Covid-19: España necesita ayuda urgente/Spain needs urgent help - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkJPgmB8s3M
La situación en España ha alcanzado una crueldad inimaginable. Tienen que dejar morir solos y sedados a los mayores de 65 años. Esto se debe a una combinación de falta de equipos (respiradores), recursos, medicos, enfermeras y la inacción del gobierno. Los hospitales están colapsados.
Spain is having to allow people 65 or older die due to the lack of personnel, resources and inaction on the part of government.  They are quite literally sedating those 65 or older to let them die alone. The healthcare system is collapsing. <comment><USER2> [https://www.heraldo.es](https://www.heraldo.es) reporting on who this person is:

> En cuanto al autor del vídeo, muchos mensajes compartidos en redes sociales > le identifican como médico, aunque en la grabación él no se atribuye esa > condición. Según ha podido comprobar EFE, en su cuenta de Facebook se > presenta como residente en Badajoz, con estudios de "CICE" en ITAE, una > escuela de negocios ubicada en la capital pacense.

[My rough translations]

> In regards to the author of the video, many comments on social media call > him a doctor, however he does not call himself one in the video. According > to what EFE was able to verify, his Facebook profile shows him as a resident > of Badajoz and an alumnus of CICE at ITAE, a business school in Badajoz.

> En su foto de perfil incluye el logotipo de Vox. Aparece identificado como > militante de este partido en una imagen que la cuenta oficial de Vox en > Badajoz publicó en Facebook el 31 de octubre de 2018 para ilustrar una > reunión con afiliados.

> His profile photo contains the Vox logo. An image of a meeting of affiliates > published 31 October 2018 in the official Badajoz Vox account identifies him > as a member of that party

<comment><AUTHOR> The audio he plays is from a person who self identifies as a front line doctor. She says so during her explanation of the situation they have.

<comment><USER2> I listened to it.

She says "Soy médico de la Comunidad de Madrid" ("I am a doctor in the Community of Madrid"). (She also seems to include herself in reference to "personal sanitario" (health workers))

When does she say she's a frontline doctor?

I don't hear her nor him say her name, so it is hard to verify who she is.

<comment><AUTHOR> She didn't, I guess I assumed that was the case given what she was describing and the emotion she communicated. I mean, she wasn't speaking like a doctor seeing kids at her private office.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Things can be very emotional, convincing, and completely fabricated.

I'm honestly not deciding either way in this case, but even in a pandemic we must seek truth.

I've lived in Madrid and have friends in Spain and it'd make me very sad if it were true. But we must seek the facts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, happily (?) it appears to be a lie...and I fell for it. Thanks for challenging it. Made me look further.

[https://www.redaccionmedica.com/virico/noticias/coronavirus-...](https://www.redaccionmedica.com/virico/noticias/coronavirus- y-bulos-no-estan-dejando-morir-a-las-personas-mayores-5276)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe this can help?

[https://edmontonjournal.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news- pmn/ont...](https://edmontonjournal.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/ontario- doctor-rigs-up-solution-to-double-ventilator-capacity-in-rural- hospital/wcm/422bd2a8-eca2-4218-bb0b-fffae2f4b8e3/)

I have no experience/education with regards to this but I was just linked to this article from another conversation.

Edit: Stay safe friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> This solution has been going around for a while. I read a paper about it. In fact, I believe they expanded it such that one ventilator could service four patients.

The issue seems to be that normally a ventilator has sensors and modes that will track patient needs and auto-adjust accordingly. When you split it like that they have to be used in a mode where the machine operates in a fixed mode and, for lack of a better description, just shoves air into the patients without much regard for what they might be doing. The paper described this as "very uncomfortable".

Yes, better than nothing. I would hope they are already doing this in Spain.</comment></comment>


Too Big to Fail: A Call for States' Rights - <AUTHOR> https://outlookzen.com/2016/11/17/too-big-to-fail-a-call-for-states-rights/ <comment><USER2> But we _tried_ that. Before there was the Constitution, the country was governed under a different basic law, the Articles of Confederation ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation)), which set up a much weaker central government and reserved nearly all power to the states. It only took a decade or so under the Articles for the whole system to begin to collapse.

The reason why there was a Constitutional Convention in 1787 was because by then leaders in many states had come to the conclusion that the Articles were so disastrously flawed they could not be saved by revision. The only way forward was to throw them out altogether, and replace them with a new system that gave the Federal government the ability to do things like levy taxes and conduct foreign policy. And from that we got the Constitution we all know today.

Fast forward 70 years or so, and the states' rights idea comes back again, this time in the South. They secede from the Union and set up a new government that establishes states' rights as a core principle. Secession leads to war, and the new Confederate government finds it can't effectively fight that war because it lacks the power to establish a single national army or efficiently tax its citizens. "If the Confederacy fails," Confederate President Jefferson Davis moaned, "there should be written on its tombstone: _Died of a theory._ "

The reason why states' rights is an abandoned concept in American political thought isn't because it's never been tried. It's because it _has_ been tried, multiple times even, and has always led to disaster.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if I'd say that the concept of states rights is abandoned, though it does seem to be discussed less. But it shouldn't be only central or only federal, but rather a constant friction over where ones power begins and the other ends. That friction we feel from it indicates that things are working. You wouldn't feel that friction if any one side has all of the power. You'd hear grumbling, but there'd be no court cases about it, no decisions to be made, because the side with all of the power does the deciding.

Both systems, fully centralized and fully decentralized both are flawed, which is why we have the balance at all.

I think what's happening is that the authoritarians in both sides of the political debate are heard more often and more loudly than before, so they of course want whatever will get them their goals. But the US is still the US, so I'm not sure what this article is even attempting to say? Less federal power? In certain areas, sure, but a EU of North America? That sounds terrible and isolating. It also seems like it would only feed the tribalism that seems to be everywhere.

I have to agree with your overall comment though. Travel, dispersed friends and families, etc guarantee we wouldn't handle being split like the EU, and it's crazy, IMHO, that the original author really sees so many differences between states that they outweigh the similarity of vision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The logic of centralization is that if X is a good idea then how could it not be a good idea for everyone? And further if _everyone_ is involved in X then there's no free rider problem. Plus there are fewer resource constraints.

I'm much more of a federalist in these matters but I see why centralization appeals to people. If there really is a correct universal solution then it might be a good thing. I tend to think that that's not the case as often as people think and that we actually are trying to that even less often then that.

<comment><USER5> Well the idea that a single point can provide the correct response for every part of a nation is a failure. The problem with this thought is that the US federal government is made up of representatives from the states. States with less people have dramatically more say than states with more people simply because there was an arbitrary limit put in place for the number of representatives. Our federal government therefore gives dramatically more power to places that no one wants to live. The best solution is a hub and spoke solution. This doesn't suffer from the local knowledge problem.

Perhaps it's time to divide the United States up into regions as well as states. Similar to how the federal court system already does it. Then the backwards southern states could fail on their own and eat themselves, in a way that allows the sane parts of the country to continue getting along just fine. Then we would put a giant border wall around those regions, especially Florida and turn them into giant penal colonies. Can you imagine the threat of being forced into Florida? Texas would become nothing more than giant flags and slices of bread.</comment></comment>


The 2010s were supposed to bring the eBook revolution. It never quite came - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/23/20991659/ebook-amazon-kindle-ereader-department-of-justice-publishing-lawsuit-apple-ipad <comment><USER2> I love the idea of ebooks, but I havent found an approach to reading them I enjoy. I love my Kindle, but I can't read programming books off of it cause they're designed differently. I can read other 'ordinary' types of books though.

It's really weird, I can read documentation for hours, but I can't read a PDF / eBook. I don't know why, I don't know if it's just the way it's rendered page by page unlike web pages, or what.

<comment><USER3> I think the requirement of fitting things onto 'pages', which PDF's have to follow as a "document" format thats intended to map to printed pages, is a huge detriment. It's a physical limitation of print that shouldn't exist in electronic form. I've had great success with ebooks on O'Reilly's Safari platform, because it uses a continuous scrolling model with "flipping" only being used for switching chapters. Unfortunately I'd rather not read off of my laptop most of the time, so that's sort of a roadblock to Safari for me (they do offer a tablet application, but I refuse to authorize my tablet through the company that provides my subscription).

<comment><USER2> Yeah I realized as I wrote my comment that maybe that's the problem. Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so!

That's understandable about the tablet, and also a shame that you'd even have to do that. I'd rather the company provide me the hardware they want to lock down, that would be easier to manage.

Thanks for sharing your side, I never got Safari because it's a bit much for me to pay out of pocket at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Works for me. Mostly due to not having space / wanting to travel with books.

Plus Amazon's daily 0.99 usd deals occasionally have decent stuff. At a higher rate than I can read so that works

Edit - Bad blood (theranos) is on sale today

</comment><comment><USER5> $14.99 isn't really that much money when you factor in the time you'll spend reading a long book, but I guess people don't see it that way.</comment>


Ocean temperatures hit record high as rate of heating accelerates - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/ocean-temperatures-hit-record-high-as-rate-of-heating-accelerates <comment><USER2> I usually try to be an optimist however, I have zero expectation we're able to mitigate severe climate change and it's repercussions.

