Ask HN: Is python a programming lang. or a scripting lang? - <AUTHOR>

Google for Python and the title is - Python is a programming language.
But if I understand correctly, it is a scripting language.
So I bumped into this doubt - is python a programming or a scripting language? <comment><USER2> Helpful answer: Python is a programming language. It can be used to create scripts, making it a scripting language as well.

More or less by definition, a scripting language is a programming language.

In a practical sense, and as stonemetal says, there is no real-world difference between a programming language and a scripting language.

In a technical sense though, one might consider a programming language to have a compiler and linker and debugger and able to create stand-alone executable files. Most scripting languages can also do that these days.

Perhaps the best guide then is intent - if a language is intended for script tasks (Windows/DOS batch files, for example, or even PHP), it is a scripting language. If the language supports a wider focus, it is a more general purpose programming language (Python, C, PERL, Java, etc.).

Ultimately, the best tool for the job, selected from the tools you know :) If you're writing a web application, there are a few languages either explicitly designed for that (PHP is a good/bad example), but many other languages can do it as well (Python, C, PERL, Java, etc.). If you're writing a desktop application, PHP would not be your best bet, but Python might not be either. Ditto mobile apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rust has it right, python is a programming language. One of its more common uses is for "scripting," because you can just write it and run it at a prompt, the compilation will happen automatically if you don't do it manually. That part of python is designed to feel like scripting, but it isn't.

Because it is a general purpose programming language, you can use it to make applications as well. Right now at work I'm using Salt Stack, which is a full application written in python. Django is another popular application written in python.

It's easy to think of python as a scripting language because a lot of people who graduate to python from perl only ever used perl for scripting, but that's a general purpose language as well.

Really the difference between "programming languages" and "scripting languages" has nothing to do with the language and everything to do with restrictions placed on the environment you use it in. Where a normal install of python would let you code scripts or full applications, a purposefully limited version of it (for example a limited version of python is bundled as a mod tool in the game Civilization 4) makes that specific implementation "scripting" or "macroing" or however else you want to classify it. The language itself is still python, though.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is no strong line between two, but experienced devs would have a gut feeling. The rule of thumb is how much code can be checked during compile time. Since Python is dynamically-typed only, it makes it a script language. It's basically something you want to put on the top of some sort of "core". Another metric is the speed of execution. Python is quite slow - like other high-level script languages. There you go.

</comment><comment><USER5> What do you see as the difference between a scripting language and a programming language? All scripting languages are programming languages.

<comment><USER6> read his name, noobplusplus

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
                  Programming
                         *
                        *
                       *
                      *
                     *
                  Scripting
                         * *
                        *   *
                       *     *
                      *       *
                     *         *
                    Python     Perl...etc

</comment><comment><USER8> I think that you're a bit confusing about the terms, interpreted or compiled ones, they are programming languages. Even the first BASIC is one.

</comment><comment><USER9> Python is a general purpose programming language that can be used for scripting.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's no such thing as "scripting" languages.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why does it matter?

<comment><USER13> People like to put down scripting, especially shell scripting, as "not a real language." I prefer shell scripting, since it lets me tie together programs written in many languages, each doing something that language does very well. The opposite of this would be to try to do everything in one language, which seems inefficient to me. Difficult applications of one language are often handled efficiently in some other--why not take advantage of that? Of course, I've made my peace with living in a polyglot computing world, and having to at least superficially know many programming languages and little-language tools.

The best difference I've seen between "programming" and "scripting" is Knuth v McIlroy, summarized here. [http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more- shell-less-egg...](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less- egg/)</comment></comment>


Feynman's letter to Koichi Mano (Dated Feb 3, 1966) - <AUTHOR> http://books.google.com/books?id=QHX1ExnM99YC&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=Richard+P.+Feynman+to+Koichi+Mano,+Feb+3,+1966&source=bl&ots=rMTMzPiMmp&sig=zP6L6oR93a6m5zzfOk_AYDfYcWQ&hl=en&ei=D53tTP3PEOXtnQeYy_TlAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

<comment><USER2> After reading his book, I've become a Feynman fan. The man is truly exceptional. I found the closing paragraph of the letter captures the essence of his humble but remarkable advice:

"You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself -- it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not it terms of the naive ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are" -- Richard P. Feynman

I had my experience with my midlife crisis, and thru that experience I come to know my own place in the world and find my life's purpose. Although I wish I head read about Feynman earlier.</comment>


Expert witness says most popular Hotfile downloads are open source apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/expert-witness-says-most-popular-hotfile-downloads-are-open-source-apps.ars <comment><USER2> If we are comparing by the files with the most downloads, should this be surprising at all? Legit, popular, non-infringing software/content has the major advantage of actually being able to capture the long tail. The stolen stuff tends to get yanked post haste. I'd be much more interested in the overall volume of stolen vs. legit.

But I suppose that helpful information isn't going to come out of a expert witness at a trial.

<comment><USER3> If the stolen stuff gets yanked post haste, wouldn't that suggest the system is being active in removing copyright infringing material? That a system allows you to post copyrighted material should not matter.

I can easily post copyrighted material here on HN that I don't have permission to post.

<comment><USER2> Well, to rephrase, the _popular_ stolen stuff gets yanked. Basically, the closer an infringing file gets to competing with the top downloads, the more likely it is to be removed from the competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sadly this article does not provide the actual numbers that the expert witness presented. All it really says is that sn0wbreeze and iReb (for iPhone jailbreaking) were downloaded a lot which might change the statistics a lot.

It's good that Hotfile is fighting this and always interesting to get an insight to how these kind of services are being used, but we're not getting much here.</comment>


History of the BASIC Engine (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://basicengine.org/history.html <comment><USER2> A related discussion from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17674944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17674944).</comment>


The Sketchbook of Susan Kare, the Artist Who Gave Computing a Human Face - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2011/11/22/the-sketchbook-of-susan-kare-the-artist-who-gave-computing-a-human-face/

<comment><USER2> The link to the YouTube video of "The Mother of All Demos" is dead. I found another one here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv- zdhzMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a poor copy from this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526272)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not notice that. I thought it is worth sharing. Anyways, Thank you for showing the link. Is there any way I can check if it is published before?

<comment><USER4> The search down the bottom is pretty good now-a-days, I've used it successfully to find similar posts in the past few weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > How did we get from there to here? [pic of DOS command -> pic of GUI]

Because computers got more computing power.

<comment><USER6> I tried running a program originally written for 80386-class CPUs on a Core i7, it didn't magically get a intuitive GUI. Weird.</comment></comment>


GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/github-is-building-a-coder-s-paradise-it-s-not-coming-cheap <comment><USER2> The thought of losing Github to the startup graveyard is kind of scary. It was bad enough to lose Google Code and when SourceForge had their "great purge" of inactive projects.

