland (UK), Krishna McKenzie (Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India), Pete Kanaris (Florida, USA), Richard Perkins (Sweden) are just a few. All those named have YouTube videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> An initiative worth looking at :

The Complete What, Why & How of Agroforestry

[https://isha.sadhguru.org/us/en/blog/article/complete- what-w...](https://isha.sadhguru.org/us/en/blog/article/complete-what-why-how- agroforestry)

</comment><comment><USER38> I would like to create/see robots that seed and plant Miyawaki style dense mini forests in urban areas.

I don't live in the right zone, but I tell my friends in the lower hemispheres that when they have a child, they must plant at least 1/2 acre of forest. Or a fruit orchard or a hardwood grove. Why? Because at its worst, it's Ag but is green and income producing. And at its best it's green, Carbon sequestering long term..medium benefits for a hardwood grove with ebony or teak or rosewood that are super slow growing and will grow with the child..leaving them a legacy and an inheritance.

If anyone wants to collaborate for such a project, please reach out(my handle at gmail). I am still researching for the northern hemisphere.

</comment><comment><USER39> One cool company working on this in the UK: [https://projectwren.com/projects/regenerative- agroforestry](https://projectwren.com/projects/regenerative-agroforestry)

</comment><comment><USER40> Might be a bit more complicated. "Underground deserts below fertility islands? Woody species desiccate lower soil layers in sandy drylands" [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.04906](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.04906)

</comment><comment><USER41> Better late than never.

The guy who invented/coined "Syntropic" agriculture grows the world's best cocoa beans at 3x the yield of similar-quality conventional farms with no inputs. He also gets a lot of other crops from the same land.

Life is four-billion-year-old nanotech and it works really well. Get with it money dudes.

(Conventional agriculture is, in retrospect, almost the dumbest thing you can do with land.)

</comment><comment><USER42> > Vulcan Farm in Illinois combines intensive perennial polyculture, > windbreaks, alley cropping, and silvopasture, and also features an > innovative long-term lease model that provides options to non-operator > landholders and land access for agroforestry farmers

Ah, so VCs have discovered sharecropping.

</comment><comment><USER43> True story, land use when sustainable delivers long term benefits of all kinds, also to investors

</comment><comment><USER44> _> If farmers increased silvopasture acreage from approximately 550 million hectares today to about 770 million hectares by 2050... carbon dioxide emissions could be reduced over those 30 years by up to 42 gigatons — more than enough to offset all of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans globally in 2015_

This is both exciting and depressing. A massive effort and it still only offsets 1/30th of global emissions.

Fixing climate is not going to be based in "profitability", at least in any near term sense. It is about dramatically reducing our CO2-based economic activity to preserve the planet for future generations. Capitalism is not geared for that kind of calculation.

</comment><comment><USER45> > and investor financing to help add trees and tree crops to agricultural > models.

Wow, sounds profitable I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you are interested in this subject, I highly recommend checking out Joel Salatin and Polyface Farm. They are doing amazing work. [http://www.polyfacefarms.com/](http://www.polyfacefarms.com/) [https://vimeo.com/125404937](https://vimeo.com/125404937)

<comment><USER29> And Mark Shepherd at New Forest Farm.

[http://newforestfarm.us](http://newforestfarm.us)

His book "Restoration Agriculture" details his system, which can be likened to agroforestry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Investors say yada is good for you. ok?

</comment><comment><USER47> There's a startup working on this called Propagate Ventures. IIRC they have an agroforestry project planning tool for farmers.

</comment><comment><USER48> > It turns out, people NEED food. Really, it's remarkable. And they'll > actually pay dollars for food that you've grown, so that they can then eat > it, because otherwise they'll die.

<comment><USER31> Surprisingly, that's not quite true.

That is, people do need food, but humanity over-produces food massively already [1]. And in many countries, you'll collapse economically if you try to live by selling food - and it's government subsidies which keep farming afloat.

[1] - Of course there's also massive hunger due to the failure of our species to more reasonably distribute the food it produces, biases in which kinds of food get produced where and when etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> So they rediscovered orchards?

<comment><USER50> ernst gotsch is the name to lookup.

Growing food under a forest canopy with plenty of pruning, which creates healthy soil and less/no need for fertilizers. It's an effort to mimic a forest ecosystem and let things grow in their natural way (livestock is another aspect).

<comment><USER51> Very cool. Thanks for the ref! Are there any books of his you'd recommend?