The only mechanism I can think of is we'll develop mechanisms at scale that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere and oceans and sell it to the world as if we're able to continue BAU and just raise taxes on carbon or income to pay for it.

<comment><USER3> Realistically, I can't help but feel that many attempts at solutions will only make things worse...

Dramatically cutting back waste and encouraging reuse over recycling should be the first concerns. Cutting down e-waste and expanding user rights to devices is probably a good place to start. The fact that you can't update/maintain a phone or router a few years is pretty significant.

Fooling people into thinking a new car is a better option than keeping their existing cars running is another big issue... what's good for the economy isn't always what's best for the ecology. Tax breaks for companies where more than 75% of their workforce is on a 4-day full time work week over a 5+ day would do more than carbon taxes.

Forcing companies to pay for domestic recycling of goods they sell would also be a big improvement... dumping waste in China and Africa is not a viable long term solution.

Taxing air shipping to discourage it, would also help a lot... do you _REALLY_ need that thingy from Amazon tomorrow?

There are many ways to bring about change, and imho expanding bureaucracy or increasing income taxes are the last places you should start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish that popular press accounts of science could be a bit more precise. What exactly does "rate of heating accelerates" mean. The graphs seem to indicate a relatively steady rate of temperature increase (not an accelerating rate) in the oceans over the last 40 years. This corresponds to the the relatively steady rate of increase in the global temperature over the same time period [1].

More precisely, it looks to me like the second derivative of the ocean temperature is approximately zero, whereas the headline suggests that the second derivative of temperature is much greater than zero.

Obviously, the reported heating is great a concern, but the original article, not surprisingly, [2] appears to be behind a paywall.

[1] [https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding- climate/...](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding- climate/climate-change-global-temperature)

[2] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/128.full](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/128.full)

<comment><USER3> The verbiage also indicates a fair amount of bias...

> because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse > gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human > activities

Up to 90% of greenhouse gas volume is water vapor... human activities definitely have an effect, but the statement above inflates the involvement and creates an alarmist feel.

I'm all for making better choices and policy change. Throwing away money on things that won't help or disguising political interests behind the environment won't help the planet as a whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anybody know what the global climate change skeptic/denier position is on ocean warming is? Is it that the ocean is not getting warmer, or it is but it has some other cause than human activity, or it is but it's a good thing, not bad? Or do they just ignore it?

<comment><USER6> While the science is correct, the media coverage is like a contest of who can come up with the scariest spin possible. Case in point: this article mentions a heating of more than 200 zettajoules. Just to be extra helpful they put an asterisk and explain that "One zettajoule = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules". Very clarifying, won't you say? I personally don't know anyone who is familiar with zettajoules, but I do people familiar with degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius. That number is absent. With a little bit of google, you can find it though. It's 0.135F or 0.075C [1].

[1] [https://thehill.com/changing- america/sustainability/climate-...](https://thehill.com/changing- america/sustainability/climate-change/478046-ocean-temperatures-are-higher- than-ever)

<comment><USER5> So is it your position that ocean warming will be bad in its consequences, but not nearly as bad as the media coverage says it will be?</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla CEO says layoffs needed amid shift from browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Mozilla-CEO-says-layoffs-needed-amid-shift-from-14978506.php <comment><USER2> Shift from browser? Are they insane?

The browser is the only reason Mozilla is still relevant. In the grand scheme of things, their other projects have near-zero impact on the world.

Mozilla's current strategy is very stupid in my opinion. They should be putting all their resources into the browser, the only space where they have an advantage (because making a browser from scratch is hard and they already did it) and where there's potential money to be made.

<comment><USER3> I remember seeing somewhere recently that they had 8% market share while MS Edge after the update managed to reach almost 7%.

I'm sure it's a good idea to shift from Firefox and let Microsoft and Google duke it out /s

The reason they fell apart as a Browser IMO was letting Firefox get "old" UX wise, while Chrome felt VERY user-friendly (I mean to the common enduser, not people like us here on HN).

<comment><USER4> It was partly that, but they also dropped the ball on their core demographic.

Things like pushing mandatory updates via "experiments", shoving pocket in everyone's faces, killing XUL.

I can't remember what it was they did that was the final straw for me, it was at least 4 years ago and not even that big a thing. What I remember is going "well, there goes my last shred of hope. Mozilla officially doesn't understand why their core advocates prefer them over alternatives. Might as well move to vivaldi and at least get all them sweet chrome addons".

Mozilla forgot about their "whole-of-product quality". Their brand was "secure, private, power-user oriented". They've been slowly cutting bits off for years that impact those aspects, and somewhere along the line they passed a threshold were they weren't sufficiently more secure, sufficiently more private or sufficiently more power-user oriented than competitors. No one change was at fault, but they've diluted themselves too much now. They're no longer the staunch defender of non-corporate internet ideals they used to be, and without that, they sorta...don't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From January 2020.

</comment><comment><USER6> Mozilla doesn't have a great business model, browser or not. But their codebase is full of treasures and Fluent is the best internationalization framework.

</comment><comment><USER7> If they stop maintaining Firefox, is there an org that could fork it and continue supporting it?</comment>


Intel predicts 10GHz chips by 2011 (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/chips/intel-predicts-10ghz-chips-by-2011-564808/ <comment><USER2> 4 cores * 2.5 ghz = close enough /s

Late 90s were great years for computing. Lets hope once again for something like that soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just bring back Transmeta and Intel will release 15Ghz chips in 3 years.

We need competitors to push CPU speed forward. Everything else in the computer continues moving: SSD, GPU, Pixel density, (...)</comment>


The price of doing a postdoc - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2017/01/price-doing-postdoc?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=postdocprice-10365 <comment><AUTHOR> Note that this is biomedicine. I doubt many other fields will show wildly different trends, but some will likely have less grim trends (e.g. engineering sciences, computing).</comment>


Show HN: Create interactive HowTo guides with just few clicks - public beta - <AUTHOR> http://whatfix.com/#!about

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one who finds it a little creepy that they want anyone installing their browser extension to give them access to your entire browsing history?

I'd rather pay for each HowTo that I create or let them run an ad in middle of each presentation. This is seriously cool and has awesome possibilities but I'd hope they would reconsider their business model.

<comment><AUTHOR> we just want to get browser.extension to ensure flow creation and execution on all sites. Thats the message coming from browser, we dont need browsing data neither its part of our business model.

we are considering enterprise version, private flows as well as ads for monetization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So as far as I understand this you can either embed this on a website or use the browser extension. Do you have any examples of it being embedded on a website?

I'm interested in adding something this to my webapp, but I'd need to see what it looks like first and I don't want to have to install the extension. I also don't want my users to have to install the extension.

I'm also looking into alternative projects like Joyride from ZURB [1] and Guiders from Optimizely [2].

1: [http://zurb.com/playground/jquery-joyride-feature-tour- plugi...](http://zurb.com/playground/jquery-joyride-feature-tour-plugin)

2: [https://github.com/jeff-optimizely/Guiders-JS](https://github.com/jeff- optimizely/Guiders-JS)

<comment><AUTHOR> embed script is used in this app ([http://app.searchenabler.com/](http://app.searchenabler.com/))

you can see flows on that app here: - [http://www.searchenabler.com/faqs/](http://www.searchenabler.com/faqs/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the example. Unfortunately I can't really try any of those examples without logging in to that app...

Anyways, I probably won't add it to my project because, while I think it could be useful, I don't really like how it looks and I think the error handling could be improved. For example, when I clicked the login button in the example you sent the guider just disappeared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> many of the feedback which we got during private beta of whatfix are incorporated ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6019078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6019078))

</comment><comment><USER4> Great tool!</comment>


China Now Leads the World in New iOS and Android Device Activations - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flurry.com/bid/83261/China-Now-Leads-the-World-in-New-iOS-and-Android-Device-Activations

<comment><USER2> Will this also increase the piracy number of paid apps?

One segment of the app market that will definitely rise to a new level is online game that support virtual currency. I know many people in Asia (not just in China) are not shy to open their wallet for virtual items but still resort to piracy when it comes to regular games (NFS on iPod/iPad, etc) and apps.

There are businesses in Asia that specialized in jail-breaking your devices and stock them with pirated software and the service is dirt cheap.

Imagine the following scenario: you bring your newly bought iPod/iPad to a store, you pick 10 games for $3 bucks total (numbers are there for illustrative purpose), you leave your devices there for 1 hour or so while mommy goes shopping, come back and have everything there!

<comment><USER3> There are two types of consumers.

-People who are willing to spend a lot of money on a device they love (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch) will spend money on apps.

-People who got their 2nd-rate, poorly built device ( _most_ android devices) for free from their carrier or for $50 from a flea market. They are not going to spend money on apps and are most likely to pirate apps/content.

<comment><USER4> _There are two types of consumers._

There are two types of commentators-

-People who naively bisect a hugely complex, graduated marketplace

-People who understand it's far more involved than that.

Seriously, though, I think it's a bit perverse to see all of the proud boasting about the spend of iOS owners -- _it often amounts to less than $100 per user, where $2.99 is considered an expensive app_. Is this _really_ the future that developers were hoping for? Dancing for pennies, hoping to be that incredibly rare break-out viral hit?

<comment><USER3> let me guess. you're a web developer threatened by the explosion of apps on mobile devices?

