Should the Obama Generation Drop Out? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/opinion/28murray.html

<comment><USER2> This is unlikely to occur. The main reasons:

1) The cultural reason. A lot of politics is cultural; most people have a self image, and pick a party to fit that image. The self image of Obama's party: smart/educated/cultured, not to mention altruistic. Providing education is viewed as a morally virtuous act ("give something back", with "in return for money and excellent job security" being unstated), not merely a professional choice.

De-emphasize education? Sacrilege. It's like suggesting a religious conservative should de-emphasize traditional hetero marriage. Good luck with that.

2) It goes strongly against the interests of Obama and his party: <http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.php?ind=W04>

</comment><comment><USER3> The author is assuming that what employers look for in a degree is a specific skill. It is not. It is a general ability to deal with hard, ill-defined work, and the persistence to keep at it despite the length of it (4 years seems awfully long when you're 18). It's about the ability to socialise with widely different groups of people and get along with them.

University isn't about job training, no matter how some people might want it to be. It's not about what you learn, it's about learning to learn.

</comment><comment><USER4> Colleges should focus more on serving needs and less on ineffective preaching. My experience as a TA in 101/102 level courses is that there is _no use at all_ in subject requirements to encourage a breadth of knowledge in students. These only serve to teach students that university is largely bureaucratic bullshit. Give students the freedom to choose the courses they want. Requirements just encourage lowest common denominator behavior in both students and academic departments.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that allowing anyone to choose whatever courses they want (outside of degree requirements) would not discourage lowest common denominator behavior. It would facilitate that even more (e.g. Accounting + Non-stop PE).

But, since our job is also not to support the LCD but the GCD, I would still support this. I would have taken more Japanese, or possibly another language, if I didn't have to take Geology. I likely would have also substituted more Philosophy for Communications. That would have been a better supplement to my CS coursework and wouldn't have made me a less well-rounded person.

<comment><USER4> That is my point! I am all for _not discouraging_ Lowest Common Denominator behavior. You can't prevent it. Actively trying to prevent it causes such LCD behavior to leak into and pollute the efforts of GCD students. Instead, universities should focus their effort on serving the needs of those who want to learn. Coercion just backfires.

I could've done a much better job in my Computer Science 101/102 courses if I could just teach the people who really wanted to study the material, and not people who just wanted to get out of the math requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author of this article, Charles Murray, is best known for writing "The Bell Curve", which argued that biological factors determine intelligence, and intelligence determines success. I don't agree with his premise that only 10% of university students are innately capable of a hard-science curriculum. Intelligence is just a coefficient to effort. Being a genius certainly helps, but most people could get through a science or engineering program if they were willing to put in the work.

OTOH, he is correct that BA degrees have little relevance in the modern economy. They persist as a relic from the role liberal-arts colleges played before WW2 in conferring educational pedigrees on upper-class men. Higher education is much more egalitarian today, but we're still aping the educational practices of that era.

As a general rule, I don't think anyone should spend the time or money on a degree that they aren't going to use after graduation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nobody is forcing anybody to get a bachelor's degree.

Or, nobody _should_ be forcing anybody to get a bachelor's degree. It should be completely up to the kid going through the schooling to make up their own mind.

I can't tell you how many times I've gotten stuff (work, tips, useful stuff, etc) not through my schooling but through the people I know, but I'm still going through my bachelor's degree/master's degree _hopefully a few of these_ /PhD because I want to.

If you don't like what you're doing, do something else while you're still young. You most likely have a place to live (parents) and some form of ambition, but if you decide to go through a useless bachelor's degree (I'm not saying that bachelor's degrees are useless, just getting an unused bachelor's degree is) that's your problem and you don't have the right to complain. Just do something about it!

<comment><AUTHOR> "You most likely have a place to live (parents)"

Lots of young people are turned out of home when they reach adult age. I wouldn't assume that any particular nineteen-year-old has anywhere else to live but a place where he is paying rent.

<comment><USER8> "Lots of young people are turned out of home when they reach adult age."

I'm 30 and I've never met or heard of one in the last fifteen years or so. I'm sure such young people exist, but I doubt there are "lots" of them anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I'm 30 and I've never met or heard of one in the last fifteen years or so."

What circles do you hang out in?

I'm considerably older, and perhaps I've lived in more different places too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a good follow-up to the thread elicited by pg's article "After Credentials."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=399863>

</comment><comment><USER9> _Except for the freakishly gifted, all of us are too dumb to get through college in many majors._

Disagree strongly. Most people are too _undisciplined_ to get through the "hard" majors, or too _uninterested_ to get through the "softer" ones (e.g. engineers who claim they couldn't have done a history major).

I agree that not everyone should be going to college. A proportion higher than 10% doesn't make sense to me. However, I'd guess that 20-40% have enough raw intellectual ability to pass through college with decent grades, and that 5-10% could complete virtually any major. The important point is that, although a quarter or more have the intellectual mettle to get through college, they have no interest in the coursework, and are going through the motions only to be employable.

I'll also point out that American college students are not working full- throttle. At demanding colleges (Ivies, MIT, top LACs) they might average 30-40 hours per week on classes and homework. At "average" colleges-- filled mostly by students who don't belong there for reasons of motivation (to get a job) rather than ability-- it's closer to 10-20.

<comment><USER10> _At demanding colleges (Ivies, MIT, top LACs) they might average 30-40 hours per week on classes and homework._

Not true, at least as you state it. When I was at MIT, I was spending about 30-40 hours per week on homework for a single class. Not all my classes were this hard, but there was at least one ball-buster per term. And I was far from alone in this regard.

<comment><USER9> Fair call. MIT is known to be hard and I know nothing about it, so I'll defer to you on this one. I was just listing it on the roster of "demanding colleges". Evidently, MIT is in a league of its own when it comes to being demanding.

<comment><USER4> From what I've heard, Caltech and Harvey-Mudd are in that league. Some from Caltech would tell you that it's higher there.

<comment><USER11> I've heard Cornell and Swarthmore are too - those are other colleges with a "throw work at you until you break" reputation. And Harvard is if you want an A, but 80% of Harvard students get Bs anyway, so most figure they'll just settle for that and work about as hard as any other liberal arts college.

Amherst was usually about 20-30 hours/week between classes and homework, _except_ when I took Quantum Mechanics or OS Design, each of which required 20-30 hours/week by itself.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux sucks, and there's nothing you can do about it - <AUTHOR> https://ryanjohnson.website/2019/11/06/linux-sucks-and-theres-nothing-you-can-do-about-it/ <comment><USER2> "The UNIX command line and most programming languages are ineffective and slow tools, because they do not make use of the brain's ability to process visual inputs quickly in parallel and contextualize large amounts of details into a cohesive idea."

"Too much reading!"

"Linux programmers are stupid."

This reads like satire. Surely this must be satire?

<comment><USER3> It's not satire, it's somebody with high education and low experience.

To quote from the 'About' section,

 _> To achieve this goal, I am developing a file system to replace the hierarchical file system paradigm used on every computer since the 1970s. I am also developing a human-computer interface to replace and extend the mouse and keyboard, which have kept the desktop experience from moving forward for nearly 50 years. I am working hard to move the desktop computing experience forward, breaking it out of the confines of tradition and integrating the full potential of advances in technology into the desktop experience._

It's essentially the cathedral mindset (vs. Linux' bazaar mindset). It's about designing a system according to the author's best knowledge vs. evolving a system according to both known and also unknown constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Golly. Persistent live usb has been a thing for like, ever right?

It makes me feel a little bit like open source projects aren't doing documentation right when someone could have easily googled for this if they only knew the right vocabulary.

But, I'm not super worried about having lost this specific person since they're so quick to call linux as a whole "crap" and developers "stupid." Maybe after undergrad and some time in the field they will come around.

<comment><USER5> > Golly. Persistent live usb has been a thing for like, ever right?

Not only that, but it's definitely possible to install, e.g. Debian onto an external drive and _not_ touch the internal bootloader. It seems that the author ran into a limitation with either Linux Mint or perhaps Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its bizarre how often I see programmers complain about CLIs given the nature of the work. A CLI is just higher-order programming. At what threshold does the author find programming an appropriate solution? Perhaps we should do everything on paper in metal filing cabinets to maximize the stimulation we provide our visual cortex.

I'm not personally averse to GUI usage. It just seems to me that complaints of "too many options" are common in regard to CLIs. And yet to me it seems that CLIs have significantly fewer practical permutations than a Turing-complete programming language.

<comment> em-bee that's a good point. if only the CLI had the consistency of a real programming language. even PHP for all its flaws is more consistent than the commandline.

don't get me wrong. i live on the terminal. and the problem with inconsistency of commands, a GUI won't fix those. on the contrary, GUIs are probably worse, especially the web based GUIS we are getting everywhere now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could this article be summed up as "someone tries to install Linux onto hardware that wasn't designed for it and did reasonably well considering"?

IMHO if you want to use linux as a day to day operating system you are better off buying it pre-installed on supported hardware from someone like Dell or System76.

That it runs on a mac at all is a testament to a volunteer community.

The argument made that everything should be in a GUI sounds like a throwback to the 90s.

