Are CIA Officers as Bad Ass as in the Movies? - <AUTHOR> https://news.clearancejobs.com/2017/05/28/are-cia-officers-as-absolutely-bad-ass-as-seen-in-the-movies/ <comment><USER2> Always puzzled by the fact that the US intelligence community largely is believed to have started after WW2, but a 10% of the US's federal budget from very earlier in its founding was used for spying [1] and Washington himself was a spy [2].

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/6-12th-grade/operation- history...](https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/6-12th-grade/operation- history/history-of-american-intelligence.html)

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

<comment><USER3> Thanks, did not know, although I knew many of the founders were spying / giving up British's move during the war, the same way how the Chinese Communist Party crippled the Nationalist's force so quickly (many of the most trusted military officials were Communists the whole time) and took over mainland China.

Here is CIA's own official acknowledgment of Washington as the first Chief of Intelligence:

[1]: [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/the-founding-fathers-of- american-intelligence/art-1.html)

<comment><USER2> Here's more detail on Washington's role: [https://www.cia.gov/kids- page/6-12th-grade/operation-history...](https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/6-12th- grade/operation-history/history-of-american-intelligence.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are at least some spy incidents, devices, etc, that mirror the outlandish stuff seen in movies.

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

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_\(listening_device\))

Guessing that's by far the exception though.

<comment><USER3> It is crucial to understand there are ops who run clandestine operations on foot, and there are analysts who does the back office analytics.

Some movies do portray things well. The Benghazi movie "13 Hours" seems like a good portray of CIA operation. A lot of desk work, some meeting with locals and informants, and generally hiding in a secret building doing surveillance work (although I think many does the surveillance directly from U.S. embassy because of the territorial sovereignty and secure infrastructure is in place already). The drug war against Pablo Escobar also showed how CIA involved in the jungle warfare by providing weapons to the opposition, and conducting surveillance on drug lords and politicians from the sky.

But I am not going to dispute there aren't assassination attempts. See [1].

        On the basis of the investigation, the evidence shows that agents of the
        CIA were involved in planning in this country with certain citizens
        and others to seek to assassinate Premier Castro."

        Bissell also testified that there was discussion within the Agency
        of the possibility of an attempt on the life of President
        Achmed Sukarno of Indonesia which 11 progressed as far as the identification
        of an asset who it was felt might be recruited for this purpose."

In [2], there's been reporting that CIA operation in China has been compromised and crippled. Many of the CIA informants are MIA according to the report. CIA operation officers would travel to China and meet informants in cafe or local restaurants. There are CIA operatives living in China like business man. On another note, Japanese spies have been caught, according to [3].

But like in most movies where operatives kill dozens and some car chase?? Meh, I doubt.

However, one would wonder, will assassination attempt on NK's Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un ever succeed? [4]. But then again, it won't be CIA who is doing the killing, it will most likely be a NK asset, or some contractor like someone said below. Although, I think it will be a NK asset.

[1]: [https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7324...](https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/7324009.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia- spie...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies- espionage.html)

[3]: [http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy- defence/article/209...](http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy- defence/article/2095193/china-holding-six-japanese-men-possibly-spying- charges)

[4]: [http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/05/north-korea- accuses...](http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/05/north-korea-accuses-us- of-assassination-attempt-on-kim-jong-un-238024)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Met a guy recently and he recommended "The Way of the Knife":

[https://www.amazon.com/Way-Knife-Secret-Army- Earth/dp/B00QSF...](https://www.amazon.com/Way-Knife-Secret-Army- Earth/dp/B00QSF9XLI)

and "Legacy of ashes"

[https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim- Weiner/dp/03...](https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim- Weiner/dp/0307389006)

\---

I downloaded the ebook to WoTK -- reviews of it are good, but I haven't started reading it just yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Human Factor, by Ishmael Jones is probably required reading for anyone interested in this question:

Tl;dr - The "bad ass" individual navigate constant dissonance, delivering results despite internal politics, micromanagement and bureaucratic ambition. How? Internal locus of control, humility, perspective and humor. Ambition, zealotry and need for acceptance appears to be a pervasive liability. You are more likely to experience them as highly effective salespeople than as Jason Bourne types.

</comment><comment><USER7> A16Z had a great podcast recently where they interviewed the former Deputy Director of the CIA about how the organization works and what its relationship is with the President:

[https://a16z.com/2017/05/16/spies-tradecraft- tech/](https://a16z.com/2017/05/16/spies-tradecraft-tech/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've oft felt that there is a conspiracy to create a cognitive dissonance regarding the CIA:

Movies: Make the CIA look tough as shit, ultra competent and a bunch of hyper- bad ass martial-artist who can dismantle a gun pointed at their head with a single move in two seconds, hack a cell phone into anything MaGuyver could have a wet-dream about, manage to appear on an roof-top anywhere undetected suddenly with a massive, expensive, yet disposable kit (burner phone, binoculars, remote mics, sniper rifle, etc) - effortlessly cross international borders, never need to shower, eat and seemingly have stashes of cash and ids everywhere and can hack any fucking computer/security system they come across.

\---

IRL: The CIA wants to remain totally silent IRL and in public they prefer to look like bumbling idiots who can't seem to do anything correctly... so we just think they are a bunch of idiots/assholes/psychopaths - and we dismiss them as either too much to think about, to evil to think about, to secretive to have enough information to think about them, etc...

The CIA is the Keyser Soze: " __ _The best trick the CIA ever pulled, was convincing you simultaneously they were both hyper-competent-bad-assery and bumbling idiots who fuck-up every mission they undertake_ __"

\---

Yet here we recently find out their tech kit and zero-day library card gives them access to even more/deeper tech than the NSA.....

Yeah... I guess we don't call them "spooks" for nothing...

</comment><comment><USER8> I am not a CIA field agent, but I know a few. Those I know tend to be risk- averse and methodical, and decidedly not overtly badass.

That said, I've never "shared a foxhole" with an agent, so maybe I just don't have a full impression.

<comment><USER4> I would guess they contract out to the military for most things that require actual bad-assery. The Zero Dark Thirty story seems to confirm that pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Considering that SAD/SOG is recruiting people out of 1st SFOD-D and other tier-1 units they obviously need people with that type of expertise at least for some of their activities.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are some interesting discussions occasionally about the CIAs previous operations of on /r/conspiracy as well:

reddit.com/r/conspiracy

</comment><comment><USER10> Without knowing anything about the CIA specifically but about big organizations incl. government ones:

I suspect 99% of the employees have jobs comparable to what you see in the daily Dilbert cartoons, and they sit in aging offices with outdated equipment (unless it's just after a rare new-stuff purchase wave), and they spend 90% of their time fighting the bureaucracy, creating, filing and reading reports, and "internal politics" on all levels. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's not like they have a razor-sharp focus for each and every employee (just like any other large organization) and most of live for anybody is just to muddle through somehow.

I once participated in a big project for the foreign ministry of a big European country. We spent a lot of time thinking about how to place the icons everybody should see by default so that they didn't cover essential parts of the country's symbols shown as default background image... when I suggested to an employee with half-inch thick glasses who placed his eyes like three inches from the monitor that I could decrease the resolution of his desktop so that everything would get bigger he refused because he thought he had to cope with whatever he was told, and if the higher ups declared default screen resolution to be X * Y it was not his place to select a different one...

Anyway, I liked everybody, it was great fun. It's just a bunch of humans after all ;-)</comment>


We Shared Our Idea On HackerNews, And Here's What Happened… - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickpreneur.com/we-shared-our-idea-on-hackernews-and-heres-what-happened <comment><USER2> Would be ironic getting no comments now, wouldn't it? ;) I honestly believed there would be more traffic being on the front page, but who knows?

To address the question in the blog post, doing what you did now is probably a good idea; asking a question! And the pictures/illustrations made me want to read the context. Too often A link will be a wall of text. An interesting one, probably, but daunting and will make me skip in those 21 seconds you mention.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, that's helpful! Yep, we'll try using more pictures next time.</comment></comment>


How I Chose a Book to Learn Programming as an Absolute Beginner - <AUTHOR> https://thisissavo.github.io/programming/2017/02/13/how-i-chose-a-book-to-learn-programming-as-an-absolute-beginner.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

I am a beginner programmer and I wrote a blog post about how I chose the book that I'm currently learning from, after trying and giving up several times.