<comment><USER4> Your original comment was the sort of partisan garbage that HN does not need (leave it to the Engadget comments), and I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Now, however, your stripes are a little too obvious.

<comment><USER3> pls. answer the question. it will give us perspective of where you're coming from (why you hate apps).

<comment><USER4> Are you this boorish in real life?

I don't "hate apps" at all, and your claim to that effect makes you look a little juvenile, continuing your bizarre "bisect the world" fetish. Nonetheless in a discussion where you herald the spend of iOS buyers (the devices are "expensive"? They are some of the least expensive options in their respective realms), it is kind of humorous considering the actual reality that most iOS users in aggregate spend very little. Just tried to load up my new iPad and it was actually difficult to get much past $75...a few days ago I spent $600 on Vegas Pro for the PC.

<comment><USER3> I apologize.

Anyway, how about books/song/movie purchases?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This will increase Android's lead over iOS. Samsung's lead is over 3x bigger than Apple's in China, and it keeps growing. Apple only has about 7% market share there.

<comment><USER6> What we've seen in the US is that Android's market share lead eroded as the iPhone became available on more carriers. You may expect that trend to continue as they fill out tiers they aren't competing on.

Considering that not being on China Mobile in China is the equivalent in the US of being exclusive with Sprint... you'd imagine the same thing will happen in China once "the new iPhone" comes out with China Mobile.

Which isn't to say Apple will win China's market share, they'll probably still trail but their disadvantage is less then you're suggesting here except in the short term.

[edit] Even in the short term I doubt it's accurate because iPhone just launched on China Telecom in the last two weeks so that effect has yet to be fully seen. [/edit]

<comment><USER7> That's really not true.

Here's the graph: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/09/ios-marketshare-up- from-26-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/09/ios-marketshare-up- from-26-in-q3-to-43-in-octnov-2011/)

The iPhone started selling on Verizon in Q1. There was a small dip in relative Android sales, but not many. The only time the iPhone came close to Android in sales was Q4 2011 after nearly 1.3 years of pent up demand for an upgrade.

Edit: Looking at graph again, in Q1 2011 android:iphone sales ratio significantly decreased. Android went from a 2.5:1 to just under 2:1

In China, a poorer country, I'd suspect Apple will never come close due to its large premium over medium-end Android devices.

<comment><USER6> Your graph directly supports my assertion:

Android had a 34% market share lead in Q4 2010 and a 22% lead in the iP4 launch quarter prior.

After opening on Verizon at highest tier only in Feb 2011, that lead "eroded" immediately to 24% and 23% for the following quarters.

Q3 and Q4 2011 it's well known that iphone sales lagged waiting the new phone and then surged but taking these quarters together you get a gap around 19-20%.

How is that "really not true" to say that Android's lead eroded when that's exactly what your chart shows?

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I was interpreting your word 'erode' as sharper than I should have interpreted and was looking at Android market share among all platforms. You are correct; after the Verizon launch, the ratio of Android:iPhone sales fell significantly.

<comment><USER6> This is why I love HN; you sir win the internets and my upvotes today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I should consider translating my game to Mandarin :)

<comment><USER9> Or even better Simplified Chinese which people of all Chinese dialects on the mainland can read.

<comment><USER10> From my understanding, Mandarin is a spoken dialect and there is no such thing as "written Mandarin." Simplified Chinese is one of two common written forms of Chinese.

<comment><USER11> That's basically correct, although there are certain phrases and grammatical patterns that don't quite match up in Mandarin/Cantonese - most will try to avoid those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> duh.</comment>


What Makes the 'Perfect Team' and How We Built Our Own - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bambuu/what-makes-the-perfect-team-and-how-we-built-our-own-3a15754b3f9 <comment><USER2> I don't know about 'the perfect team' \- but I definitely feel like there's a lot of things that you 'forget' to talk about in your day-to-day work unless you explicitly dedicate time to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> We do something similar at my place, it's a great way to make sure our dev discussions stay on track, and when they derail we go "we need to talk about this at the next sit-down, not here".</comment>


Engineers of the Soul: Ideology in Xi Jinping's China - <AUTHOR> https://nb.sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in <comment><AUTHOR> Really helpful in understanding a lot of what goes on in tech and investment in China and foreign investment as well</comment>


Robinhood (backed by a16z) started offering free equity trading platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.robinhood.io/

<comment><USER2> Will this work only for Americans? Is there a minimum deposit amount?</comment>


Launch HN: Flockjay (YC W19) – $0-upfront tech sales academy for diverse talent - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm Shaan Hathiramani, the founder of Flockjay (https://www.flockjay.com). My team and I created Flockjay to make tech accessible for people from underrepresented communities. We're doing this by targeting a branch of the industry that itself has been neglected in this age of engineering bootcamps: a $0-upfront online sales academy that gives underserved jobseekers the tools and training they need to break into tech.
Startups are building formal sales processes earlier in their life cycles. Many struggle with predictably hiring top talent for sales. Skilled sales reps are critical for growing startups, as they accelerate revenue (4-5x their compensation) while understanding what customers want. Top performers are hard to find because they often come from non-traditional backgrounds. They are conscientious, curious, and emotionally intelligent, and have honed their skills through experience and mentorship.
As an industry, we focus most of our energy on teaching people to code. Yet, in a recent poll of 250 US college and university officials, not one school offered coursework in tools like Salesforce. Meanwhile, the best sales reps are amongst the highest earners in tech. Providing this training can create economic opportunity that changes lives.
I have witnessed the power of education and access in my own life. As a son of non-white immigrants, I grew up with a narrow view of opportunity. Then, 22 years ago, my parents crossed the street and asked our neighbors why their kids' bus went one way, and mine went another. I applied for a scholarship to their private school, and my entire worldview changed.
After college, I taught financial literacy in inner-city Chicago and NY. Many of my students felt overlooked in tech job searches despite being qualified. They didn't speak the tech language, rarely had an industry connection, and lacked fluency in business software. If they did land the dream job, there was often a steep learning curve with little training or support.
We built Flockjay to bridge this skills gap. Over 12 weeks part-time, students receive expert coaching, interview with top companies, and join a community of mentors. Our hired graduates make 2x or more their current income, while making real impact at breakout tech companies. They develop life-long skills for any professional transition.
Our team has 10+ years of domain expertise, and with help from world-class professionals (Facebook, Flexport, Google, etc.) we've developed a fully-immersive curriculum that uses cutting-edge tools (Summary: https://flockjay.com/applicants). Our students pay nothing until hired, after which we take 10% of their first year income.
We are working with groups representing different races, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic/educational backgrounds, geographic locations, and ages to attract high potential applicants. You can read more about our view of diversity here: https://flockjay.com/diversity.
We are from places like Mississippi and Ghana, and we are building a radical company to reflect the change we want to see in the world. What we've learned so far is there is no single story of success. We want to hear your experiences, ideas, feedback, and stories about breaking into tech. They have been the most meaningful part of our work. <comment><USER2> This reminds me of Lambda School (in a good way). Will 10% of students' first year income be a sufficient cut for you? I assume a salesperson's first-year commissions will be much lower than future years.

Also, have you considered doing in-person courses at some point? It's less scalable, of course, but people may be more open to committing a portion of their future salary to a program they engage with in-person.

I see cool "learn to code" courses and bootcamps all the time. I haven't seen the same for sales. Looks like you are well-positioned. Excited to see where it goes.

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal is to shift costs over time to the employer, while still aligning incentives with students, so they have skin in the game. Companies struggle to predictably hire top sales talent, and our graduates come in with a big leg up - not only learning best practices for SaaS selling from experts, but learning tools like Salesforce and Outreach.

We emphasize personal, 1v1 mentorship and coaching, which is our way of getting the benefits of in-person learning. Over time, we'll be partnering with community groups and their spaces to offer IRL coaching as well.

<comment><USER3> Not everyone can be a good salesperson. But those that can be good can be trained to be GREAT. Sales isnt the last refuge of people that cant do anything else. It is a profession with actual skills that can be developed through training, process, and experience.

I love the idea of someone saying "oh yeah...sales MATTERS" in a world that screams "tech tech tech tech." If you are a non-technical person wanting to work for an exciting tech company then sales is a great place to gravitate. And if you are a tech company that ignores investing yourself in sales then you are fighting with 9ne hand tied behind your back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love it. I've been in tech sales for 20 years and even started a company that provides sales services for tech companies. I truly believe that a number of great tech companies die because they dont "figure out" sales early enough. Lead gen...pipeline management...pitches...these things matter. I've helped crappy products destroy competitors just by paying attention to the sales process. TLDR: a better mousetrap is worthless without a sales strategy.

If I can offer my time or experience to help you drive this forward I would be excited to do so. I tell people often "I wanted to be in tech but I'm an awful engineer. So sales was my way to enter this sector."

My contact info is in my profile. Good luck to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Make something people want" only works if people know you exist. I'll reach out to follow up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >As a son of non-white immigrants, I grew up with a narrow view of opportunity.

How many white immigrants are able to send their kids to private school? Most non-immigrant white parents don't/can't send their kids to private school. How many parents have neighbors who send their kids to private school?