I think that Microsoft's recent efforts to improve their CLI support on Windows are a good indicator that for a certain set of problems CLIs are just less restricted.

GUIs were there first on windows if you prefer otherwise but still Microsoft needed to add decent CLI support to stay competitive.

</comment><comment><USER8> OMG.

1\. UNIX != Linux

2\. Painful to you does not mean universally qualified "SUCKS". I'm at a loss what the alternative is, maybe you can't understand a CLI, or something.

3\. I figured it out. Here I fixed the headline: "Understanding what the computer does is too hard SUCKS, and the only thing that can be done is to learn stuff"

<comment><USER7> If only _GNU_ would somehow make it clear that _G_ nu/linux's _N_ ot _U_ nix...

<comment><USER8> To an idiot, apparently, it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thinking one could use Linux on Apple's proprietary hardware without non- trivial problems was the first mistake. Really should have thought twice about installing Linux to an external drive _on a system with it 's own internal drive & bootloader_ too.

<comment> em-bee i did the same, it worked just fine. the only downside was that the USB device i used was to slow, so the result wasn't practical. and, i just can't deal with dual booting. i want my systems to be always on (or quickly restore state from sleep or hibernate)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surely a better solution in this case would be to run linux inside a VM?

I ran this way for a couple of years on a black macbook, and it has a few advantages, such as the VM just suspending rather than rebooting if for some reason the host OS reboots, eg to install updates.

Now, there's docker et al too.

Personally I've always found setting up any complex dual boot configuration fraught.

And linux makes some things quite complex to configure (eg sound), requiring you to look online for solutions. Unfortunately those are often in the form of rambling and often outdated forum topics, or "educational" blog posts that start with "First, an introduction to computer sound hardware ...", when all you want is the cli command to change volume.

</comment><comment> jerome-jh Wow, a computer something-ist trying to be a neuroscientist.

So maybe the visual cortex is 30% of the brain, it is also very coarse and imprecise. It sometimes ignores large part of the visual field. It is very immune to noise and that's why it is imprecise. It does much processing without you being conscious and that's why there are so many "optical illusions".

On the other hand audition (when working, not my case) is very precise (sensitivity), has very good frequency selectivity, huge dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is precisely the sort of way in which "user friendly" installation methods fail.

I have a theory that most desktop Linux users, after a number of years, end up in one of two camps:

a) giving up and going back to $PROPRIETARY_OS

b) settle on something like Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Debian or similar whereby the system is less 'opinionated' and just gets out of your way.

Mint seems like the worst of all worlds to me.

And the poster here is insufferable. If it's supposed to be satire, it's not funny either.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was genuinely painful.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you want to run an OS from a removable external hard drive, you put the bootloader on the external hard drive too.

In his case, taking the easy option when he wanted a complex solution was his error. He should have selected the 'something else' option. Yes, he needed extra knowledge to pick that selection, but that is where Google is your friend.

Linux _is_ User-Friendly. But it is _very_ selective in choosing its friends.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe this moron could have answered "no" to the question asking if he wants to install the boot loader on all drives but clearly, he's to dumb to do so just as he's too dumb to restore the uefi boot loader in os x (system settings-> syrup m startup disk). I stopped reading after that. People this clueless should not use computers without supervision especially Linux.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can anyone positively confirm any OS that handles the scenario described here seamlessly?

It seems like a rare use case that, while feasible, is totally unsurprising that it would require a good bit of research and manual intervention.

<comment><USER16> I think linux would do fine. As long as the different hardware you want to run it on is compatible with the version installed on your external disk. Which wasn't the case here apparently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "other entrepreneurs"

</comment><comment><USER18> Ryan john sucks and there's nothing he can do about it ...</comment>


'Content' is a terrible term. Please stop using it - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2018/05/08/content-terrible-term-please-stop-using-it <comment><USER2> I am content to never read this site again.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about the word "media"?

</comment><comment><USER4> what would you use instead??</comment>


Can the Web save newspapers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/business/article/754729--can-the-web-save-newspapers

<comment><AUTHOR> This topic has been discussed here before, and I'm sure will be discussed again - I found this article interesting because it gives an overview of the strategies newspapers are considering.</comment>


Apple is lobbying Californian lawmakers against 'Right to Repair' bill - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3074896/apple-is-lobbying-californian-lawmakers-against-the-right-to-repair <comment><USER2> > _" With access to proprietary guides and tools, hackers can more easily > circumvent security protections, harming not only the product owner but also > everyone who shares their network"_

Of the many consumer insults present in this entire topic, this one really shows the ridiculousness of Apple's position.

<comment><USER3> For that matter, if more altruistic people had access to these tools, couldn't you argue that security bugs would be found quicker as well? As of right now, it's possible that there are a million security bugs that black-hat hackers are sitting on that the average person doesn't have the tools to know about.

Isn't security-through-obscurity considered the worst kind of security?

<comment><USER4> Security-through-obscurity can be very effective by using it to throw up a smoke screen.

Case: you need to protect a web server. If you can successfully hide/spoof your OS/software fingerprint, an attacker won't know whether your server has vulnerable software. This makes exploit selection extremely difficult.

You can protect an already secure system from 0-day or unknown exploits by hiding whether you're running windows/linux/bsd/whatever with IIS/apache/nginx/traefik/caddy.

Of course this should not be used as an argument to introduce laws that limit the rights of repair shops, users or even security researchers.

<comment><USER5> Really? Software detection techniques are so sophisticated these days, you need to put a lot of effort into that, and it all can be defeated by something very simple that doesn't even depend on you. Experts will find the way and newbies will just throw at you everything they have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "When an electronic product breaks, consumers have a variety of repair > options, including using an OEM's [original equipment manufacturer] > authorized repair network."

Yeah, it's called taxing users for the defects you engineered in the first place. Look at how ridiculous the glued keyboard fiasco was with Apple, which refused to admit any guilt in their design for several years and charged users several hundred bucks for official repairs if they did not subscribe any special warranty.

</comment><comment><USER7> If there was a right to repair and Apple released three generations of bad laptops someone else could probably fix their mistake while they were still in the denial phase.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ugh! As a former Apple fanboi, _this_ is the reason I no longer own any Apple equipment. Apple products are beautiful, and very well designed, but so is a rhinestone straitjacket.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd also like to see a "right to install" bill that targets all major computing device platforms.

Nobody should be able to sell devices to millions of people without giving those customers the ability to install their own software. There should be no arbitrary limits such as "you have to plug your device into another device every 7 days just to keep your custom software installed".

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree and disagree. I think people should have the absolute right to repair and modify their devices, with or without an existing warranty. However to support that activity while forcing companies to honor the warranty feels wrong. It's like saying here, I screwed it up, now you fix it for free.

</comment><comment><USER11> Let them repair but it should void any warranty.

<comment><USER12> Why exactly should a vendor not be responsible for the quality of its product just because they weren't hired to repair it?

<comment><USER13> Why should a vendor be responsible for any damages caused by unauthorized repairs using unknown methods and equipment?

<comment><USER12> 1\. Who is talking about unauthorized repairs? I am talking about repairs that are authorized, by the owner of the product, because who else would possibly have the authority to decide who is allowed to do something with a thing, such as repairing it, if not the owner of that thing?

2\. Who says the vendor should be responsible for damages caused by repairs not done by the vendor? I was responding to someone who said that a repair not done by the vendor should void the warranty. Warranty only covers defects caused by the vendor, thus what they suggested was that vendors should not be liable for defects they themselves caused if someone else has repaired their product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The tradeoff here is between right to repair, and users having secure, trustworthy devices that will not spy on them. Put yourself in the shoes of an abused family member who lives with a hardware tinkerer who can pwn your device, unbeknownst to you, enabling further abuse (not talking about physical abuse necessarily here).

Just to take one slice of the population as an example, Apple has many gay and trans employees and no doubt users as well, so they are keenly aware of the problems these people can face whether while growing up, or afterwards.

As another example, take a look at the /r/atheism subreddit FAQ about coming out to your family, and read some of the horror stories there. People get disowned, kicked out of their parents homes, physically threatened, and even physically harmed in some cases, just for thinking for themselves.

As another example, in some cultures, honor killings are also a thing.

Users deserve to have their personal devices be secure, even from hostile family or household members.

On the other side is right to repair. I would love to see both sides be satisfied, but I do think the right to repair folks have been too militant in ignoring and dismissing the legitimate concerns Apple has about preserving user privacy.

Then there is the bogus line of argument that Apple is only against right to repair because they are heartless, greedy, profit fiends. But there are plenty of profit opportunities they have forgone, such as gathering personal data to exploit for ad networks, which argue otherwise. So I don't buy it.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, but what do you want to say with your comment? Changing a broken screen does not invalidate any chips on the motherboard afaik..

<comment><USER14> I think my comment is pretty clear.

Just to address your one cherry-picked hardware item:

>Changing a broken screen does not invalidate any chips on the motherboard afaik..

On some devices (those with fingerprint sensors) there are security implications.

<comment><USER15> From My experience with iPhones the opposite is true.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't use default_scope. Ever - <AUTHOR> https://andycroll.com/ruby/dont-use-default-scope/ <comment><USER2> I ran into this recently. Almost the exact same usecase, although I had canceled line items, instead of posts.