<comment><USER3> If they can't stand on their own feet, I imagine somebody would/will buy GitHub at a firesale rather than see it disappear completely. For all their missteps, they have developer mindshare that is the envy of everyone. If we're lucky it would be someone like Google or Microsoft, if we're unlucky it might be Oracle or SalesForce. Whoever it would end up being though, GitHub won't just vanish.

<comment><USER4> Ignoring the fact that the VCs want to get paid and GitHub's employees want to keep working, how big of a skeleton crew would it take to keep a site like GitHub running in "maintenance" mode?

<comment><USER5> Can you really put something in "maintenance" mode without killing it?

Maintaining the app and not moving forward with new features and adding value (because of lack of resources), I would assume it would just die eventually.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand this obsession with the first derivative of value. GitHub already provides loads of value. I understand they need resources to keep the lights on, but they could do that by recouping a _tiny_ fee from their users and most everyone would be happy.

<comment><USER7> They're not without alternatives already though. In a changing environment to stay still is to fall behind.

<comment><USER6> That's not as big an issue when there are network effects -- look at Craigslist. Plus, what killer feature is bitbucket going to add at this point to make everyone want to switch? They're practically the same product. All the major innovation happened years ago.

<comment><USER8> Clickable code view would be nice, e.g:

[http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v4.9/kernel/async.c](http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v4.9/kernel/async.c)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the idea. This would be awesome indeed. I've created an issue on GitLab for this: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/25762](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/25762)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't find the blog post, but some blog wrote a while ago why VCs invest in companies like Github. TL;DR -- basically it provides infrastructure for other startups.

The business itself may not be a great business due to the amount of cost it takes to run it -- but it's necessary for the running of other ventures.

Sort of like highways and non-toll bridges.

<comment><USER11> Are you saying that VCs are investing because they see companies like GitHub as being public goods? That's contrary to normal investing principles, unless there's some reason to think that a VC investing will result in their portfolio companies having superior access.

<comment><USER12> The point is more or less, if VC invests (or plans to) in 20 software companies, investing additionally in something like GitHub or npm makes it more likely that the other 20 companies will succeed. They don't invest _just_ in GitHub from the goodness of their hearts.

<comment><USER13> I know nothing about investing but I feel somewhat skeptical about these arguments. How many startups actually failed because they were using a poor package manager or source control host?

<comment><USER14> This sounds more like a spin-off of the old investment adage: "Buy stock in the products you actually use." If you spin that argument slightly as a proxy purchase, it makes sense that VCs would be investing in the products that their other startups are using heavily.

As an super-small-time investor who only owns stock in companies whose products that I use and enjoy, I can't knock them for it. For me, the logic is that whenever I tire of using something or no longer find it valuable, presumably I'll have early insight to sell the stock before the rest of the world catches on. I don't know if that same logic applies to proxy buying, but I suppose if you're intimate enough with your companies to know if they're abandoning Github for something else, as I don't know if pulling venture capital is as easy as selling the stock.

<comment><USER15> > as I don't know if pulling venture capital is as easy as selling the stock.

There's generally minimal liquidity. During a round, an existing investor may have the opportunity to sell some shares to new/other investors, but if she knows something that's not coming out during diligence, there's definitely something fishy going on. If the round is shaping up to be a major up-round, maybe an early investor wants to lock in a good return, but that's beside the point here. And then of course if things really aren't going well for the company, you're looking at the bad kind of liquidity event--a liquidation.

So if a VC wants to pull out based on a negative hunch, it's probably either impossible or the signal itself will doom the company if it wasn't already doomed.

Just my 2 cents as a first-time founder.

<comment><USER14> Sounds about right to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Everyone is comparing GitHub with GitLab in the comments, but they are ignoring the other competitor.

I think Atlassian is the company that makes the most out of the git marketplace, even if they have fewer customers. They are simply more efficient, and are ready to take over with Bitbucket if GitHub fails.

Also, many companies pay for Jira+Confluence even if they use GitHub.

<comment><USER17> Bitbucket is in a weird position, in that Atlassian can't make the best Git hosting solution. It's not that they can't technically, it's just that they have complimentary products that cripples how good you can make code reviewing (crucible), issue tracking (jira), analytics (fisheye), wiki (confluence), and so on.

GitHub and GitLab are not bound by the same constraints, and can focus on creating the best end to end Git hosting product. While Atlassian has to be careful about cannibalizing other product lines.

<comment><USER18> We're a big Atlassian shop, and switched from Crucible to Bitbucket Server (then Stash). I do not get the sense that Crucible is the future as far as Atlassian is concerned - I believe they see Bitbucket Server as what they are going to focus on.

FWIW, with the latest releases, they've addressed most of the remaining features that were missing from Crucible, and I'm very happy now with the PR/code review flow in Bitbucket Server.

<comment><USER19> I agree; Bitbucket Server is a smash hit in _big_ banks who are now moving away from SVN to GIT to stay relevant. It simply makes more sense to use BitBucket Server offering by Altassian given that most organizations already use Confluence for hosting their wiki.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The takeaways from the article:

(1) They went on a hiring spree in 2015-16, dramatically increasing their costs before their revenue was able to keep up. Something to keep an eye on in 2017.

(2) Half the team is remote! Kudos to them for making this work.

<comment><USER21> >Half the team is remote! Kudos to them for making this work.

Are you being sarcastic (esp, in light of your point 1) )?

Out of curiosity from someone not in the know, would remote employees cost more or less than ones made to come in every morning?

<comment><USER20> > Are you being sarcastic

Definitely not, I work remote. I feel I am more productive as remote employee, probably about 10-20% more. I read somewhere that for every 10 miles you commute daily, it costs you $10,000/year in gas/vehicle wear-and-tear/health and psychological side effects, etc, not to mention the lost hours sitting in traffic.

Would you rather have your employees sitting in traffic, or working on critical projects?

<comment><USER22> According to that I am net negative when I go to work. (Although I too am significantly more product at home)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Considering the piles of venture money they received it sometimes startles me how few new features they have pushed to production in the last two years. Gitlab, on the other hand, seems to push a new major feature every other month. Of course it helps that they don't have to worry about running a SaaS service for several tens of millions of users, but still it seems that Github is too focused on minor improvements and might just lose the game against the open-source approach of Gitlab.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's a few years now I can not see Github focused, from the external POV at least, to provide good coder tools. All the new things only marginally improve on what we used to have. I would worry more about that than about the losses themselves, since I feel the losses mostly reflect the fact the company has no clear direction so is spending money on workforce in the hope to have larger effects. Perhaps they don't need more people but more focus.

<comment><USER25> Agreed; they need less people and less money. Look at what GitLab's achieved! Maybe it's time to leave the posh accommodations and go back into the wilderness.

That said, I feel for the engineering staff that has to deal with the availability requirements and the DDoS events. Those folks are heroes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm surprised that they _actually have_ a recreation of the oval office _in their office_. How arrogant and self-important do you have to be to honestly believe that such a parody is in any way justified? No, GitHub, you're not in charge of the free software world. You were just the first decent choice for code hosting. GitLab is eating your lunch and you're pretending that it's not happening.