<comment><USER50> I don't have book recommendations, but this channel is worth watching:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf9s-yeskYZweEuKyq1ia6w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf9s-yeskYZweEuKyq1ia6w)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you ever been hurt by a lack of privacy? - <AUTHOR> I've recently taken an interest in privacy and security. The two concepts seem bound. A lot of people seem freaked out that the government and corporations are monitoring everything. I'm not saying they shouldn't be freaked out. But I'm wondering specifically why are people freaked out? Are there material ways that this lack of privacy hurts people or is it more anticipation of future harm? <comment><USER2> > _Are there material ways that this lack of privacy hurts people..._

In the safety of your own privacy, you can let go of common expectations. Being constantly recorded introduces a huge stressor, no matter how virtuous you are. You _can 't let go_ of past mistakes because other people certainly won't.

Lack of privacy in overcrowded prisons does kill people, mostly out of desperation. Convicts get extremely violent when their physical AND mental space is not respected. I believe privacy to be as important as any other needs after basic survival. [http://www.npr.org/2016/03/24/470824303/doubling- up-prisoner...](http://www.npr.org/2016/03/24/470824303/doubling-up-prisoners- in-solitary-creates-deadly-consequences)

> _...or is it more anticipation of future harm?_

 _" If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."_ You're not human anymore, you're a walking narrative: a commie under McCarthy, a heretic in Renaissance Italy, a witch in 1597 Scotland, a queer in the Middle East. Ambitious people protect their privacy because they know _anything_ can be turned against them. Authority lives and dies by mud-digging and scandals.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Cardinal Richelieu quote's chilling. That's got to be one of the most evil sentences uttered by humans.

<comment><USER3> > That's got to be one of the most evil sentences uttered by humans.

Its a fairly matter-of-fact description of the state of law at the time. (Note that that statement itself -- though Richelieu himself was in a privileged enough position to have no concern -- could easily have been an _example_ of the effect it described, as it suggested both that the King's law was evil in condemning the honest, and that the King's law was capriciously enforced, either of which could be lèse-majesté.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes. First of all people don't record or search information not to use it. Second of all, surveillance doesn't have to be used to stifle dissent, it's very existence does so.

More broadly a lack of privacy creates risks for people like rape victims, people fleeing domestic abuse, the LGBT community, women's rights activists.

I'll pull a few links for the US, but remember, surveillance isn't just an issue in the US. Think about China and Russia.

[http://time.com/2970573/muslim-american-nsa- spies/](http://time.com/2970573/muslim-american-nsa-spies/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/how- su...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/how-surveillance- mutes-dissent-on-the-internet/476955/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I'm no troll looking for an argument as that's a strong case you make. I figured those who responded would be those who know something about this topic. I appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a broad field. I might not even know if some data collected about me leads to a higher price when looking for a product or a flight on the internet. I don't know what the immigration officer or the police may find on record about me when checking my data. An insurer might have given me a less favorable tariff without my knowledge based on some data about my driving experience, my hobbies or my health data. And so on. It is not that you know every time you're screwed that you were screwed ... and even less the reason for this.

On the other hand, somebody collecting data about you always results in an uncertainty: The data is potentially stored indefinitely and you don't know where the data might end and who will use it (potentially for his benefit or against my interests) at any point in the future. There are examples of data collection even with a good intent that ended catastrophic. Currently some Turkish citizens and even academics and journalists fear that they might be arrested just for communicating with the "wrong" people in the past.

At least, you have always to assume that collecting of data, monitoring, thighter security and reduced privacy are never only "for good", especially not for the individuals, but more in the interest of government, corporations, political parties and so on. And you never can go back and demand that your data is deleted: The biggest problem is that you don't even know who stores what about you. Combine that with all the data that is collected about you every day: where is your phone located, whom do you call, mail, chat with, what internet pages are you visiting, what apps are you using and where, which photos are you sharing and where and when we're they made, what products are you looking for, which shops are you visiting, which terms are you googling, what are you posting to HN .... lots of reasons to freak out if all this data points fall in the wrong hands.

<comment><USER5> To add another example to my own text:

Google for something and Google will optimize future results to your known interests. That leads to a filter bubble showing you more and more customized search results. Are you hurt by this? Not knowingly, but perhaps you miss something important. Do most people know about this? Most likely not, so the collection of data leads to a skewed world view.

<comment><AUTHOR> A bubble's not good no. I think my obliviousness to this issue was a sort of bubble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you start with an introvert, in the context of online privacy, the simple lack of privacy could be a significant barrier to participation. In a "connected world" this barrier has the potential to affect major parts, if not every part, of your life.