There is one usecase where this works, though.

        class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
          default_scope { include(:author) }
        end

In my case, the parent model depended on the child-model to be present when running a few methods (calculating the total for line items), so I decided to do this for eager loading.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> IMO, only to set up a non-ID sort order</comment>


Dennis the Denver dentist and Laura the Louisiana lawyer - <AUTHOR> http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2005/08/dennis_the_denv.html

<comment><USER2> Also for grades: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071114111138.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071114111138.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting idea, but some of the interpretations are way off. The Jerry/Walter thing is weird. Why would you compare the Dennises against a group of similar size instead of just comparing the ratios betwen Dennises and everyone? I mean, maybe people who were born in a certain time period were more likely to both become dentists and be named Dennis.

It says "221 of these Dennises are "extra" dentists--choosing the profession just based on their name." This statement is almost farcical. Even assuming there are more dentists per Dennis than among normal people, the wording of this sentence suggests there was no other reason for these people to choose to be dentists. I think they must have skipped over some part of probability law.

<comment><USER4> You can consult the article itself instead of the description of it (always the better option, especially when it comes to articles in non-specialist newspapers etc.). It has a full description of their methodology and at first glance doesn't seem to contain any 'doh!' mistakes.</comment></comment>


Brad Feld's Blog has been down for a week plus? - <AUTHOR> http://www.feld.com/blog/ <comment><USER2> from @bfeld: taking a two week blogging break. maybe the ddos attack will end / my new config will be up by then. about 3 hours ago from twhirl

<http://twitter.com/bfeld/status/1022091755>

</comment><comment><USER3> is this like if a tree falls in a forest and no one cares, does it make a sound?

<comment><USER4> If a blog falls in a blogosphere...</comment></comment>


Static site generators are overvalued - <AUTHOR> http://typed.pw/a/449 <comment><USER2> That's the problem with many young people, they fail to recognize Unix history. Or for how a computer actually works... as long as there's a JVM running in a container inside a virtualized fat server with 128GB RAM, everything is fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Minimalism is overrated - that site looks ugly and has nearly no features. Just compare it to the default Pelican look (a static site generator, link below). No doubt which one looks better.

Pelican also has loads of plugins. I wonder where I get more resources for pandoc + make site generation.

[http://blog.getpelican.com/](http://blog.getpelican.com/)

[https://github.com/getpelican/pelican- plugins](https://github.com/getpelican/pelican-plugins)

<comment><AUTHOR> Minimalism is underrated imho. Just because is simple, doesn't mean it sucks. Most sites are so full of crap they take minutes to fully load. My point is that you can build a site that covers 90% of your needs in 5 minutes. Wheter typed.pw looks good or bad is a question of taste. I like it, the most important aspect for me is readability anyway. What I absolutely dislike is sites that are too "modern". They mess with the scrollbar, use lightboxes/popups, use the same color for normal text and links, make textfields almost indistinguishable from the rest of the page, etc.

My main point is that we fail to use the tools we have properly and build something that is more powerful than needed. And sometimes this is damaging too (e.g. sites taking minutes to load, etc.).

BTW not having features sometimes IS a feature. YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This guy apparently doesn't need any kind of theming for his site.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand how it works. Could someone upload an archive with some files? Thanks in advance!</comment>


Where is the One Percent? - <AUTHOR> http://thekeesh.com/onepercent/

<comment><USER2> Is median income the right measure to use here? This leads to weird anomalies like how is Bergen County is 1% but New York County (Manhattan) is 4%?

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I thought the same thing. It seems kind of strange to use median income to find the "1%".

I guess it all depends on the point this is trying to make, which I'm a little unclear on. It seems perhaps useful (it's data, after all), but if the intent was to tie it to the "occupy" movement, then I missed that connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cost of living. Cost of living. Cost of living.

$85,000 in San Francisco will not get you much. The same amount in Kansas will have you living like a king.

<comment><USER5> Yea but living in San Francisco will get you lots of culture, restaurants, etc. that you won't get in Kansas. Living in SF is just a luxury that some people are willing to pay for, you could live in Oakland and pay half the rent.

<comment><USER4> I'm not knocking on SF, I live there and I love it. I'm just pointing out that this "top 1%" article is useless since it does not account for cost of living.

The difference in CoL is so drastic between NYC/SF and Kansas that the study might look drastically different if it looked at net income after living expenses.

<comment><USER5> The point I was trying to make is that CoL should not be a factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course, you can break into the _global_ top 1% with a mere $34,000 a year.

<comment><USER7> I believe it is 54k a year now, but I may have been looking it up incorrectly.

<comment><USER8> According to the Wiki, 40% of the US population made over $54k in 2003. That's 125 million people or 1.8% of the world's population. Since there are obviously people outside the US also making over $54k per year, we can assume that at least 2% of the world population is making over 54k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whoa, so any small business owner who is more or less successful is considered the 1%? The situation is worse than I thought...

Seriously, I think the 1% should include only those earning over 500K a year (there's about... oh 1% of them in the world :-))...

<comment><USER10> No. You need $380,000 in income, i.e., PROFIT, from a small business to be considered part of the 1%.

A "successful" small business owner could take in $2-3M in receipts and still only clear $150k a year after expenses. Or less. Some businesses don't have much of a margin. And most don't have more than a few hundred k a year of receipts.

That's what I find crazy about all of the "you'll hurt small business!" anti- tax rhetoric. If it's only targeting more than $380k in PROFIT (for a sole proprietorship, or that much per owner for a partnership/jointly owned business), then raising the MARGINAL tax to 50% or higher would only encourage the business owner(s) to spend the money on expanding their business instead of buying a second yacht.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I see something similar about the capital gains debate. You only pay capital gains when you /sell/ your business. If you want to take money out of an existing business, you have two options; issue a dividend (and pay both corporate taxes /and/ capital gains taxes, which usually makes the second option attractive) or pay yourself bonus/salary at the usual tax rates.

A lower capital gains only helps you if you are building to flip.

<comment><USER10> >issue a dividend (and pay both corporate taxes /and/ capital gains taxes

This is only true if you're a C-corp. I know on HN most folks are creating a C-corp because it's easier to invest in, but if you're doing a small business, a partnership, S-corp, or LLC filing as an S-corp are likely the best options for you.

In all three of the latter cases, taking money out only causes you to be taxed once.

<comment><USER11> right, I'm an S corp. you get taxed once, but you pay the income tax rate, as if it were salary or bonus, so you still end up paying well north of twice the capital gains rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I'm really curious in these days is how this map would look if we had a map of the World instead of the map of the United States.

Where would the 1% be then? How many of us would be in the 1%?

<comment><USER8> More of us, but not as many as you'd think.

The top 1% of the wold is ~70 million people. This is 22% of the US population. The top 22% in the US earn about $85k per year. So, if you're making over $85k, you're in the global 1%.

Except, this is rather America centric. If we expand out to the entire G8 (pop. ~880 million), we find that you need to be in the top 8% of G8 salaries to be in the global 1%. This corresponds to about $150k, taking the zeroth order approximation that the G8 distributions are the same as the US one.

Note: Population data pulled from Mathematica and US Household income data pulled from wikipedia ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)). Note that the income data is dated, so corrections are welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Campbell County, Wyoming. Just as I suspected!

This is great, thanks. What technology did you use for the map and parsing the census data?

UPDATE: Looks like this js library was used <http://mbostock.github.com/d3/ex/choropleth.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> The idea that Caroline County, VA (my home town) is the 9% is fairly ridiculous. It's a very poor county, with most people working in the food industry or at King's Dominion nearby. I suppose DC commuters may be skewing the stats, but that certainly wasn't reflected in my high school.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's what CNN says [http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/20/news/economy/occupy_wall_str...](http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/20/news/economy/occupy_wall_street_income/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> Not surprised about Virginia, which is where I live. 3 of the top 5 richest counties in the US are in Virginia. If you count Maryland, then 4 of the top 5 are in the DC metro area.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think Occupy refers to the claim that "the top 1 percent owns more financial wealth than bottom 95 percent combined" popularized by Michael Moore in his latest film.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow check out all the counties in metro Atlanta. We always joked that paulding county was full of rednecks, but it's in the top 5%.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this adjusted for living expenses at all? New York may have high salaries but they also have high cost of living.

<comment><USER20> Personally I'm not a huge fan of so-called "cost of living" adjustments. I've lived in a range of "cost of living" areas, and areas with a higher CoL are generally nicer, by which I mean, everything in the area is just _generally nicer_. Stores don't have missing tiles, produce is fresher, crime is lower, the lights on the stores outside don't have missing bulbs for long, the roads are smoother, the houses are nicer, and the local culture is richer, in most senses of the term.

If we're talking about things like global levels of true wealth, you probably _shouldn't_ adjust for CoL. Areas with high CoL are areas with a higher ambient wealth, and for questions of who is better off, trying to normalize on CoL lines someone in semi-rural China vs. a Manhattenite is normalizing away a critical truth.

<comment><USER11> I find this especially true in labor markets. I've moved from the central valley to the silicon valley and back several times during my life, and yeah, silicon valley has higher wages (and higher rents) - but you know what? it also has higher expectations.

