A Salute to Solo Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/08/24/a-salute-to-solo-programmers/ <comment><USER2> I'm the only developer in my ad agency of about 80 people. It's super cool to write all my own code, make all my own stack choices. To know that I wrote everything here is a really cool feeling.

At the same time, I really miss talking shop with other devs. And given my extremely young age (only a few years out of school) sometimes it can be hard to be sure I'm making the most efficient choices. There's a lot of times I ask myself...why is this stupid and what am I going to break?

It definitely has its ups and downs. I think the most valuable lesson has been self reliance. No one is fixing this, it's on me. No one is going to refactor this, except for me.

edit: spelling :(

<comment><USER3> > At the same time, I really miss talking shop with other devs.

I'm in the same position, it's really lonely being the only technical resource. Just someone to bounce ideas off of. On the other side, everything works and when it doesn't I know exactly why within moments because I wrote it all.

<comment><USER4> I had this problem for years. And then I picked an open source project that uses the same language and tools and started contributing to it. I made some great friends and the mailing list was always live with discussion that was often much broader than the thing we were building. Over the years we also met live on a couple of conferences, had drings/dinners together and it really helped me fill the void of working alone on commercial side.

<comment> what-no-tests This!

<comment><USER5> Since there are no more upvote-points, we can't know how many people agree with the comment, so "this" are again required (or show alternative).

<comment><USER6> I do not need to know how many people agree with something to know whether I agree or disagree with it.

There's no need to show upvote points; just order it so I'm more likely to read the things that other people think are worth reading. I can judge it myself without seeing N "this" comments or upvote points beside it.

<comment><USER7> Whoooosh

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been doing the (unpaid) solo thing for years, and I'm almost sure I'm gonna give it up now. I built Tiled Text ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be&t=1m30s)) while working at a grocery store and dealing with a repetitive strain injury, and it was a miserable, awful experience. I designed and built this 'abstract visual debugger': [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfMthDInwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfMthDInwE) while my savings slowly ran out, along with my girlfriend's patience for being ignored. And I've spent a ton of time teaching myself mathematics and programming language fundamentals, and writing on new perspectives on programming tools/languages ([http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/why- programming-languag...](http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/why-programming- languages-dont-have.html)) —with no real prospects for academic recognition (to say nothing of remuneration), with my historically poor academic record.

I think for some people this is the only thing they want to do, and it works out well enough for them. I felt like that was me for a long time, but I've begun to wonder how much of this sort of dedication is motived merely by... baser qualities.

In any case: I salute you, solo programmer! —but be careful, eh? It's possible there's a simpler lifestyle that would make you happier.

<comment><USER9> Your abstract visual debugger is really cool! I was thinking about pursuing something similar for my bachelor thesis but ended up doing something much different.

I'm curious to learn more about your insights regarding the subject, where can I find more information?

Also curious to learn what made you go from thinking "this was you" to thinking another lifestyle could make you happier, which lifestyle? Why?

Edit: Going through your submissions now (:

<comment><USER8> >... what made you go from thinking "this was you" to thinking another lifestyle could make you happier, which lifestyle? Why?

There are a lot of things that have gone into that question. I would say the biggest thing was that I became aware of the fact that I was always 'in my head' instead of having a more direct interaction with people/environment, and realizing (from a number of sources, but importantly, through meditation) that being not 'in your head'—direct interaction with things—is a major part of feeling content or satisfied (as well as being effective in... most domains). Makes sense if you think about it: you think when you are trying to change something; if nothing needs changing, you don't think and you're content.

Now I'm looking for a balance with social interaction, physical activity, and intellectual work. Since I've been unable to earn money from my own projects, I am giving them up to just do a normal 40hrs/week kind of programming job: if I try to do the job and the projects, there's no time for the balance I want.

After a few years I may get a job that's more physical/social and return to my projects, but for now I need to catch up on finances, and programming is the only way I know how.

Edit: another way of saying the above: anxiety/depression became a problem, and the balance I describe seems to be a major part of the solution.

<comment><USER9> I can relate to what you're describing, thanks for sharing.

Some part of me wants to just live in solitude with little or no social interaction at all, but I deliberately avoid it since my rational side tells me I'll end up depressed.

I've been told more than once I should look into meditation, do you know of a good way to start?

<comment><USER8> > Some part of me wants to just live in solitude with little or no social > interaction at all, but I deliberately avoid it since my rational side tells > me I'll end up depressed.

Yep! That's the struggle.

This guy has a pretty nice intro, with a quick 10 minute or so practice you can do: [https://youtu.be/3Uqoxo_jPXQ?t=3m33s](https://youtu.be/3Uqoxo_jPXQ?t=3m33s)

Then there's this book which works pretty well as an intro because it's a collection of diverse perspectives, from different people, on the subject: [http://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Guide-Meditation- Inspiration...](http://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Guide-Meditation-Inspiration- Contemporary/dp/1611800579)

Alan Watts is also generally pretty good—can find talks from him on youtube, and he's written many books.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! I'll hopefully have a look, at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a solo programmer. In London. I rarely see anyone in my day to day. I work from home. I binge work, sometimes for 18-24 hours at a time - I loose track. I love it. I love my life.

I have almost finished my latest fun project. I'm collecting 25k data points a second. I control 38 servers. I have automated absolutely everything.

i would love to sell it now, but not sure how

<comment><USER11> how much are you making? ;-)

<comment><USER12> It sounds like, "enough".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi to all the other solo devs out there! I've been building [http://moonman.io/](http://moonman.io/) mostly by myself for 4 years now, writing all the code (roughly 100k lines of c++) as well as creating all the earlier art and design. Earlier this year I was lucky to be crowdfunded enough to hire an artist and continue working on the game.

On projects that span years you find that you're not actually working alone, you're collaborating with your younger self. A younger self who is more naive, more optimistic, sloppier, and who leaves funny comments for you to stumble across years later.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The many superpowers of Apple's Preview (here and here) does justice to the app's power and flexibility. Read it and join me in my appreciation for this labor of love from a solo, unnamed programmer who, I'm told, has been at it since the NeXT days."

Preview is one app that is a source of constant admiration and consistency that makes using OS x that much easier. Maybe a single excellent developer can make better call in terms of consistency because applying similar pattern across board is natural where doing so for more than one person requires a whole lot more effort? (communication, keeping up with a style etc.) While on the same subject can there be some way to make reusable components for visual intefaces ala unix commanline and pipes. If so then developers can do well developing bits of code, each doing one thing well and let users construct their own "solutions"

<comment><USER15> Preview is ok. It's clunky for looking at multiple images in a directory. Editing images is just weird - saving the image as you make edits, so you have to revert if you play with something - it breaks a 40 year old opn file-edit file-save file paradigm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The game Banished ([http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/](http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/)) is another modern example of an amazing piece of software turned out by a single programmer.

<comment><USER17> While we're looking at amazing gaming accomplishments my solo programmers, there's also Axiom Verge ([http://www.axiomverge.com/](http://www.axiomverge.com/)) which was released on PS4/PC this year.

<comment><USER18> Interesting coincidence: both are games. In the business world when you buy an app you probably want to make sure that someone will be able to maintain it even if something happens to the project lead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are quite a few of these guys still out there.

Look at dwarf fortress great example of one guy "doing it on his own"

<comment><USER20> Just the other day...

Terry Davis showing a game using his own graphics libraries, compiled with his own compiler, running on his own OS:

[https://youtu.be/EsFPq6I13vA?t=300](https://youtu.be/EsFPq6I13vA?t=300)

Though I suppose the article has a commercial/organisational slant.

<comment><USER21> Well, that guy's kind of a huge racist, so an ode to him is probably in poor taste:

[https://twitter.com/TempleOS/status/337551685285195777](https://twitter.com/TempleOS/status/337551685285195777)

<comment><USER22> I didn't take the time to delve in to other tweets, but if you know more about him, can you tell me whether, based on what you know of him, he is saying "black people are niggers"(0) or "I won't be shamed into not using a word"(1).

Based on _just the tweet_ , it sounds like #1. If so, I can only repeat "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". And, furthermore, I don't think that, in itself, says he's racist.

<comment><USER23> No, it's the first one. He's a pretty big bigot and racist. He's also been diagnosed with a form of schizophrenia, so take that for what it's worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> AFAIK LuaJIT was the work of Solo programmer Mike Pall. He built it on top of Lua, of course, but it's still an incredible feat of engineering and dedication. There are some who speculate that Mike Pall is possibly an alias for a whole team of people, but I think the reality is it's just one hard- working and extremely talented individual. He's now in the process of passing on the torch to the community, after a decade of shepherding LuaJIT.