I am very interested to see what you think about it and would love to hear your suggestions on what other books are great for absolute beginners as well as what books should I check out after I finish this one. Thanks.

<comment><USER2> That was very a refreshing read. Most of us forgot how long it took us to learn the basic things we take for granted now. Keep writing!</comment></comment>


Microsoft, Please Stop This Madness - <AUTHOR> http://camendesign.com/blog/stop_this_madness <comment><USER2> I think the best way to do it would be an XML file referenced from a meta tag. This is a property of websites, not web pages, so it makes sense to put all the information in one place.

        <!-- page.html -->
        <meta name="msapplication-jumplist" content="http://arstechnica.com/jumplist.xml">

        <!-- jumplist.xml -->
        <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
        <jumplist>
            <name>Ars Technica</name>
            <starturl>http://arstechnica.com/</starturl>
            <tooltip>Ars Technica: Serving the technologist for 1.2 decades</tooltip>

            <task>
                <name>News</name>
                <action-uri>http://arstechnica.com/</action-uri>
                <icon-uri>http://arstechnica.com/favicon.ico</icon-uri>
            </task>
            <task>
                <name>Features</name>
                <action-uri>http://arstechnica.com/features/</action-uri>
                <icon-uri>http://static.arstechnica.net/ie-jump-menu/jump-features.ico</icon-uri>
            </task>
            <!-- etc -->
        </jumplist>

<comment><USER3> Yeah, a reference to an external file would be a better way to do it. And HTML5 already has the mechanism for this sort of thing: the <link> element[1] and the "rel extensions" registry.

[1] [http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/semantics.html#the-link-element)

[2] <http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/RelExtensions>

<comment><USER4> Uh, doesn't that just add an extra round trip and yet another mandatory HTTP request? No thanks, I think we've enough of those.

<comment><USER5> > Uh, doesn't that just add an extra round trip and yet another mandatory HTTP > request?

No. The request only happens if you decide to "pin" the site, or otherwise give it a first-class status on your machine (one could imagine the same by pining it to the OSX dock or making a site into a "standalone app", I think there was a browser doing that a while ago)

<comment><USER4> Even worse. That gives first-class status to the "HTML version" which contains links to all of the other "versions" of a webapp.

<comment><USER5> > That gives first-class status to the "HTML version"

Erm... you make absolutely no sense here?

Of course the "HTML version" (aka hello we're talking about web pages here) is the main resource, what else would be, unicorn and ponies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can tell you right away what their response will be, and it is that meta extensions are an accepted way of extending HTML5 with browser-specific features, see:

<http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions>

 _"You may add your own values to this list, which makes them legal HTML5 metadata names. We ask that you try to avoid redundancy; if someone has already defined a name that does roughly what you want, please reuse it."_

They will also argue that menu is intended to create toolbars and menus within a webpage, not within the browser itself - and that by using meta extensions, the IE team have implemented their browser-specific extensions in a standards- based way supported by the WHATWG. They will say that it also doesn't pollute the markup with an extension that only applies to a single browser on a single platform (which is why WHATWG developed the meta extensions). In short, pages that implement this are HTML5 compliant.

Now my own opinion. The browser makers need differentiation between their products. Browser market share is as important, if not more important, than OS market share.

If Microsoft want to enable websites to deeply integrate with a Windows desktop by using meta extensions, then that seems like the right place to do it. A lot of us would prefer that every browser maker simply implements the standards, but a lot of innovation in web technologies (img tag, applets, xmlhttprequest) started life as browser-specific extensions. Frowning upon, or not allowing any differentiation would remove a lot of motivation for pouring resources into browser development.

As much as we might not like it, we have to deal with it - at least they put this extension in the right place with meta instead of not implementing menu properly or doing their own implementation of menu (besides, I can't think how this desktop pinning would work on for eg. OS X and Chrome - it seems something very 'active desktop' windows specific).

<comment><USER7> I must confess, this post makes me feel a bit like Edward Everett. In the future when I attempt this argument, I'll just quote you:

 _"A lot of us would prefer that every browser maker simply implements the standards, but a lot of innovation in web technologies (img tag, applets, xmlhttprequest) started life as browser-specific extensions. Frowning upon, or not allowing any differentiation would remove a lot of motivation for pouring resources into browser development."_

Very well put.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, weird to see markup of mine show up in a blog somewhere.

Meta tags are the most standards compliant way to do those jump menus. I don't buy the idea of hijacking a menu tag to alter browser chrome. From an implementation perspective, I'd much rather they let me link to a manifest file of some kind than add multiple meta tags in places, but it's not a horrible choice.

As an aside, I can tell you that if they'd implemented it as a menu tag, we wouldn't have put it on Ars for the purposes of that article.

<comment><USER5> > I don't buy the idea of hijacking a menu tag to alter browser chrome.

The <title> tag does it with no big issue. Though an external <link>ed file (à la RSS/ATOM) would be much better. Meta tags are not really structured and forces everybody to download a bunch of browser-specific crap they don't carte for.

> As an aside, I can tell you that if they'd implemented it as a menu tag, we > wouldn't have put it on Ars for the purposes of that article.

Why not? If you don't already have a menu with these "essential tasks" it becomes a great one, and if you do have one and don't want to bother with reimplementing it as <menu> (yet anyway) display: none on the jumplist menu.

<comment><USER9> Because as people have already said, doing a CSS hack so that your <menu> hack doesn't display in the page itself is worse than doing the standards-compliant method of implementing the browser-specific feature via the meta tag.

Here[1] you can see that the standard places no restrictions on what can be entered in the <meta> name option and the browser is not required to implement handlers for all names. Given that this is not display HTML, I think the <meta> tag is the perfect place for this.

[1] [http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#attr- meta...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#attr-meta-name)

<comment><USER10> I don't think you understand what "CSS hack" means.

<comment><USER9> By hack I meant workaround to overload the original function of the CSS menu tag to replicate the function of the <meta> tag. The <meta> tag is explicitly meant to represent metadata about the page. The <menu> tag is explicitly meant to represent a menu _in_ the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know if I buy it. The jump list isn't really part of the page itself, it's metadata attached to the 'website' in question, so I sort of understand them putting it in <meta>... at the very least, I don't think it makes sense as an inline <menu> element in the middle of the page content. It sucks having all those meta tags there, though, since that's a huge blob of html that has to go in the header of every page when it really should live in a metadata file somewhere on your site... sort of like a stylesheet.

<comment><USER12> His solution is to put the menu in the page content, and use a CSS work-around to not display it. What about screen-readers? I don't think he thought this through.

<comment><USER5> > What about screen-readers? I don't think he thought this through.

yes, what about screen readers? Screen readers get a well-thought-of menu of accelerators to existing features of the website. If the website is well coded, this can even be _one of the website's own, displayed menus_.

What is there _not_ to like?

Instead, by embedding it in random meta elements, screen readers have to download the useless code (as does every other browser out there) _and can not use any of it_.

<comment><USER12> And screen readers would implement that by detecting a meta tag named "ms- application-jumplist"? In other words, screen reader developers should support proprietary Microsoft extensions rather than using the standard methods of supporting screen readers?

You're right, it's brilliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Speaking of stopping the madness, this guy's website uses a fixed viewport that prevents iPad Safari from zooming in and out. Stop the madness, indeed.

<comment><USER14> Maybe you should be directing your anger at Apple for implementing the quick- but-harmful viewport hack in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They have a point, but... <menu> != what they did. It's an add-on for an _external_ menu on IE _in Windows_ ; extensions make sense there.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish his "HTML 5 from early 2008" site would support zooming on my iPad, pretty obnoxious it doesn't.

<comment><USER17> I wish people stopped complaining on HN that linked websites don't work on their iPads, and instead sent bug reports to Apple or authors of the websites.

<comment><USER18> It's not a bug, it's intentional (and thus obnoxious):

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, maximum-scale=1.0, user- scalable=no" />

<comment><USER17> OK, but why not ask the author to fix this?

<comment><USER19> Because it's ironic that he's being a stickler for standards when his own site is broken.

<comment><USER17> There is nothing ironic in the fact that people cannot afford to test their websites on every single device Apple releases. FYI, I just opened that website on my iPhone and it works great. Perhaps, the viewport meta tag was added here with iPhone in mind, before iPad was released.

Edit: indeed, this is a bug: there are different CSS styles for devices with < 480px screen width and > 480px (via @media CSS rules). Desktop browsers pick the latter style and ignore "viewport" meta tag. iPhone picks the former style and takes into account viewport. iPad picks the _desktop_ style and takes into account viewport, which disables zoom (intended for the iPhone style version).