<comment><USER27> The oval office isn't around anymore.

<comment><USER26> I mean, that's an even more frugal waste of money. Still, the fact they even had something like that is the problem. It's like something from an episode of Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting that 600 employees sounds like a lot, but it works out that revenue/employee p.a is $230k+ - which is above average for enterprise SaaS[0] - and you have the 25%+ annual growth on that

That said, they _should_ be doing better margin-wise since they would have relatively lower customer acquisition costs compared to the market since they have so much developer recognition.

[0] [http://tomtunguz.com/revenue-per-employee- trends/](http://tomtunguz.com/revenue-per-employee-trends/)

</comment><comment><USER29> It seemed that Github was doing just fine accomplishing their mission and goals when they were bootstrapping, but things got ridiculous with a massive (and possibly unneeded) VC investment. Or at least an investment of that humongous sum of money.

Can someone explain the rationale behind pumping all this money into firms that clearly don't need such vast amounts of it, which only spurs exorbitant and unnecessary spending? Is it some sort of non-obvious game of unicorn musical chairs hoping for a hyper inflated exit before the music stops?

<comment><USER30> From the outside it looks like a land grab game. Competetion is heating up (bitbucket, gitlab, tfs online, etc).

<comment><USER29> but is throwing all this money at a company who clearly doesn't know how to effectively deploy it to grab that land (those expenditures are ridiculous) the best way to do it?

<comment><USER31> Well if they thought another company had better odds than GitHub they'd fund that company instead. GitHub has got to where they are at the moment so they must be doing something right, and startups are dead by default - VCs expect startups to be doing at least some things that defy the established wisdom.

<comment><USER29> The question is not who or if to fund, but how much. My question has to do with the sheer quantities of investment in Github and the obvious inefficiency and excess in that capital. They could have funded Github half as much, perhaps even less with an equal result in a "land grab" if that's what they really want. So I sense here something else is at play. There must be some investment metrics around invested capital and the sheer quantities of which that have something to do with valuations and expectations and nothing to do with how much capital the company really needs. Imagine you only need $20m and someone gives you $100m because the VCs say because the VCs say that's how much capital they need to deploy. What do you do with that "Extra" $80m? You waste it, that's what. Seems very inefficient, so there must be some other ends here.

<comment><USER31> The question of how much to fund by is the same as the question of whether to fund. As a VC you have to trust the companies you fund to spend your money wisely and give them a long leash, letting them spend their money on things you think are stupid - otherwise you're not a VC at all, you're more like the R&D department of a large corporation (which could be a reasonable and profitable thing to be, but there's presumably a reason VC has grown so much and corporate R&D has shrunk).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I hope this is a temporary blip on the radar for Github, and that they return to profitability very quickly.

Github should be a pillar platform in our community for the next decade, and the only way for them to become that is via profitability.

<comment><USER33> Why should it? They weren't responsive to user demands for years, routinely break features (checkbox saving is broken right now), and have terrible discovery and search.

If anything we should be cheering for gitlab. Atleast we can modify it locally.

<comment><USER32> Because we should be cheering for Gitlab, and Github, and any other major competitor in the space to perform well and be stable (and independent, ideally).

Competition & long term stability means that they can focus on the features that are most meaningful for their user base. If their revenue stream continues to be poor, they may begin making short-term decisions to prop up revenue, which ultimately will lead to a much poorer product over the long term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I once met Chris Wanstrath. He is the most arrogant guy I ever met.

I travelled for an hour and he sat there staring at his phone between looking at me like something he had trodden in.

At least pointing tens of companies at Gitlab has made me feel better.

</comment><comment><USER35> SIX HUNDRED EMPLOYEES?!

I don't care how advanced GitHub is; that is an INSANE number of employees for this kind of business!

<comment><USER36> ~4000 for Twitter (although I vaguely recall a culling recently, not sure how many they let go).

<comment><USER37> I'm curious what does these 4000 employees do at Twitter ? let's say half of them are engineers, what are these 2000 engineers working on ? Twitter is mostly CRUD and messaging.

<comment><USER38> This is fitting here: [http://danluu.com/sounds- easy/](http://danluu.com/sounds-easy/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm surprised that the author doesn't focus more on the other numbers (the burn numbers aren't surprising to me - see here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190371)). According to the author's data, GitHub had $25M in ARR in Sep'14\. That's 2 years and 2 months after they announced their $100M round, so probably 28 months after they signed a term sheet.

If you calculate back from there, let's say $12M in ARR in Sep'13, $6M in Sep'12 and $4-5M in May'12 - that's insane (them raising $100M). Not sure if Bloomberg's data is correct but if we look at the other data points (probably same source data), $90M in ARR in Sep'16, it seems to be accurate.

Sep'12: $6M (assumed) -- raised $100M a couple of months earlier Sep'13: $12M (assumed) Sep'14: $25M (according to Bloomberg) Sep'15: $50M (assumed) Sep'16: $90M (according to Bloomberg)

</comment><comment><USER40> >The new digs gave employees a reason to come into the office. Visitors would enter a lobby modeled after the White House's Oval Office before making their way to a replica of the Situation Room. The company also erected a statue of its mascot, a cartoon octopus-cat creature known as the Octocat. The 55,000-square-foot space is filled with wooden tables and modern art.

The Sillicon Valley episodes write themselves it seems haha. This is hilarious.

<comment><USER41> I'm hesitant to call this, and their hotel retreats and jet-setting travel 'opulence' out of a sense of decency, but...

I guess I'm just a lot more frugal, and mostly isolated from this culture.

<comment><USER42> I don't begrudge anyone all the opulence they can afford.

But when they _can 't_ afford it, my eyes start rolling pretty hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I remember reading a few years ago how GitHub and StackOverflow were the new resumes. You needed a good profile on both to have any chance of getting hired.

It just goes to show that having a profile on a website does not define who you are as a developer. Websites go under, and better ones will rise up. I hope GitHub does stay around... I do not care for their "politics" but I like their service.

<comment> iso-8859-1 What do you consider politics? If they insert relevant ad links in the comments of your code, would you mind?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> _" GitHub quickly became essential to the code-writing process at technology companies of all sizes and gave birth to a new generation of programmers by hosting their open-source code for free."_

How much would you be willing to pay to store your open-source code at github?

<comment><USER26> $0. I would consider paying ~$30/mo for GitLab though, because it's free (as in freedom) software.

<comment><USER45> Agree, I would not mind paying for Gitlab private repos some sum of money (probably not 30/mo tho).

Gitlab is superior in every possible way than Github except for it's speed.

<comment><USER26> I'd pay for public repos (I don't need private repos, all of my code is free software). In fact, I would _donate_ $30/mo to GitLab if I used their services enough (unfortunately the projects I maintain live on GitHub and I don't have the authority to change that).