</comment><comment><USER25> Fabrice Bellard is the greatest solo programmer IMO. He wrote FFMPEG, QEMU, A PC emulator in Javascript and a ton of other stuff - [http://bellard.org/](http://bellard.org/)

<comment><USER11> The greatest that you know of.

<comment><USER25> Yes, of course :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like the attitude and point of view here, and I will also lift a glass to all the solo programmers. As far as I am concerned the actual act of writing code has always been transacted between a single brain and a keyboard. The article does seem to have a slightly dated desktop-oriented perspective, though. Isn't it fair to say that the mobile world reinvigorated the solo/small team development project?

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a nice read. I think that the enormous foundation of frameworks, toolkits, and open source libraries that exist today provide a huge lever for the talented individual - Acorn is an incredibly accomplished app and I had no idea a single person wrote it.

Equally, they provide a great crutch for the much greater number of not-very- talented people like me to cobble our ideas together into something approaching a polished product. That's new: I certainly couldn't have hoped to get much done writing 6502 assembler, but with a Cocoa book and a few late nights I'm earning actual money from code I wrote.

<comment><USER28> I wonder if Core Image is doing a lot of the work for Acorn, I'm not an Apple developer but I remember when it was announced thinking that it would make Photoshop type applications easier to develop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Most programming languages were started by solo/independent developers, and some worked many years before anyone else helped. When you look for innovation, somewhere along the line it was an individual or solo dev work of creativity. Great teams are made up of self propelling independent/solo capable developers that can work in a team or parallel on separate products or services in a project.

Guido worked on Python for many years before anyone joined in: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R52mi- Fyk0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R52mi-Fyk0E)

</comment><comment><USER30> It's an interesting period. On one hand, even though the complexity of the app has grown a lot, so have the tools and libraries which are available.

Another important aspect of doing it alone is the ability to market your software. If you're not interested in that too much and don't have a spouse or friend who can take care of promoting, selling, customer support, etc, then it's difficult to make a living with it.

And of course, the competition is fierce and getting stronger every day. Kids are growing up with computers and devices and they write code. I've just spent 30 minutes playing a 10-year old's game (John Carmak's son, btw :) ).

Then there's always the 'open source' way - you start solo and then people join you.

My life as a solo programmer has been in ups and downs - making money while working full time as a programmer and then going solo and spending all my savings on experimental projects which so far haven't been commercially successful.

Now I have to take a job again and be a 'team player'...

</comment><comment><USER31> Credit where credit is due

-> [https://github.com/sindresorhus](https://github.com/sindresorhus)

<comment><USER32> This guy has me blocked on GitHub and I have no idea why. I've never interacted with him before. I tried to make a simple pull request to fix something and GitHub won't even let me fork his code.

I've emailed him and asked if he perhaps blocked me by accident or something and got no response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > It needs 7.77 gigabytes of disk space. The "obsolete" word processor I use > to write this (Pages 2009) weighs in at 388 megabytes; the newer and dumber > Pages version 5.5.3 takes up 478 Mbytes.

Binary size is, of course, a poor measure of program complexity. A solo programmer can easily leverage libraries to drive up their total weight significantly.

</comment><comment><USER34> That's not to say that it's impossible to do anything on your own nowadays. I hear that it only took one guy to make Evochron Mercenary ([http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/faq.htm#2](http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/faq.htm#2)) and the game takes roughly 1gb. Now, Star Citizen is supposedly the next big space sim; a big team that has raised over $50 million and creating a game that will probably take over a 100gb to install. Heck it took 20gb just for me to demo the dog-fighting module.

One developer vs a team backed with millions of dollars.

1gb vs 100gb.

It can still happen.

</comment><comment><USER32> Solo programmer reporting in. I've been working on libsoundio[1], an alternative to PortAudio. This is in the context of Genesis[2], a digital audio workstation. Collaboration is great but sometimes if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.

[1]: [http://libsound.io/](http://libsound.io/)

[2]: [http://genesisdaw.org/](http://genesisdaw.org/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Eric Chahi's work on Another World immediately came to mind as a great solo achievement while reading this. This code review written a few years ago is very good: [http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/](http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Most grunt work is automated and so much knowledge is leveraged even solo- shops can keep all tech together. Good! That said, data from hard-science problems is the new nut to crack. I almost cry thinking of startups like rescale.com, the chance they offer to independent researchers and scientists to do so much more than it can be done in a shared lab or cluster. When I read of $$$ burn rate in the SV, I cringe: one ikea table quoted at $250 is one good full day of work with rescale.com. Unbelievable, make me think VCs and investors should ask for much more value for money when funding science startups.

<comment><USER37> Is rescale's offering the equivalent of an Ikea table? I'm not sure of the relevance of the connection.

<comment><USER36> It may be bootstrapping attitude but instead of a $250 table I would do with a $100 table + $150 on rescale!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _> Today, such singular achievements appear to be no longer possible._

More people than ever are making their own things today.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hmm, I think it's easier than ever for the solo programmer. Production deployment is easier, research and knowledge sharing is easier, testing is easier, finding a third party library to help is easier...everything is easier. A good programmer can build a product from beginning to end very easily now.

</comment><comment><USER40> I am a solo dev at a university and a couple advantages I enjoy is that I choose my own technologies, and I am learning all about other aspects of web dev including sys/server admin. I can legitimately say that I am a full-stack engineer, albeit because I was semi forced to learn everything...

</comment><comment><USER41> Paul's cousin was my colleague a few years ago. He had so many stories to tell about him. He has a personal web site at [http://arachnoid.com/](http://arachnoid.com/)

I hear he spends most of his time now sailing.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have been doing solo development of [http://bit.ly/1MPBDze](http://bit.ly/1MPBDze) for so many years, now just business development and occasional coding

</comment><comment><USER43> Here is another. He writes in assembler. Steve Gibson GRC.com.

</comment><comment><USER44> I didn't realize Acorn was a solo act. I ignored since I bought Pixelmator first, but now I have to go buy Acorn to support the guy just out of respect.

</comment><comment><USER45> Notch started as totally solo developer for MineCraft.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think the conclusion really resonates to the Handmade Manifesto that was posted a few days back.

</comment><comment><USER47> this sounds like me

</comment><comment><USER48> "make a dent"

funny how OP nods to steve today when he snitched him to sculley back in the day</comment>


The Race to Build Megafire Prediction Tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-28/the-race-to-build-megafire-prediction-tools <comment><USER2> I'm sure you could do a lot with satellite imagery and simulation. It could suggest spots to place preemptive fire breaks or have controlled fires.</comment>


EFF to Court: Lifetime GPS Tracking Violates the Fourth Amendment - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/eff-court-lifetime-gps-tracking-violates-fourth-amendment <comment><USER2> I'm 100% for lifetime GPS tracking of certain classes of criminals - It's a far sight nicer than lifetime imprisonment, and that is a legitimate punishment.

But the EFF's point here is solid: This wasn't a punishment handed down as part of a sentence. This was added to someones sentence ex post facto, and that is not cool. It is fairly cut and dry; You only are sentenced according to the law at the time you committed the crime. Adding new punishments, no matter how well intentioned, is unconstitutional. I don't even have to cite an amendment, it's in article 1.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree with this point. It's completely ridiculous to retroactively apply laws.

<comment><USER4> HN makes me sad sometimes. It was less than 24 hours ago that we criticized India for talking about applying the new law concerning crimes committed by minors on a high profile case.

Now, not even a day later we are talking about doing something just as insane. :(

<comment><USER3> This is the first time I hear of this discussion. That said, are we talking of applying a new law to a situation that has yet to pass sentencing? Then sure, a new law can be applied. If they have already passed sentencing then too little too late.

<comment><USER4> No, it is too late and thankfully the justice system has not entirely failed. However, I am still appalled by the court's statement:

> On Monday, India's Supreme Court dismissed an appeal to stop his release, > saying it "shared" the concern of most citizens but its hands were "tied" by > the law.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- india-35149409](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35149409)

I hate that politicians all around the world are more than happy to keep the people occupied in these things that don't affect a lot of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's amazing that we take for granted our law generation process being so broken, that our only hope at sanity is to appeal to the closest commandment from the Bill of Rights.