I am all for what you are doing, but this line is laying it on a bit thick.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're making the same point. Most people regardless of background don't have access to private school, let alone private school financial aid scholarships. Mentioning my upbringing was to emphasize how narrow my worldview was, including but not limited to schooling options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would love to get my mother signed up for this as she has been wanting to transition into tech sales. What types of roles do you believe a graduate of the program would start out with? ADR/SDR? SMB AE? Other? And what about remote opportunities?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd love to help. Ton of ageism in tech, and we're looking to help fix this (we have many students from those backgrounds). We focus on ADR/SDRs now, with the goal being that with our training, they get promoted 6-9mo faster than peers to AEs. We're doing some SMB AE work as well.

Email us at firstname.lastname@example.com and I'd be happy to personally share more. We're focused on fulltime, on-site positions for now, but over time will do more with remote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any way someone outside of the US can get access to these trainings? That would be awesome for someone like me trying to switch gears from being in development and just entering sales.

I understand the other alternative is to provide $5k in advance, but for someone considering moving to the US soon, would this requirement be relaxed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, we're focused on working with students who are eligible for full- time work in the US (residents, citizens, and those with visas already). We're investing upfront in an extremely high-quality education for our students, and we ask for nothing until hired. Email us at firstname.lastname@example.com and we can see if we can help.

<comment><USER6> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I noticed you're hiring some sales reps at your company: [https://jobs.lever.co/flockjay](https://jobs.lever.co/flockjay)

Why are you choosing to recruit externally rather than from your talent pool where you can control quality?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are doing both (and have already hired from our own training). We plan to be one of the biggest hiring partners from our program. We're posting externally due to timing - we need more help now, and our first public batch of candidates starts Jan 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi Shaan, I appreciate when services get creative with monetization approaches. The 10% fee of first year income is quite interesting. It seems like a good way to charge for education because it incentivizes the educator to put the student in the best earning position possible.

Are you able to shed light on how you are able to protect Flockjay from anti- discrimination laws? My guess is perhaps your students become "independent contractors" that makes it not subject to the Civil Rights Act? Does this mean that as a student I would be unavailable for hire as employee and would have to commit to enter into service agreements as contractor instead? Or is the risk not on Flockjay because they are not the one making the hire. If that is the case would this not put companies that use Flockjay at risk of breaking anti-discrimination laws?

From [https://flockjay.com/diversity](https://flockjay.com/diversity)

> We aim to promote diversity and inclusion in our application and training > process, in the hiring partners we work with, and in our own company. [...] > Diversity includes race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, > socioeconomic/educational background, geographic location, and age.

From [https://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/herman/reports/fu...](https://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/herman/reports/futurework/conference/staffing/9.7_discrimination.htm)

> Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in > employment on the basis of race, color, sex, or ethnic origin; the Age > Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) prohibits discrimination against > employees 40 years and older; and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) > prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of disabilities and > requires that employers reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities > who can otherwise perform a job. As with other labor standards, independent > contractors generally would not be covered by anti-discrimination laws.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the question, it's an incredibly important one, playing out on the national stage most recently with lawsuits against Harvard.

Diversity is notoriously hard to define, and few companies try due to the risk of such lawsuits. We take a deliberately broad view of diversity as you referenced, and we admit students based on a skills assessment evaluation that aspires to be blind to those criteria. No process is perfect, but this allows us to avoid the issues you mentioned. When companies hire from us, they then evaluate based on skills criteria and our certifications.

Happy to follow up if you have more questions.

<comment><USER8> > we admit students based on a skills assessment evaluation that aspires to be > blind to those criteria

I think that is a good approach. Thanks for the response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you had any people move from engineering to sales by using your bootcamp?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, more popular than you might think, especially as a)SaaS products get more technical and b) roles like sales engineering grow. Some of the best performers in sales become thought leaders in the industry they work in. We get applicants who went through coding bootcamps, who realize their skills are best served in sales roles, merging technical knowledge with understanding/solving complex business problems.

<comment><USER10> I went the opposite route and would have loved to have had something like FlockJay at the start of my career.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool thing about these roles is they're a killer combo of skills - best way to understand product-mkt fit is to talk to customers and truly listen to what they want (and what they need).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea, really like what you are doing!

I'm wondering what kind of opportunities are out there for an older engineer through this program? Aka someone that has recently turned 50, has a long career as a programmer, etc, etc.

I've been thinking about sales recently and it seems like there a higher salary/income ceiling, as as I find myself bumping into my own salary limits, this seems like a pretty interesting option.

Anyway, just wondering if this is more a young man's game so-to-speak, or if this program is suitable for us, uh-hm, 'seasoned professionals'.

<comment><USER3> Tons of opportunities. The biggest challenge I face hiring sales folks is the tech aspect. I can teach you discovery and qualification in a few short weeks. It would take me years to teach you about WordPress or I series or PHP. Turning your tech knowledge into a solid sales foundation is easy. Go for it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really love this idea. I totally agree that there is a lack of good and easily accessible sales training/education. Would be interested in learning more about how the training itself is designed. Where do you source the training content? Are there real trainers that you meet virtually via video conferencing or does it work like a self-serve online course?

<comment><AUTHOR> Kelly Schuur is our Head of Sales - she was the first Account Executive at Intercom and has spent a decade building and training sales teams. She's poured her heart into the interactive curriculum, along with support from industry experts at Facebook, Google, etc. All our instruction is live, interactive, personal, and online - so it's via video conferencing and tools like Slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been interested in learning sales. Very cool to find a bootcamp for it. I'd be interested in taking this coarse if I could pay upfront instead of paying 10% of my income. Is there an option for this or will there be?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there is currently a $5k upfront option. Most of our graduates earn 2x their current income in their new tech sales roles (>$75k or more) in year 1.

We charge a fraction of what comparable intense, live coding bootcamps charge. There are apprenticeship options for sales, but real training there is minimal, and you're not learning from experts, or able to fail safely. In many respects they're glorified staffing companies.

Sales reps are amongst the best paid in tech. Investing in the training to be the best is what we focus on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it possible to pace our my own sales class?

We are trying to do B2B sale but it's really hard fresh out of school. I can corroborate that our school doesn't offer training like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our classes are live, online, and interactive, from 5-8pm PST Mon-Thurs, with new ones starting every month. Most schools we've talked to (>250) don't offer courses with this training. We'll be expanding to more timings/options in the near future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> When will the first class graduate? I would like to hire a few people immediately, we could also allow for remote phone / video internships or testing during their course.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love to chat. Send us a note at firstname.lastname@example.com. First batch ready in March.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nit: the birds with the headsets make it look like call center work.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope this doesn't go the same way coding bootcamps go.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really hard for great dev skills to be learned in a matter of months. Sales on the other hand, is a different story. People already have many of the core skills, they just need the tools and training to level up, and create a scalable process. A lot of that is learning to use sales enablement tools, and a lot of it is getting practice and personal coaching from experts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is great news. Even as an Engineer, Sales is Hard.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like a reasonable idea, but I'd drop the college admissions essay bit about overcoming hardship etc now that you're already in YC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ton of hard work ahead for us to do that doesnt end with YC - making sure we're building for and serving people from underserved, non-traditional, and disadvantaged backgrounds. Reaching them requires sharing our stories and listening to theirs.</comment></comment>


What Branches of Math Would Aliens Most Likely Share? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/ipg7g3/what_branches_of_mathematics_would_aliens_most/ <comment><USER2> I've tried to make a new mathematical philosophy using the permutations of lists rather than numbers as the basic structure upon which understanding would rest. I think that such a mathematics could replace our numerical maths in many respects. Therefore I don't think that the aliens would necessarily have any thinking in common with our own.</comment>


An Introduction to Semiconductor Physics, Technology, and Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8223/an-introduction-to-semiconductor-physics-technology-and-industry

<comment><USER2> Interesting picture of the CPU! Multiple PLLs, different memory types, logic functions. From a hardware perspective, I think physics plays less and less a role here. What matters most nowadays, are all the subtle logical challanges introduced by software.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a more in-depth look at the physics, "Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics" [1] is pretty good.

[1] [http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm](http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone else seeing an IIS .NET permissions issue error?</comment>


Show HN: Not Depressing News - <AUTHOR> https://www.notdepressing.com/ <comment><USER3> The first thing I notice browsing the homepage is that these "not depressing news" are often feel-good stories that can be uplifting but also aren't very intellectually stimulating, e.g.:

>Thanks to 'Super Mom' Saving Her Husband's Life, He Opens His Eyes in Time to See His Son's Birth

That's super nice to hear but it barely qualifies as "news" as far as I'm concerned.

Meanwhile those that seem more interesting are not that uplifting to me, for instance:

>Donations Pour Into Northwest Iowa Library After Man Burns LGBTQ Books

So that means that somebody burned LGBTQ books in the first place? That's pretty messed up.

>A Christian woman who was sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy has won her appeal and been acquitted in a landmark ruling.

Somebody was sentenced to death for blasphemy at some point in this day and age? That's not uplifting at all.

I guess I'm a glass half-empty kind of guy.

I do sympathize with the intent here, it's true that actual news can be very depressing. My personal "not depressing news" involves reading about sciences, in particular astronomy. Questioning the way our world functions, contemplating the scale of the universe (both in space and in time) is really soothing to me.