Now that I debugged the problem, can we instead report bugs to website designers instead of commenting here on HN?

<comment><USER10> Yes, the problem is that iPhone's HTML layout engine breaks the page when you rotate the phone, then breaks it further when you rotate it back to where you were. I put the viewport tag in to solve the iPhone, but then the iPad came out and there's no way to have a different viewport for an iPhone / iPad. Blame Apple, I'm still trying to find a working solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _sigh_ This again? Okay, Apple does the same thing with meta tags and links. I don't see the issue here. MS is using the standards. I mean, this guy is basically asking for MS to break with convention and do something people might not have intended. Rather, this way is explicit.

</comment><comment><USER21> I see three different 'issues':

\- should we allow companies to bend the standard in order to innovate? \- is this implementation a good way to implement this innovation? \- is this an innovation that we would like to see on other OSes?

I think the answers to these questions should be yes, no, and maybe. The 'yes' is because that is the norm, and it hasn't turned out bad. The 'no' is for two reasons:

\- as others indicated, putting this stuff in an external file makes more sense. \- terminology could be made a bit more platform independent.

The 'maybe' is because I think this innovation will turn out to be useful. Other OSes or browsers could implement the way to activate in a completely different way. On the other hand, I do not quite see how this is different from a bookmark that the browser UI knows to display in a small pop-up window. A single meta-tag that indicates 'show this URL in a small borderless window close to what you think is the point it was opened from', plus some Javascript call 'ask the user to put the following URL in his start menu' could do most, if not all what this tries to accomplish. Splitting this into parts has the advantage that it promotes reuse.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just FYI, you've got a typo in your markup that's preventing your page from validating:

</figcatpion> should be </figcaption>

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually it's not me the author. I run in the link at reddit (the conversation there wasn't that interesting about the topic) so i thought to submit it here.

Take care, _e_

Ps: I sent an email to the author of the blog post inviting him to join the conversation here. If interested.

<comment><USER23> No need to sign your name. We can tell it's you from the username. See the comments section of the guidelines: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you read what you saw and it made absolutely no sense, there is actually more below the image. The footer makes it look like the article has ended. It's like a frame but with no apparent scrollbar. Terrible non-intuitive webdesign (sure looks fancy though).

Here is how it looks like for me: [http://s1.image.gd/o/d6/d63da036dc4e2e93670dac425ca017d9b227...](http://s1.image.gd/o/d6/d63da036dc4e2e93670dac425ca017d9b2278fb7.jpg)

<comment><USER10> Scrollbar should be there, what web browser are you using? The y-overflow is hidden on html, but not on body for page-centering reasons but this has not affected browsers I have tested thus far. Maybe you're on kHTML?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't have access to IE9, but maybe it's possible to create the necessary meta tags using javascript to clone a <menu> (or <nav> or a list with links for that matter) the same way jQTouch creates the apple meta-tags on the fly?

I'm guessing this will be in a jQuery plugin very soon.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wait, hang on... Why can't a microdata format be used for this? It seems like it would be a perfect fit to me. Granted, I've never actually used microdata, but from what I've read...

</comment><comment><USER27> A jump list isn't an HTML document - I'm not sure describing it with html tags makes sense, since it'd be too easy to write invalid jumplist markup that's valid HTML. I could envisage somehow replacing RSS with HTML (use the right tags, in the right order, don't use the wrong tags), but it wouldn't make much sense.

<comment><USER5> > A jump list isn't an HTML document

A jump list isn't a bunch of metas either. An HTML <menu> or a specific, custom XML format can be ways to describe jumplists. These descriptions are then translated into whatever actual format jumlist specs use. No problem.

> I'm not sure describing it with html tags makes sense

A jump list is a menu. So is a <menu> element. You could hardly make more sense.

<comment><USER27> A jumplist menu doesn't support the content that an HTML menu lets you author. It's only a superficially sensible idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Madness? This... is... Microsoft!

</comment><comment><USER29> "This is the exact same kind of terrible, short-sighted, browser-specific garglemesh that plagued the web with favicon.ico a Microsoft only image format that forced a specific file name and location (and generates billions of 404s across the web every day)."

Hmm. With the iPod, there's the apple-touch-icon.png</comment>


Growing and Foraging 100% of My Food – Day 333 Update - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=96&v=xOmgGXywkGw&feature=emb_logo <comment><USER2> Knew it was Greenfield before I clicked. Just a question for other HN-ers, is fishing or collecting roadkill considered foraging?</comment>


How to Interview a Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/wbc/interprog.html <comment><USER2> i think the hirers forgot that they are also being interviewed. not one of them seemed to feel that they needed to do anything other than allow the anointed one through the front door. that being said, it seems as though each person selects people based on a wide range of criteria - i think the portfolio idea is probably the best, especially if other good programmers say they're good. Q is doing open source work the equivalent of building a portfolio with the benefit of allowing other programmers to rate your stuff?</comment>


96% of Congressmen Agree: Bad Legislation Is Easier To Craft In Secret - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111211/01563717032/96-congressmen-agree-bad-legislation-is-easier-to-craft-secret.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> Nice to see that Ron Paul voted against conducting these proceedings in secret.

You know, I heard somebody on NPR saying about him, essentially, "he may come off as a bit kooky, but he's been very consistent with his principles." I'm starting to think I'm willing to "throw away" a vote in favor of that.

<comment><USER3> Kooky is the wrong word to describe Ron Paul. Lets be clear about what Ron Paul's principles are. Ron Paul wants to eliminate the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Internal Revenue Service.

<comment><USER4> Many of those departments are completely unnecessary. Was the US really at risk before the Department of Homeland Security came around after 9/11? Did we learn nothing in school before the Department of Education came around in 1980?

<comment><USER5> The Department of Education first started 100 years previous, but then was demoted to part of the Department of the Interior, then Federal Security Agency, and then Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. FEMA used to be part of Housing and Urban Development, and before then there were many different federal organizations involved in disaster management, with no clear leadership. DHS of course is made of a number of separate groups, including the Coast Guard.

In other words, it wasn't that there was nothing, but rather it was a reshuffling and reprioritizing of what was already there.

<comment><USER5> WTF? -2 karma for pointing out that we had federal-level organizations involved with education even before we had a DoED? And similar for the other departments mentioned?

Do you also think that before the DoD was created in 1949 that there was no federal response to defense?

Or do you justify even bad logic in support of your view of how the government should work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And once again, the "conservative" representatives in my state, Michelle Bachmann, John Klein, Erik Paulsen, and Chip Cravaak, vote against transparency and freedom, and the one "liberal" representative that everyone in my party was the most deathly afraid of, Keith Ellison (because he is a Muslim), votes on the side of liberty. More and more I just want to skip the Republican caucuses next year.

</comment><comment><USER7> Let's face it, 96% of Congressmen probably agree it would be better to make all terms including those of current members 12 years.

</comment><comment><USER8> Look at the Bay Area concentration among those 17...</comment>


The Reality of Enso - <AUTHOR> http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/enso.html <comment><USER2> This is fantastic. I am going to go meditate right now.</comment>


Is Amazon Cloud Drive Down ? - <AUTHOR> https://forum.rclone.org/t/acd-429-too-many-requests/1792/66 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/ncw/rclone/issues/1351](https://github.com/ncw/rclone/issues/1351)</comment>


Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let's Talk Piracy & "The Simpsons" - <AUTHOR> http://daggle.com/dear-rupert-murdoch-talk-piracy-simpsons-2944

<comment><USER2> This isn't a new argument. It's one we've been having in Australia (and presumably the rest of the world) for years now.

These distribution issues become even worse for us as there are time where content isn't even available when you want to go actually pay for it.

Then we have problems where content isn't available for months after its release. In a world where we are being involved in conversations that happen worldwide (eg, via Twitter), having to wait several months for that content to even become available (that's if it is available at all) is problematic at best and utterly stupid at worst. EDIT - because of spoilers

Pirating content is just so much more convenient (which I'd imagine is at least part of the reason why its rampant). It shouldn't be easier to get content for free than to pay for it.

Once you've paid for content, you shouldn't be made to feel like a criminal or have a reduced experience, which is what we are experiencing now with those "Pirating is stealing" unskippable ads at the beginning of those region locked DVD's they're so happy to sell us.