<comment><USER6> Anecdote: the other day I was walking back home from dropping my daughter off at daycare, through a nice residential neighborhood. I see a guy sitting on the sidewalk with a cop standing over him. I gingerly pass them, and about 20 feet away I pass three old people discussing the situation. I can't make out what they're saying, but I hear the phrase "sexual predator" several times.

So I'm not convinced that this isn't the law generation process working exactly as intended. We keep appealing to the Bill of Rights because we just don't like the outcomes democracy gives us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's almost (but maybe not quite) a moot point, since the status quo in our society is to carry around a GPS tracking device 24/7, and the authorities can pull the records from it at a whim. Heck, I'm typing this on one.

<comment><USER8> There is a difference. You decided to carry that tracking device with you. You can decide to pause or stop carrying it.

<comment><USER9> Though, the instant you do you are flagged.

Just as although paying cash is fine, but actually paying with cash is highly suspicious - why would you ever want to do that if you have nothing to hide?

Coming soon to a future near you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a very tricky issue. I'm against the notion of perpetual punishments in general, but some kinds of sexual behavior are compulsive and historically the response to that has been to detain people who exhibit dangerous behaviors of this sort indefinitely in a psychiatric facility, which is obviously even more restrictive of liberty than tracking their whereabouts.

Mind, I'm not saying Wisconsin's law is well-drafted or demonstrated to work, just observing the existence of a conflict between individual rights and public safety in a context where the risk is very hard to measure.

<comment><USER11> If a person has a psychiatric illness that makes them hurt others, then treating them in a close facility is right and proper. Its no more restrictive of liberty than any other involuntary hospitalization.

If a past criminal moved next door, it should not matter what kind of uncontrolled violent behavior they had. Is it that much better to know that instead of sexual violence criminal, you get a person who slashed a knife into a innocent person? What if they shot a person, or kicked and stomped on someones head and cause irreversible brain damage? If Wisconsin's law is good, then why not apply it to all criminals that has been found guilty of serious violence?

<comment><USER12> The plaintiff in this case is a serial molester of young children, convicted twice, paroled, and sent back to prison when he acknowledged contact with two kindergarten-aged children (a grave violation of the terms of his parole) and admitted to considering molesting them.

There's not much more justice in committing him involuntarily, nor would we prefer to incarcerate him for the rest of his life, if we can find other ways to prevent him from coming into contact with children.

<comment><USER11> > There's not much more justice in committing him involuntarily

In what way are you describing a healthy person? Would we call a person as being healthy if they had a problem with being aggressive, repeatedly committing assault, convicted several times, and admitting that they can't control their aggression and intentionally goes and look for people to beat up?

I think such person is likely to have a medical condition, psychological or actually brain damage, and treatment (involuntarily if needed) is best for both the individual and society. Trying to "find other ways to prevent them for coming into contact with people" would be horrible bad idea and unlikely to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Requiring someone to wear an ankle monitor for the rest of their life sounds bonkers. You would either have to give him/her the charger or mandate that he/she return to a police station or court house to have the device recharged perhaps every month. If you gave them the charger, couldn't the person just "forget" to charge the device and then drive out of state?

From the Wikipedia page on Ankle Monitors [0]:

>GPS units are similar in design, but the offender also carries a GPS cell phone unit that receives a signal from the ankle unit, or both functions may be combined into one ankle unit. Persons subject to a restraining order may also be subject to GPS monitoring.

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

<comment><USER14> Parolees are already subject to many arcane obligations, such as a rigid schedule of meetings and phone calls with the parole officer. The punishment for a single failure is going back to prison for the remainder of the sentence. You could presumably make regular charging of the device a similar requirement. Low battery indicator for too long = back to life in prison.

<comment><USER8> But that seems unjust. Since in this case they served their sentence already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If life imprisonment isn't unconstitutional, why is lifetime GPS tracking unconstitutional?

I'm not saying I support lifetime GPS tracking; just that I don't understand the argument.

<comment><USER3> The argument is that they already served their sentence. They are free to do as they will. This is effectively in addition to their sentence, retroactively changing the laws. Imagine if suddenly there was a law that said you were to have your tongue cut out if you lied, and that it applied to lies told in the past. How would you feel about that?

The point is, punishments can only be applied to sentences pronounced from this point on, not ones that have already been served or are in the process of being served.

<comment><USER15> This argument seems based much more in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 of the original text of the constitution. Quoth: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The ACLU and EFF seem clearly to be in the right here, and the district court ruling seems pretty straightforward. Here's a quick sketch of the facts of the case:

* The plaintiff is a serial child molester, convicted once in the late 80s, again in the 90s (for which he served a 10-year sentence), paroled in the early 00s, and had his parole revoked after he sought contact with 4-5 year old children and admitted to considering molesting them.

* Following his sentence, he was committed involuntarily to a psychiatric facility after a hearing with a jury found unanimously that he was a danger to the community and likely to offend again.

* As was his right, he annually challenged his commitment, and in 2010 had an evaluation that determined that while he was more likely than not to offend again, his condition didn't then meet the standard required to confine him at the psychiatric facility, and he was released.

* At that point in 2010, he was as a matter of law free, "maximally discharged", with no lawful encumbrances remaining on his whereabouts or activities.

* During the time he was committed (but after his criminal sentence had expired), Wisconsin passed a law requiring lifetime GPS monitoring for people convicted of the kinds of crimes he was convicted for.

* The state contends that because he was involuntarily committed fairly as a matter of law, and because the hearing that released him from that commitment was aware of the GPS monitoring law when they determined he could be released, the GPS monitoring act was fairly applied to him.

* The state also contends that the GPS monitoring requirement isn't a "punishment" but rather a public safety mechanism.

* The court roundly and vividly rejected the idea that the GPS bracelet wasn't punitive, and found that because his commitment followed from a criminal conviction for which his sentence was entirely served, he couldn't be punished retroactively.

* The court also determined that because SCOTUS had already established that merely attaching a GPS monitor to a car temporarily constituted a 4A search, there was no possible way the state could prevail in any argument that suggested that lifetime GPS monitoring of a person was _not_ a 4A search.

As EFF says, this case is really more about retroactive punishment than anything else. This plaintiff if a corner case. 10 years from now, we can expect lifetime GPS monitoring to be the norm in states like Wisconsin.

Irrelevant but interesting note from the article:

Pedophilia is a diagnosis recognized by the court as warranting involuntary commitment, but the state cannot premise arguments on the idea that pedophiles will _compelled_ to molest children. If they were, pedophiles could evade criminal convictions by pleading insanity.

</comment><comment><USER16> only property needs to be tracked.

I am nobody's property.

you can keep your GPS devices. I'll stick to my phablet.</comment>


Ask YC: A way to measure page render time? - <AUTHOR>

How do you measure the affect of different layouts on browsers' progressive rendering of pages? <comment><USER2> I ran across this the other day: [http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2005/05/renderin...](http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2005/05/rendering_web_p.html)

If there was an easy way to run mozilla headless, e.g., "time moz-render-to- file <foo.html >foo.png", that would probably give you an idea (even better if moz could report timings itself). No idea how hard that would be to do, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably the best solution I've seen yet, although that has some big limitations.

What surprises me is that, in looking at all the browser rendering benchmarks online, everyone just seems to do it by hand! There must be some pragmatic way that the browser developers are benchmarking the browser speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One more thing to do would be to add a start_time via js on the top of the page. Then, another at the tail end of the page - then use a javascript function to calculate the difference. This will give you the time for the server (or your web app). [You can also do some code to your controller or view - however you have it to generalize for all pages].

Now, this time is not the same as the time that firefox takes to display the page. For this, you will have to use the start time on head and then use a js function that will be called on body onload. This can now take the difference and show you the browser rendering time alone.

I have often seen that some pages get generated in the server in under half a second, but takes more than a few seconds for firefox to render. [For example, table with lots of rows, with lots of divs and esp. if there is any dynamic modification of nodes].

Another technique I use is to also display the times for both server/browser, only when I am logged in - and also use color codes to show the severity of the situation. [Like Green for under half a second, red for over a second..etc].

</comment><comment><USER4> YSlow is good for measuring page render time, using _your_ computer and internet connection and provider meaning it might _not_ mirror where your end- users are coming from geographically and from a network perspective.