For example, avoiding social/professional media, i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn could have a material negative impact on your life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. The most prolific and successful users of social media that I personally know have told me directly that they don't care very much about privacy. I know one person who seems to have mastered FB who keeps their profile literally wide open with no privacy controls at all. An introvert would no sooner do that then they'd start singing and skipping down the sidewalk every day.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And as if on queue this article shows up on HN: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/12/turn_off_location_se...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/12/turn_off_location_services_go_ahead_says_google_well_still_track_you/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't know.

Plenty of people can look at my data and based on that take actions against my interests without me ever learning about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> What would be some examples of that? I'm not doubting that you're correct, it's just I'm trying to grok this.

<comment><USER8> I have an example, someone I know filed a suit against an employer due to a back injury. He won and was able to be off work until he was able to work.

Unfortunately, he was never able to get a full time job again. He worked the rest of his career at a temporary agency. He was constantly close to getting a job but never got it.

Many years later it was discovered that the most likely reason he never got a job was likely because during the background search they found the suit and no company wants to deal with someone that they felt had a possibility of suing.

This was in the 90's. Now it's so much easier to find that info. and more. But you would never know about it and how it effect us.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect example. Ruined the guy's life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes. I self censor tremendously due to the amount of online tracking these days. Even with VPNs, anonymous search engines, and tight browser controls, it's fairly easy to identify people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do you self censor. I could say I'm going to spark up a bowl of good weed right now. So what? You know what I mean. Do those that monitor care about that sort of stuff or are they looking for patterns they judge to be truly dangerous as in a plot. BTW, I'm partly playing the devil's advocate here and realize this is a bit weak. If I had the guts to really say something I'd say Ayahuasca. There you go. Should I be freaked as fuck now? Saying the weed was an easy one since I live Oregon but Ayahuasca. Oh shit, I said it again. Fuck. I have no privacy. And I don't have any Ayahuasca but the point is will my post attract any attention? Does anyone give a shit about that when they are watching or do they have their priorities right, that is, national security. I made the leap and assumed that this was sort of the NSA you're referring to though you could have meant your company monitoring, google for ads, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm puzzled why this interest in the topic hit me all at once like a ton of bricks, whereas 6-months ago I didn't think much about it at all. For me, it's been binary. I'm doing some catch up. :-)</comment>


The Economics of Faith: Using an Apocalyptic Prophecy to Elicit Religious Belief [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nber.org/papers/w18641.pdf <comment><USER2> The assumption that $500 is enough to any serious believer to reconsider their belief seems too low price. If the belief has life chancing value, $500 is not enough. They have already suffered trough ridicule and tied themselves into the group.

Paying them something like $100,000 to $500,000 after the doomsday date might have matched the value they get from sincere faith.</comment>


Why Bitcoins are more expensive in Argentina than in the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/why-bitcoins-are-60-more-expensive-in-argentina-than-the-us/

<comment><USER2> Short version: they are not - the real problem is that there are two values for the dollar in Argentina, the official one (highly manipulated to hide, among other things, the real value of inflation) and the unofficial one (the one everyone accepts as the real one, except of course for the government). The author is taking the "fake" dollar value and using it to prove that bitcoins are more expensive, but he could apply this approach to pretty much anything.

This is shown by the author in the second graph, btw, so I can only guess than the title has been intentionally framed in such a way that allows the author to write about economy in Argentina in a website dedicate to digital currency.

</comment><comment><USER3> Government highly regulates and practically prohibits the dollar here in Argentina. As a consequence, black market dollar is the only available and it's obviously more expensive. Huge inflation of 25% or more makes the black- market dollar even more attractive. Today the dollar exchange here is 5.50 ar$, and black-market dollar is 8.7 ar$.

There are several ways to circumvent the prohibition, for example using credit cards. But the clever government implements all kind of crazy pseudo-taxes on dollar purchases to close the loophole. Bitcoin is another example of such loopholes, but very expensive and illiquid at the moment. By the way, the same situation happens in Venezuela but the grip is harder and has been happening for far longer, official dollar is 6.3 Bs. while black-market "lechuga" dollar is a whopping 34 Bs., so bitcoin exchange should be even more attractive there.

<comment><USER4> I'm in Venezuela and unfortunately I've never heard anyone talking about Bitcoin here.I haven't really looked hard,to be honest.

Dollar purchases are totally prohibited here , we only get $400/year for online purchases and ~$2500 for travellers.