I noticed that whenever I went to silicon valley, I was, well, mediocre. I had to put some effort in just to stay in the middle of the pack, and I've had some jobs where it took my all just to keep my head above water. In the central valley? almost everywhere I worked, I was like a little god, even without all that much effort.

Sure, the average worker gets paid more here in silicon valley; but if you hire the average silicon valley sysadmin/programmer, you are getting a whole lot more than the average central valley sysadmin/programmer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> El Paso County, TX (the leftmost one) has a median income of 36,78? A few others in Texas are similarly quite off.

<comment><USER7> Have you ever been to El Paso? Its miserable.

<comment><USER22> Judging by the percentage given, I'm pretty sure the trailing 0 was stripped and it's really $36,780.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Double Click to zoom in; Shift + Double Click to zoom out.

<comment><USER24> Or use the scroll-wheel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seems they're concentrated in Washington DC primarily, with New York, San Francisco, Boston and Seattle taking the rear.

The North Slope of alaska, however, shows an error here. The cost of living in Barrow is really very high... much higher than, say, Adams County, Washington. So, I suspect someone making the median income in Adams County is probably doing better than someone making the median in Barrow, in terms of take home pay....

Though, interestingly, those oil workers will be taxed on their income, not accounting for their expenses, and thus are marginally poorer as a result.

Also, according to the standards of this map, I'm the %1. This is good to know, because previously, I'd felt a little sheepish when I made that claim.

<comment><USER26> It seems like having the center of political power inhabited by the 1% explains why the concerns of the 99% are so easily dismissed by national politicans.

<comment><USER27> Keep it up, Hari.

<comment><USER26> Heh. So few people get the reference...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eat24hours.com/breakup-letter-to-facebook-from-eat24 <comment><USER3> Every day that goes by I am more convinced that the Twitter stream is the best way to communicate, as a brand and as a consumer. On Twitter, as in Facebook, I follow/like whatever brands I find interesting, engaging and resonate with my believes/interests. If I see that a brand does/say something I don't like, I simply unfollow/unlike.

What Facebook is doing is (over)engineering how my relationship with brands/people are, and I don't like that. If I like Robert Scoble on Facebook it is because I want to see what he has to say, and my like should not just be another stat on on Scoble's total number of followers. Hence, my use of Twitter is significantly higher than that on FB. Facebook is digging itself into a big hole.

<comment><USER4> Why do you want to engage with brands?

I don't mean that to be antagonistic, I just don't have much understanding of that particular thing.

<comment><USER5> You follow a band you like because you want to know about their upcoming performances and new music. You follow an artist you like to see new stuff they're working on and when they post it online. You follow your favorite family owned restaurant to see what specials they have and when they're doing a wine tasting. You follow your favorite local bar to find out when trivia night is.

There are a ton of reasons to follow things that aren't friends. And Facebook was a great way to track all that stuff. Now, it isn't, because Facebook changed the algorithm. You can still find it if you manually click on the Pages Feed, which is handy for folks who know it's there. But most people don't, so most of what you take the time to post on Facebook as a business is barely seen by anyone.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, half the time people sign up for purely symbolic reasons, or to participate in a "like us on Facebook to win.." competition and not necessarily because they want daily ads for $brand served to them in between their friends' baby pics and obscure links posted by some guy they once met at an airport.

If you _really_ want regular updates from a vendor you sign up to their mailing list...

<comment><USER7> > _" If you really want regular updates from a vendor you sign up to their > mailing list..."_

Or you follow them on social media because you use it more regularly than you use e-mail, or you find it more convenient.

<comment><USER6> But the Facebook news feed has _never_ been a reliable delivery mechanism for updates you actually want to receive, because there's always been a huge volume of content with imperfect filters in place; if you really want to check on a brand you either go direct to their Facebook page which is entirely unaffected by filter algorithms or follow them on Twitter or by email. Users who only ever saw a fraction of the brand communications in their main feed anyway aren't particularly upset by changes in the filter that mean they see an even smaller percentage (if they get more friend updates instead they might even see it as a net win). Brands whose free advertising reaches 1-2% of eyeballs rather than 10-20% of the ones upset here, as with the Gmail "promotions" tab.

Eat24's marketing team aren't stupid: they know this which is why you don't get coupon offers on Facebook, you get meme graphics, jokes about food and pictures of pizza. You get coupon offers by email without the jokes or on Twitter with them.

Edit: disagreement by downvoting is particularly lame when it comes without an explanation of why I'm supposedly wrong. You don't see everything that every person or brand has posted in your newsfeed, haven't done for a long time, and in practice wouldn't do without a lot of scrolling even if they didn't filter at all. Whether Facebook's intent in filtering Pages posts to your feed more aggressively than Friend posts to your feed is purely commercial, purely driven by user engagement metrics or something in between, it's hardly a new development or something that only applies to brands.

<comment><USER7> > _" the Facebook news feed has never been a reliable delivery mechanism for > updates you actually want to receive"_

Yes it was. It was great for me for several years. I blocked games and kept my friends list to actual friends, and I was easily able to keep up with peoples' lives AND with products/companies I followed.

Eventually they changed the algorithm enough times, and hid/removed enough options, that I couldn't keep up. I posted a mini-rant in the comments here about it -- how FB's algorithm decided it was more important that I see a random not-very-close high school friend post an offensive political meme than that I see my brother's wedding pictures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well that's funny brands are complaining Facebook is selling out. That's like Coca-Cola complaining that the Super Bowl is too commercial. When I joined The Facebook it was for me and my college classmates. There was no such thing as liking a brand (and maybe not even liking at all). I remember most of my friends being surprised when after liking a brand you were inundated with spam. I guess after people obsessively liked things for years, and added every possible friend, the only thing left is to pay for news feed placement.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a question on this. Let's say small college puts a post on Facebook like an event, financial aid warning, or a school close announcement. If I read this right, then that post will not be distributed to everyone following the college? In contrast, on Twitter, a post will go to all followers. Is this right?

<comment><USER10> Yes it 100 Percent right. It will reach to approx 10% of people who have liked the fan page.

<comment><USER11> Wow, I just learned about this today. What's the point of having a Facebook page then? Sounds like a gigantic waste of time.

<comment><USER12> Well you can pay to promote a post so it will have a higher reach. Businesses should be more appreciative of the fact that 5-10% reach for _free_ is far more free reach than you will get with TV, radio, Google ads, or anything else short of putting flyers on telephone poles.

<comment><USER11> Well, no. I disagree with what you're saying. If I create a page for my business and share coupons and stuff, people are free to come like my page. That means they want to see more of my stuff voluntarily.

Why is Facebook extorting money from the business to allow users to see what they want to see?

<comment><USER13> No, it does my mean they want to see a constant stream of every promotion and sale you offer. It means that they liked _one thing_ and your page is no different than the thousand other things I have liked last month. You don't have some entitlement to space on my feed. If I am interested then a constant stream of likes to your content will keep you in view. If you convinced me and ten thousand others to like a single cat picture that does not mean I want to see anything else you post. I may like your television advertisement, but that is not why I turn on the tv or select a particular channel.

<comment><USER11> You're confused. A like _for_ a page is not the same as a like on a _single post_.

<comment><USER13> No, you are the one who is confused here. A like for a page, similar to a like on a single post, is not permission to spam my news feed. If I wanted to subscribe to your updates I would actually, you know, subscribe. A like is a coarse-granularity indication that I have some interest in your page, but just like everything else I opted to "like" it is one indicator among many that should be used to build my feed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't use Eat24 - but between this and their post on NSFW advertising - <USER2> feel like I should. Their content strategy people know what's up.

<comment><USER14> Here's the other article I was referencing:

[http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn- websit...](http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-website/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know what the original author is talking about to be honest. When I use Facebook, my feed is filled with friends & family posts and the very occasional ad.

To really put it into perspective, I just opened my Facebook now, first ad is in position 5 in my feed. The next ad popped in at the 52nd item in my feed. I went looking for a third ad.. I decided to stop after the 200th item in my feed and I generally don't scroll down that far in a single sitting.

Sure, there are ads on the side, but I'm more or less blind to those ads because they're always there.

That's not to say it was always like this. Candy Crush ads and whatnot used to pop up all the time from certain people. That's why you can hide those. They quickly disappear.

I guess it must just be cool to dump on Facebook now.

<comment><USER16> We must be in different buckets. I signing and I see 1 message from a friend followed by 1 ad, 2 sponsored posts and to the right 4 or 5 ad's in the sidebar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Honestly I still don't get the hubbub over this algorithm change by Facebook. It's a scaling issue Facebook is attempting to solve, in a dramatically different (and IMHO superior) way than Twitter.

On both networks, every time you look at your feed you'll only look at the top X items. On Twitter, that'll just be the X most recent items. On Facebook, those X items are picked algorithmically based on the degree of engagement. The latter seems 1000x better and more intelligent than Twitter, even though it technically means not every post I'm subscribed to will make it into my feed.

As people spend more and more years on Facebook, we naturally accumulate more friends and pages (personally around 1200 friends and 200 pages). Thus, we're subscribed to more content. Far too much to reasonably make it into our feed. Given that X is fixed, the percentage of any particular source's posts which will make it into X _should_ decline. It seems totally reasonable that which posts make it in are dictated by how much engagement those posts had.