There are companies you can use to measure performance of a webpage from various geographies, networks, and internet connections available from pingdom, Keynote, Gomez and other companies

<comment><AUTHOR> Unless I'm missing something, yslow just measures download size and latency.

I want to measure how well the browser progressively renders the page. For example if I made a layout with tables nested 50 deep, the browser would do worse at progressive rendering and have a higher render time than if I used just css.

Likewise, I'm not talking about network latency, eg pingdom, keynote(?). Or compatibility, eg gomez.

<comment><USER5> Keynote DOES measure the time it takes for a page to be rendered using IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked over those products and only see download time and latency, not render time. If you could provide a link to where this feature is listed, that'd be very helpful.

What I'd really like though would just be some kind of browser performance profiler (not js profiling.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just noticed one thing. I added a comment directly. And was hoping that mine would probably go to the end of the list. But my response got inserted between posts by prakash and pg. Curious to see where this comment ends up.

</comment><comment><USER6> surely just put some js at the top of the html, to remember the current time, then set some js to be executed onload, and calc the difference?

Or are you not allowed to edit the code? :/

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/> ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Render time. (see above)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gmail does it apparently.</comment>


Show HN: Kcl, a Kafka command line client to do anything with Kafka - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/twmb/kcl <comment><USER2> Looks interesting! how does it play with schema registry?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

It isn't yet integrated with the schema registry, but I think doing so would be a fairly straightforward task. My primary goal before this "Show HN" was 2.6.0 feature completeness.

I'll look into integrating with the schema registry within the next month. Thanks for the reminder!

edit: there's a few other minor kafkacat features that I'd like to implement as well, such as start and end _times_ for consuming, and producing entire files. I think those two, in addition to avro schema registry, are the main features this is missing, but otherwise kcl is much more featureful.

Long term, I think it'd be great to add support for secrets in vault, but I'd like a bit more usage before considering integrating that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Thinking of quitting to start freelancing. Crazy? - <AUTHOR>

I co-founded a small startup a few years ago. We were acquired last year by a much larger vendor in our space. It was by no means a financial windfall, but we did get decent salaries, benefits, and autonomy. That being said, I'm terribly bored with the position, product/market, etc. After so many years, I just feel like I need a change at this stage to recharge. My cofounder is also leaving which makes the prospect of staying much less attractive.
Lately I feel totally unmotivated which concerns me. I've now started actively searching for opportunities and contacting some people in my network to see what might be available. I'm hoping to start doing freelance Rails development now.
When does it make sense to take the leap? I have cash in savings, and I could go do freelance .NET or Java work in a pinch given it's abundance in my area, but I'm really seeking to stick with Rails as it's been my sole focus during this time and I personally enjoy it much more than the alternatives. I'm a bit constrained in that I'm seeking remote Rails projects as there just isn't much demand where I reside.
I feel pretty confident I could go out and pay my bills to maintain my current standard of living even if the work wasn't very rewarding. Part of me wants to just cut bait and put myself out there rather than keep teetering on the fence between a full-time job and wannabe.
I'm interested to hear others experiences here. How did you do it? Any thoughts or advice? <comment><USER2> Well, I recently quit to become a fulltime freelancer and I'm absolutely loving it. Here's a quick brief on my background:

Until about 8 weeks ago I was an academic neuroscientist. For a variety of reasons, I quit and started working as a fulltime web developer.

I had just about $8k in my bank account at that time. This may seem low (it is!), but it was about 1/4th of my yearly salary so it is a lot for me. I'm don't need a lot of money to survive, so other than taking the girlfriend out every now and then I can live on a fairly tight budget.

I've found several clients through Hacker News, which is pretty awesome. I'm charging a low rate right now to make up for my unorthodox background and lack of professional experience. I imagine you'll have a much easier time since you have real experience to put on your resume, whereas most of mine were side projects.

I'm not sure what else to write, but if you have any questions feel free to ask!

<comment><USER3> I am curious to hear how you found your clients in a place as competitive as HN?

<comment><USER2> Not sure! =)

I have a handful of side projects in both programming and "soft" skills such as running a newsletter. I got some leads through various HN posts about my side projects, and a few from the "Freelancer?" monthly thread. You can see the projects that I listed if you search last month's thread.

But yeah, I find it a little surprising myself. Probably some combination of the following:

-public projects

-right skill set (PHP instead of more trendy Ruby, etc)

-cheaper price

-good environment for developers right now

-luck

If you think about it, there are a lot of brilliant people on HN...but many of them already have jobs. Of those freelancing, a lot probably already have a solid client load. Of those that still need clients, not all are going to be working in a specific skill set, and I'd wager many don't want to work with PHP.</comment></comment></comment>


New London Apple Store Big Enough To… Block Out The Sun? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/new-london-apple-store-big-enough-to-block-out-the-sun/

<comment><USER2> Reuters says "U.S. developer Hines is in talks to buy the site for under 25 million pounds and Apple is interested in taking space there." ([http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/09/02/uk-apple-target- idU...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/09/02/uk-apple-target- idUKTRE7811NM20110902)) According to <http://www.ifoapplestore.com/the_stores.html>, Apple's retail stores range from around 3,600 square feet to 20,000 square feet, with most being in the 3,000 to 6,000 square foot range.

The article states proposed building the Apple store is situated in is a "10-storey development 87,000 square feet of offices and 13,000 square feet of retail." It's quite likely that the 13,000 square foot retail section will have several stores, including the Apple store.

This isn't about Apple creating enormous stores. This is about the possible development of an office center with a shopping floor that might house an Apple store.</comment>


Google Photos Launch Shared Albums - <AUTHOR> https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/shared-memories-made-easy-with-google.html <comment><USER2> Funny they're making this out to be new. Its revamped but this sharing feature existed in the Picasa days in a simpler form.

Side comment, the Google+ forced usage was a debacle whoever decided the photos team to remove the sharing via link features in an attempt to force people onto the G+ platform. Any manager that is willing to significantly hurt customer experience to drive their units short term results should be run out of town. Those personalities can be cancerous to companies, driving to make their personal agenda metrics look good for a couple of quarters before they move on to the next project.

Glad to see they are returning to what works best for customers!

<comment><USER3> It was even in Google Photos until they removed it, to then re-add it now.

They are just removing features and readding them with a different name.

How very Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It really should have launched with this, glad to see it is finally up.</comment>


US lifts Huawei ban; mostly - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2019/06/29/trump-surprises-g20-with-huawei-concession-u-s-companies-can-sell-to-huawei/#250b8f581e21 <comment><USER2> I suppose Trump thought that the company was pure evil and forgot how trade worked. This signals that Trump is, in fact, quite soft.

However, I'm not certain it is a good thing or not. For so long we've been wanting politicians who change their mind when faced with evidence. On the other hand, this is of commercial significance and I don't see him going back on social policies, where the evidence is not measured in GDP.</comment>


Yep, That just happened. Noction released a Free T1 Carriers monitoring service - <AUTHOR> https://www.noction.com/tier_1-networks <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.noction.com/news/new-free-tier1-carriers- perform...](https://www.noction.com/news/new-free-tier1-carriers-performance- monitoring-service)

</comment><comment><USER2> Spam. No article, misleading headline. Link just goes to a product page.</comment>


Google updates Play policies to require games to use its in-app billing service - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/08/23/google-updates-play-policies-to-ban-apps-and-ads-modifying-devices-require-games-use-its-in-app-billing-service/?fromcat=all <comment><USER2> The Play store is a cesspool of dodgy apps with even dodgier advertising and permission practices.

8 out of 10 games I download have this weird splash screen pop up advertising another game or trying to peddle me something.

It's gotten to the point where I don't even download any apps anymore. Too much crap out there and these practices seem completely legal according to Google TOS.

Is it so hard to just pay 5$ for a game, and leave me the fuck alone? Why do devs bombard me with upsells every loading screen after every level?

I haven't used an iOS product for about 3 years, but I don't remember it ever having this particular problem.

<comment><USER3> Freemium type games are all the rage on both iOS and Android -- there is no difference there (I remember the nonsense when the Dead Trigger publishers went freemium on Android, claiming that enormous piracy force their hand. A week later they quietly went freemium on iOS as well. Their _real_ reason is that getting suckers to buy ammo packs turns out to be much more lucrative).