The black market here is just out of control, like you said, just today a friend sold $1000 at Bs.32.

The Government only gives dollars at the official rate (Bs.6.3) to their close friends (corruption). Venezuela does not produce anything other than oil. So , everything we consume here is imported (food,clothing,etc). If you are in commerce and need to import something, you go to the black market.

And that explains why the projected inflation for this year is ~45 - 50%.

Argentina already suffered hyper-inflation not too long ago. I cannot understand why they did not learn from their mistakes.

<comment><USER3> Well, because of course it was not a mistake. Inflation is a way to transfer wealth from the general population to the guys with the printing press (The gov friends). The only way to escape this trap is to save money in a hard currency, for example the dol...wait a minute...

<comment><USER4> Talk about govt friends. The govt friends here are the only ones that get dollars at the official rate. They are supposed to be importing food, medicine, electronics,etc.

They ask for $1mill from the govt for importing 1000 refrigerators at $1000 each. They get them at Bs.6.3 so they have to pay Bs.6.300.000 for the $1mm

They import only 500 refrigerators and bribe everyone from the national guard, customs officers,etc. to say they imported 1000 refrigerators, paying their supplier only $500.000.

They sell the 500 refrigerators at Bs.15 per dollar, keep the rest of the $500.000 outside of Venezuela and then sell enough of them at the black market rate of Bs.35 to buy the next $1mm at the official market rate.

Then they ask for more dollars from the government. And the cycle continues.

Multiply this by a LOT more. Almost every govt official is in on it and it has produced a ton of multi-millionaires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Title is misleading. No one really uses the official goverment exchange rate. Also trade goes both way in Argentina, the market is illiquid so the spread is high.

Localbitcoins offers anonymized trade data from ARS, however it is somewhat crappy interface now: [https://localbitcoins.com/bitcoincharts/ARS/trades.json?sinc...](https://localbitcoins.com/bitcoincharts/ARS/trades.json?since=200426) (iterate the since argument with tid)

[https://localbitcoins.com/country/AR](https://localbitcoins.com/country/AR)

</comment><comment><USER6> The article is wrong. The official exchange rate is a phony rate. The real price is the street price, and it's relatively the same as in other countries.

If we take the official exchange rate in consideration, then EVERYTHING is more expensive in Argentina than in the US, because the black market is the only market accessible to regular people.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clearly this is just another symptom of the Great Argentine Coin Shortage.

i.e., [http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2009/06/08/090608ta_...](http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2009/06/08/090608ta_talk_surowiecki)

<comment><USER8> This has actually gotten better recently. They introduced a magnetic card for transportation(bus, subway, trains), SUBE: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUBE_card](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUBE_card)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> see my comments here - [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5968355](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5968355) \- basically the market is very illiquid and the volumes are small.</comment>


"Castrol Rocket" Makes a Bid on the 400 MPH Mark - <AUTHOR> http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/bikes/triumph-castrol-rocket-400-mph/#more-46743 <comment><AUTHOR> Googled around and found more details at [http://www.castrolrocket.com/](http://www.castrolrocket.com/).</comment>


New York Public Library Enhances Public Domain Collections for Sharing and Reuse - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/01/05/share-public-domain-collections <comment><USER2> There is some really fantastic stuff here. I'm especially excited about the maps, American[1] and otherwise, but the stereoscopic views[2] are amazing. They really give you a feel for what it must have been like to view these things. A fun technological trip.

1: [http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/5cd94760-c52a...](http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/5cd94760-c52a-012f-bcd4-3c075448cc4b#/?tab=about) 2: [http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/robert-n- denn...](http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/robert-n-dennis- collection-of-stereoscopic-views#/?tab=about)

</comment><comment><USER3> The NYPL has posted metatdata about these collections on GitHub as well

[https://github.com/NYPL-publicdomain/data-and- utilities](https://github.com/NYPL-publicdomain/data-and-utilities)

<comment><USER4> More background on it: [http://www.nypl.org/research/collections/digital- collections...](http://www.nypl.org/research/collections/digital- collections/public-domain)

A visualization tool: [http://publicdomain.nypl.org/pd- visualization/](http://publicdomain.nypl.org/pd-visualization/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this is really great. There really is a wealth of knowledge and culture here. I'm especially interested in the collection of sheet music. It would be really great to make an album with new recordings of the old songs.