No wonder they think they're losing, its because they are - and its their own damn fault.

</comment><comment><USER3> It`s 2012. I can get live footage of every event over the world within an hour good or bad (Youtube / Twitter / TV ) but cant watch my favorite tv-shows when i want.

There are a total of 6 \- The Walt Disney Company \- Sony Pictures Entertainment \- Paramount Pictures \- Twentieth Century Fox \- Universal Studios \- Warner Bros. remaining movie studios who control the rights to nearly every popular movie / tv-show. What is mind blowing for me they rather sue mothers who torrent some music files then get their act together and create an iTunes Store for themselves.

It could be so easy for them to create a joint venture and buy Netflix and Spotify. Those companies, given the right tools, can easily figure out a consumer model that would work for the majority of us.

But no, they rather witch hunt for over a decade now and lobby more and more censorship laws in every country. I finally want to get to the point where i can watch what i want when i want.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think Rupert Murdoch's myopia can be summed up by the name of one of his many businesses: "20th Century Fox".

</comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't a content provider have choice as to how you get to watch something?

By making it so you can only watch it on demand through your cable TV channel Fox gets money from you in a number of different ways;

The ads that screen before and during the show. The money the cable provider has to pay Fox to have the channel. The money the provider has to give Fox for the on demand service.

Plus it stops the majority of armchair hackers from putting it up on youtube etc. If it was made available on the web, then Fox would only get a very small percentage of the ad money. And of course you wouldn't have to watch it when it's on TV. The aim is to keep you watching your TV and taking your money. People watching on the web don't pay as much attention to the ads.

Fox doesn't promote piracy as much as it promotes getting you to sit on your couch most the evening, watching ads, eating Doritos and getting your daily dose of "Fair and Balanced" news.

So DirectTV isn't listed as an on demand provider? Then change your provider to one that pays Fox what they demand. So don't forget to set your calender for next weeks episode.

p.s. Life is better without a TV.

<comment><USER6> > _Shouldn't a content provider have choice as to how you get to watch > something?_

Yes. But when they make bad choices good people (who want to pay for the content) will mention those bad choices. And bad people (who don't want to pay for the content) will just pirate, sometimes using the bad choice as a justification.

> _Fox gets money from you in a number of different ways_

I don't know how it works so maybe I get this next part wrong, but limiting the ways that people can pay you is not a way to maximise income.

> _Plus it stops the majority of armchair hackers from putting it up on > youtube etc_

I don't understand what you're saying; plenty of on-demand cable only content is available on torrents. Technical restrictions cause inconvenience to paying customers but have little to no affect on pirates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Content not being able to be played through my Xbox is half the reason I didn't end up paying for Hulu when my free trial expired.

The other half was that there was still ads, but that's an argument for a different day.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought he was leading up to "convenience", the du jour argument for piracy.

But buried at the end of the article he says:

"Now, if I really wanted to watch last week's episode, on my TV. . . I could buy it from Amazon or Apple iTunes. But don't you think paying four times for the same content is a bit much?"

Which I think is the more honest argument.

Yah, we'll pay for it if it's easy.

But not as much as you're asking, especially for network TV that you maybe forgot to TIvo.

</comment><comment><USER9> All of my friends pay $120/month for satellite/digital TV... I pay $120/month towards expanding my personal data storage space.

Up to about 7 terabytes now..

</comment><comment><USER10> so when leasing airwaves Mr Murdoch is paying the OP? or i missed smth

<comment><USER11> It's a bit of a mental stretch, but... the airwaves our "ours" because we pay taxes to fund the FCC to regulate them that way.

<comment><USER10> i thought vice versa, we pay taxes to operate/regulate anything that is in public domain ("ours" already), not that we buy it with our taxes from someone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Tim-Boss Rupert Murdoch loved MySpace and had no problem whatsoever with it's own piracy ('unauthorised' music on profiles, music videos constantly ripped etc)...until it failed!

</comment><comment><USER12> I am not sure if it's possible on Roku, but on Boxee you could get around these lame restrictions by spoofing your user-agent.

<comment><USER11> That worked on Google TV boxes for a week or two, years ago. Then they blocked it by the Flash player ID string embedded in the browser, so user agent spoofing doesn't work anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Murdoch just knows that post-Season 8 Simpsons isn't worth streaming. ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> "Blocking TV Devices Promotes The Piracy You Hate"

That's like saying the high price of Porsches promotes car jacking. People are pro-theft or anti-theft. I'll never download copyrighted content without permission. It doesn't matter what anyone does. Having the Simpsons is a privilege, not a right.

It wasn't that long ago that shows would air once and never be seen again (as far as audiences knew at the time) and I don't remember people rioting or breaking into studios to steal the original tapes because shows only aired a single time.

When you steal copyrighted content, that's exactly what you're doing, even if you aren't busting down physical doors and rummaging through physical storage rooms.

Just my two cents.

<comment><USER15> Ah, the "You wouldn't download a car" argument.

The analogy is horrifically broken, because while it takes a non-trivial amount of effort to copy a Porsche (not 'steal' it, because piracy doesn't destroy the original -- but you knew that, right?) it takes a trivial amount of effort to copy digital media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm sorry but this is a classic episode of WMFS syndrome (aka, "where's my free shit?"). You can't have exactly what you want, when you want it _for free_ , so it's someone else's fault. If you wanted the show, you could watch it right now. But you don't want it $3.99 (?) worth, or whatever iTunes/AMZN charges for it.

Since you didn't avail yourself of the opportunity to watch it the first few times you had the chance, you pay for the privilege. You might not like it, but that's how it goes. You can't walk up to an airline and buy the same seat at the same price the day before it leaves, either, so this sort of price discrimination is hardly remarkable.

First, as you say, you did have the chance to watch the over-the-air broadcast (for which Murdoch should pay you/the gov't for use of the airwaves; if you don't like the current financial arrangement, write your Congressman). You didn't avail yourself of that opportunity.

Next, you could have DVRd it, as you say. But you didn't, for whatever reason.

Now you are upset that Hulu Plus doesn't have it. Do you yell and scream when the public library doesn't happen to have purchased the book you want? Because you pay for those books too. Go get a refund from Hulu Plus, if you're unhappy, but it's an economic decision not to make it available on Hulu Plus or on Fox's website.

The fact is, you had several chances to watch without paying more out of pocket. You missed them, so now you have to pay, if it's important to you. That is no one's fault but your own.

Update: formatting

<comment><USER17> $125 per month for DirecTV. $7 per month for Hulu Plus. $7 per month for Netflix. Where do you see me saying I wanted it for free?

The fact is, I can have it on demand and for free if I want to watch it through my computer. Or hook my computer up to my TV. Fox provides it this way.

But if I want to watch it through a Roku or Google TV, from the same exact web site, from the same exact data stream, then I can't.

And I can't, because, Fox is afraid that if they do it that way, I won't pay all the money I'm already paying to DirecTV in the first place.

So lesson learned? I shouldn't bother with any of the payment options in the first place.

<comment><USER16> Forgive me. Your complaint is that you can't watch it _on the device_ you want at exactly the time you want for free. (Though if it's on Neflix streaming, one would think you could watch it via Roku.)

Anyway, I think we agree that Fox is making a business decision, just like you make a business decision to provide some of your content for free on the web and some for pay at your conferences.

So your quibble is with the choice of devices. But your post (and reaction above) counts up the amount you are paying, and implies that Fox is being atypically greedy (or myopic) for not making it available on the specific device you want at no additional charge.

My complaint is that you're couching an economic argument--you want to pay +$0, Fox wants $0.99--in moral terms, which smacks of the entitlement to which I object.

<comment><USER6> You appear to have missed the point.

OP wants to pay. OP is, in fact, paying. OP could easily get the content for free, because that's how it's delivered by Fox. Except Fox, for some reason, won't provide the free content in a form usable to the OP on the device where OP is already paying for the content.