 _Is it so hard to just pay 5$ for a game, and leave me the fuck alone? Why do devs bombard me with upsells every loading screen after every level?_

What game did you pay $5 for? Examples? Most people refuse to pay $1.99, much less $0.99, leading to the current situation. Again, this is the same on _both_ platforms.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue most people would be right in not wanting to pay $0.99 for most apps. Most (the _vast_ majority) turn out to be incomprehensibly bad, and I truly feel bad for paying for some.

IMO what we really need is a short, free (optional) trial period for many apps. You really really need to get past the "but what if it's shit?" perfectly-rational reflex when someone sees a non-free app.

<comment><USER5> There is a short, free mandatory trial period on every app in the play store.

The first time you purchase an app you have 15 minutes, during which time you can go back to the store and hit "refund" to reverse the charge and uninstall the app.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but 15 minutes is not enough time for me to evaluate an app. 48 hours would be nice. Best of all would be if the store allowed the app developer to specify how long refunds were permitted for (and displayed that information at purchase time). I think the better developers would compete to offer their customers flexibility, confident that their products would prove their worth.

<comment><USER5> I might be alone, but I think I'd refund every app I purchased if I could within 48 hours. Even 24 would be too short for me.

I'd be able to pick up new games every week for my weekly commute and never have to pay for them.

<comment><USER6> So you use most of your games for less than 48 hours each? I'd say you're getting very little use out of them! But that's why I'd actually prefer that the developer got to choose the length of time that refunds were allowed. Then the person selling the quick game with a 20 min play time could allow only 5 min for refunds, while the to-do list application could have several weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a much needed change from Google and best thing to have happened to Android EcoSystem.

Last several months almost every week you hear a new ad company that is based on Notification Ads, Icon Ads. These guys are in for Quick Money with no regard to developer or end user. (I am restraining my self from talking about how developers have been abusing notification ads in order not to spread the spam techniques).

</comment><comment><USER8> And what about users from countries where Google's billing is not available (for example Serbia) ?

People reported it long time ago, but Google hasn't updated that issue since February 2013, and it was reported on February 2012 !

[http://d.pr/i/VIPN](http://d.pr/i/VIPN)

[https://support.google.com/googleplay/known- issues/1319135?h...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/known- issues/1319135?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER9> For end users there are several updates that are welcomed, such as apps not being allowed to show ads thru notifications, or that apps cannot add shortcuts that are ads.

</comment><comment><USER10> Google's Admob is shutting off Paypal as a payment option a month from now. It is already shut off for new Admob customers.

[https://support.google.com/admob/v2/answer/2772061?hl=en](https://support.google.com/admob/v2/answer/2772061?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER11> We need a distributed third-party platform that is technologically unable to force a single payment portal. I don't know what that would look like technologically but I'd like to have it.

<comment><USER12> Now that Google insists on a payment method all of the sudden "we need" third- party solutions?! no one had objections about Apple and Amazon doing so, at least Google allows third-party app stores and sideloading.

<comment><USER13> What makes you think that "no one had objections about Apple and Amazon doing so"? Lots of people did. Lots of people have been quite vocal in their dislike of the so-called "walled garden" practices of various organizations.

Google and Android have generally provided a relatively open third-party alternative to what Apple and others are offering. If the degree of openness is changing, however, then I can see people speaking out against them, too, and possibly looking for alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So it' only games that have to use Google's billing? Not the Amazon Kindle app? Or music distribution apps?

<comment><USER15> Yes, only games, from the text of the change. This hints that perhaps the change is aimed at their attempts to implement parental controls and push into the child / family-friendly market? If using Google's system then they can enforce the controls on in-app billing set at the device level.

Of course, it is also possible that they recognize there is a lot of revenue flowing now from games through in-app purchases and have decided just to be anti-competitive assholes. But I would have to say, that has not been their form to date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Games of skill" can't offer cash prizes. If I made a math tutor app that dolled out real money would this be covered?

What if I ran a coding challenge on an app that had prizes?

Strikes me that this one will be a hard line to draw and apply consistently.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope this means Google Wallet will be able to do what Google Checkout couldn't - finally take on Paypal. But before it does that, it needs to be ubiquitous on Android devices at least, and used by hundreds of millions of people, globally. Then maybe a day will come when you can withdraw the money out of your Google Wallet, in your own country, just like with Paypal.

<comment><USER18> Let's replace our reliance on one terrible company with another!

<comment><USER19> And let's go from a non-enforced dejure wretchedness to a defacto enforced wretchedness!

The only 3rd party non-Google app/package manager I know of being used on Android is Debian, and it definitely doesn't have an app store or payment gateway for in app. Kindle of course is their own bag, and B&N is around too; it seems like there's got to be some place to start to begin to set both app- makers and app-users going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So will Google cover anti-fraud and chargebacks, if I'm not allowed to do that myself using strong tools?

</comment><comment><USER21> So... does this mean I can no longer shop in the Kindle store directly from my Nexus?

<comment><USER22> This is an update to the policies of the Play store. Kindle Store != Play Store. So no, you can still do whatever Amazon deems OK on their Kindle playground on your Nexus.

<comment><USER21> Right, so... I still don't understand exactly what you mean.

On an iPad, Apple does not allow Amazon to sell things directly in the Kindle app -- because it's an "in app purchase", and Apple wants their 30%.

Google _does_ allow this currently. The Kindle app on Nexus, downloaded from the Play store, embeds a complete store within it that does not use Play to do purchases. It uses the standard Amazon "one click" purchase mechanism.

The question is: is this changing so Amazon can no longer sell directly within the Kindle application when downloaded from the Play store?

[Edit]: I am not talking about the sideloaded Amazon App store in this case. The straight up kindle app from the Play store.

<comment><USER23> from the google play developer guidelines:

"Developers offering additional content, services or functionality within another category of app downloaded from Google Play must use Google Play's in- app billing service as the method of payment, except ... where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the application itself (e.g. buying songs that can be played on other music players)."

the kindle store is kind of straddling the line between affected and unaffected. if reading a kindle book on an e-ink kindle device counts as outside the app, they're fine. I'm guessing google will give amazon a pass here, the regulation is clearly meant to stop games with scammy IAP, not ebookstores.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Biographicon (YC Startup) Wants To Be Wikipedia For The Non-Notable Masses - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/01/biographicon-wants-to-be-wikipedia-for-the-non-notable/ <comment><USER2> it's safe to assume this will be more prone to vandalism, since each page will have less of an audience (and thus less chance of a vandalized page being fixed) than any given page on wikipedia

<comment><USER3> I agree. Despite the guidelines, I can see this potentially being used to spread rumors, gossip, lie, or just stuff that's plain unflattering on people. I doubt many people will be actively monitoring their Biographicon profile and this content could go undetected for a while, causing the subjects real harm.

<comment><USER2> i don't think it'll be particularly harmful. i think in the long term the wiki's reputation as a reliable source information may suffer. when something is _well known_ not to be reliable, it doesn't have much of a way of inflicting harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to see a graph of the number of times someone has commented on techcrunch that is the equivalent of "how did this get funding?! no value". I wonder if there are spikes for YC company launches.

Who do these people think they are? Nobody, clearly, as they are usually anonymous.

Remind me to stop reading the comments there.

<comment><USER5> Hey Ivan, stop reading the comments on TechCrunch (ValleyWag too)

<comment><USER4> Ohh wow, thanks! I totally needed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1) I'm not a big fan of the name, maybe it has subtle meanings that I'm not getting. It just doesn't flow. It sounds like a military term.

2) A lot of space is wasted in this site. The whole left column, which is about 40% of the site, is completely blank. I have mixed feelings about the little feedback bar, which, being a black log and over a yellow background, reminds me of ___.

3) Eventually you'll have to start making money, and thus putting up ads. The nice thing about wikipedia is it is non-profit and doesn't serve ads. If wikipedia did serve ads, I probably wouldn't bother contributing.

4) You should study the usage patterns of wikipedia, and what made it successful. I think there was an essay about that somewhere. The conclusion is that most of the edits come from a small minority of hyper-dedicated users, and the general high quality of writing on wikipedia can be attributed ot them. How are you planning to attract those types of people?

<comment><USER7> I agree--at minimum make the bio the width of the name header, and put the navigation links above the bio. The "Feedback" link could be made the same color as the backing oak leaf/acorn cluster, or green for more contrast and consistency with the organic theme.

I don't mind the name so much. It's almost like "Biographic Icon." Or perhaps "Biography Con" (just kidding).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had this idea several years ago. I gave up on it due to the possible legal implications.

<comment><USER9> ...and what would those be?