I have no problem donating to free software (I donate $10/mo to Neovim, $10 to SirCmpwn (sway), and other bits and bobs here and there -- as well as donating my time to openSUSE, runC and the OCI). The only condition is that I have to use it enough that I feel that they are owed some money to make the software even better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> GitHub has some significant challenges ahead that are not mentioned in this article. As companies move to the cloud, they will run their own development ecosystems--SCM, CI, defect tracking, etc.--in their own cloud; and hosting services like GitHub and BitBucket will have a hard time competing. Already Oracle (and surely other vendors) are offering developer cloud instances that provide these services all wired together.

<comment><USER47> BitBucket is owned by Atlassian now. Stash is rebranded as BitBucket and while it has its issues, its integration with Confluence and Jira is at least as good as any of the other Atlassian integrations.

So if you're hosting your own tools, BB still gets paid and you don't have to switch vendors.

(my personal feelings about Atlassian rank somewhere between dislike and dread, but the BitBucket integration is one the least offensive bits).

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is an example of how VCs distort the market for other businesses.

I had a recent conversation with a prospect and they took issue with the price of our software. Our app is in a specialized industry (ie. a smaller market). We charge a per use fee of $35. This fee enables our customer to immediately earn nearly $200 (a 5x return with no risk to them). Despite the significant benefit and profitability of using the app the prospect took issue with our price and referred to the cost of other apps.

It was that conversation that made me realize how we've become accustomed to the quality and price of software that's been heavily subsidized by massive VC investments.

<comment><USER49> I agree with the idea that venture capitalists alter ("distort" is a loaded term) the market in their favor. That's part of the natural process of systems commoditizing their complements. But I really think that you characterize this in an uncharitable way with your example, which I have difficulty believing as it was stated.

If your lead really understood that they would "immediately earn a 5x return with no risk", and that was the truth, they would be cartoonishly foolish to not take that offer. Furthermore, wouldn't that mean your company could be printing money with its results? It's hard for me to believe a rational customer wouldn't take that deal, so either they didn't understand or believe that would be the result, or you're exaggerating here for the benefit of your point.

I know it's easy to think I'm just griefing you over this, but I'm trying to make a point in good faith. There are certainly legitimate reasons to dislike the profit incentives that venture capitalists encourage, but I think you portray their impact on small companies as unrealistically bad (and perhaps your product in a more favorable light than is warranted), to the detriment of a discussion about it.

None of this is personal, mind you. Just a comment.

<comment><USER50> Perhaps you live in a world different from mine, but what you describe as "cartoonishly foolish" behavior I consider completely standard. Customers refuse to spend 5000 to make 20.000 all the time, or they're willing to waste weeks finding a different vendor that can offer the same for 3000. Others are willing to walk away from a great deal unless they get a discount, but are content with a tiny discount. Because a discount to them signifies a moral victory, or that they're not being taken advantage of, or they simply want to believe they're great negotiators or something like that. I don't get it, but I have seen it often enough for it not to be unusual.

We don't live in a world of rational agents. And even if we did we don't live in a world where most business purchases are made with people's own money. People have complex and contradictory goals and in my experience pointing out the value customers get for the price they pay is the least effective sales strategy.

<comment><USER51> I live in the same world as you. My business has a proven model for digital publishers that generally increases their yield 2-4x yet they refuse to spend the percentage needed to make the deal happen. Sometimes pride can be so large...spend 5k to make 50k? No thanks..lol

<comment><USER52> 1\. They don't believe the benefit will be realised in their circumstance.

2\. There is both opportunity cost and hidden cost for trying your solution.

<comment><USER49> And to add, these are _reasonable things for a consumer to believe_ that are _not evidence of irrationality._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> please guys get your shit together. I guess I would be able to figure out an alternative but a big chunk of my life as a programmer is centered around Github. It would be a major let down to see them perish.

<comment><USER54> Maybe someone said that about SourceForge 10 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Fortunately it is easy to push the same repo to multiple hosts with git. So people, use mirrors instead of putting all your eggs in the same basket. Git is a distributed CVS, relying only on github means you are using it just like SVN.

</comment><comment><USER55> The subtext to this (at least why this made it to the front page) is "github is lighting money on fire, can't last forever, but github is infrastructure- status now what if it disappears?"

I think this anxiety is why there's a lot of work being done in the decentralized space right now. The UX-side of "web 3.0" is sorely lacking but I think it's only a matter of time before people begin to crack it.

I'd love to see some research into what it would take (in terms of network size) to provide robust, decentralized replacements for service-as- infrastructure products like Github.

<comment><USER56> Wait. We're on web 3.0 now? What does this version add?

<comment><USER55> Decentralized applications and infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Staying in an annual budget of $98 million sounds feasible for a place like github. That's an $8.1m/month burn. Just be a little less elaborate, I'm sure this is doable.

</comment><comment><USER58> It feels that GitHub failed to create an ecosystem and did little innovating it just turned a single-tenant application to multi-tenant (which sometimes is no small feat). They could've created other developer-oriented products - issue management, CI, code review etc and they could've innovated more in their primary area that is storing code like providing better tools for code exploration than simple search (see GitQL project).

</comment><comment><USER59> This is why the mania around unicorns is not sustainable. The best part is that github isn't even burning money that fast compared to some of the other ones.

</comment><comment><USER60> I always freak about some other country attacking github.

The world would crumble/ it's probably some sort of weird national security scenario.

<comment><USER61> An attack on StackOverflow would be as bad or worse. These sites should probably be protected as areas of national strategic importance, like how the US protected the NYC docks during WWII.

<comment><USER62> Not really. StackOverflow is mirrored and archived everywhere, like in the Google Cache. Github is read/write, and can't be mirrored anywhere near as easily.

<comment><USER63> These folks are archiving all non-fork github repos:

[https://www.softwareheritage.org/](https://www.softwareheritage.org/)

There are other github mirrors too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Github is too good to fail IMHO: if they raise a bit their prices, all their paying costumers will still stay and their money problems will mitigate.

By the other hand, Atom is clearly a long term loser and they should let it go. Their contribution to the text editing world was terrific but now they should focus where they are the best.

<comment><USER54> Atom lose against which ones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I personally moved away from Github, mostly due to political issues, secondarily because of this funding issue. Can't keep burning money forever.

I put my private stuff on my own Gogs instance or on Bitbucket, tho I like Gogs UI much better, it's closer to github. The community fork of it, Gitea, is also making progress to enable pull request federation.

Would be awesome if I could work together with people using Gitlab, Github or Gitea without them having to sign up to my site. They just fork to their own site, make their patches and submit the pull request to my upstream.

GitHub has little value to me, the social network they built can move elsewhere like it is for many programmers and coders.

<comment><USER66> Which political issues? I'm honestly curious.

<comment><USER67> I'm guessing parent is referring to stuff like the "meritocracy rug" and "code of conduct".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> > _The company paid to send employees jetting across the globe to Amsterdam, > London, New York and elsewhere._

If a company as vitally important to an industry as Github is to software can't do this... it's time to really worry.