<comment><USER4> Reddit's /r/upliftingnews suffers from the same problem.

"Woman held captive in basement entire life visits Yosemite."

I don't feel uplifted, and that's not news.

<comment><USER5> The real story is that the woman was held captive for her entire life - <USER2> is bad news!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the one hand, I will compliment this and say what a good idea is this is. The world is becoming, on average, a less violent, more prosperous place since the industrial revolution. Fewer people starve and there is much less armed conflict. People need to be reminded of this. But it can be a really dangerous game to live in an bubble and turn blinders on to reality. I hope everyone can take this "not depressing" news dose and also keep an eye on reality. Final thought: Being depressed by the news, any news, is a choice. Depression from the news is often from a feeling of powerlessness over the situation. But what you can control are your emotions and your decision to be depressed by the news. Channeling Epictetus here. He would just tell us to decide not to be depressed and focus on what you can control. Politics got you down? Vote. Get others to vote. Become involved. Local politics are important, etc. That is my thoughts, hopefully that seems balanced. That said, bookmarking this site and I will see how it evolves.

<comment><USER7> I think the intent is solid.

But using curation by someone else in an attempt to solve the problem of overwhelming malaise in one's news feed just won't "scale" (sorry for using that valley buzzword). How much can any entity curate on a day-to-day basis? How does one decide what's actually worthy? Didn't we see this before in the early web when Yahoo thought it could categorize everything? Can we trust _anybody_ (other than ourselves) to white-list what we see?

As a twitter user, I've found using the "muted words" feature to be somewhat helpful, my list is _very_ long and includes not only the people and issues I despise (president cheeto-satan, etc), but also their opposition which I generally agree with. Yeah, it's "leaky", every once in a while I get mug shot of somebody I'd rather not see, but it does mitigate the never ending stream of despair.

In general, I think individuals would do better to limit their news feeds by themselves, either through the discipline of sticking to trusted sources, or by more draconian measures of filters. Cable news, of course, is a no-go dumpster-fire.

<comment><USER8> Back before the rise of our newer technology, curation seemed to work pretty well. Most folks in the US had access to three or four TV channels, one or two local papers, and a handful of national newspapers and general interest magazines.

I'm not sure that particular genie is going back in the bottle, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those that are interested in positive/uplifting news, I've been following a few newsletters that have similar content:

1) [https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter/](https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter/) (From a recently funded Kickstarter) 2) [https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/feb/12/about-the- upsid...](https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/feb/12/about-the-upside-a- guardian-series) (From the popular newspaper The Guardian) 3) [https://tinyletter.com/inbetternews](https://tinyletter.com/inbetternews) (More cute news/ GIFS of animals) 4) [https://www.positive.news/](https://www.positive.news/) (UK based positive news)

<comment><USER10> [https://twitter.com/HumanProgress](https://twitter.com/HumanProgress)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, you're just taking the list from [https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/](https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/) ?

You should at least name/link them somewhere...

<comment><USER12> It looks like it's just UpliftingNews but uglier than reddit (which is kind of impressive). I think for it to be an MVP it has to be more than just scraping some community's content. Otherwise this is just an RSS view of one subreddit - I'd rather get the subreddit and all the comments and content surrounding it. No real added benefit from this site.

<comment><USER13> I agree, not sure what all the fuss is about. The internet is filled with sites of nothing but links to other sites...

The big revolution was web 2.0, where interactivity was enabled and encouraged. That's the reason I go to specific sites, the content is what you make yourself these days, not what gets posted to you...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Putting "not" to negate a negative isn't always a great idea. "Not Depressing" still has the word depressing, versus "uplifting",pleasant or even hopeful these words will always be much better.

<comment><USER15> Why do you care about the name? You'd go to that kind of place for the content not because of the title anyway.

<comment><USER16> because first impressions count

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are many interesting questions around this.

Is the purpose of news to manipulate your mood?

If that is the case it competes with video games, sports, fiction, etc.

Is the purpose of news to inform?

In that case "current events" competes with an understanding of past events.

I was listening to an evangelical preacher the other day about the book "Romans" written by my namesake and how the apostles are getting their asses kicked in roman jails and preaching with anger against immorality (beyond the pale today in the west) such as polygamy and slavery.

Then I was reading about how the Polish and Japanese both learned how to write at the same time in the same way. I felt the dread hanging over Arlington National Memorial and was shocked to discover who had owned the land it was on.

This 1971 book

[https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Ben-H- Bagdikian/...](https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Ben-H- Bagdikian/dp/0060902582)

predicted that we would have "news on the web" in the 1980s and has a much deeper analysis of that entails than most books written since.

He sees a fundamental problem in "news" that the gatekeeper function has to be done efficiently and quickly. Of all the things that happened today, the "news" is one in a billion or so.

That selection is necessary to create a feeling of shared reality. (I saw CNN at 5:14 and my Uncle Nic saw it at 7:31 and we saw "the same thing")

That selection is also violence against reality itself.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not to be a downer, but the current top story is "Thousands of Native voters in North Dakota getting free IDs". The reason that's necessary is not _not_ depressing.

It's sort of like "Man who fell off click only broke both legs".

<comment><USER19> Nothing wrong with voter ID, nearly all developed countries do it.

<comment><USER20> The U.S. has a long history of voter suppression, of which using IDs to limit who can vote is one tactic. For some of us, that's depressing. This is off- topic though so I won't comment further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is indeed 'not' depressing news on the page. In fact, there isn't any news at all.

Is this a practical joke? Or is the website broken?

<comment><USER22> In the latest Firefox, the console informs me

> The resource at > "[https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/new.json?sort=new?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/new.json?sort=new?") > was blocked because content blocking is enabled.

This is due to Firefox's built-in content blocking / tracking protection [1], not a plugin.

[1] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking- protection](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection)

<comment><USER23> Soo, it's just poaching content from reddit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really like this idea, and have long thought of doing something similar, the reason being that most/all existing services that I've come across so far don't do a good job at it. They can actually be even more depressing than normal news (to me).

One reason reason is that the "positive news" are often reported against something really depressing, don't point to sustainable solutions and so defeats the purpose. In essence I believe "positive news" must either turn a slightly blind eye to the vast number of problems facing humanity (without being essentially just pictures of cats), or mainly bring up such problems if a true solution has been found (not "eating more raisins may reduce cancers in mice").

If this problem could be solved (by heavy manual curation?) I believe a service like this could actually take off.

<comment><USER25> I have been thinking about this too, and posed an idea some time ago, to the Humane Tech Community [0], named "Turning the Weapon Around" [1].

The gist is to use our existing social media channels, that generally - through their algorithms - reinforce negative sentiments and divisiveness (because that keeps us engaged best, as Max Stossel explains very well in his recent Medium article [2]) to create a network of people that do the opposite: Post, share, like and comment on positive news.

This would work best if it were supported by an app that faciliates this. Our community is thinking about such app, a decentralized one, which we'll use for our crowdsourced Humane Tech Awareness program.

[0] [https://community.humanetech.com](https://community.humanetech.com)

[1] [https://community.humanetech.com/t/idea-turning-the- weapon-a...](https://community.humanetech.com/t/idea-turning-the-weapon- around-raising-awareness/423)

[2] [https://medium.com/@maxstossel/how-everyone-lost-their- mind-...](https://medium.com/@maxstossel/how-everyone-lost-their- mind-e1cede28a30)

<comment><USER24> Hey that's really cool! Thanks for the link to Humane Tech Community, looks promising and will definitely check it out. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I'm looking for some feedback on NDN, it's a little MVP that will eventually give you only the not-depressing news from all over the web - it's seeing quite a bit of retention, and I'd like to know what you think! I'd like to turn it into a product, but it's pretty hard to see where to go.

<comment><USER26> A lot of your news is not just "not-depressing". It's actively uplifting. In fact, most of the stories on the front page are "feel good" stories.

It'd be cool/useful if you could provide news on the important issues of the day that's simply "not-depressing". I.e., factual and detached and doesn't elicit emotion, but not explicitly feed-good.

(e: forgot to say: nice work!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah I'm thinking of adding a sentiment slider after I get a large amount of news sources going, as well as a "which sources I want to see" selection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My wife has been running a somewhat-related twitter account for a few years:

[https://twitter.com/happyanimalnews](https://twitter.com/happyanimalnews)

I am, of course, a big fan :)

</comment><comment><USER28> I just bookmarked your site in the hope that you will find the energy to continue this for a long time.

The interesting thing is that there is a big gap between our personal life and what we read in the news. While what we read in the news is often terrible, depressing stuff, our personal life is usually good, mostly manageable and not threatening at all. For most of us, life is worth living. And notdepressing.com caters to that reality, even gives the reader hope that everything will turn out well.

No, your website is not a replacement for the news sites we all are used too. But it might become a wonderful addition. Keep it going!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, the only issue right now is that I really have no idea what to add other than more sources/news articles.

<comment><USER29> Regional filtering? So you can see everything that happened near you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My high school runs a podcast that does a similar thing, we talk about positive news and interview people who've made a positive impact on the world (we've done Austen Allred and Turbovote).

[https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened](https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened)

Love to have you on sometime! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to be on! Sounds awesome - email me at email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Doesn't work at all for me on FF63.