<comment><USER18> "Except Fox, for some reason, won't provide the free content in a form usable to the OP on the device"

I'd like to emphasize that Fox _actively have done work to make it unusable_ on his device. If they'd done nothing it'd work fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did you accept a lower salary? - <AUTHOR> Anyone who has settled for a lower salary when they know they could probably go and earn more elsewhere, what are your reasons?
For me, I work with my fiancee... for over 5 years now. This is our second job together and this is the longest job I've ever held in my career. I make way less than what I could be making as a web developer. I know I could probably go to another company and make more, which may be an assumption, but I like my company and I like working with my lady.
My job is fairly laid back; less than 10 minutes from home; Friday nights I get to work from home; I get about 4-5 weeks paid vacation a year; no one bothers me too much; and I have so much downtime, I spend a majority of the time working on side projects.
I also have a dream that someday I will finally be able to work for myself and not someone else hence the side projects. To go to another job means a whole new environment and I am just developing and supporting a product for yet another company. So I willingly accept my lower salary. <comment><USER2> I accepted a lower salary because I went from maintaining a shitty VB6 apps to a company that uses .NET, hoping I could learn something more marketable working there.

It wasn't worth it, they had a bunch of incredibly stupid systems and maintaining these was even worse than the VB6 apps. On top of that they lied to me - I was supposed to work on a new project and instead I worked on sorting out the mess that other programmers made. I noticed that some other people on the team did more or less the same kind of a job, expect their pay was better since they didn't have "junior" in the title.

I will never accept a pay cut again.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are explaining a job that I used to work. Visual Basic 6.0. Support and fix bugs in a program. Add new features. Make it more user-friendly -- was my job. I had to deal with a tyrant boss who would watch over me while I would code, belittle me, do everything he thought was "making me a better coder." Only lasted a year and a half... even turned down an offer that was double my salary because if it meant dealing with him... I just couldn't do it.

When I began working there... he was paying me just $10 an hour. The most I ever made there? $12 an hour.

Read more about it here: [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the- opportunity/](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/)

I wonder how similar our experiences are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm in almost the exact same situation as you, except I'll add one thing. I worked a string of really heinous jobs where the work environment was extremely toxic. Bosses yelling in your face, watching you work over your shoulder while drinking their morning coffee, other employees being verbally and physically aggressive. I don't particularly like the company I'm at, but I get to work remotely, it's super relaxed, and I can pretty much put the hours in whenever I want. If I leave to go somewhere else, I have no idea what kind of situation I'd be getting myself into.

I get paid a bit below 100k, which in Los Angeles with 5+ years experience is pretty bad, but my end goal is to build my own business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Been there done that! [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the- opportunity/](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I took about a 120k paycut to work whenever and wherever I please. My SAAS app provides me a nice middle-class salary and continues to grow mostly on its own. I don't have to deal with being a "true believer", repeated "temporary" crises, unreasonable deadlines, etc. No backstabbing office politics.

More importantly, with a self-enforced 10 hour work week I have lots of time to improve my tradecraft, explore pet projects, take care of my body, etc. I feel in control of my own life, rather than chasing other people's dreams.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you mind sharing your Saas product?

<comment><USER4> I generally prefer not to broadcast the business, but I'm happy to answer questions about my experience :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My second job was a Linux consultant, Python / Java Developer. At that time the salaries was rather poor as everything with money involved Windows and .Net. But I found Unix technologies a lot more interesting, especially for learning and solving the really hard problems.

I really enjoyed that job, the problems we solved were challenging and fun. And I learned so much, I accepted that lower salary as I bet on Linux, Python and Java knowledge would be in demand later. And today I'm really happy that I specialized in these technologies, because the market has really changed in my favor the last three years.

</comment><comment><USER6> I recently accepted a 10K/year lower salary ($70K instead of $80K).

Better work/life balance inc. flexible hours, generous paid vacation/sick, closed for Christmas & federal holidays (on top of paid vacation), and unlimited (but optional) telecommuting.

The $80K would have cut my flexible vacation by a third, no closure at Christmas, flexible hours gone, and telecommuting pretty much gone (with a "maybe" they'll start in the future). Plus the commute was fifteen minutes more each way.

I may have made the wrong decision financially, but I have a family, and I get to see them a lot more telecommuting, we get to go on family holidays, we get to spend time together at Christmas, and flexible hours will help picking them up/dropping off at school.

<comment><USER7> Those are good perks for $10k. based on your post, I think you made the right call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not an engineer, just a marketer/writer. Had two jobs offered, one offered 15k more a year. Took the other job: it fell in line with my strengths, I can be full time remote from my forest, and I knew my new boss at lower paying gig, while expecting me to still work hard, would be good about making sure I got off on time to go to gym as well as respecting when I needed to take vacation. Do I sort of wish I had more money? Yes. But I'm in this company for the long haul, and I decided 15k was worth the specific lifestyle I wanted over the long haul.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my case, this was only for an internship. I study in Canada where the interns in CS and Computer engineering are rather well paid (easily over 20USD per hour for a first internship). I accepted a much lower salary to work in start-up in Copenhagen (its called pleo.io). The experience was amazing and the team was awesome, but it is hard to live in such an expansive city with an intern salary of around 1600USD per month. Only renting a room in a shared apartment usually costs more than 800-900USD per month.

</comment><comment><USER10> My last job was a political hellhole where they imported new management and new management imported their friends and marginalized the people who built the company pre-aquisition.

</comment><comment><USER11> Work life balance, lower expectations at work and no internal competition. As bad as it sounds like, that's what I need since I burnt out not a while ago. The pay cut was mostly made on stocks/bonus. I lost a lot of those by leaving my previous employer. My base is actually slightly bigger now. In other words, it feels like I'm really getting paid for what I do everyday and that the salary/productivity expectation is at a sweet spot on both sides.

</comment><comment><USER12> In my case because it was - own office in a building 15 minute walk from where I live as the only developer working on an interesting problem Vs a 7 mile commute by public transport to work on a less interesting problem in an open office with 30 other Devs.

It just wasn't even a choice for me, the final kicker is employer operates a strict 9-5 policy for work, not had that expectation on a Dev job in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER13> The last time I jumped ship I did not took a paycut - actually a got a small raise - but took a job where I am paid ca. 15% less than my market value. I was recruited by the VP of IT at a small company. We used to work together in the past and he knows what I am capable of if I work under the right conditions, which excludes discussions about BS and interruptions through "burning issues". I do what I love to do, I set my own priorities and my own deadlines. I have a site in Confluence showing the satus of my current projects, he gets every two weeks an e-mail from me with the actual highlights/achievements and once a month we go for lunch together where I can ask him for guidance. I can take some time learning new technologies during working hours and make homeoffice now and then. Why should I leave? Actually I can imagine working for someone else than me only under these conditions.

</comment><comment><USER14> I took a 40k paycut moving to New Zealand back in 2001. I don't regret it, since leaving my country of birth, things have only gone backwards there, and NZ is a great place to raise my son.

Since I was here, I took a 10k paycut once, to move from a big company to a small startup.

It was the right call, but I was lucky, and it was by no means guaranteed to work out (2009 was scary).

Company got acquired by a massive one, and compensation ramped back up to the top of the scale (w/ RSUs making total comp p.a. something I can't match elsewhere in the local market - I interviewed around, and found out I was making substantially more than the CEO of the startup I interviewed at).

But thinking of making the move again, since I'm feeling my skills atrophy a bit, and financially now on a solid footing, so I'd like to work somewhere a little more fast-paced.

</comment><comment><USER15> My employer has good policies on ADA accommodations. I still need to go into the office, but I feel good that when I can't anymore I'll still have a job with them.

Plus, I went from being responsible for the PM side of data architecture to natural language processing. Way less stress, way better skill set.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm definitely paid less than I could be, by maybe 20-30k, but cost of living is quite low, found a 1/2 acre ranch house (totally decent) for $140k, I bike to work and the only a traffic I deal with are pedestrians, I choose my own tools, choose how and when I want to work, work on interesting stuff, have lots of paid leave, and receive solid benefits including an old-style pension. Money is tight sometimes, but can't otherwise complain, unless its that I sometimes miss city life, and I end up working on too many different things (javascript, python, bash, matlab, php; web dev, data analysis, file management, elementary IT). And the boss has agreed to a raise, on condition that expected funding does come in (pretty sure it will) ... so getting better.

</comment><comment><USER17> To move from union to mgmt. Yes, I was a ditch digger 16 yrs ago. Now i'm a PM in Tech Svcs. The 10k/yr paycut hurt, especially in Seattle right now, but work remote on somewhat interesting projects, no commute, get so spend time in the presence of family.

</comment><comment><USER18> OP, you're basically describing a dream scenario I'm sure many of us developers have. I'd be very willing to take a lower salary if it means a 10-minute commute, and having a lot of time for side projects.