</comment><comment><USER69> If you are an investor, you want to invest $1 to get $2 back (aka shareholder value). If your dividends are not growing, you divest and invest somewhere else.

Now, the thing is very competitive, and many companies offer "exponential growth". If your growth slows down, if the perspective is not good, divestment starts and that is a downwards spiral.

To stay competitive and to prevent an investor run, companies are forced to take massive risks. And risks materialize into huge disasters... like this one apparently.

</comment><comment><USER70> Apparently "git cash" isn't working very well ...

<comment><USER71> git rm -r --cached .

This is apparently working very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> > "The income statement shows a loss of $66 million in the first three > quarters of this year. That's more than twice as much lost in any nine-month > time frame by Twilio Inc., another maker of software tools founded the same > year as GitHub."

These sort of statements are a little annoying. I understand that Bloomberg has to write for a less technical audience, but the writer must know this isn't an accurate comparison.

</comment><comment><USER73> The thing not mentioned is that Bloomberg is a Github Enterprise customer. They ran their own git server for a bit and then transitioned the whole company to github and the pull-request model (relatively quickly too)

</comment><comment><USER74> Interesting to read there (and nowhere else that I could find) that GitHub co- founder Scott Chacon left the company this year.

</comment><comment><USER75> It's funny reading Tom Preston-Werner's write up on GitHub in Dec 08:

>You Don't Need Venture Capital

>A lot has been written recently about how the venture capital world is changing. I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but I've learned enough to say that a web startup like ours doesn't need any outside money to succeed. I know this because we haven't taken a single dime from investors. We bootstrapped the company on a few thousand dollars and became profitable the day we opened to the public and started charging for subscriptions.

I guess VCing up and losing money is a choice. They probably figure the odd $100m cash loss will end up as $1bn+ on the market cap. He looks quite cheerful in his rich list write up [http://www.forbes.com/profile/tom-preston- werner/](http://www.forbes.com/profile/tom-preston-werner/)

<comment><USER76> He was right though. They didn't need it. But it was just too much money for the founders to say no to. I'm also in the bootstrapping camp but I don't blame them for filling up their bank account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> A blog that could be relevant

[http://hintjens.com/blog:111](http://hintjens.com/blog:111)

</comment><comment><USER78> Short-selling companies that make very popular and effective developer tools is low expected value play.

</comment><comment><USER79> Uh oh. So much is dependent on Github. Is there a full mirror?

<comment><USER80> You can easily mirror with Gitlab: [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/repository_mirroring.htm...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/repository_mirroring.html)

<comment><USER79> That's not the question. I'm not concerned about mirroring my stuff. I'm concerned about the disappearance of other people's stuff, perhaps forgotten by them but still used by others, if Github tanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> How come such a fantastic product is not massively profitable?

</comment><comment><USER82> You know, I can't say I'm surprised. When github first started, it was just about code. Nothing else. Then they started with all the identity politics crap.

As soon as a company starts parroting political messages like "white middle managers have no empathy" instead of, you know, building good tools, I know it's time to find another solution. I was a paying customer, and when github got into the political game, I dropped them like a bad habit.

I'm not screwing around here, I'm trying to build a business and your political aspirations do _nothing_ for me as a customer, so why don't you take them and shove em. Happy customer at bitbucket ever since.

</comment><comment><USER83> "Lost"

<comment><USER84> The opposit of a profit is a loss. It is unrelated to the non-financial meaning of the term. They had revenue of $98M, a loss of $66M means they spent $164M over that time frame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Maybe they'll be the next Verizon aquisition

</comment><comment><USER86> Am I the only one the tone in this article bothers? The author keeps criticizing and belittling the CEO, who is obviously significantly smarter than him. There might be correlation there.</comment>


Ask HN: What is a science fact that blew your mind when you learned it? - <AUTHOR> I'll go first. When I read that it takes a photon over 100,000 years to exit the Sun as visible light, I was completely astounded. Curious what other insights from science people have learned that were completely unexpected to them. <comment><USER3> Electrons in a copper wire do not travel at the speed of electricity. Not even close.

Electricity travels at nearly the speed of light.

Electrons themselves travel like molasses:

"In the case of a 12 gauge copper wire carrying 10 amperes of current (typical of home wiring), the individual electrons only move about 0.02 cm per sec or 1.2 inches per minute (in science this is called the drift velocity of the electrons.). If this is the situation in nature, why do the lights come on so quickly [when you flip the switch]? At this speed it would take the electrons hours to get to the lights."

This completely caught me by surprise, but it makes sense once it's pointed out. Imagine a pipe filled with solid balls that just fit in it, with little friction. If you push a ball in one end, a ball pops out the other almost immediately. But not the same ball! Even if you keep pushing balls in, that first one you pushed will take a while to get the other end.

Update: as rrobukef notes in a reply, this would be the case for direct current (DC). With the usual household alternating current (AC), the electrons barely move at all!

[https://www.uu.edu/dept/physics/scienceguys/2001Nov.cfm](https://www.uu.edu/dept/physics/scienceguys/2001Nov.cfm)

[https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/02/19/what-is-the-speed- of...](https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/02/19/what-is-the-speed-of- electricity/)

<comment><USER4> For AC, they move back as well. Thus electrons move less than 4µm from their original place (excluding Brownian movement, I assume)

<comment><USER5> Another mindblower: you can chuck a capacitor at the other end and you've got a circuit with one wire!

Hence you can get shocks from one live wire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Science doesn't "prove" hypotheses - it _disproves_ them.

For this to work, a hypothesis must be falsifiable. Most pseudoscience (and religion) makes non-falsifiable claims, meaning they are incompatible with scientific discourse.

This simple observation is a powerful tool in any bullshit-detection kit.

Once produced, a scientific hypothesis of any merit will be attacked vigorously with experiments until enough parties are convinced that disproof is sufficiently unlikely. The process isn't always pleasant for those making the falsifiable claims.

Sadly, this is not how science is taught in most schools. There, students are given the "truth" and, on a good day, asked to verify it experimentally. We are now living with the terrible consequences of generations of youth who think science is about "proving" the truth.

<comment><USER7> You're correct in the sense that this is what science is per Popperian definition. However, I would be careful to assume that many scientists are actually so busy refuting hypotheses. The Popperian ideal and the reality in science are two different things.

To cite a paper I currently read:

> "As Chalmers (1999) remarks, when we turn to history of science, the idea > that falsificationism is actively undertaken borders on laughable (see > especially Feyerabend, 1975). Not only do scientists exhibit extreme > reluctance to falsify their work (Woodward and Goodstein, 1996), but if > falsification had been followed as a scientific method, then many of the > theories generated by some of the best minds in science would never have > progressed beyond their earliest explications (see Chalmers, 1999: ch. 7; > Feyerabend, 1975; Kuhn, 1970c: 234; 1970d: 13; Von Dietz, 2001: 22)." > ([https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350508409104504](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350508409104504))

I haven't read all the sources. But it's worth mentioning that your point is controversial.