A quick look at the dev console - I think tracking protection blocks it from loading reddit which it wants for whatever reason.

Probably a 'proxy through the back-end' job.

edit: I just realised I have reddit's DNS blocked. Oops. FF still brings up tracking protection regardless I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> All good man - I'll take a look ASAP

<comment><USER32> I'm having an issue on Firefox 63 as well. No content is loaded. Works fine in Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Something similar from David Byrne: [https://www.reasonstobecheerful.world/](https://www.reasonstobecheerful.world/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Reddit is blocked by most if not all major ISPs in Indonesia, which breaks the site without the use of a proxy.

Maybe scrape Reddit server-side? I'm not too sure if that would work but just a suggestion.

I really like the idea, though.

<comment><USER35> Maybe use a VPN? The issue is clearly with indonesian ISPs.

<comment><USER13> It's not the user's fault, they shouldn't need a VPN to read an uplifting news site... That's just depressing...

<comment><USER35> Agreed, the fault is with the ISPs. It seems that they are not actually providing internet service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm now doing eldercare.

Are there any Happy Stuff TV channel(s) that I can program as defaults? Knitting, kittens, panda bears, food, travel, museum tours, antiques, etc.

An easy default channel for those people who use TV as company, background noise. (For examples: my mom, her boyfriend, my uncle.)

The default channels (Fox, CNN, local news, crime shows) are horrifying. Fear, outrage, gore, drama, political ads.

No wonder the boomers are acting insane.

Of course, I change the channel to some happy stuff, if I can find it. Which delights my mom and her boyfriend. But such programming is not 24/7\. When the segment is over, cue channel surfing, and it's right back to horror show.

I don't have TV, so don't know how to Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV. (I've been reading up, but haven't experimented yet.)

Tangent: I just discovered my mom's been paying $250/mo for triple play. Outrageous. But given the givens, I'd happily pay $100/mo for curated commercial free Happy Stuff TV cable channel package.

<comment><USER37> Similar boat, have to look after my parents now and the difference between my father watching Fox News (well...any news these days) regularly and not is night and day. He's far more angry with it on, its just nonstop outrage and cynicism. I'd love to find something that would satisfy his desire to 'stay current' without the overreaction and FUD, but maybe he'd just go looking for it anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No offence to the developer, but isn't this like propaganda? I mean you're not just choosing to _only_ see the _best_ in world, but you're letting someone else define what _is_ the best (or not depressing). Just seems a little weird to me...

<comment><USER38> That's the case with any newspaper though, isn't it? We should always cross- check and verify, listen to multiple opinions and look at a variety of sources if possible.

<comment><USER39> The main purpose of newspapers used to be exactly an opposite. You choose the particular newspaper, by editorial board views closest to yours, and just get an information. You don't have to cross-check everything - that's what you pay for subscribing to newspaper. You outsource the job to the editors.

<comment><USER38> The part "by editorial board views closest to yours" says it all. All newspapers have views. They choose what is "good" or "bad" based on their views. That's why cross-checking is essential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> From time to time there tends to arise a demand for news that are not "bad" or depressing or paints the world in a somber palette. However, I'm often reminded of this quote by George Orwell:

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations."

Perhaps news are inherently skewed towards the negative side, and that's the way it should be.

<comment><USER36> Orwell didn't anticipate the infotainment industrial complex.

Marshall McLuhan correctly recognized that overstimulation, the outrage machine, shuts down critical thought. What McLuhan calls "auto-amputation".

<comment><USER41> Aldous Huxley did however, cf Brave new world

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Great Idea love it!

I'll second the idea of providing straight info on major current events too, tho that might take a big editorial/journo staff...

More immediately, while Chrome populates nicely, Firefox just comes up with the main page with [Top Today] and [New] blank. I'm also running NoScript but w/restrictions lifted on all sources on your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah straight info on major stuff would be good.

That's interesting - I have no idea why that could be the case - I'm googling around to help it.

<comment><USER43> You want Memeorandum: [https://www.memeorandum.com/](https://www.memeorandum.com/)

<comment><USER42> Looks good - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> >You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.

:(

<comment><USER41> Here is how to enable JavaScript: [https://www.enable- javascript.com/](https://www.enable-javascript.com/)

<comment><USER44> Thanks, but I'd rather not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I like it. If you would like to share any insights in how you've built this, I'm quite curious. Perhaps it goes without saying, but if you prefer not to say for whatever reason, then I respect that.

<comment><USER9> Someone mentioned this above but this scrapes headlines from Reddit's r/UpliftingNews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> You might wanna check this:

      Unhandled Rejection (TypeError): Cannot read property 'children' of undefined
      App._callee2$
      src/App.js:72
        69 | let topTen = []
        70 |
        71 | let newPostsRaw = await axios.get("https://www.reddit.com/r/" + subreddit + "/new.json?sort=new?")
      > 72 | let newPosts = newPostsRaw.data.data.children
        73 | ^
        74 | // console.log(newPosts)
        75 |

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll take a look ASAP

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> For the observer:

Don't worry, this is still politically slanted. It's "not depressing" that donations pour in after some wacko burned "LGBTQ books" (for children, left out of the headline; also, exactly four books).

Not sure I have time for that much news, depressing or not. And I definitely don't need to be told that it's the opposite of depressing that some people are getting into a tit-for-tat over LGBTQ children's books, a subject I'd love to hear nothing about ever.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just scraping everything right now - I'm working on a proper filter for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Sincerely, I feel depressed reading that the government is away things to people (as the money ultimately will leave my pocket for that); or that a new drug may solve many problems (as I feel I'll have to do my own research to evaluate these claims now); or that a dog had cancer and lots of people were worried about it; or that Snapchat is getting praised for anything.

</comment><comment><USER49> I would like something that filters either Google News or Apple News (app), and removes all stories of murders and abuse.

I understand that a small % of adults behave badly, but I'm not sure that reporting each instance isn't actually making the problem worse. Or desensitizing us. I guess morbid curiosity sells.

I would also like to exclude most Trump news. But still know what's going on in the world.

<comment><USER50> The trouble with the vast majority of Trump "news" is that it's not really news - if I wanted to know the content of each and every one of his tweets I'd just follow him on Twitter. It's very lazy journalism.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but it feeds the outrage machine and leads to more ad views. Win-win!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Living in a news bubble isolated from the depressing news of the time inhibits the negative feedback lagely responsible for making change from reaching the public.

Aren't people's news feeds on social emdia already effectively doing this? And it's part of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER52> "not derpessing"

1st yeah ok

2nd 'Remote Canadian town has been in isolation for a year'

3rd 'a bunch of people have diabetes and alzheimers'

4th 'some dude was unemployed and in a closet'

5th 'some dog lost a leg'

6th 'dude burns LGBTQ books'

7th 'A Christian was sentenced to death'

Yeah man... I'm not seeing this 'not depressin'g part.

</comment><comment><USER53> Needed this. Right now my city (heck country's) cellular services have been been suspended on account of the thousands of people rioting & torching public and private property to protest the acquittal of a woman in a blasphemy case by the Supreme Court.

Just more of the same, I guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes dude, glad my little project helps

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> "None of the news that's fit to print"

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good tagline

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Just FYI: Firefox and Edge both give me a warning about it not being secure.

"The owner of www.notdepressing.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."

</comment><comment><USER56> So you just built a barebones, frankly sort of ugly UI around an RSS feed of /r/UpliftingNews/?

Is this a bootcamp application project? How did this end up on the front page?

</comment><comment><USER57> Great idea! Thanks for trying to make the world a better place.

<comment><USER58> Indeed. This, [https://phys.org/news/2018-10-portugal-wild-circus- animals.h...](https://phys.org/news/2018-10-portugal-wild-circus-animals.html) made my day. Portugal is a little on the conservative side and taking the kids to see the elephants at Christmas is very much a tradition. This law is going to raise eyebrows and open some eyes. The date of 2024 seems rather far away but given the cultural impact this will have it's rather pragmatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> You should call it Great News

</comment><comment><USER60> Wait, dogs can get cancer? Fuck. That is super depressing.

<comment><USER61> I think actually every living animal can get cancer. Except maybe sharks, or is that an urban legend?

<comment><USER62> Alas, they do.

[https://www.livescience.com/41655-great-white-shark- cancer.h...](https://www.livescience.com/41655-great-white-shark-cancer.html)

> Scientists have known for more than 150 years that sharks get cancer. And > yet the belief persists that the animals don't suffer from the disease.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app."

Depressing.

</comment><comment><USER64> Great concept! I really hope this catches on.

</comment><comment><USER65> Can you please, pretty please, add an RSS feed?

<comment><USER66> He is using Reddit /r/upliftingnews as source so you subscribe to; [https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews.rss](https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews.rss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> The design needs some work for desktop, plz

</comment><comment><USER68> I like it. Especially the Red Hat story.

<comment><USER69> Yeah. That blew my mind. I'm not actually sure it's not depressing. Will IBM maintain Red Hat's open source policies? It seems _very_ unlikely...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well, it got yoinked off the front page. Sucks.