I took up a job that's fairly middle-of-the-road in terms of salary -- plenty of lower, and plenty of higher, around the bay area. I took it at the time mostly because of working with some friends that I knew I liked working with, so I knew at least that part won't be bad. It's still a long commute though and I'm starting to question if it's worth it, especially if there's closer jobs that are potentially higher salary.

</comment><comment><USER19> Scope of challenge and room to learn, coupled with sufficient support to enable meaningful impact on a world-class problem.

With the right mix of global problem plus virtually unlimited resources, and depending on your personal values and the company culture, a big co with built-in funding and mass market can be more rewarding than "home run" startup money.

// If that sounds right to you, maybe you've already cashed out and now want to really change the world, consider joining us. We intend to fix banking from vantage of 5th largest bank in world with 2.5 trillion in deposits. And if you haven't cashed in yet you probably can enjoy a pay bump, not cut. Email in profile.

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't forget that if you want to start your own company, the more money you have saved up the better. Then you have a longer runway before you have to start talking to investors, etc. Having a higher salary now will help you do that.

</comment><comment><USER21> My first full time job was for CAD 70k at Research In Motion. I knew other local employers (e.g. Google, Sortable) were paying more to new grad but I didn't care because I got to write C code and was hoping to sidestep onto the security team.

My next job I took a full-stack webdev role for GBP 41k (got a raise to GBP 43k the next year). That was around CAD 7k less than another offer I got in Vancouver. But I wanted to travel a bit, plus I knew that company paid their Sillicon Valley employees twice that.

</comment><comment><USER22> I accepted a lower salary (than another offer, but more than what I make right now) at a company whose product I'm excited about, they had a team of more experienced people than my current company and I moved from frontend to a fullstack position. Of course, only time would tell if this was a good decision.

</comment><comment><USER23> Last time I was interviewing for jobs I took the lowest of my 3 offers. There were several reasons for this, I will refer to the accepted offer as A and other offers as B and C.

1) Large corporation vs small corporation, offers B and C were for very large corporations (one private and one public) and I took job A because I do not enjoy bureaucracy.

2) Challenge. Offer B was a job I felt I could already do 100% and everything I really wanted to do was offered as a "maybe if things go the right way you'll get to build something cool." Offer C seemed challenging, but was a different direction for my career. Offer A offered as much challenge as I was willing to accept and was very aligned with my career goals.

3) Flexibility. Offer B - no work from home until after a year, but even then it's not guaranteed and at most once a week. Offer C - it seemed like people were only allowed to work from home when there was a state of emergency/snow- closures, etc. Offer A - we are as flexible as possible, we are more concerned with getting the work done.

Also worth noting, I was the youngest person on staff when I was hired at company A. At B and C there were tons of people my age - I think this is why they had a worse work/life balance. I'm single and no kids, but most people I work with are pretty established in that regard. I believe I benefit a lot from the fact that my older coworkers won't accept crappy work/life balance.

4) Connecting with people. I definitely connected with those at company A moreso than those at company B and C. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that at companies B and C people were just going through the motions during the hiring process, so it felt very robotic.

Also, while interviewing at company A it was very acceptable to discuss the displeasures of working at public corporations (I was able to have a very blunt convo with a CxO during my interview - and we commiserated a bit on our non-optimal experiences working at them).

</comment><comment><USER24> I accepted a lower salary (135k vs 150k) and a lower title (lead for a project rather than lead for the department on every project) because of work culture.

I can fix code etc, but it's very hard to change culture. It would have been a big step up in many regards but culture is a huge part of accepting a job.

</comment><comment><USER25> I took a 30k paycut for my current job.

Why? because they gave me the ultimate perk, 100% remote!

I'm heading to thailand next week and plan to just travel around the world. As a bonus, my total living cost in southeast asia (including rent food and plane tickets) is going to be less than what I pay in rent right now.

<comment><USER26> What do you do with your rental?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I cut my salary in half going back to research after some years in a HFT gig. I'm gaining quality of work (wider breadth of topics), quality of people (world class researchers) and quality of life (office 10 min from home instead of 90, travel to conferences, ...).

<comment><USER28> What area of research do you work in? Did you go back to working at a university?

<comment><USER27> I work in systems and no, I went back to industrial research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I relocated from the NE back to Austin and took a lower pay. I grew up in the South and didn't like how impolite people are in the NE. I actually didn't fit w the regional culture. Goes to show how important culture fit is for work too.

</comment><comment><USER30> 1\. I could work from home most days of the week. 2\. I enjoyed the work. 3\. The expectation was a maximum of 40 hours/week, which I thought I wanted at the time. When I worked more, my manager explicitly told me to work less.

</comment><comment><USER31> I really wanted to be part of the team I'm currently in. I thought I would learn a lot with them and become a much better developer, turned out to be true.

I asked for less money just to make sure I would still be hired.

</comment><comment><USER32> I had 6 offers 2 years ago. I chose the third highest salary option because of the unique company culture and people. Totally correct decision in hindsight.

</comment><comment><USER33> Being able to work from home full time is my number one factor. The multiplier of work I get done is so high that many weeks I work around 10 hours.

<comment><USER34> Genuinely curious: do really only work 10 hours, including email and other forms of communication?

Do you think you could get more done working 20 hours / week, or do you only think you have about 2 good hours of coding work in you per day?

<comment><USER33> I spend the rest of my time reading on engineering related topics that I care about. These may or may not be relevant to my work

I could get much more done, but realistically there's rarely enough work to keep me actually busy for 40 hours a week

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I did it to fulfil my dream of working in the games industry (AAA games for PlayStation/Xbox etc). Six years later I'm ready to leave.

</comment><comment><USER36> Because it was a life goal to move from the US to Europe for a while and because my wife is much less fearful.

</comment><comment><USER37> There basically aren't any senior dev positions (that I've ever seen) where the money is low enough to even factor into my decision. Every other thing people commonly look for in a job is a higher priority to me.</comment>


Open Source UAV projects giving comfort to the enemy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/08/can-open-source.html <comment><USER2> I'd never keep myself from an Actual Good to mitigate a Possible Evil...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think makers need to be proactive though. Regulators could start to treat hobby planes like 747s, as far as the difficulty of selling them and getting them off the ground.

It would be wise in the DIY community to show that trying to stop people is a waste of time. Real security solutions require innovation. An example: SAMs are by far still the easiest and cheapest way to take out a plane. But we spend many billions on stopping 7 year olds with safety scissors.

I think it's up to innovators to show how to make things really secure, or demonstrate that there is no such thing, and best to avoid the pretense and waste.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: JVM templating engines? Looking for JSP alternatives - <AUTHOR>

For the first time, I'm building a JVM-based web app. I'm looking for a good replacement for JSPs. I've used Rails and Django extensively and like both their templating engines quite a bit - probably because of this experience jsp makes me want to gag a bit.
I've look briefly at Velocity but the perlish '$' syntax puts me off - though I could probably get over that.
Notably it only has to play friendly with java - Groovy, Clojure, Scala, are all viable options. I'm also considering using JRuby and just sticking with the erb I know.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> GXP is decent. (<http://code.google.com/p/gxp/>)

You could also try GWT (<http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/>). Obviously more than just a templating engine but very cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out Lift. It's a Scala based web framework.

<http://liftweb.net> [http://steve.vinoski.net/pdf/IC- A_Chat_Application_in_Lift.p...](http://steve.vinoski.net/pdf/IC- A_Chat_Application_in_Lift.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a huge fan of Grails/Groovy. In general I prefer Ruby, but if you're in an environment with existing Java code and Java infrastructure, Groovy can be a great fit.</comment>


Nine awesome features and extensions for Mercurial - <AUTHOR> http://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/nine-awesome-features-and-extensions-for-mercurial-hg/ <comment><USER2> If I understand these correctly, I can come up with this mapping between Hg <\--> Git

        rebase <--> rebase
        histedit <--> rebase -i
        shelve <--> stash
        unbundle <--> ???
        purge <--> clean -x -d -f
        alias <--> [alias] section in gitconfig
        color <--> [color.*] section in gitconfig
        progress <--> ???
        pager <--> core.pager in gitconfig

<comment><USER3> unbundle is probably closest to git reflog

<comment><USER4> Git has its own bundle/unbundle commands. AFAIK, the reflog simply has no equivalent in Hg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know it's more common today to use histedit, shelve, rebase, etc; but I have personally found the mq extension to subsume all of those (although it's more complicated than the other extensions).