<comment><USER10> defamation, libel

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. Also, we weren't so willing to give up our privacy online up to 4/5 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> one of the simlplest and clearest web app interfaces i've seen so far. who did design? it's great!

<comment><USER12> The great Devin Hunt of Fuzzwich.com (with contributions from the also-great Laurence Honderick of Fuzzwich). It's amazing, isn't it?

Was it only the visual design that you liked or did you like the workflow/feel of it too?

<comment><USER11> i like both. for example, on the homepage when you click on input 'your name goes here', two new buttons appear.. that's just details, but details are what distinguish great design/interface from an average one.

<comment><USER12> We feel strongly about that stuff. Glad to hear it paid off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To the founders (Ethan and Daniel?): will you reserve any editorial control? I guess the most obvious factor that could led to the entire site's corruption is bad data (e.g., Han Solo, God, etc.) or particular data that a party may not want public (e.g. Oprah's home phone number). Or has there been some clever thinking done to resolve that problem? I've read the guidelines and they seem quite cogent.

<comment><USER2> note to the developers: this initial prototype has some pretty severe client side glitches in Opera 9.26

<comment><USER12> Thanks, staticshock. We're aware of it. That's Opera in Windows, right? We've seen it work fine in Opera on the Mac.

<comment><USER2> correct

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nothing like Scheme with flat files to make a web app :) (Why use a db when you don't have too?)

</comment><comment><USER15> Biographicon's interface is just plain slick.

I see the site being popular for people who care about celebrities.

</comment><comment><USER16> Are there any editors? I wonder if an inner circle will develop like on Wikipedia to keep the peace.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/wikipedia_secret_mai...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/wikipedia_secret_mailing/page2.html)

<comment><USER2> well, there is no way that people who don't know you can monitor your profile and filter out the fiction from the truth, so a single unified "inner circle" is unlikely to be of much use

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> i can see this becoming very popular, particularly for students in school/college who could very quickly populate it with their circle of friends

one thing: what will happen with people who have the same names?

<comment><USER18> disambiguation pages of course!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This has been done: wikiyou.com Good luck guys!

</comment><comment><USER20> "Who would most likely want to buy you?"

<comment><USER20> Hi comment feed readers. RIP Biographicon (WFP 08). [http://blog.biographicon.com/2008/08/03/biographicon- closing...](http://blog.biographicon.com/2008/08/03/biographicon-closing/)

I just don't feel like submitting it as a story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> that feeback button is everywhere!

<comment><USER18> It's undeniably the hot trend if you're a responsive and loving site curator. :)

Then again I'm biased since I have a user feedback focused startup and we're hoping to be putting those tabs on a lot of people's websites.

example.uservoice.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> congrats ethan & daniel!</comment>


Ask HN: What it takes to become an 'anchor' on Stellar network? - <AUTHOR> I was looking for an anchor on Stellar.org network so that I can integrate my application with the network to help users in India transfer funds. But there doesn't seem to be an anchor for Indian market. What does it take to be an anchor on Stellar network if I want to be one? <comment><USER2> Searching through Stellar's youtube channel I came across this presentation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Z77ZWCfkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Z77ZWCfkc)

It gives a very good idea about anchors.

Also, there is documentation here: [https://www.stellar.org/learn/anchor- basics](https://www.stellar.org/learn/anchor-basics)</comment>


Show HN: EmailOctopus – Dirt cheap email marketing via Amazon SES - <AUTHOR> https://emailoctopus.com/?hn1

<comment><USER2> This is very good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is hiring ripe for disruption? - <AUTHOR>

First it was classified ads, then monster.com, then LinkedIn making job openings more accessible.  Do you think the market is ready for something new?  When it comes to finding a job and hiring/screening candidates, it seems like the process is tedious, time-consuming and inefficient.  Is this a market that would be grounded in where they are or is there an opening for a creative way to disrupt the status quo? <comment><USER2> I was going to say: Can you get recruiters out of the process altogether?

But after thinking about it, I think recruiters have an important part to play in the current process, but it's not as a filter. Rather they are just a really expensive polling mechanism: Are you looking for a job now? Are you looking for a job now? Are you looking for a job now? ...

Like all polling mechanisms, if there's too much polling, it puts a heavy load on the system.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who is in the job market right now, hiring is ridiculously broken. Anecdote time:

During a recent job interview, the interviewer mentioned that there was another position in the organization for which I would be qualified. The position had been open for over a year and the department head was desperate for any half-way qualified candidate.

Furthermore, when I say that I was qualified for the position, that was an understatement. I am literally the only person on the face of the earth that has experience in their domain who isn't already employed. I also exceeded all of the requirements from their job ad (e.g. they wanted a BS and I have a PhD).

So, I sent a nice cover-letter and resume explaining my experience and expressing interest in their project (it was a pretty neat project). Three days later, HR rejected my application without so much as an e-mail. They still haven't found anyone for the post.

I've been seeing this time and again. Hiring isn't about finding good people, it's about rejecting bad people. We'd rather reject 100 qualified employees than risk letting one knucklehead in.

<comment><USER4> That example sounds less like an example of the job _market_ being broken and more the organization at that particular firm being broken. It's difficult to disrupt that, other than to be a different firm in the same market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a lot of issues in finding job and/or finding someone to hire. It feels like trying to tackle the whole problem is a bit brutal.

Here are some areas that I find irritating;

\- Finding companies that I want to work for, other than well known companies. Indeed sucks, I don't trust it.

-Terrible job descriptions i.e. this recent one I saw for a technical project manager: "Expert in python, php, ruby on rails, and Java Spring. 10 yrs exper required and we will pay up to 55K"

-Getting resumes to speak to the position, keyword loading, properly listing skills, achievements, etc,

-Disorganized contact with recruitment teams. ie. I had an amazing phone conversation with a hiring manager, at the end he asked which of his two positions I was interested in. A week later recruiter turns me down for one the positions.

-Complete lack of knowledge from recruiters: ie. We use a framework you haven't used before, I'm not sure you can make that switch.

-Location - I'm looking to leave my current location and have targeted a city, I'm getting turned down because I don't live there.

<comment><USER6> Hear hear.

Its a seller's market for programmers, but the traditional recruiter style means you don't hear a single thing about a company until you're on the phone with them (and they're trying to figure out whether you're competent). Requirements lists are NOT the way to engage people who are just looking for better opportunities (but don't necessarily need a new job).

Also regarding how recruiters handle things... about half of recruiters just want to match your resume bullet points to a list. They ignore important things like domain knowledge and the ability of a coder to learn new things. Oh, you have 5 years in .net, rails and HTML/CSS, but you haven't used their lightweight CSS framework yet? Sorry, we're looking for someone that matches better. I have yet to meet a recruiter that has any idea how much time and effort it takes to learn any particular technology over some other. Learning and being able to apply the fundamentals of OO programming takes a heck of a lot longer than swapping from C# to Java, or from Backbone to Angular.</comment></comment>


Evidence of water in megacanyon on Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/10/getting-down-under-on-mars.html

<comment><USER2> Can anyone help explain how likely this is to be the result of water? Is it possible these lines were produced by wind?</comment>


Writing compilers is hard - <AUTHOR> http://use.perl.org/~pmichaud/journal/40322

<comment><USER2> let's go shopping!</comment>


Latest perk on Google buses: security guards - <AUTHOR> http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/us-techbuses-security-idINBREA0F1O320140116

<comment><USER2> Good for Google for doing this. I like this a lot better than making concessions to the thugs that threaten Google employees or Google's property.</comment>


Madison Square Garden Has Used Face-Scanning Technology on Customers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/sports/facial-recognition-madison-square-garden.html <comment><USER2> I think people who find this concerning are very likely in the minorty. Folks are pretty willing to give up their fingerprint for access to Disney parks.

I appreciate the security concerns of MSG, but I don't see how we can make an informed decision without knowing its false positive and false negative rates, and what happens on false positives. Then obviously there is the question of where they are acquiring the facial data from, and with whom they share it.

Also, haven't casinos done this for years to keep out banned gamblers?

<comment><USER3> > Folks are pretty willing to give up their fingerprint for access to Disney > parks.

Wow, I hadn't heard about this and was genuinely surprised it's actually a thing. Fortunately, apparently it's opt-out:

> Are all guests required to use Ticket Tag?

> If you don't want to use Ticket Tag, you can simply carry and show a photo > ID that matches the name identified with your ticket.