<comment><USER18> No. Just no. Like many other small businesses, I paid thousands of dollars to Facebook for ads to create fan pages. People who were interested in what I was doing became fans (I had about 4000 in all). There was _never_ any indication from Facebook that they would make it increasingly difficult to reach those people, and those fans were never told that they would not see my posts. Due to changes in their algorithm I watched the views for my posts drop from 1200 to less than 10. Then I was told I had to pay to reach my own fans. Businesses like ours helped grow Facebook by building fan pages but Facebook betrayed us and, more importantly, betrayed our fans. It's sick.

<comment><USER17> Instead of resorting to emotion, can you explain a compelling alternative for how Facebook could actually solve this?

Yes, you have 4000 fans. But I'm 99% sure you're not the only page they like. They probably like many other pages, and also have many other friends (2 numbers that increase over time). Do you not see how it's literally impossible for every post I'm subscribed to reach me?

This is purely a problem of scale. Most of my friends don't see my updates, because they also have many other friends. But my mom sees every single update I have because I'm her only Facebook friend.

Perhaps it's annoying/confusing that Facebook gave you the option to monetarily combat the effects of a growing network. But organic growth also still works.

<comment><USER18> Facebook started to throttle response just over a year ago, well _after_ most people already had all of their friends in their feed, and well after most people had joined most of the pages they like.

It's no coincidence that Facebook told me I could get more views by spending money to reach the same people I had been reaching organically just a few weeks before.

The solution is to stop trying to extort money from the businesses that helped them build their business and let the users decide what they want to see.

<comment><USER17> You're acting as though Facebook has somehow blocked fans from visiting your page. They're of course free to do so.

Given that you accept it's a statistical impossibility for all content I'm subscribed to to reach my feed, what we're debating is priorities. Before this algorithm change, I fully believe it was tilted too far in terms of brands—I received way too many updates from brands and few from my friends.

What you call extortion is what every sane person in the world calls advertising. If a magazine writes a story about my business (free advertising), that obviously doesn't entitle me to free advertising in all future issues. Neither does Facebook once giving you free reach.

<comment><USER18> If your feed before was "tilted too fat in terms of brands" then you could easily have hidden them from the feed or unsubscribed.

Your analogy is wrong. Facebook did not write a free story about my business. I _paid_ them to help me gather a group of people who were interested in my business. They never at any point said that I would have to pay to access those users. Then, after I spent a lot of money, time and effort maintaining that group, they told me that I couldn't access them without paying them again and again. That's extortion, not advertising.

As someone who has ran a business that has sold many millions of dollars of advertising you don't screw over your readers and advertisers to make an extra buck. It might work in the short term, but it's a failing business strategy.

<comment><USER19> The users are hiding you by their inaction on your posts.

If you "like" more posts from a page, you'll see more of their content. If you don't like their posts, you'll see less of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They are deleting their Facebook on 11:59 PM on Monday. That is a minute before April 1st. I suspect a clever April Fools self-promotion tactic...

</comment><comment><USER21> Here's my hit prediction - in 1-2 years HN will be full of blog posts of people bemoaning how they are forced to abandon Twitter, not because they have just noticed that 140char is too short to convey a meaningful message, but because they feel that they've been betrayed and/or misled.

(It will take longer because they charge substantially less, but it will happen _because_ they charge substantially less.)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is why Facebook is buying other companies because people are migrating away from Facebook.

One flaw Facebook has, when everyone's been on it for years they collect hundreds of friends from random old parts of their life. This waters down the experience because random people you barely know posting all the time turns your feed into something less interesting.

Toss in more ads combined with old acquaintances, and distant family members and you have a spammy feed.

Plus advertisers are mad because they invested in broadening their reach only to have it taken away from them unless they pay to promote.

A new social network is a fresh social network, void of your parent's family friends and clothing companies you no longer care about.

Facebook is myspace all over again.

The most telling decline stat, my older sister who is a soccer mom and was obsessed with Facebook for years recently told me, "we don't really go on Facebook anymore, we use instagram." uh-oh, it's the non-technical family member indicator. She was the last one of us to get a smartphone too.

That's why Facebook is buying other internet properties. Because their's is on the decline with actual engaged users, their stats might show new users joining quickly, those are probably bots, spammers, and foreigners. Facebook's future is a universal login tool and a place to see you're great aunt's inspiration quote spam.

<comment><USER13> You realize that at the same time as the occulus rift purchase they announced one billion mobile users, right? No one is moving away from facebook. Everyone has anecdotes but the financial filings have real numbers. They may not be growing at the rates they were in the past, but that was inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I actually kind of feel for facebook. Not even a year ago people were complaining about Facebook not having enough relevant content etc. So they were migrating away. Old facebook was filled with commercial spam and made it a crappy experience. EdgeRank helped with that aspect a lot.

Switching hats, this also bothers me though. I'm a marketer for a lot of local businesses through my agency, and obviously this sucks. It's still a really valuable platform from a paid perspective. In fact using the some images and copy on facebook versus Reddit I get almost 5x the CTR and conversions. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're savvy and you're willing to treat Facebook like any other ad network there's still a lot of value to be had. The days of free engagement from pages seems to be coming to an end. That really sucks for people who paid to build their's up. Going back on features like that and screwing people etc. seems to be an endemic of the tech industry as a whole though and not just Facebook. Google Reader anyone?

I know this is more of a rant and points out more problems than solutions, but I just wanted to point out the situation is more complex than Facebook is bad let's hate them.

<comment><USER24> Nobody paid Google any money to create a following on Google Reader, and then made that following worthless... Not really a fair comparison.

<comment><USER23> Okay then not google reader. What about the myriad of startups that "pivot" leaving paying customers hanging etc. Frankly too, that was a very small part of my overall point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My sincere apologies for the sarcasm, but you mean to tell me that your previously free source of massive one click fan reach is no longer free?! There is no possible way that this was intentional ...

</comment><comment><USER26> And I can't even post a comment on their blog to show support because I closed my fb account. Oh the irony... Anyway, more power to ya.

</comment><comment><USER27> The algorithm they describe is apparently called "EdgeRank." All I can find via Google are really bad infographics and worse layman explanations (ones that make it clear the writer doesn't understand basic graph theory, or is adulterating their understanding for whatever reason).

Can anyone post a link to a research-level paper explaining the algorithm? The name EdgeRank makes me think it's a ripoff of PageRank, so are they solving some sort of eigensystem for, what, an incidence matrix instead of an adjacency matrix?

<comment><USER27> Ah. It appears to be nothing more complicated than computing this linear formula given, and Facebook has a thousand tiny little knobs for adjusting the parameters.

Maybe the problem is that their algorithm is not really an algorithm. PageRank was good because it had an interpretation as a random walk that made sense (before SEO). EdgeRank can only be interpreted as an arbitrary formula.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like they're cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Why not just go with the 100% free route and accept less engagement on their posts? They will still profit. People will still come to Facebook and search for them.

I'm no fan of Facebook either, but this just seems childish. In the end, it's not Facebook who's hurt. It's them and their FB-only fans.

<comment><USER5> Because engagement with the people who like your page is purposely being dropped to 1-2%. So, those 10,000 likes you have won't really matter because only 100 or 200 people will see it. Unless you pay $20 to get all 10,000 to see it and get you another couple dozen likes.

<comment><USER29> You're right, but you didn't point out the other obvious thing that some people aren't getting: it takes effort to properly post things on Facebook. Add that to only 1-2% of your hard-won subscribers are actually seeing it and it makes it really not worth it.

<comment><USER28> Has anyone _really_ looked at their Facebook page? Their engagement is low for a good reason - they simply aren't good at posting on Facebook.

Go look at their page and tell me: if you were in charge of Facebook's algorithm, would you put that stuff on every person's feed without charging a bunch of money???

I'm by no means an expert, but I know that their posts aren't exactly making me interested in ordering food or talking to them.

They do, however, have some posts that went viral, but they're really not suited towards their customer base.

It's just not a good feed. IMHO, and obviously also in Facebook's, they don't "deserve" any more attention when there are tons of more successful alternatives for Facebook to show.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't matter the page. Facebook itself is purposely turning the algorithm down to weight page posts much less strongly than they weight individual posts. It's Facebook that's pushing it down to 1-2% and has been dialing it back consistently for the last 4 months or so. That 1-2% metric isn't based on people upset about their unpopular pages, it's from inside Facebook itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> FB has huge financial pressure to monetize everything. The consequence is to- your-face ads that we are seeing day-in-day-out.

</comment><comment><USER31> While I agree with the problem with paid ads and bots, it is funny that the blog uses like buttons and has facebook comments though they are leaving facebook.

<comment><USER14> Yeah - interesting to see what they'll do about fb comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just don't understand why a company would want a Facebook page; consequently all this angst and drama leaves me befuddled. They have a website. They can show people who care pictures of food and whatever else they want. Why would they seek to dilute their web presence and message by helping another company profit from their content?

<comment><USER33> I have asked the same question from a marketing professional. His answers was: We go fishing where the fish is.