I am genuinely happy with hg when I use it, and find it wonderful as a user, most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER6> My favorite: crecord ( [http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/CrecordExtension](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/CrecordExtension))

A curses record extension that lets you commit on a lie by line basis.

<comment><USER7> This makes commits that have not been tested.

<comment><USER8> You can test before pushing anyway.

I was surprise that the record extention was not in the list. Didn't no the crecord!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When will mercurial learn that these things should be default. One of the only reasons I moved to git was I didn't have to hand hold people setting up all the extensions.

<comment><USER10> Whenever I teach hg, I just give them a template .hgrc and the first lesson is about putting their name in there. It's a one-time cost for any Mercurial user.

The Mercurial dev team is very conservative. The reason some of these extensions aren't default yet are due to bugs or because they don't work well on Windows or because they require the user to learn some advanced usage (e.g. an improper rebase can result in apparent data loss to the uninitiated). Some of these just have a plain yucky UI, e.g. histedit's UI is very close to "git rebase -i". It would be much nicer if it had some sort of curses interface instead.

Mercurial is in this for long haul, and it gets better all the time. As its extensions mature, they'll be turned on by default. Right now, it's a matter of flipping them on.</comment></comment>


Where can I find an online community of abstract thinkers? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,<p>Where can I find an online community of abstract thinkers? But I asked because out of all the online forums I used HN seemed like the right one to ask. <comment><USER2> This seems promising: [https://strangers-club.com/](https://strangers- club.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: How to properly increase search rank against site that are gaming SEO? - <AUTHOR>

I have a couple of web pages and a site that I'm trying to increase my relevancy for.  However, when I look at my peers, they are using every trick in the book to increase their relevancy, and it certainly looks like it's working.
When I use a backlink tracker to see what backlinks they have, it's incredible how pervasive they have created links to their site, from sites that generate false new links, to adding links to their sites on profiles for golf forums.  I imagine they must have paid to get these links because it would otherwise be a huge amount of work and most of the backlinks are garbage.
I know Google says "trust us, just create good quality content, and we'll recognize it", but frankly I don't have confidence that that will work.  I'm competing against people that are really gaming the system, and I don't think the "honest" way will actually work.  The type of site that I'm creating isn't really popular, and there aren't any blog sites or blogrolls that will link to my site, unless I create my own sites, and link back to my site, which I'm guessing would be frowned upon by Google.
Have other people found that they can compete against these sites that are gaming the system without resorting to their tactics, or is this a fight-fire-with-fire situation? <comment><USER2> The "trust us, just create good quality content, and we'll recognize it" line is true. If you write genuinely good content (ie: others think it is good, not just you) then you will do better. Yes, they are using these tricks now, but eventually the cream will rise to the top. Just keep plugging away at great content and you will eventually build traffic. Don't play their game. Google will eventually start swinging the ban hammer and you don't want to be in their sights when they do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply.

However, is the only way to determine "good" content thru the number of links that the site has? Or does Google somehow have other algorithms? My site focuses on a subject that really doesn't have a well-developed community at all, so the chances of people linking to my site are very, very slim.

So basically, I'm creating what I believe is good, original content, vs my peers that have no content but lots of links to their site via gaming methods. And their gaming methods are really working, at least on Google, so I'm wondering, can I can really gain any ground against them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like they're link spamming. Those links are very very low quality, you can easily beat them.

Don't chase low quality links, get higher quality links. It won't be considered "black hat".

If you are writing good content I'd suggest using this quality content to increase your rank.

Here's a solid way to do that: 1\. Buy high Page Rank domains / Websites related to your niche. 2\. Begin posting press release style content about your content, with links, on these high PageRank domains.

This will mean every post you write will have 50 - 100 high quality links to it straight away.

Fight fire with fire.</comment>


WieldyMarkup - Compiles to HTML (JS, Python, & Ruby) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vail130/wieldymarkup-js

<comment><USER2> I don't see the python and ruby bits (well python was mentioned in gitignore)?

<comment><AUTHOR> <https://github.com/vail130/wieldymarkup-js>

<https://github.com/vail130/wieldymarkup-python>

<https://github.com/vail130/wieldymarkup-ruby>

Sorry, I have them in different repositories.</comment></comment>


Ask The VC - What Is the Standard Number of Shares to Create in a New Company? - <AUTHOR> http://www.askthevc.com/2007/06/what_is_the_standard_number_of.php <comment><USER2> We did 5mil + option pool. If you are doing SV model, vanilla flavor is the only acceptable flavor for these numbers and the rest of corporate structure. People around here have a good idea of what percentage of the company say 10,000 of the company usually represent and if you are way off it's a bad sign.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd heard 10,000,000 as a standard number by one of the Startup School presenters. We incorporated with one million. Just don't issue them all right away!</comment>


Ask HN: Hiring software engineers in '16 vs. prior years? - <AUTHOR> Hiring Managers:
I'm curious to hear how your experience has been finding software engineers over the last 6-12 months.  How's the length of time from job opening-to-hire versus recent years?  Any metrics to support whether it's been more difficult or easier recently?
Thanks for your input. <comment><USER2> I can't speak to 2016 as we've only recruited one person this year. However, towards the middle and end of 2015 it was very hard to find good developers in Raleigh, NC. It seems like everybody noticed, too, and as a result salaries seemed to have jumped up a bit. I know a number of senior engineers who were able to get 20% or so raises by jumping to a different company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that sounds similar to our experience. We saw a fairly steady uptick in the difficulty of recruiting engineers between '11 and early '15, then a significant shift around early/mid last year. We've been able to recruit about half the number of qualified candidates compared to the previous few years. I'm interested to hear how others have fared.

<comment><USER3> Have you considered hiring remote ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just an agency recruiter, so I'm at the whim of the employer. My experience trying to represent remote jobs has consistently been the opposite: the supply of qualified candidates is excellent versus the relatively few remote positions. (So, strong enough that these employers rarely need to a hire a contingency recruiting agency).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lots of talent available and no issue hiring but then we pay 30% over market.

If you pay market rates then you only get the people actively looking for work _or_ your company is so obviously amazing that devs will take a risk on you.

<comment><USER5> This a thousand times over, there are so many job opportunities out there at the moment but relatively few outside of the Valley are willing to up the market rate even though there is a huge lack of talent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any Australia anecdotes would be heartily appreciated. A falling AU dollar and stagnent dev wages make the US look so well paid. Almost to the point i could get paid more with a remote US job let alone an onsite one.</comment>


Seattle has third largest homeless population in U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2017/zillow-data-seattle-3rd-largest-homeless-population-u-s-rising-rents-take-toll/ <comment><USER2> You're seeing this is smaller cities as well (San Diego and Portland come to mind). I'm curious on the data of homeless pop percentage-wise - as I think both of those cities would be much higher.

From an anecdotal perspective, I left San Diego for a year to travel and coming back now it's much, much worse than before. Tent cities are way bigger, the homeless population seems _much_ more aggressive, and the small fact that we have a Hepatitis A outbreak due to there not being bathrooms for them[1].

While San Diego rent hasn't skyrockets like SF/Seattle, etc - the sentiment locally seems to be the huge increase is mostly due to other cities sending their tough cases here [2][3].

Seems like this should be one thing the government should be ready to handle, but it's only getting worse.

1) [http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/health/hepatitis-a-outbreak- sa...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/health/hepatitis-a-outbreak-san-diego- county/index.html)

2) [http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Nevada-Settles- Homeles...](http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Nevada-Settles-Homeless- Dumping-Lawsuit-369736411.html)

3) [http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/sdut-san- diego-...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/sdut-san-diego- homeless-crisis-great-weather-2016sep04-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> It boggles my mind every time I visit Seattle or San Francisco and I witness the struggle. The wealthiest people in the world responsible for developing, building and deploying the services that we all use everyday (and getting paid massive amounts for it), juxtaposed against the homeless and poverty stricken living directly next to them.

<comment><USER4> Maybe that's my cynical German view of the USA, but to me that's the natural outcome of a society where the prevailing attitude is that everyone is responsible for themselves and if you have problems that's your fault and your fault alone.

<comment><USER5> There are services for the homeless in America. That attitude is only taken by a portion of our population. You have a fair point though, it's a large portion...

The population in the USA is swelling and everyone wants to live in the city, so prices are rising. Except for meth and dope, which only costs a couple bucks. Cities don't have the money or available land to deal with it. It's awful.