</comment><comment><USER6> More at [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/books/new-york-public- libr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/books/new-york-public-library- invites-a-deep-digital-dive.html) via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10850011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10850011).</comment>


Ask HN: After years at BigCo I feel like I'm becoming unemployable. Now what? - <AUTHOR>

I've been developing software professionally at the same large company since graduating college several years ago.  Over time I've come to realize that there's no such thing as stable employment, so I'd like to keep my options open as much as I can.
The problem is that at my job I've been repeatedly thrashing because direction keeps changing so suddenly.  I've written "production" code in PHP, JavaScript, C#, Java, C, C++, Perl, Python, and ActionScript, but I don't think I've developed any meaningful level of expertise in any of these.  I feel like I'm a jack of all trades, master of none, and I'd never even be able to hold a candle to anyone who has deeper experience in any subset of these.
On top of that, the company I work for has a very high degree of Not-Invented-Here syndrome, with lots of home-grown tools and frameworks of dubious quality, leaving me with completely non-transferable skills.  Projects are rife with mismanagement, and the only things I've learned from the pain points in my job are that they are social problems, not technical.  It feels as if I've only accumulated one year of experience, repeated several times.
In spite of this, I'm getting glowing reviews from management and would rate myself above the median among my colleagues, but that really doesn't count for much.  After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I've been trying to devote some effort to hobby projects and open source but never seem to have enough time to really get anything meaningful done there.
How should I try to escape this stagnation?  I'm getting the feeling that the best way out may be a different job with better learning and development opportunities, but it's also somewhat disturbing to me that my skill set is scattered so thinly that nobody would ever want me (particularly the sort of startups that are frequently discussed here on HN). <comment><USER2> You may be underestimating yourself or overestimating the degree to which startups need rockstar engineering. If you ship and it works, you're good enough. Better is better, but most engineers can create plenty of value without being e.g. DHH or Linus.

I was in similar straits at the old job: I was one of the more trusted engineers, spending my time doing maintenance coding on an evolutionary dead end. I used it as an opportunity to bone up on my general web dev skills (System architecture, design, SQL, etc). I also used my "routinely delivers on promises" karma to buy changes to the development roadmap that were useful to my professional growth. ("This project would be improved by integrating Prototype. I have taken the liberty of mocking up a screen. We should do more like this, the clients will be thrilled. Of course, you'll need to assign me to it since I am one of the only two competent JS engineers here and the other is busy.")

<comment><AUTHOR> Patrick, as always your advice is very insightful, but it's going to be tough for me to follow it. I've become very apprehensive about sticking my neck out there for a new responsibility because in my work environment it has almost invariably been equated with being assigned blame. I'd assume you are quite familiar with the saying "the nail that sticks up gets pounded down."

The customer is quite far removed from the development team and honest customer feedback is jealously guarded by management, either blatantly held hostage or creatively misinterpreted to further management's own goals. My immediate supervisor is very supportive, but the management further up the chain that controls requirements, budgeting, and customer interaction hasn't demonstrated the slightest bit of care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You very likely vastly underestimate your actual expertise. I find that no matter how far I've come, I always feel that I have yet to develop any "meaningful expertise" and its easy to find someone much better than I am to compare poorly against.

What you may be feeling, is that more and more bigcos are becoming not-so-big- cos and discovering that years of what you've been doing and piles of worthless development projects are just as useless to them as you already know they are. The era when companies waste money reinventing (square) wheels is rapidly drawing to a close.

My suggestion is to find an open source project that uses a technology that interests you(1) and commit yourself to really diving in. You'll probably see some good code, and then realize that you've got something to add. You'll feel like a million bucks the first time code you submit is accepted on the main branch, not because it was your job, but because people _liked_ it.

(1) Pick something you are _actually_ interested in. Don't fool yourself by choosing something that you think you _should be_ interested in. You need the passion to keep at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I think your footnote is especially encouraging, since I'd been under the impression that not all open source projects are created equal, and that writing process schedulers for the Linux kernel or optimizing JavaScript execution in Firefox wasn't my cup of tea. I suppose there's no shame in contributing a tiny patch to the install script for some no-name program X so that it works on obscure platform Y, although it's not something I can brag about on a résumé.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You definitely sound like someone who's afraid to quit their first job and is doing everything in their power to convince themselves that they should. Honestly the things you're complaining about you'll find in varying degrees at jobs big and small, companies established and new, whatever. Your company is probably not as bad as you think, and you probably haven't become as unemployable as you think.