From their Privacy Policy: [https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/en_CA/faq/my- disney-experi...](https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/en_CA/faq/my-disney- experience/my-magic-plus-privacy/)

<comment><USER4> They also quite explicitly state it does not store the actual fingerprint, which might be (is? logic follows) notable. It 'converts to a numerical value' instead. That can't just be hashing (how do you check that when validating later? images won't be exact) but instead would be some form of parsing to a subset of data which is 'unique enough' for their purposes. Their purpose is something like identification across current visitors with statistical significance, preventing ticket sharing. I'd expect that that has the side effect of the data NOT being unique enough for other purposes where the ticket isn't present.

I suspect this was inevitable given Disney's obsession with removing friction. It seems like they at least take the implications fairly seriously, which is nice to see.

<comment><USER5> Which is about as reassuring as saying "we don't store your criminal record, just the bytes that make it up".

What you want to do with fingerprints is compare them to fingerprints found. Hashes let you do that. THAT's what we want to prevent from happening in order to have privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There needs to be a way for false positive victims of AI or otherwise automated decision-making to appeal/challenge the decision and have an actual human review. Otherwise the future will be full of dystopian "Sorry, you cannot (or must) do XYZ because the computer said so!"

Unfortunately this is likely to require legislation, so we won't see the problem addressed (at least in the USA) until it has become nearly irreversibly oppressive.

<comment><USER7> In 2017, I was fired by the system. I told my manager and she tried to get me reinstated. Instead she received an email to call security to make sure I don't take any company's property. I was escorted out. It took 3 weeks without pay to get me reinstated. Somehow this is the funniest thing that ever happened to me.

tl;dr: I got fired by the system against my manager's will.

<comment><USER8> Somehow it doesn't feel funny to me. What was the reason anyway?

Must have been a really stressful experience.

<comment><USER7> The previous manager was laid off, and he never renewed my employment contract in the system. So I had to watch each of my privileges being revoked one by one. My parking access at first, the elevator next, the stairs, jira, my email, then my computer login. When i attempted to log in too many times, security was notified.

Every one understood that I actually wasn't fired, but they had never encountered this situation before. So they chose to follow the protocol.

This was my wake up call. There is no such thing as a secure job.

<comment><USER9> Sorry- you had stair privileges? How does that work?

<comment><USER7> Access to the stairs and each floor requires scanning your badge. That access had be revoked

<comment><USER9> I'd ask what kind of place was that you were working in, but I fear I don't have access to the answer :0

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For all the "yeah, but didn't so and so do it already?" responses...why does that make it okay, again?

</comment><comment><USER11> As someone who works in the industry, using face recognition at sporting events is not new at all. Although admittedly algorithms are a lot better now.

<comment><USER12> The spokes-droids will clearly just continue to spout meaningless nonsense like this: "MSG continues to test and explore the use of new technologies to ensure we're employing the most effective security procedures to provide a safe and wonderful experience for our guests." Can you offer any insight into what exactly is meant by "person is considered a problem" and "sometimes used for marketing and promotions." Does that mean "sold to law enforcement and ad targeting companies," or is it a bit less bad?

<comment><USER13> I would imagine that the at system at MSG is similar to Ingenuity Sun Media's system that's been deployed across NASCAR[0]. (The NYT article doesn't identify the vendor, but how many are there?) ISM's system specifically looks at the number of people in the crowd and how many are looking at the screen. Additionally, it tries to identify demographics in the crowd. Which makes sense, because this is meant for mass advertising. Although, I wonder how much more accurate you're going to get with some geewiz face scanner, than traditional demographic information sources. (Lots of middle aged white men at NASCAR? You don't say!)

Update: Apparently, you can get better info.

> "We've learned the age demographic is more diverse than we thought it would > be," Hutchins said. "We're seeing a very balanced male-female [ratio], we're > seeing a very balanced adult-young adult [ratio], and we're seeing a bigger > crowd than they told us we would see."[1]

[0] [https://jalopnik.com/the-video-boards-at-nascar-races-are- sc...](https://jalopnik.com/the-video-boards-at-nascar-races-are-scanning- your-face-1823610364)

[1] [http://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/20990688/nascar...](http://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/20990688/nascar- being-watched-watch)

<comment><USER12> It's a bit surprising to see that there's enough money in scanning people's faces at car races to develop that kind of "ingenuity." The fact that people went to the track and stared at a motor oil ad for 2.5 seconds hardly seems worth much, especially if they're "anonymous." Also, from the second article:

> It's not mapping your face as much as just pulling metadata and data points > around the structure of the face.

Heh, "metadata and data points." It's depressing to read the same bafflegab over and over.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, pulling points off my face isn't metadata. It's data. Hell, all metadata is data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 2001 Superbowl (pre 9/11) crowd scanned for "possible terrorists" and "identified 19 people thought to be wanted on outstanding warrants for misdemeanors."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/04/us/tampa-scans-the- faces-i...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/04/us/tampa-scans-the-faces-in-its- crowds-for-criminals.html)

<comment><USER15> I'm really impressed you had this reference in mind. Did that event personally impact you or did you read it contemporaneously?

"None were arrested because the crowd was so large and because the number of matches exceeded the police's expectations.

'We thought we were ready to use it, but getting through the crowd and the architecture of the stadium proved overwhelming,' Detective Todd said."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They've been doing this at casinos for quite a while to track cheats and decide who to comp.

<comment><USER17> Do they have a whitelist for the owners?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't believe this to be particularly new/unique, e.g.:

> A Sept. 20 [2016] concert at Tokyo Dome by popular band Babymetal featured > facial recognition systems at some of the gates. The system required guests > to pre-register a photo of themselves, which the system used to confirm that > the concertgoer was indeed the original purchaser of the ticket.

(Facebook link as the original source appears to be down) [https://www.facebook.com/babymetalnewswire/posts/80628173280...](https://www.facebook.com/babymetalnewswire/posts/806281732808144)

<comment><USER19>
      the original purchaser of the ticket

Given that the biggest scalping operation in history uses their ultimate clients' own credit cards to finalize the purchases, this would prevent only small scale, casual scalping.

<comment><USER20> I don't know about BabyMetal, but in Japan the concert ticket buying experience is often pretty different. In order to get tickets, you have to join the fan club. You are then eligible to enter a lottery for tickets. Often you can only buy a few tickets (not sure how many, but less than the number of fingers on your hand).

So this would actually help stop scalping quite a bit (or at least make it a _lot_ more expensive). The potential scalper needs to organise a huge mass of people to buy tickets, many of whom will not get them. Then they need to organise meetings for the purchasers of the scalped tickets with the people bought the tickets. It's not impossible, but it's going to make it much more difficult.

I had a friend who used to go to _many_ concerts and I wondered how she managed it. She met people at the concerts who were essentially crowd sourcing tickets. They would coordinate which concerts they wanted to go to and each of them would try to get tickets. Then they would meet at the concert and hand them all out. I think this is pretty common, so it under cuts the scalpers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They do it at most NASCAR races, too. Not only that, but the company that does it bought and renamed one of the tracks!

</comment><comment><USER22> hrm... I wonder how vast their facial database is. I know gov't has my driver's license and passport photos, but they're pretty crummy quality.</comment>


Exploring the mysteries of Go with AlphaGo and China's top players - <AUTHOR> https://deepmind.com/blog/exploring-mysteries-alphago/ <comment><USER2> The players who played against AlphaGo and lost said they got something valuable out of it. They started looking at completely new possible combination of moves they hadn't thought viable before. (The guy that played against AlphaGo before Lee Sedol said how it improved him. He even climbed several ranks.)

This makes me wonder. Maybe the human brain never computers for global optimas. It gets to a point where it's good enough and then stops. Clearly, if they play vs AI and then start improving their strategy again, the brain might have thought defeating most human is a good enough strategy.

This is also see in other games, someone who plays in "easy" difficulty or low ranked games in multi player games are stuck with "bad habits". As in they do really well in those thresholds but perform poorly when introduced to higher difficulty. But as soon as there is a need, good players rapidly adjust. (Example: In MOBA games like leauge of legend or Dota, higher ranked players adapt at a much higher rate to new emergent strategies while lower level player tend to not manage this and find things unbalanced.)