There's also another side to this situation, and I might be blowing it out of proportion but here it goes.. I think that we have self-centered attitudes in this country which make young people think that their own experience through life is paramount and above the society around them. I.e. thinking it's OK to backpack around Seattle all day filching cigarettes and dollars from anyone who will look their way, all while leaving their shit and trash in the common spaces.

I have mixed feelings about this because there are poor souls out there who have been fucked over in life and deserve help. But some of these kids have expensive backpacks/tents, nice ink, and smoke fine weed. Maybe I'm misinformed, but the whole scene can really look like narcissism and fat ego.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a Seattle resident, seeing firsthand these massive and multiple tent cities springing up everywhere, is unbelievably frustrating. Tent cities will appear in one area of town, only to be later cleared by Police and then fences erected to ensure they don't return.

Homelessness is nothing new, but in an area that prides itself on its inclusivity, progressiveness and innovation, Seattle has thus far, failed at addressing the problem. Additionally, given Seattle's place as a major tech hub, the companies (Amazon is directly complicit in this issue since they contributed immensely to the now largely unaffordable rental/housing market) that have profited from the area, need to ask the question if thousands of homeless people wandering the streets is an acceptable cost of doing business.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps part of the problem is that a) people agree homeless folks need a place to live but b) aren't confident/capable of influencing their representatives to make a change.

Meanwhile they don't want the problem to affect them for the months/years until political action is taken.

<comment><AUTHOR> C) Most people don't actually know how to fix the problem effectively, including many of the people whose responsibility it supposedly is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a link to the paper.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.09380](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.09380)

</comment><comment><USER9> So most Americans live in the suburbs and commute but in a semi-big cities if you are not a middle class you cannot even afford to rent (not even think about buying) an apartment ? Why is this a big problem ? I thought in the US you guys are more liberal when it comes to building highrises. Or is it because no matter the demand it's just too unaffordable for your avg joe ?

<comment><USER10> American cities are generally restrictive about building high-rises, or any new housing for that matter.

Everyone wants their city to remain the same as it was when they moved there, and unfortunately they have the political power to obstruct new construction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aren't there any state housing programs in the US? Where I live a person basically needs to contact social wellfare and their rent will be handled by the state when they can prove they don't have income or savings. And our GDP is nowhere close that of US (GDP, Finland 40k per capita, US 51k per capita)

<comment><USER12> There are, but they're completely overwhelmed and have enormous waiting lists. There's also large issues with basically every attempt to construct housing being blocked, because no one wants it near _their_ house

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just returned from a 10 day vacation in Switzerland. And I am not making this up, I didn't see a single homeless person. Can anyone enlighten why there are so few homeless folks in Europe compared to the US ?

<comment><USER14> Switzerland has an exceptionally low rate due to a couple of reasons pretty specific to them. In general, Europe seems worse off than the US.

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

<comment><USER15> Those numbers don't really support your claim...

<comment><USER14> There's around twice as many european countries with a lower percentage of homelessness than the US on that list compared to those with higher. Though, those where to a larger degree more populated. You could probably cut it how you want it, but framing it as Europe having lower homelessness is too simplistic and that was my main point.

<comment><USER15> Many of those countries have 1/3 to 1/4 of the US GDP per capita. That has to count for something... ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has anyone gone the rent free route of urban tent living? With an REI membership and looking at some resident sidewalk occupants, it does seem viable to have a tent and save $3,000/month while keeping a normal job.

Realizing that the people that have abandoned their dignity are a tiny part of the homeless population, nobody would actually know, great way to save.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did it for 5.7 years (for health reasons, not to save a few bucks), though I did not camp on a sidewalk and I did freelance work instead of having a job.

I don't recommend it. I also doubt that you would save as much as you think.

<comment><USER17> Would I be able to ask some questions? What health reasons would cause you to sleep in a tent that doesn't involve saving money?

And where did you sleep? And why not sleep in a vehicle? And why did you not save as much as you thought?

By the way, if you want to live in a vehicle, tent or something like that while freelancing, you could always just move to Eastern Europe, India or someplace else and live well for what you'd spend living in a tent in The Bay Area. Personally, that's what I would do. Alternatively I've read online about being "net cafe homeless" in East Asia for 10-30$ a day. Or, I've wondered about buying a van in Europe and hopping between countries for a couple years, but I've never heard of a non-eu citizen doing this, has anyone?

All of that is almost definitely more effort than it is worth if your only objective is to save money, but they might be good ideas if you want to experience them as part of travelling abroad while on a budget, or just get away on a Steve Jobs-type of adventure like he did to India.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really want to discuss my health issues. That is always all kinds of drama.

I slept in a tent in whatever greenery I could find, usually on the edge of town. The reason I did not sleep in a vehicle: I gave up my car years before I went homeless. I no longer drive.

I didn't say I didn't save money. I said the OP likely would not save _as much_ as they think.

OP said they would save $3000/mo. Let's assume that is current rent.

Housing is a place to store all your stuff. Many homeless people rent a storage unit for their stuff. Subtract the cost of your storage unit.

Housing allows you to buy food cheaply and cook from scratch. No kitchen means buying a lot of prepared stuff from eateries. If you are suddenly "saving" $3k/mo, you probably will not be eating at the absolute cheapest places to save money. Subtract higher food costs from your savings.

If you have a regular job, you need to be presentable. Homeless showers are often pretty horrifying and their schedules are incompatible with most work schedules. Most people will need to pay for some kind of shower access, such as a gym membership, truck stop showers and/or the occasional motel stay. Subtract that from your savings.

You can't expect to leave anything in your tent. It isn't secure. You have to carry everything you own everywhere at all times to secure it. If you leave your tent on the sidewalk, it may be gone when you get back. If you have money, you can potentially buy expensive lightweight, ultra slim items to make your alternative lifestyle work, such as a silk sleeping bag liner instead of heavier bedding. Subtract those expenses from your savings.

Camping tents are not intended to be lived in. They wear out when you live in them full time. I replaced my tent every one to three months. Subtract that from your savings.

Seattle is very wet. Cheap tents are never very waterproof. You either need a more expensive tent or to accept that stuff will be ruined or to check into a hotel anytime it rains hard. When electronics, like a phone or laptop, get wet, they can die. Life on the street is hard on possessions. They routinely get lost, broken or stolen. Subtract that from your savings.

Etc.

I could probably go on, but that should give you some idea.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the in depth reply! I asked a question and got downvote censored pretty quick - by time of writing - and I'll probably be shadow banned soon for asking.

So, I really appreciate the discussion.

I never considered that motel checkins would be a recurring thing for people that live that lifestyle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Motel check-ins are not a recurring thing for most homeless people. They can't afford it because they aren't out there due to imagining that sleeping in a tent is some clever life hack that will save them money. But if you have enough income where it is feasible to spend $3000/mo on housing (that is more than I live on all month, supporting a family of three) and you imagine that sleeping in a tent on the city sidewalk will save you $3000/mo, that is just not realistic.

When the storms come, you will say "Fuck it! I am not sleeping in this! I am checking into a hotel. I can afford it for one night."

As soon as I had enough resources to check into a hotel periodically, my highest priority was being in a hotel during life threatening storms. It was often a financial hardship that I stressed about, but I did it anyway. So, I think the odds are really poor you will willingly subject yourself to sleeping outside in a bad storm as a matter of course if you don't absolutely have to.

I wasn't in Seattle. I was someplace a lot drier. Given how much rain Seattle gets, hotel stays on stormy days could easily exceed $3000/mo. On a per night basis, hotels are usually much more expensive than housing.

Additionally, you will not be welcome at homeless services. Those are aimed at helping poor people, not clever hippies giving the middle finger to society to save a few bucks. And people will likely be much less tolerant of you setting up a tent on the sidewalk than of actual destitute people doing so. If the neighbors and cops figure out you are adding to the homeless problem in spite of being able to afford housing, you may find yourself subject to a campaign of harassment until you either go elsewhere or relent and get back into housing.

If you want to save a few bucks, a better plan is to do some research and look for a cheaper housing arrangement. This might involve getting a roommate or moving to a cheaper town and commuting or something else that adds inconvenience to your life. If you can't tolerate those inconveniences, you really don't want the hassle involved in living in a tent with no plumbing, no electricity, no means to secure your possessions, etc.

Also, I don't imagine they will shadow ban you for asking a naive question in good faith. I don't think that violates any rules here. ;-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>