But that's fine. You want to move on, by all means move on! Don't be afraid, and don't spend so much time trying to rationalize it... it's already rational. :)

It's all about reframing yourself for the next opportunity. If the next place you _want_ to work at is a Java shop, play up your Java experience, and spend some time at night making sure you're mostly airtight Java-wise.

Not-invented-here is not a big deal. If you actually helped develop FrobbcoDHT versus simply using memcached, you can just say "Built proprietary DHT for x y z reason." It looks good on your resume. If anyone questions why something off the shelf was not used, you can either explain why something proprietary was necessary or that the company culture was not-invented-here and your manager/lead disallowed it. If you merely _used_ FrobbcoDHT internally, just say that you have experience with DHTs in general. This isn't a big problem.

Maybe it's also been a while since you interviewed anywhere? Apply for some random jobs as practice/reexposure. You'll probably get some offers and can reboost your confidence.

I would just strongly advise you to stop focusing on your current employer so much. You have to play this mental game of "I hate it here it's ruining me my career is over" to give yourself the push to quit... but that's lowering your confidence, warping your sense of reality, and might make you come off as bitter/whining while interviewing. Just accept that you're going to leave, stop feeling the need to justify it, working on marketing yourself, work on honing a couple things depending on who you're going to talk to next, and try to work some confidence back up!

</comment><comment><USER5> Write a story about each of the projects you have worked on.. The problems, the discussions, the plan of attack and the outcome, cost savings for the company, technology used. As though they were all separate consulting jobs.

Take out company names and specifics.

Have an objective look at what you have done and assess it again, because now you've taken the emotion out of it ('repeatedly thrashing' etc) and you are left with cold and useful facts about your projects.

You then have a portfolio that you can show new potential employers. I am in a similar situation and am currently doing the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to do that, but none of the projects I've worked on have succeeded or shipped. They're all rotting in the deadpool of neat proof-of-concept types that will never see the light of day.

I can't even say that I've saved the company money here or there. The most credit I could claim on that front would be that I chased down a problem enough to know that is not worth wasting more effort trying to solve it in the manner prescribed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A long tenure is often attractive, and you can truthfully say that after giving them a good shot and investing a lot of effort in trying to make the situation better, you're ready to move on.

The fact that you haven't "shipped code" isn't your fault: you're not in sales or business development. The glowing reviews and the fact that you've stuck it out for so long are both examples that you're a good employee.

As for "transferable skills" - yeah - it's a problem because douchebag recruiters just look for little acronyms.

If you can afford to take 6 months off, you could do a course in something or other. Self motivated continuing professional development is often looked upon favourably.

During this time you could also make it your business to develop in open source communities to broaden your knowledge and take up some pet projects.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll just jump in now before the rest of HN gets here and say "Leave your job".

See, among others, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1960437> for an excellent discussion of "why".

(Specifically: you will suddenly find time to devote to those hobby projects you can't focus on right now, for one. That will lead to at least some degree of skill set specialism or broadening, which will rejuvenate you, which will help you decide whether to continue hacking around and turning it into a consultancy gig -- or finding another, better job.

That or you run out of money and end up at Starbucks, which would at least be a change!)</comment>


Nvidia Developer Zone hacked Over 400,000 user accounts exposed - <AUTHOR> http://www.the4cast.com/news/developer-forums-of-nvidia-gets-hacked-over-400000-user-accounts-exposed/

<comment><USER2> I see vBulletin boards getting hacked over and over again. Are there any forums that use bcrypt for password encryption (xenforo, phpbb, smf... etc)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! I think the basic encryption has been cracked! So the hackers are finding it easy to get through!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well this comes to mind... <http://bit.ly/LitFKQ>

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL! Yeah! :D</comment></comment>


Redecentralize: Taking back the net - <AUTHOR> http://redecentralize.org <comment><USER2> A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6543846](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6543846).

When an item has had significant attention, HN generally doesn't allow reposts for about a year.</comment>


A Startup's Roadmap to Validation - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/startups-roadmap-validation-jon-lee?trk=pulse_spock-articles <comment><USER2> This article makes some good points on managing expectations and being realistic with objectives. However, I would never recommend abandoning something you believe in even if others tell you it wont work. At the very least, you will learn something and at the very most, you might show the world something it never knew it wanted until now.</comment>


Is helpful software really helpful? - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/08/24/overly-helpful-software/ <comment><USER2> > Attempts to help a user too much may interfere with the user's ability to > form a good mental model of the problem.

I think this is a problem with much of the software I dislike. I have no idea what it is trying to do and why because the software tries to conceal information from me.</comment>