The sad truth is, it's hard to get eyeballs on your site. Once that changes the game will change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I 100% support eat24 in their decision. Facebook is ridiculous now. I requested my "facebook archive" 2 days ago and still have not received my email confirmation with the download link. As soon as I do, I'm deleting my facebook profile as well. Goodbye Facebook. I hoped you would learn from mistakes, but I see you haven't.

</comment><comment><USER35> _yawn_

Another "breakup letter"...fascinating...

</comment><comment><USER36> Silly post. Facebook is a business. Just like in Costco, you don't get free samples forever. At some point you need to buy the bagel bites to get full at home.

<comment><USER37> Exactly. Eat24 is mad that Facebook won't carry their ads for free, and I can't say that that's a position I have much sympathy for.

<comment><USER38> Or Eat24 is mad that Facebook are demanding money to carry Eat24 contents for free.

If spotify started to demand money for artists rather than pay them, artists would start to get angry.

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure I understand the difference between "<company> ads" and "<company>'s content". Facebook is a promotional platform. Content posted there by companies are advertisements, nearly by definition.

<comment><USER40> People like/follow accounts of companies on social networks in order to consume the content those accounts post. Certainly this includes marketing material, but a key distinction between this and ordinary ads is that people have made a deliberate decision, "I wish to see content from this company".

That content becomes part of the reason people spend time on the platform, adding more opportunities for Facebook to sell actual ads (including to competitors, I might add). The network effect applies to companies, too!

Facebook is now denying that content to users who have said they want it, and destroying most of the value to the companies of creating that content. This is a reversal of their prior policies (thus a bait-and-switch), dishonest (if they don't want companies participating in their social network, they should just ban them and make them run ordinary ads), and just plain ol' stupid (because they're deliberately damaging their network and their image).

<comment><USER39> I think, what you are saying is, "It's not an ad if somebody signed up to see it". It takes a lot of imagination to distinguish between "company content" and "ads" on a platform whose purpose is PR and promotion.

<comment><USER40> It takes no imagination to distinguish between "things users go to Facebook to see" and "things users do not go to Facebook to see".

<comment><USER39> I agree that people will want to see some ads and they will not want to see other ads. They're all still ads.

<comment><USER40> In your opinion, not in mine. If Facebook agrees with you, then Facebook should be honest and ban commercial entities from having accounts, instead requiring them to use only the ordinary advertising mechanisms.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some Consulting Wisdom I Picked Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/chad_myers/archive/2008/06/08/some-consulting-wisdom-i-picked-up.aspx <comment><USER2> Basically an approach I take on all points. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best consulting advice I got, and revisit is from Jerry Weinberg's "Secrets of Consulting".

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0932633013>

Highly recommended.

<comment><AUTHOR> DHH actually plugged that book at RailsConf this year and sales on Amazon shot up to top spot in consulting section. Yeah, it's a great book!</comment></comment>


Programming languages to watch: LiveScript, Julia, Elixir - <AUTHOR> http://adambard.com/blog/3-languages-to-watch/ <comment><USER2> This may possibly be intentional, but seems a bit confusing. The original name of Javascript was LiveScript when initially released with Netscape in the 90s.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#Birth_at_Netscape](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#Birth_at_Netscape)

Edit: It seems it is intentional:

"LiveScript was one of the original names for JavaScript, so it seemed fitting. It's an inside joke for those who know JavaScript well."

[http://livescript.net/#name](http://livescript.net/#name)

<comment><USER3> That is my single biggest issue with the LiveScript name... Not that most people know this, it still bothers me a lot.

Though, I'm one of the ones who had the same kind of problem when Mozilla named their new browser Firebird (before becoming Firefox).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are into functional programming and new functional languages we have a good little conference called Mostly Functional going on @ Turing

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

We have two presentations on languages targeting the Erlang VM, Elixir and Joxa, as well as other goodness...

(Disclaimer, I am the organiser)

<comment><USER5> Whoa! Are those going to be recorded and made available? I would _love_ to see the presentation on Building A Robot Army Of Raspberry Pis!

<comment><USER4> Yeah, erk, well reminded, I must get onto that. I am organising the event, and doing that talk and I haven't finished writing the software yet...

<comment><USER5> Self-serving self promotion: I work for a small little shop that does conference recordings, so If you need help figuring out that side of things, you can shoot me an email at chris at intelliquestmedia dot com.

We're based in the States, but the owner is a Brit. I'm sure he'd jump at an excuse to head back and do some recording in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What this article calls currying is actually partial application.

Partial application is a technique where you take a function that requires n arguments, pass in the first one and get a function that needs n-1 arguments.

Currying is a technique where you take a function that takes n arguments and turn it into a function that can be partially applied. E.g. in Haskell it works with tuples as arguments. There is function 'curry :: ((a, b) -> c) -> (a -> b -> c)' and its counterpart 'uncurry :: (a -> b -> c) -> ((a, b) -> c)'.

<comment><USER7> You get a function that can take N arguments and return a value, or 1 to N-1 arguments and return a function representing a partial application, which itself exhibits the same behavior:

       add3 = (a, b, c) --> a + b + c

       x = add3 1
       y = x 1
       z = y 1 # z = 3

If you look at the compiled code, it _is_ actually an abstraction over a partial application, but at that point is that not just an implementation detail?

<comment><USER6> I agree it is not really important.

The main difference between the two I see is that partial application basically binds a certain argument to a fixed value, while currying only changes the way the function is called (thus allowing for easier partial application). It is easier to see on a function with more than two arguments. Imagine f:(A×B×C)->D. Currying it will yield f':A->(B->(C->D)), so you would call it as f'(1)(2)(3). On the other hand, partially applying on first argument it would yield f'':(B×C)->D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> why-el Just for the record, Elixir was favourably reviewed by the creator of Erlang itself.[1]

[1][http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with- elixir.html](http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> To me, much more interesting than _" a language targeting the Erlang VM.. [that] mostly imports Erlang's syntax"_ is:

Lisp Flavoured Erlang:

[http://www.trapexit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=40268](http://www.trapexit.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=40268)

</comment><comment><USER9> Of all the "Javascript.next" languages I hear on a regular basis, it seems to me Microsoft's Typescript is the one most likely to become successful, if only because every time I read an article about it, most of the comments are extremely positive about it and it looks like there are already some fairly large projects written in it.

In comparison, I don't see a bright future for Dart nor Livescript (although I secretly root for Dart because I have more confidence in Google to take this language somewhere interesting).

</comment><comment><USER10> I really like Julia. I'm currently playing around with it whenever I find some spare time. I don't see it as a competitor to R, I think it could well be something along the lines of Python or Go.

It is LLVM based, and already really fast even though it is still a 0.2 and the JIT seems to have a lot of room for optimisation.

Whats more, it seems to offer just the right blend of language features: \- Easily include C libraries via a simple ffi [1] \- It is homoiconic like Lisp and thus allows for fantastic macro facilities [2]

\- It has solid parallel programming support via a Coroutines implementation (Tasks) (similar to Goroutines as far as I can tell)

\- It is a non-pure functional language

\- In contrast to Go it has generics, so functional constructs like map, apply, drop, reduce, fold, partition & friends are already in there (or can easily be implemented) [3]

\- It has optional types, so that you _can_ assign types and the compiler will check for it and mark errors and will be able to create optimised code, but you don't have to [4]

\- Running external programs is a joy [5] (Example: a=readall(`echo hello`))

The community seems to be very alive. There's a simple web framework called "Morsel" and I've recently set it up against a couple of contenders from the web framework benchmark (cpoll-cppsp, phreeze, and some others), and even though it is still a version 0.2, the performance for the json serialization benchmark would be pretty close to Scalatra (I yet have to publish these numbers, will do so soon).

I really hope that Julia will grow, as I love the choices that went into the design of the language, and it would be a shame if it would be only a replacement for R instead of something much bigger, as it is such a nice language.

[1] [http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/calling-c-and- for...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/calling-c-and-fortran- code/)

[2] [http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/metaprogramming/](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/metaprogramming/)

[3] [http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/stdlib/base/#general- col...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/stdlib/base/#general-collections)

[4] [http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/types/](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/types/)

[5] [http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/running- external-...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/running-external- programs/)

<comment><USER11> I don't know if you have any experience with it, but how would you compare it to clojure?

<comment><USER10> I bought a Clojure book and started going through it, and I have some limited experience with ELisp and Racket. I really like lispy (is that even a word?) languages, so I tried to get into Clojure, also because I really like the ideas behind ClojureScript and the various libraries for it. So far, my experience has been mixed, I guess because I didn't read enough, or maybe it is my unfamiliarity with anything jvm-related (having never been a Java guy), as that's also something I constantly run into when I'm doing Scala. I'll try to write a bit more in Clojure, but so far Julia felt easier to get into, and I really like the ability to use types so that stupid errors don't result in runtime issues.