<comment><USER8> I would like to add to your remarks that science actually says something along the lines of "Grant me these assumptions/axioms/miracles(i.e. space-time, causation, etc.)" and then I can give you a theory of gravity, statistics, etc. This I think is hinted at in Gödel's core insight from his incompleteness theorem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A compressed spring weighs more than the same spring uncompressed. The moon and earth weigh less together than if you weighed them separately and added the values together. Most of the weight of solid objects is due to the high speeds and binding energies of the elementary particles within them rather than the rest mass of the constituent particles. The number of particles that exist is relative to how fast you are accelerating. Everything that has energy (which is everything we know of) affects the gravitational field; this means that even photons are "attracted" to each other.

A non-relativistic quantum state will return arbitrarily close to its initial state an infinite number of times. There is such a thing as interaction-free measurements: you can take photos of things without ever letting light hit a detector and you can tell whether a bomb is "active" without actually interacting with the detonator.

Energy is just a number that is calculated as a function of the state of a closed system — that this number is a constant results from the time transitional invariance of the laws of physics. Similarly, conservation of momentum is due to the spatial invariance of the laws of physics, and conservation of angular momentum is due to rotational invariance. Also, conservation of energy does not hold under general relativity.

<comment><USER10> > The number of particles that exist is relative to how fast you are moving.

I thought the existence of particles was relative to how fast you're accelerating? If it's relative to how fast you're moving, wouldn't that imply that absolute velocity exists, i.e. that given two objects with known relative velocity to each other, we could potentially establish which one was "really" moving and which one was "really" still?

<comment><USER9> Should have said how fast you are accelerating. Edited now. See [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Unruh_effect](http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Unruh_effect)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think "mind blown" is an accurate description when I first saw the Hubble Deep Field image:

[https://hubblesite.org/contents/articles/hubble-deep- fields](https://hubblesite.org/contents/articles/hubble-deep-fields)

I already knew that "the universe is incomprehensibly large", but seeing how many entire galaxies there were in a random dark patch of sky was eye opening to me.

<comment><USER12> Don't know exactly why, but thinking about the vastness of the universe always cheers me up. Thanks for sharing :)

<comment><USER13> Relatedly, my dad always told me that thinking about the vastness of the universe "weirded him out."

My hypothesis is that he has narcissistic tendencies so pondering the vastness of the universe only highlights his own insignificance. I've noticed similar reaction from people who visit a large city for the first time and get a sense of how small they are in the grand scheme.

<comment><USER14> Reminds me of the Total Perspective Vortex from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which exposed an individual's insignificance in the universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not science, but Mathematics - That there are more ways to arrange a deck of 52 cards than seconds that have elapsed since the big bang took place.

Thousands of similar questions on reddit for anyone interested- [https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=science+fact+site%3Areddit....](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=science+fact+site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Faskreddit)

<comment><USER16> Also chances are that no one has shuffled a deck in the same order as someone else has, ever in history.

<comment><USER17> This one gets me too. It's _so_ counterintuitive to me.

(Caveat: this is assuming people shuffle well, which of course most people don't, therefore in fact people probably _have_ shuffled to the same state).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments).

<comment><USER19> I would love to see this number for computational scientists.

<comment><USER20> While anecdotal, its easy to run into issues like this[0] where scientist with little CS background assume certain behaviors in code that don't actually exist.

[0] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjwda/a-code-glitch- may-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjwda/a-code-glitch-may-have- caused-errors-in-more-than-100-published-studies)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When i could "see" my visual blindspot. [https://lasikofnv.com/try- these-3-fun-tests-to-find-your-vis...](https://lasikofnv.com/try-these-3-fun- tests-to-find-your-visual-blind- spot/#:~:text=Position%20your%20head%20to%20look,with%20the%20surrounding%20yellow%20color).

<comment><USER22> OMG me too. I was having an eye exam. The technician had a black field with a bunch of lines. Holding a rod with a white dot, and told to let them know when it disappeared.

I laughed, "Well that will only happen if you put it behind your back."

They laughed, "Everyone has an astigmatism where the nerves enter the eye. We are looking for that or any other issues."

I was so shocked when the dot disappeared.

Also happy to hear it was the normal blind spot.

<comment><USER23> There is one driving your car too. :)

<comment><USER24> Not if your mirrors are set correctly. Lean your head to the side window, set the mirror so that it just misses the tail end of your car. Position your head over the centre console, set the mirror. There is now approximately no blind spot. You can fine-tune by careful observation on a multi-lane highway as people pass/you pass others. Done correctly, there is no blind spot.

<comment><USER25> There are always blind spots. You covered ___a_ __blind spot, but not all of them. Some of them are surprising.

[https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investig...](https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investigates/13-investigates- millions-vehicles-have-unexpected-dangerous-front-blind- zone/531-9521c471-3bc1-4b55-b860-3363f0954b3b)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It never fails to amuse me that any pressure or force that we intuitively feel is "pulled" by a vacuum, is only caused by air pressure on the other sides of an object.

When you see something hanging from a suction cup in your kitchen or bathroom, it's fun to imagine that the air around you is hammering the suction cup enough to keep it stuck there. With quite some force you'll notice, if you try to pull it straight out! But let some air in through a small gap, and it will help even things out.

A lack of air by itself does nothing. It's just about the net forces.

<comment><USER27> Wow, I never thought about that before. So, if you could draw a vacuum in your whole kitchen or bathroom, would the suction cup fall down?

<comment><USER28> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ok, so maybe not a "fact" but the hypothesis of the False Vacuum:

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

This quote blew my mind:

 _" The possibility that we are living in a false vacuum has never been a cheering one to contemplate. Vacuum decay is the ultimate ecological catastrophe; in the new vacuum there are new constants of nature; after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it. However, one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time the new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been eliminated."_

I immediately went out and bought Greg Egan's "Schild's Ladder" after find out he'd used this as a plot device.

<comment><USER30> You should also read the Three Body Problem trilogy, specifically the last book, although I won't spoil it. It uses a plot device very similar to a false vacuum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not a fact per se, but: the sheer amount of living things that came before me, in the sense of my direct ancestors and their direct ancestors etc. etc – not only my human ancestors, but the whole of my ancestors all the way back to the origins of life itself – and I would not be here today if even one of them would have died before reproducing... that manages to blow my mind every single time I think about it.

<comment><USER32> Try counting the total number of your ancestors: you have 2 parents, they have 4 parents in total etc., i.e. 2^N where N is the number of generations. Going just 40 generations back (about 1000 years), you had 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776 ancestors.

<comment><USER33> But not necessarily 2^40 _unique_ ancestors. That is, the same person may be your ancestor by more than one route through the subsequent generations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The sun orbits the center of the galaxy every 250 million years, so when the dinosaurs were around, they were on the other side of the galaxy, compared to where we are now.