My point is, as we discover more of these `slighly better than human AI`, we'll also discover that human brain might be capable of much more. It just never saw the need to pour more resources in it till it found a healthy competition. Our only (soon to be) sentient friend, the AI.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X-NdPtFKq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X-NdPtFKq0)

<comment><USER3> So then I wonder if with enough play, people can beat AlphaGo once more. Maybe would should let people have a chance to keep playing against AlphaGo till they recover from the flaws it finds in human games, and maybe human creativity can win out once more.

<comment><USER4> > So then I wonder if with enough play, people can beat AlphaGo once more. > Maybe would should let people have a chance to keep playing against AlphaGo > till they recover from the flaws it finds in human games, and maybe human > creativity can win out once more.

Alpha go learns just like humans it is not standing still for humans to catch up.

<comment><USER5> What if the size of Go board was increased? Does AlphaGo scale as well as expert human players?

<comment><USER6> Probably better, actually. (But that's just a guess.)

<comment><USER7> Humans are limited by the size of their skull. Computer systems have no such limitation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow! I knew the Ke Jie vs AlphaGo would come one day, and probably the human team vs AlphaGo, but didn't expect the "Pair Go" (human + AlphaGo vs another human + AlphaGo). Interesting to see.

<comment><USER9> Centaur chess has been a thing since Deep Blue. I think the problem their future of ai stuff is having is most orgs have no idea which of their zillion problems actually needs this tech. Hopefully this will raise more awareness.

<comment><USER10> I thought people stopped doing Centaur chess when it turned out that human+computer usually loses to computer alone.

There are still positions that people evaluate correctly but computers misjudge, but those are pretty rare.

<comment><USER11> Pretty is nice, tell more please.

<comment><USER10> As early as 2013: [http://www.businessinsider.com/computers-beating-humans- at-a...](http://www.businessinsider.com/computers-beating-humans-at-advanced- chess-2013-11)

Next year: [https://www.chess.com/news/view/stockfish-outlasts- nakamura-...](https://www.chess.com/news/view/stockfish-outlasts- nakamura-3634)

And computers were only getting better since then.

<comment><USER12> It's not as far as people might think though.

If I recall correctly, Nakamura used an older version of a weaker chess engine (Rybka). He also tried to force a relatively equal position (since he was behind in points anyway) which led him to lose because of risky play.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Stockfish would lose to Stockfish + Nakamura or any of the leading chess players. These people have been using chess engines for analyses for quite a while now and certainly know their limitations.

<comment><USER10> The key idea of human+computer is that human does strategy and position evaluation, and computer calculates tactics and acts as a safety net to prevent human blunders. A weaker chess engine would still perform that function.

Granted it's all conjecture since no large competitions took place, but the mere fact that no such competitions took place suggests that the outcome probably won't be pleasant for humans.

<comment><USER12> My point was tat with the same chess engine, man with machine beats machine.

I do see your point about position evaluation though. And yes, it would be interesting to see a tournament.

<comment><USER10> I actually have not seen any recent cases when a human with chess engine was beating the same chess engine more often than a random chance would imply.

It used to be the case before about 2012-2014, but now the gap is so large that a human can only make things worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is another NN engine from Tencent making progress for last couple of weeks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Art_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Art_\(software\))

<comment><USER14> Fine Art's played a lot the on Fox server. It actually hadn't been seen since March 11 (at which time it was still losing sometimes), but is playing again today...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has deepmind done any additional training of AlphaGo since last spring?

The training that AlphaGo underwent between fall of 2015 and the match against Lee Seedol in March 2016 seemed quite effective.

<comment><USER16> Yes. From the press conference:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/64hmu2/watch_live_pr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/64hmu2/watch_live_press_conference_of_alphago_vs_ke_jie/dg2d1ti/)

> _Last year, the AlphaGo that played against Lee Sedol was v18. The Master > that achieved 60-0 was v25. Which version will play this time?_

> _Scott Beaumont: The exact version of AlphaGo will have to be introduced by > the experts working on the project, but it will be the newest version. > Defeating Ke Jie is no easy task, and AlphaGo has been continually > improving. Also, we hope to continually improve Go as an art, through the > wisdom of the players and AI in cooperation._

(Magist/Master was the handle under which AlphaGo played 60 online blitz games last December: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo#Unofficial_online_matc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo#Unofficial_online_matches_in_late_2016_to_early_2017) )

<comment><USER15> Very cool, thanks for the details. I didn't realize the version playing as "master" was 7 versions after than what Lee Seedol faced!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can AlphaGo run behind the Great Firewall?

I think that for the match with Lee Sedol it was offloading computation to (some form of) Google Cloud no?

<comment><USER18> This is not a semi clandestine match. The collaboration with the Chinese Government stated in the post should take care of that, a reliable connection to the AlphaGo servers at home.

<comment><USER17> Probably

Also (if this is optimized) the information exchange back and forth should be minimum (board position and next move selected by AlphaGo takes very little space)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is AlphaGo written in the Golang to play Go?

<comment><USER6> No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is exciting. Kasparov was prescient when he talked about and promoted advanced chess [1]. The concept was older but he was very humble on accepting this possibility. Magnus Carlsen training is with computers [2]. I would love to see Carlsen playing against the top computer chess program now. He is the "New Hope".

BTW, it seems we are experiencing here in HN some kind of AI fundamentalism since the downvote rush doesn't correlate with this normal comment. I am not arguing against the downvotes, just that sych reactionary behavior was not expected.

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

[2] [http://m.dw.com/en/world-chess-champion-magnus-carlsen- the-c...](http://m.dw.com/en/world-chess-champion-magnus-carlsen-the-computer- never-has-been-an-opponent/a-19186058)

<comment><USER21> > I would love to see Carlsen playing against the top computer chess program > now. He is the "New Hope".

I don't understand; he would get destroyed. Do you mean just to see what it would look like?

<comment><USER20> The answer is: we don't know yet.

<comment><USER22> We do know, with essentially 100% certainty. Carlson's elo rating is mid 2800s and the top engines are high 3300s. A 500 pt rating difference implies he has less than a 5% chance of winning a single game, let alone a match.

Plus, he can play against an engine any time he wants. If he could beat them in some magically surprising way, would it make any sense for him to be keeping this amazing skill a secret from the world? No.

<comment><USER20> > the top engines are high 3300s.

Sources?

<comment><USER23> Seriously?

[https://www.google.com.au/search?q=chess+engine+elo+rating](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=chess+engine+elo+rating)

And we don't know "with 100% certainty", but we can calculate a projected win/loss probability using those ELO ratings[1]

A 3300 rated chess engine vs Carlsen at 2850 gives a 93% win probability to the chess computer.

That's roughly the same probability of an International Master raned player (ELO 2300) beating Carlsen.

The top ranked engine is Stockfish, rated 3500+

[1] [http://www.bobnewell.net/nucleus/bnewell.php?itemid=279](http://www.bobnewell.net/nucleus/bnewell.php?itemid=279)

<comment><USER24> ELO scores can only be compared across a single pool of players, and those scores you linked to are from computer v computer tournaments only. The absolute scores aren't comparable because you can effectively adjust the absolute score by adjusting the parameters you start the system off with.

As far as Im aware no engines compete against humans regularly enough to get an ELO score (presumably because watching a computer thrash human players for a few hundred games isnt that interesting).

<comment><USER23> Sure, the rating compression thing is a valid criticism.

There's little doubt they are much stronger than humans though. There are enough online games that if this wasn't so it would show up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Welcome - <AUTHOR> http://pinboard.in/blog/156/

<comment><USER2> >The (registration) fee is based on the formula (number of users * $0.001), so the earlier you join, the less you pay.

Love that they're completely transparent about their number of users and how they're using it as a bargaining chip to convert fence-sitters like me.

Looks like it might really pay to be an early adopter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bio for one of the Pinboard creators:

 _Peter Gadjokov (pvg) co-founded del.icio.us in 2003. His previous projects include Bigbook, Infoscape, Weathernews, and the internal networking protocols for an Austrian tank._

</comment><comment><USER4> The idea is good, is the tagline 'social bookmarking for introverts' really motivating? It seems that at least in the 18-25 age range the word introvert has a stigma...

<comment><USER5> You should see Maciej's other project, bedbugregistry.com, tagline "insects for hipsters".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's amazing that they haven't gone down at all during all of this.

The Delicious blog couldn't even handle its own traffic yesterday.

<comment><USER7> We had a pretty wild time. Had to turn off a lot of background services and completely saturated our MySQL writes, but the site stayed up. I'll write up our experience in a couple of days in some detail.</comment></comment>