There're way too many interesting languages these days :)

<comment><USER12> There's a few threads on SO that try to summarize what you need to know if you haven't programmed in java before(and, yes, it's a decent amount), e.g. what a JAR is, classpath, -server vs. -client, -Xmx and Xms, GC options etc. Alternatively, ask on reddit, IRC or the mailing list

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5721496/learning-java- so-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5721496/learning-java-so-i-can-get- at-clojure)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11358929/what-should-a- sc...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11358929/what-should-a-scala- developer-know-about-java-and-or-the-jvm)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/1ev4u5/what_do_i_ne...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/1ev4u5/what_do_i_need_to_learn_about_java/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks! These look very helpful! I'm currently doing quite some Scala and the problems are very similar, so I bet that these will help me a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice selection.

Livescript looks like it fixes some of the warts of Coffeescript while also raising the level of abstraction.

Julia is something I've already been looking at. I'm a bit torn on it -- it has vastly fewer libraries than Scipy and R so I don't know if I'm ready to "wear the hair shirt". At this point in life I'm more concerned with doing stuff with existing libraries than building the libraries myself.

Elixir I'm less excited about, because I'm not so excited about Erlang. I feel that Scala provides all of what I'd want from Erlang, along with better sequential performance.

<comment><USER14> _it has vastly fewer libraries than Scipy and R_

The incredible PyCall.jl package allows use of existing Python libraries from Julia with automatic object translation, including no-copy use of NumPy arrays:

[https://github.com/stevengj/PyCall.jl](https://github.com/stevengj/PyCall.jl)

There is also heavy work on a Julia IPython kernal, which is under testing right now and very close to release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shameless plug: My 2d canvas-based game engine supports LiveScript out of the box: [https://github.com/superjoe30/chem/](https://github.com/superjoe30/chem/)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the link, this looks like a fun way to try out LiveScript! :)

<comment><USER15> Enjoy. To use LiveScript just use the .ls extension instead of .js. That includes chemfile.js (chemfile.ls for livescript)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope that some Elixir features make it in to Erlang but I guess I'm one of those rare people that likes the Erlang syntax a lot better. I don't really understand the hate for it, it seems so clear and specific. Anyway, if people want choices for an Erlang like experience, without the Prolog syntax, check out LFE:

[https://github.com/rvirding/lfe](https://github.com/rvirding/lfe)

<comment><USER18> The thing I don't like about Erlang's syntax is that often I have to change the character at the end of the line when I need to move a line. It makes refactoring more tedious. I have no problem with it when reading code :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19>
      Some other cool features of Elixir:
        ...
        * List comprehensions

I'd just like to point out that Erlang has list comprehensions as well.

<comment><USER7> Shh! I know, the list just looked dumb with only two items.

<comment><USER20> Feeling a little Rick Perry this morning? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The language I'm most interested in currently is kernel: mathematically underpinned by the vau calculus, with a smart creator and steward, and a better abstract model for macros than even Racket's stellar syntax-parse. Implementations abound.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_\(programming_language\))

<comment><USER22> > and a better abstract model for macros than even Racket's stellar syntax- > parse.

To clarify a little bit, `syntax-parse` is actually not its own model for macros but is a sophisticated front-end for Racket's underlying macro system (described in this paper: [http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/publications/jfp12-draft- fcdf.pdf](http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/publications/jfp12-draft-fcdf.pdf)). Also see Jay McCarthy's blog article that tries to clarify this: [http://jeapostrophe.github.io/2013-07-22-123list- post.html](http://jeapostrophe.github.io/2013-07-22-123list-post.html)

Racket's macro system and Kernel's fexprs are pretty fundamentally different, so I don't think the comparison is very apt. In particular, Racket's macros can be entirely compiled away.

<comment><USER21> While true, I was comparing macro APIs from a usability perspective and should have avoided the term 'abstract model'.

My point was the _mental model_ I refer to when using $lambda is simpler and easier to understand than my mental model for syntax-case, syntax-rules, syntax-parse and friends. The very fact that 'Racket's macros can be entirely compiled away' complicates my mental model which must now accommodate 'phases', compile-time/run-time dichotomies, require for-syntax, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When looking at languages like LiveScript (or CoffeeScript) I say to myself: "Javascript has been around for 18 years, how long will this be around for?"

Not saying not to use it, but my use case has to overcome that question.

<comment><USER13> With Coffeescript (I don't know about Livescript) the compiled output is close enough to hand-written Javascript that, if Coffeescript suddenly disappeared into a black hole, you could use the compiled output as source if needed.

<comment><USER7> Livescript is a fork of Coffeescript, and LS 1.2 purports to have improved the JS output for readability, so I think you'd be ok.

<comment><USER15> Livescript is technically a fork of coco[1] which is a fork of Coffeescript.

[1]: [https://github.com/satyr/coco/](https://github.com/satyr/coco/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Julia is in a weird place. It improves in speed over R and Python, but the head start of both of these languages is strong. Also it will be some time until julia can provide equivalent support for GUI and Web programming.

<comment><USER25> Julia fits well as the next step from Matlab. I've already seen groups of engineers across various disciplines that have turned to Julia instead of Matlab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How is currying better than partial function application (particularly with keyword arguments)? If your function isn't commutative, then it seems to give greater importance/flexibility to the first arguments.

<comment><USER27> As usual, the terms are misused.

Any discussion of currying vs partial function application needs to start by explicitly stating what the author intends each to mean.

<comment><USER26> Fair enough, but is currying "better" than partial function creation in some way?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been playing with TypeScript a fair bit lately. Really like it: [http://www.typescriptlang.org/](http://www.typescriptlang.org/)

Haven't used LiveScript yet.

<comment><USER29> I was a bit torn between LiveScript and TypeScript. But after using both a bit, I think I like LiveScript better.

I feel TypeScript doesn't offer much beyond static type checking, and this can be compensated by using closure compiler together with LiveScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> As someone who has just this week started serious study of Erlang, I'll have to look at Elixir as well. Ending statements with periods does take some getting used to!

</comment><comment><USER31> Have yet to take a look in Julia, but I've been playing around with Elixir for a while and looks great. Elixir macros particularly got my attention:

[http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/5.html](http://elixir- lang.org/getting_started/5.html)

There is a book on Elixir coming out from Pragmatic Programmers sometime and will be written by Dave Thomas, which might generate a certain buzz too. This may be a good time to dive into it a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER32> LiveScript looks amazing. I love how much F#-y looks. I'm definitely going to start using it for personal projects.

</comment><comment><USER33> Julia and Elixir definitely seem worth checking. I especially like the interchangeability between Erlang & Elixir.

</comment><comment><USER34> What features do these languages offer that make it worth watching them? Neither of them seems to offer anything novel.

</comment><comment><USER35> I really hope people would promote Livescript or GorillaScript more, as better compile-to-js languages.

...Coffeescript stole the spotlight and nobody wants to hear about anything else, but it's mediocre and boring language-wise!

<comment><USER36> As the creator of CoffeeScript, I hope so too!

A big part of the original idea with CoffeeScript was to exhaustively annotate the compiler so that folks could take it, and run off in more radical directions. Whereas CoffeeScript is intentionally conservative (no standard library beyond what JavaScript offers is allowed, for example), the fact that LiveScript is a fork off Coco, which is a fork off CoffeeScript, is a wonderful tangent.

There are static and optional typing flavors, asynchronous-flow-control flavors, macro-oriented flavors, functional ones, contract ones, and of course the rewrite of the basic language itself. In open source, there's enough spotlight for all of 'em.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Also check out ToffeeScript.

<comment><USER38> Also for people coming from Haskell/ML background there is GorillaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What about R?

<comment><USER40> What about it? It's 20 years old this year, and the language it was meant to clone, S, is almost 40 years old. What's new to keep an eye on?</comment></comment>


Stephen Hawking 'very ill' - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/04/20/hawking.health/index.html <comment><USER2> During the 1973-74 academic year, Hawking was a visiting professor at Caltech, and I was a junior in the physics program. The first signs something was up were the wheelchair ramps that appeared around Bridge Laboratory, the older physics building. Hawking made his debut by giving the weekly physics colloquium talk in the large lecture room. At that time, he could still speak well enough to give a lecture in his own voice (with a microphone), and he started into some brand new, mind boggling stuff about black holes evaporating. The entire physics faculty was there, and I sensed he had zoomed over most their heads. Most, but not all. Feynman was sitting in the front row, and half way through, he asks a question. It was the kind of question that reveals he was following along just fine. The two titans proceeded to have a back and forth exchange for a few minutes in front of the assembled masses, and then Hawking continued with his talk. It was awesome and humbling to witness that, and my friends and I, sitting way up in the back rows, just shook our heads.

<comment><USER3> "The entire physics faculty was there, and I sensed he had zoomed over most their heads. Most, but not all. Feynman was sitting in the front row"

Simply the sheer awesomeness (for lack of more eloquent words) of this sort of meeting between the titans actually sent chills down my spine.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely! My favourite bit from "A Beautiful Mind" -- the book -- is still that early chapter describing what an astonishing collection of intelligence Princeton had attracted at that point time (1930s): Einstein, Goedel, von Neumann, Church, Fine,...

The pressure was so intense that the average completion time for a PhD was 2 years! (And when he arrived, Nash himself was apparently just bitter about not being offered a scholarship by Harvard).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Hawking was born on what turned out to be an auspicious date: January 8, 1942 -- the 300th anniversary of the death of astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei._

It didn't "turn out" to be an auspicious date. They'd already known the date Galileo died. That it even makes the date "auspicious" is debatable. There are only 365ish days to be born on. Repeats aren't a surprise.