</comment><comment><USER34> Gravity travels at the speed of light (the speed of causality). If the sun suddenly disappeared, the earth would continue orbiting around where it used to be, for about 8 minutes.

Nothing can travel faster than light through space, in a vacuum. However, if you pick two points in space that are far enough apart (e.g. at opposite sides of the observable universe), these points will be moving apart faster than light, because space itself is expanding.

The expansion of space isn't coming from a single point outward, like an explosion. It's expanding by the same amount at every point in the universe. People analogize this in lower dimensions to stretching fabric or blowing up a balloon.

<comment><USER35> How do we know that the space is expanding if there is nothing to compare it to?

<comment><USER34> The farther away a galaxy is, the more red-shifted the light from that galaxy is, when it reaches us.

Also, really far-away galaxies are receding from us faster than light.

And, the existence of the cosmological event horizon seems to support this too, I think. Things beyond that horizon will emit light in our direction, but that light will never reach us. In fact, without this horizon, I believe that the night sky would be much brighter.

I find it kind of sad that, as time passes, more of the universe becomes unobservable. Eventually the only stars visible from our POV will be those in our own galaxy (and galaxies that ours has merged with, in the interim).

More info at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The selective attention test, aka the "invisible gorilla" experiment, and the finding that 50% of people didn't see the gorilla.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was pretty amazed by the Casimir Effect when I first learned of it.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

<comment><USER23> I think I need to get an advanced degree just to be able to read that wikipedia entry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> A gallon of gasoline creates 20 pounds of carbon dioxide.

So my trip to the grocery store could be adding as much carbon dioxide to the air as the groceries I pick up!

<comment><USER23> That is fascinating. A gallon of gasoline weighs 6 pounds, so it probably must be using 14 pounds of oxygen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The dual slit experiment. Run the experiment with no one watching it, it produces result A. Run it again and watch it, it produces result B. Watching the experiment changes the result. WTF????

<comment><USER40> It's false information. It's debunked multiple times. "Watching" means "placing or turning on an additional detector", which ruins interference pattern. To develop intuition, look at double slit experiment made at macro scale using walking droplet.

<comment><USER41> I'd really appreciate a few links to this. I am on a youtube binge lately watching quantum dynamics lectures for lay people. The constant talk about "watching" and "observers" drives me crazy. I refuse to believe anything has anything to do with whether or not anybody is "watching" anything. Bouncing photons off of it? Sure I can see how that would affect all sorts of things. But if the bouncing photons alter what's going on (and it seems they cause as much quantum decoherence as anything else might) then that's not the same thing as just "watching". That word implies to me "there are ambient photons or some other field or background that does not alter the experiment, and I am merely observing that background to get an idea what's going on within the experiment". If the experiment cannot be conducted without interference within an ambient background of photons flying around, or within some other medium we passively non-destructively-to-the-experiment observe, then we cannot currently be said to be "observing" anything at all with respect to that experiment. Let's just say that, can't we? If we can't not alter the relevant circumstances of what's going on, then let's just admit that, without using faulty and improper language to "describe" what's happening. Can somebody help me out with this?

<comment><USER42> You make a good point. The problem is interacting with the particles, e.g. the photons bouncing off them. Don't poke the particle -- it only interferes with itself. Poke the particle -- now it is entangled with your measurement device, that means zillions of other particles, which changes the interference patterns.

But it is more complicated that this. Consider [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur%E2%80%93Vaidman_bomb_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur%E2%80%93Vaidman_bomb_tester) \-- if you only poke the particle in a "parallel universe", that also changes its pattern in this one.

At the end, quantum physics says there are multiple "versions" of how the particles move, and those versions interfere with each other. By interacting with each other, particles become entangled, which means that the "versions" of their states are no longer calculated independently, but together.

There are disagreements of what exactly this means: some people believe that reality only has multiple "versions" on a microscopic level, but when the entangled configuration becomes large enough (how large? no one knows), the parallel computation collapses, one of these "versions" is randomly selected to become the actual reality and the remaining ones disappear. Other people believe that multiple "versions" is the whole story; that observing the outcome means that you (being composed of particles that follow the laws of physics) also become entangled with the particles in the experiment, and now there are multiple "versions" of you, each observing a different outcome.

So, I'd say you got it half-right. Yes, it is about "observation = interaction"; and "observer" is just a shortcut for "the thing that poked the experimental particle, optionally also a display connected to that thing, optionally also a person observing the display". (That is, you could also have a completely impersonal "observer", e.g. a machine that measures the particle but no one is looking at its display.) But quantum physics is a different thing than mere classical physics where you correct for photons being actual things that hit the measured particle. It means there actually are multiple outcomes, which then interfere with each other, at least on the microscopic level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I absolutely cannot psychologically deal with the Monty Haul paradox. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem) I've coded it multiple times in multiple programming languages as a cathartic exercise. Despite seeing the results obviously printed out in a console in front of me, I just can't handle it. I lose SAN just thinking about it.

<comment><USER43> The explanation that makes the most sense to me, from wiki:

Yet another insight is that your chance of winning by switching doors is directly related to your chance of choosing the winning door in the first place: if you choose the correct door on your first try, then switching loses; if you choose a wrong door on your first try, then switching wins; your chance of choosing the correct door on your first try is 1/3, and the chance of choosing a wrong door is 2/3.

<comment><USER41> The bit that gets me... If he opens one door, which is a goat, so there is 1 goat and 1 prize remaining... then the chance should be 50% staying put or switching, right? That's the part that gets me. The whole bit about 3 doors and opening one of them and "do you want to switch" is all a ruse, it seems to me. At the end of the day there are two doors, one with a goat and one with a prize, and however you choose between 2 doors, you will win or lose 50% of the time. Right? Aargh the SAN loss...

<comment><USER44> It would only be 50-50 if you could only pick from 2 options, but your initial choice is between 3 options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> That when we look up at distant stars, nebulas, & galaxies and the like...we are looking back in time. What we see could have been gone for decades, centuries, or longer.

<comment><USER46> "longer" is an understatement. The Andromeda galaxy, which is viewable by the naked eye, is 2.5 million lightyears away. And that's the _closest_ galaxy to us.

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

<comment><USER47> One of the closest, anyway. Yeah, most distant objects observed are over 10 billion years "in the past".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Not a science fact per se: Until recently I haven't realised the amount of damage inflicted by religion or in the name of religion if you will, to our species. Take Heliocentrism[^1] for example, it was alluded in the 5th century BC that the Earth revolves around the sun and that stars are other "suns". Then religion came along. Galileo nearly died for re-iterating a theory that was accepted by part of the _scientific community_ nearly 2000 years before him.

In similar fashion, years ago while studying the circulatory system for the anatomy class I came across a wikipedia article. This particular part of the circulatory system was documented in detail by Egyptians in 200 BC. Knowledge came from the mummification process. The next breakthrough in this area was made in the 19th century.

Looks like our species could have a colony in Mars by now, if science were allowed to breakthrough linearly.