[https://imgur.com/a/coYjsZ4](https://imgur.com/a/coYjsZ4)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow this is going pretty high actually

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice idea. Basically the opposite of this excellent short story: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by- controversial/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/)

</comment><comment><USER70> Looks empty to me</comment>


Nintendo Shares Fall After 'Super Mario Run' Disappoints - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-shares-fall-after-super-mario-run-disappoints-1482142448 <comment><AUTHOR> It saddens me that todays mobile gamers get confused and angered by the 30 year old payment model of shareware + single payment full game, to the point that their bad reviews and decrease in sales leads to an 11% decrease in stock value.

I really liked their direction on their payment model.

Is this the market today? Or was it merely Nintendo's fault for not communicating with their audience on the payment model, leaving consumers to expect something else?

<comment><USER2> Yes, it also saddens me.

The majority of young customers was spoiled by Apple's bad decision to not offer trial versions in the AppStore, as was established practice since decades.</comment></comment>


Open Sourcing the HubSpot Facewall - <AUTHOR> http://dev.hubspot.com/blog/open-sourcing-the-hubspot-facewall

<comment><USER2> Nice work - I'd also love to see your spiffy stats dashboard code opensourced!

<comment><USER3> working on that as we speak! glad you liked the wall.

<comment><USER2> Whoa, hey Mr. Nagro, small world :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hiring managers, what are your feelings on graduates of code bootcamps? - <AUTHOR>

I ask because I've got a friend in one right now and was wondering how hiring managers look at applicants who come from these 8-16 week immersive code bootcamps?<p>Is there a stigma attached to them? Are they viewed as self-starters who are eager to learn? How are they judged for say entry level positions versus someone who is self taught, or someone with a formal education? Are they judged based on something they've built? Their perceived aptitude to learn? <comment><USER2> I can only speak for myself. I honestly have no interest in their educational background, only in what they've done, how they think and what they can do for my startup.

A CS degree is interesting but doesn't tell me they can code. I know, however, you can't go from no coding at all to skilled coder in a 2-4 months. I won't hire someone who can't do the job, so I suppose if they DID somehow manage it, that would leaves them to distinguish themselves by presenting a useful portfolio of work. They'd also have to demonstrate that they can talk about coding in an interview and think off the cuff like a coder when presented with problems verbally.

So, it doesn't matter where or how you learned it, but that you can do it very well. Prove it by showing me. This probably doesn't work for a larger company with HR / gatekeepers OR in countries where people are obsessed with paper credentials.</comment>


Removing Features - <AUTHOR> http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/02/02/removing-features/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IgnoreTheCode+%28ignore+the+code%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> This is an important truth.

On a related note, I (and I suspect many other hackers) have a billion cute little applications I've written over the years that do very specific things in exactly the way I want them done.

The interesting thing to me is that I'm reluctant (embarrassed?) to release them because I'm afraid of the phantom snobbery that pervades engineering culture. Since my apps and utilities are "trivial," I fully expect to be ignored at best, or maybe scoffed at for my stupid, toy applications.

Then I thought, maybe that's an allegory for the whole software ecosystem... everyone's so afraid of being "trivial," that few people are willing to do one thing and do it really well.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like your apps were made to run on *nix.

<comment><USER4> Even *nix utilities have suffered the feature bloat problem. Many have so many option flags that they exhaust the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower case, and move into the --wash-my-car-while-you-are-at-it styles. The saving grace is that for the most part, these obscure options are completely out of sight if you don't need them, but they do clutter up the man pages quite a bit.

<comment><USER5> I believe it was Dennis Ritchie who said something to the effect of "Unix bloat began when cat started taking options," or some such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see this as a fundamental concept of programming abstracted to the application level. When you code a function you strive for modularity, for your function to be re-usable as a building block. But if you're not careful you can make your function take too many inputs and do too many calculations. The same truths apply in code as in life. Keep things small, manageable, and re-usable, and Good things will come to you.</comment>


Protecting Net Neutrality and the Open Internet - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2014/05/05/protecting-net-neutrality-and-the-open-internet/ <comment><USER2> I can't help but think this is one potential super cluster of potential unintended consequences, if it ever happens. Net neutrality implementation, or enforcement, has been in limbo for a very long time, and exploitation as a result of the lack of such action has been mostly theoretical. Then there are all these proposals that doesn't consider many things, like this one from Mozilla which excludes interconnects and peering, how would we deal with discrimination exercised through simply not peering or interconnecting? Or, if that gets to be 'made neutral', what's the point of a CDN apart from reducing latency? Then, if I run a video service from Seattle will an ISP in Miami be forced to make sure they have an adequately sized interconnects with me, or a provider one tier above them have to? Also, it's not like there is discrimination right now, how many domestic access providers allow outbound access on port 25, or multicast, or BGP? What about all the research with game theoretical models about this? What about other countries that has no neutrality legislation on the horizon? What about the fact that commercial internet started less neutral (before PPP/SLIP) with limited access to limited protocols and ended up more neutral over time without intervention apart from customer demand? What if the last mile is wireless and certain services would become viable only if it's restricted? What if I want to provide $1/month access to only Wikipedia? To me, personally, it sounds like the problem net neutrality is supposed to deal with is badly defined, or a symptom of another set of problems, and the solutions are defined even worse and has the potential to create even more problems.

<comment><USER3> > how would we deal with discrimination exercised through simply not peering > or interconnecting?

The simple solution is to require last mile ISPs to do settlement-free peering with anyone who brings traffic for their customers into their facilities.

> Or, if that gets to be 'made neutral', what's the point of a CDN apart from > reducing latency?

The point of a CDN is that it's more efficient. By having facilities closer to the end users, a CDN has lower costs and could charge customers less to deliver the same amount of content than you would have to pay e.g. Level 3 for that amount of transit.

> Then, if I run a video service from Seattle will an ISP in Miami be forced > to make sure they have an adequately sized interconnects with me, or a > provider one tier above them have to?

If you run a video service from Seattle then you still have to somehow bring your traffic to Miami before you could peer with an ISP in Miami. If you do that by paying a transit provider then obviously the transit provider will have to supply the amount of capacity you're paying them to get and they'll charge you accordingly.

> Also, it's not like there is discrimination right now, how many domestic > access providers allow outbound access on port 25, or multicast, or BGP?

Blocking port 25 by default is an anti-spam measure. In general if you call your ISP and ask them to unblock it, they will. They're not blocking it because they don't want you use it, they're blocking it because you want them to. BGP is pretty much the same deal. And requiring last mile ISPs to support multicast would probably be a good thing.

> What about all the research with game theoretical models about this?

Such as?

> What about other countries that has no neutrality legislation on the > horizon?

If we had to do what everybody else is doing then we would have to have government-operated ISPs or local loop unbundling.

> What about the fact that commercial internet started less neutral (before > PPP/SLIP) with limited access to limited protocols and ended up more neutral > over time without intervention apart from customer demand?

That happened in the dial up days when there was more competition between ISPs because the "last mile" was literally the phone network. It was a result of de facto local loop unbundling.

> What if the last mile is wireless and certain services would become viable > only if it's restricted?

What services would those be?

> What if I want to provide $1/month access to only Wikipedia?

An enterprise that builds a last mile ISP solely to provide access to Wikipedia for $1/month is not a thing in any danger of occurring.

<comment><USER4> CDN also do traffic spikes. If a MMO pushes a >100MB update to a several millions subscribers at the same time, no single network connection could handle it. CDN make it possible to push massive amount of information fast and it limits the risk of service disruptions.

The benefits of CDN's are thus mostly unaffected by Net Neutrality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Url changed from [http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/05/06/mozill...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/05/06/mozilla- proposes-third-way-on-net-neutrality/). HN prefers original sources.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the catch on this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I doubt we'll ever get the net neutrality we want until we swallow the pill of paying for what we use—like we do for other utilities—instead of some imaginary total capacity. How do we make sure transfer amounts are monitored fairly? How do we make sure our software is accessing the network only when we want it to? Those are technical challenges we'll need to solve. But if we want ISPs to play fair, then we must absorb the simple concept: If you stream Netflix all day, you should pay more than the lady next door who checks Facebook a couple times per week, even if the bits are flowing at the same rate.

<comment><USER7> Honest question; if a very naive one (Since I haven't thought about it very hard...) But why wouldn't a very simplistic metering be acceptable by that definition?

I'd be totally fine having my internet metered, if the costs were commensurate to the service provided, and the service was as regular as other metered services (e.g. water/power)

I've heard why the common carrier argument isn't "the best solution", but I don't fully understand why metering hasn't been championed as a way to have the two sides (consumers and the companies) come to some common ground, or at least "call the bluff" of the companies using justifications like the above ("people use internet differently", "people will never use this amount"); so why not just see, and charge accordingly?

<comment><USER8> It's called the Insurance Effect. People are willing to pay more for flat rate, which includes "carrying" high volume users, to insure against bill shock if their usage patterns change. Humans are bad at estimating bandwidth use, and pricing that removes that requirement has real value.