<comment><USER6> Very true. In a group of 23 randomly selected people, there is just over 50% chance that two share the same birthday. Two great articles about this:

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

<http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.birthdayprob.html>

Don't tell that to astrologers, otherwise they might make Mars align with Jupiter and that will crash your code with an unknown exception.

<comment><USER7> The funniest example of how that's just probability was when this problem was discussed in my bachelor's class of about 60 people, and the prof confidently starts asking us for our dates of birth, and there was not even 1 matching pair. The probability is apparently around .01%

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, how did the class determine whether anyone shared a birthday? The best way I can think of is lining up by order and then seeing if your neighbors share your birthday. Is that how you did it? Is there a better way to do it?

<comment><USER7> everyone says out their birthday in order of seating(randomly seated). If someone hears their birthday, they shout out of turn.

I guess you were expecting an algorithm faster than O(n)? That was the best we could do, given n processors with O(1) space each :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How very sad, he was an icon I looked up to as a child. I still remember first reading his 'Brief History of Time.'

<comment> a-priori It's a little early to refer to him in the past tense.

<comment><USER10> Maybe the past tense refers to trickjarrett's childhood.

<comment><USER9> That was my intended use of it. My apologies for not writing more clearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a great man. He survived 40+ years with a supposedly terminal condition... here's hoping that he can pull through again.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ugh, just seen this on Twitter.

<http://twitter.com/SaveTheGuns/status/1567102622>

I dont see why people feel they have to get their shots in when someone is too ill to respond :( (not that it would affect him anyway - but the principle! the principle!)

<comment><USER11> Don't let it get to you man :)

<comment><USER12> hehe I know :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> :(

</comment><comment><USER14> hang in there Stephen!!

</comment><comment><USER15> Sad story. Here is hoping Hawking gets better.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would really be interested in his first experience after death...

Will he be able to find a way to communicate to us?

 _That_ would be really ingenious, because all of the rest is only opinion, and opinions are _all_ and _always_ questionable...

</comment><comment><USER17> My first reaction upon seeing the headline was, "duh!"

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ill>

<comment><USER11> I actually thought that was kind of funny. He's pretty dope too.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Scala-ts – Scala to TypeScript compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/miloszpp/scala-ts <comment><USER2> To dispel misconceptions: from the top of the readme:

"scala-ts is a simple tool which can generate TypeScript interfaces and classes from Scala case classes."

Not really what I call a compiler. This is more a REST endpoint consumer generator.

PS: for the reverse exercise, here is a _syntactical_ TypeScript to Scala translator: [https://github.com/densh/TypeScript/tree/topic/scala- emitter...](https://github.com/densh/TypeScript/tree/topic/scala- emitter?files=1)

<comment><USER3> Ah, thank you. I was already trying to figure out the why I would need to compile my Scala down to typescript, presumably so I could then compile that down to JavaScript

<comment><USER2> If you want to compile your Scala code to JavaScript, there's already a widely accepted and stable solution: [https://www.scala-js.org/](https://www.scala- js.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Handy if you're already serializing case classes to be consumed by a TypeScript frontend, but otherwise I'd suggest looking into Scala.js.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love using Scala on the server and Typescript in the browser. And adjusting ts type definitions by hand gets tiresome very quickly. So I look forward to trying this out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Let me ask the obvious. Can this generate TSX from Scala?

<comment><USER7> Should have opened the link:

scala-ts is a simple tool which can generate TypeScript interfaces and classes from Scala case classes

<comment><USER8> That doesn't answer the question. TSX is typescript-JSX (e.g., the typescript- typed React node-building language inside javascript).

<comment><USER7> Why not? Anyone asking about JSX should get their answer from that description.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this any better than scala.js?

<comment><USER2> No. To be more precise, it does a completely different job. As I said in another comment, it isn't actually a Scala compiler. Comparing it to Scala.js is nonsense to begin with.</comment></comment>


Salary Negotiation Counteroffer Calculator and Sample Script - <AUTHOR> https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/salary-negotiation-script/ <comment><USER2> The book is excellent, too. Quick read, but if it results in you negotiating a raise, you'll make, well... thousands, or tens of thousands, off of it.

I'd say download and read before jumping into your next TV show/videogame etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to say thanks for the kind words about the book. I'm glad you liked it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to hear how this works behind the scenes! What assumptions is the calculator using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question.

\- The main assumption is _you should counter_ and we're just figuring out the right amount. \- It's assuming that you will not take the job for less than your "minimum acceptable salary", so that's basically the floor for your counteroffer. \- It's assuming you'll counter between 10% and 20% above the job offer you receive. This is based on my own experience negotiating salaries and my background working with companies to develop and leverage their compensation structures.

It accounts for the two 0–10 questions to dial in your specific counter in that 10–20% range I mentioned above.

Once you hit the big "Show my counteroffer!" button, it also updates the "3\. Prepare for your final discussion" section of the page to reflect your preferences (like which benefits you value most).

The idea is you could literally be on a call and get a job offer and then use this tool to calculate your counter and navigate the negotiating process.</comment></comment>


Is LinkedIn Too Stuffy? - <AUTHOR> http://mdalums95.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/is-linkedin-too-stuffy/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think it's the entrepreneurial bias speaking here, but I've been talking with my officemates about building a social network for startups to source talent and share resources. I'd love to have HN's thoughts!</comment>


Arise & Shine App: Sleep more & always wake up on time. - <AUTHOR> http://ariseandshineapp.com This wonderful alarm clock combines the snooze function with your daily routine, allowing you to manage both at once. So you can sleep up to the very last minute and not worry about waking up late. <comment><USER2> I thought this is something like Sleep As Android app. Check Sleep as Android ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.sleep)) It's an interesting app which can track your sleeping rooting and give you statistics about it

</comment><comment><USER3> I read the text, watched the video, and still don't really understand how I would benefit from using this app.

Please give me a use-case I can understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone has a morning routine e.g. Exercise(45min), Shower(15min), Breakfast with the family (30min), Read News(15min), going to work(30min).

Case 1: You've worked late and want to sleep a little more. You decide not to exercise the next morning and the alarm to wake you up 45 minutes later.

Case 2: The alarm rings, you lazy and do not want to get up now. Would you be willing to sacrifice the read the news? Disable the read the news and you can sleep about 15minutes more.

Basically you stop thinking about how much longer I could sleep, and change that model for tasks you do in the morning that you could skip to sleep more. As simple as that.

No statistics, no conclusions of your rest. is just a tool for organizing your morning, to sleep the hours necessary to be productive when you finally get up.</comment></comment>


How to Track Down Divergence Bugs in Rr - <AUTHOR> http://robert.ocallahan.org/2016/06/how-to-track-down-divergence-bugs-in-rr.html <comment><USER2> _rr aspires to be your primary debugging tool, replacing — well, enhancing — gdb. You record a failure once, then debug the recording, deterministically, as many times as you want. The same execution is replayed every time._

 _rr also provides efficient reverse execution under gdb. Set breakpoints and data watchpoints and quickly reverse-execute to where they were hit._

 _rr works on real applications such as Firefox, with low overhead. It is being used by many developers inside and outside Mozilla to fix real bugs._

[http://rr-project.org/](http://rr-project.org/)</comment>


More than 130 TLS certificates used by U.S. government websites have expired - <AUTHOR> https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2019/01/10/gov-security-falters-during-u-s-shutdown.html <comment><USER2> Should have set up letsencrypt with automatic renewal? Doesn't seem like these were set up in a very savvy way by the site admins.</comment>


Ask HN: How can a solo founder retain board control? - <AUTHOR> Solo founder here, raising a seed round with a lead VC who wants a board seat. It seems straightforward for co-founders in this situation to retain control of the board, 2-to-1. As a solo founder, would this be 1-to-1 and an independent? Even if that independent is mutually agreed upon, I'd still be giving up control. How can this be structured without pissing-off the VC? Is there any precedent for this? <comment><AUTHOR> This quick explanation "Startup Boards: Forming & Organizing Your Board" from Kaufmann Startup School has been helpful: [https://youtu.be/SEK6lbuYjnQ](https://youtu.be/SEK6lbuYjnQ)

</comment><comment><USER2> Recommended reading: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-manage-a- board/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-manage-a-board/) (especially the "board compensation" section)

<comment><AUTHOR> > You need someone you really trust, who is 100% independent

The examples here are not 100% independent, given prior friendships or working relationships with the founders. Terms will stipulate that the assignment of an independent director be "mutually agreed upon by the other board members" (e.g. founder and investor).</comment></comment>


NSA planning 1 Exaflop supercomputer - <AUTHOR>

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/229402009 <comment><USER2> This shouldn't have been submitted as an 'ask HN' - instead you should have linked directly to the article.</comment>


Stuck In The Middle With Bruce (2001) - <AUTHOR> https://articles.starcitygames.com/premium/stuck-in-the-middle-with-bruce/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've found this article on less wrong. It's written by a magician, but it's really highly relevant for startups.</comment>