<comment><USER9> "Insurance" is a form of risk mitigation. The reality of bandwidth is that we _know_ someone who likes using FaceTime, or who has a Netflix subscription, is going to use more bandwidth than someone else. Sure: it makes sense if you aren't certain how large a web page will be to buy insurance on it, but you don't want to be in the same insurance bracket as a true "heavy user": I am happy to take part in a pool where everyone subsidizes the risk of accidental trauma, but I _know_ someone who insists on smoking is going to increase their health costs, and they should be forced to take on that increased burden. This is especially evident when the playing field changes: the cost of insurance for all users goes up dramatically when something like FaceTime or Netflix is released, because the people using it are using dramatically more bandwidth than the people who aren't. If the bandwidth companies said "ok, thanks to Apple's FaceTime service, everyone's connection is now twice as expensive _even if you don 't own Apple hardware_", people would be pissed. This is why insurance charges people differently for their inherent risk, and why you can't use insurance as a metaphor here (well, unless you want to make the opposite argument ;P).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not like this is novel. Every person with any knowledge of the situation (and no financial ties to ISPs) have been calling for the telecommunications services classification for years from the FCC. As I remember it, the FCC neutrality rule strike down would have been totally avoidable if they had set the classification to begin with.

Will Mozilla "officially" proposing this make any real waves? I guess as a large organization, maybe their example will at least open up the door for other companies to join Mozilla's proposal?

Edit: I get the "last mile" distinction in their proposal, but if the entire idea of Internet delivery was classified under common carrier laws, that would cover last-mile.

<comment><USER11> _Edit: I get the "last mile" distinction in their proposal, but if the entire idea of Internet delivery was classified under common carrier laws, that would cover last-mile._

"Common carrier" worked when we had a (true monopoly) telephone system where touchtone was considered a radical, once-in-a-decade technical advancement. What incentive does Comcast have to, say, push standard bandwidth to 100Mbit while being paid regulated, low margin rates as a dumb pipe provider?

Mozilla's proposal is interesting, but I think it's probably too clever by half: Even if the FCC wanted to get into the business of setting "fair" rates for "remote delivery", I think Congress would prefer they didn't, and that matters.

<comment><USER12> > What incentive does Comcast have to, say, push standard bandwidth to 100Mbit > while being paid regulated, low margin rates as a dumb pipe provider?

To be more explicit: Mozilla's proposal solves this. ISPs get to charge whatever prices they want to consumers, which covers the cost of 100mb bandwidth and technological innovation, but to companies they have to act like a dumb pipe and _ensure_ equal access. This means Comcast has an incentive for innovation even in a monopolistic situation—They can charge users more money.

I'm not sure if this would solve the problem with BitTorrent though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1\. Someone needs to expain ths topic better. 2. There's too much confusion right now, and I think it's an important topic. 3. Right now--I don't trust Comcast in any senerio.

<comment><USER14> Plus, there's paid shills here on HN attempting to confuse the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the far distant future internet will distinguish between cached and uncached data, especially for international and interplanetary communication.

So any kind of data that can be easily hashed and disseminated over ad hoc networks will be basically free and unstoppable (BitTorrent and Netflix will be the same thing).

But data that has to be sent from scratch instead of referencing a hash will have to pay some kind of toll, albeit a small one.

It's simple to see the endgame of this: there will be an economic incentive to favor storage formats that reference existing data whenever possible. What's really remarkable to me is that ISPs don't seem to understand this, and by killing net neutrality they are hastening the demise of their own business model.

It's going to be a little rough for 5-10 years, but when everyone's cell phone has p2p gigabit wifi, I find it a little hard to imagine that ISPs will even exist as a business, outside of the government or things like banking where a hard line/low latency is desirable. So writing this out now, I see that latency is everything, so a few decades from now, what low latency industries are they hoping to capitalize on? Maybe gaming, surgery, telepresence, high frequency trading.. Netflix is just a cover story.

</comment><comment><USER14> We need a revolt to protect the internet. Washington is overrun by money but if people raise enough of a ruckus they do somewhat listen, c.f SOPA. If net neutrality is too big of a leap for the so-called "libertarian", anti regulation crowd than we need to break up Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. so we can have some actual last-mile competition.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not to be tok contrarian here, but isn't there a massive moral hazard (eg one that Netflix takes advantage of) in enforcing Net Neutrality?

</comment><comment><USER17> Could someone explain like I'm five? This is fairly technical for anyone not familiar with telecom regulations.

</comment><comment><USER18> With this "fast lane", could I theoretically get "for free" 1gbps while paying for 1mbps?</comment>


TP-Link blocks open-source router firmware to comply with new FCC rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3044594/open-source-tools/tp-link-blocks-open-source-router-firmware-to-comply-with-new-fcc-rules.html#tk.rss_all <comment><AUTHOR> Can anyone explain to me the danger of how open source routers are going to mess with airports? Are we assuming they're sneaking in to airport buildings and getting access to the router, or a remote attack that's somehow less likely than with closed-source firmware?

<comment><USER2> The open source firmware has a setting for frequencies that overlap with the frequencies used by weather radar. Preventing such interference is one of the main roles of the FCC. I guess it isn't extraordinary for the FCC to ask hardware makers to make changes to make it more difficult for end users to misuse the hardware.

There are multiple previous discussions of TP link locking their routers in the last few weeks.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tp%20link&sort=byDate&prefix&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tp%20link&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment></comment>


Why you should upgrade to Firefox 6.0.2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.browsomatic.com/2011/09/firefox-602-and-3622-follow-up-update.html <comment><USER2> In short: you should upgrade because they removed some compromised root certificates.

<comment><AUTHOR> yup short and simple</comment></comment>


Stop Freaking Out About 3D Printed Guns - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/stop-freaking-out-about-3d-printed-guns-c60545b59ac5 <comment><USER2> The most important point is missing - you can't stop the signal. Even if you somehow make the blueprints illegal, they will simply show up on torrent websites, darknet, etc. The cat is out of the bag.

The second most important point that's missing is the effect on the countries where guns are illegal and/or tightly controlled. They will be affected much more.</comment>


Amazon contributed $ to the head of Congressional antitrust probe before hearing - tech-historian https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/18/amazon-executives-donated-to-rep-cicilline-antitrust-probe-leader.html <comment><AUTHOR> This behavior should be against the law on both sides. This is not donations, but bribes. They can say donation all day, but it's really a bribe or they would not be giving money to people for free. Once again, we the people are NOT being represented by those that are suppose to represent us. Failure in democracy imho.

</comment><comment> tech-historian (Sorry for butchered headline. I found it difficult to get under the char limit)

</comment><comment><USER2> TL;DR: Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI)</comment>


Courage - <AUTHOR> http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/janusz-gorycki/courage <comment><USER2> _Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. -Anais Nin_</comment>


Stop learning code, start making things - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hellomrperez/stop-learning-code-start-making-things-5712fd97aebb

<comment><USER2> Some baseline level of knowledge is always needed. It may or may not be the case that you have enough knowledge needed, as a beginner, for any given project.

For a simple website, it may be possible to just poke around in a tutorial and glean everything you need. For a complex web service or server process, maybe not.

Why advocate for this "learn no more than is necessary" position? People learn in different ways; none of them are right. And you wouldn't say that about calculus, would you?

The enthusiasm for minimizing formal, up-front learning coming out of the Peter Thiel school of thought strikes me as very short-sighted and suitable only for relatively simple projects. It is a reflection of SVs obsession with short-term profits.

<comment><AUTHOR> First off, I appreciate your response. Your points are very valid.

I don't think one should ever stop learning. I do believe however that one should take on projects as soon as they can. Adding that hands on experience is what puts the learning in context.

My point in this article is to get people to take their heads out of the courses, and actually take on projects. Yes, at first you may only do simple projects. However, as you keep learning and keep taking on more projects, the complexity will gradually increase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This cuts both ways.

> Looking back, I can't believe I jumped in knowing so little.

I also have this feeling about my first few client projects, and it was to my detriment. The fact that I was technically able to deliver something to spec convinced me that I knew what I was doing. There have been times when I've wished someone had told me back then: _stop just making things, and learn how to code._

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting perspective. I appreciate your response, however, that was not the case for me. Even the mistakes served as learning experiences.

When I learned code,I was told to do things in a certain way, sometimes not fully understanding why. By putting it into the real world context of actual projects, it solidified those concepts.</comment></comment>


How to protect your private data when you travel to the United States - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/how-to-protect-your-private-data-when-you-travel-to-the-united-states-73909 <comment><USER2> Its says wiping data may arouse suspicions and then goes on to recommend wiping your devices.

Also "backing up your data" is a very broadly worded action. How is this achieved? Is it simply hit the "Backup" button or is it more involved.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't travel to the US.

Problem solved.</comment>


Ask HN: Best App Portfolios - <AUTHOR>

I'm an iOS developer looking to set up a portfolio website to show some of the apps I have built and possibly attract some freelance work. Does anyone have any good examples of portfolios from mobile developers?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> There are a few mentioned in this article on tips for portfolio sites that might give you some inspiration: [http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2008/12/10-characteristics-o...](http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2008/12/10-characteristics- of-excellent-portfolio-sites/)

One of the ideas I thought was great was to have a portfolio blog, not a portfolio site. You can post pictures of your work, but then accompany it with a technical summary of what problem you you were solving. Great for coders to showcase the stuff behind the app's UI.

<comment><USER3> This is what I am doing and it is attracting work for me. My website has been up less than 2 weeks and I've already started building an app for my first client.

My site is just a WordPress blog with pages for my Google Play store, LinkedIn profile and a Contact Me form. Check it out - jamesjguthrie.com</comment></comment>