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

<comment><USER49> I'm not personally religious but I'd be very careful before assuming religion, an institution that's been with humans for thousands of years, was a net negative.

I think humans probably have some innate desire for institutions with religious-like properties. And as we've become more secular over the past 60 years, there's been an increase in people that seem to be making politics the replacement, which may end up being more destructive than theistic religion ever was.

<comment><USER48> > I think humans probably have some innate desire for institutions with > religious-like properties.

Hm, but we grow in a religious setting, the larger part of the population. So, is it an _innate_ desire or a designed reality for population control?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Growing up, I was taught that the main reason why it's bad to drink is because it kills brain cells and brain cells don't grow back. Apparently that is not the case anymore:

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-adult- brain-d...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-adult-brain-does- grow-new-neurons-after-all-study-says/)

<comment><USER51> What level of drinking would cause this, though?

<comment><USER52> Come over to my house and I'll show you...

That's why haven't had a drink for the last 5 years

<comment><USER51> Well, i just meant i had not heard this - so i was curious if a glass of wine a night causes damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Only 10% of the cells in a human body are human, but that 90% is only 2-3% of human body weight. [https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-human- micr...](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-human-microbiome- project-defines-normal-bacterial-makeup-body)

<comment><USER22> So if your body was a democracy, you would lose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> How prion diseases work and spread. They're basically infectious lego. You may not thank me if you read about them...

<comment><USER23> I read somewhere they survive even 1000°C cleaning of stuff.

Maybe dental implements.

<comment><USER55> I get what you are saying, but it just occurred to me "survive" might not be fitting for these ... "things"? They are not quite "alive", are they?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The physics & biology behind eyesight.

Our eyes collect light that is "left over"(not reflected) from other surfaces.

Can't explain why but I had always had a sense that objects somehow emanated their own "image". Learning that colors manifest themselves because _every other wavelength was absorbed_ was fascinating.

<comment><USER57> Why do you say not reflected? It seems like the light that enters our eyes often has been reflected?

<comment><USER58> I'm thinking the parent commenter meant to say "not absorbed"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Obvious when you think about it, but I didn't realise for ages that all the planets orbit in the same plane.

<comment><USER22> Is the obvious reason because the sun is spinning? Or some other not so obvious reason I do not know of?

<comment><USER59> Well this may not be correct, but I'm assuming the plane they spin in is the same as the equator of the Sun and in the same direction as the Sun's rotation. That would make sense if they were made of "stuff" that was thrown out from the centre and clumped together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> That there is such a thing as deterministic chaos (aka the butterfly effect), ie. infinitesimal perturbations can quickly produce macroscopic changes, and all the philosophical implications that result from it.

That despite the apparent complexity of the weather many atmospheric phenomena can be explained from first principles with pen and paper calculations.

That the existence of elementary particles can be derived from simple symmetry considerations (That one blows my mind every time.)

That when we look out into the universe we see elements roughly in the same proportions as they appear on earth. (We are all made out of star dust!)

<comment><USER61> Isn't that just probability distributions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> we can see our nose all the time, but our brain filters it out.

if you close one eye and keep the other open you'll suddenly see one side of your nose.

<comment><USER63> We also have a blind spot in each eye where our optic nerve passes through our retina, which the brain constantly edits out.

<comment><USER16> Also while turning your head you don't really see, but your brain pieces things together and plays an image of what it thinks you should see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Average density of the universe is about 1 proton mass per cubic meter

<comment><USER47> That's including dark matter, I think? With just the matter we can see, it's not even that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> For me it's material science misconceptions, corrections to what a kid / the over-simplified public conception are. As I'm not a material science expert, if I'm wrong or slightly incorrect please explain what actually happens.

"diamonds are forever"

It's appealing to believe that a crystalline structure, a pretty one too, might exist until actively changed.

Diamonds are not forever. What 'blew my mind' is that diamonds are the result of compression and very slowly decompressing. That slowly over time the outer layer leaves that state and turns to dust.

Glass is a 'liquid'

I'm much less sure about glass, I'm not even sure that science is sure about glass. Apparently one process for making glass in the old days involved something blowing and spinning discs of it to produce nearly flat segments. When installed the artisan making the window would place the thicker end down for stability or some other reason. I'm not positive if glass is a liquid or not, but the reason many people might think it's a liquid is that intentional selection bias when fitting the panes of glass.

The whole concept of glass possibly being a liquid though changed the way I perceive solid, liquid, and gas states. Those labels better reflect much more temporally localized potential change and interaction than they do to uniquely describe matter.

BTW, if there is an expert, is glass actually a liquid or a solid?

<comment><USER66> May be wrong, but I think it correct to say glass is a 'fluid' (it flows - very slowly), gases and liquids are generally fluids. But glass is not a liquid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Information has mass (and thus energy). As in a full hard drive weighs more than an empty one. [https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794)

</comment><comment><USER27> The gold in my wedding ring was formed inside a star. I kinda sorta knew all matter was formed inside stars but it never really clicked until I thought about something as simple as a lump of gold and where those atoms really originated.

<comment><USER68> Related, most of the atoms in a new born baby are 13.7bn years old.

<comment><USER69> as Moby would say, we are all made of stars. It was a bit mindblowing to me to realize this was true and not just some hippie-ish slogan.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> In Physics 2 (Light, Electricity, and Electromagnetism), I could not derive the correct answer for calculating the flux of an infinite sheet.

TA: The flux is S for an infinite sheet.

Me: How? We have S for this side plus S for the other which yields 2S!

TA: For an infinite sheet, there is no other side.

Me: O_O

<comment><USER71> To me that sounds mostly like a philosophical distinction. In most physics calculations, "infinite" just means "finite but so large that we can neglect edge effects".

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> That the Amazon soil is actually very poor in nutrients and the dust from the Sahara desert is actually what keeps the Amazon rainforest alive.

Long ago the South American and African continents were one. To think of it, there is still a major connection!

</comment><comment><USER73> BTW, "it takes a photon over 100,000 years to exit the Sun" is misleading - <USER2> sounds like there's a single photon that's generated deep inside the Sun's core and winds its way through like a cicada until it emerges at the surface.

In reality, any photon traveling inside the Sun will almost instantly collide with some other particle, which may emit zero, one, or more photons as a result. When we say "100,000 years", I believe we're summing up the total of these photons' expected lifetimes, basically following the flux of energy rather than individual photons.

</comment><comment><USER74> The 100-step rule in neuroscience, that states that no primary brain operation (e.g., face recognition) can take more than 100 neuron firing "steps." (Feldman & Ballard, 1982)

<comment><USER18> This is a bit misleading since there are way more steps / neuron firings involved, the rule just says that these operations happen in less than 500ms and 1 firing per 5ms is the maximum throughput of a single neuron. These brain operations aren't implemented as a sequential chain of neuron activations though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Creating something out of nothing: The Banach - Tarski Paradox

[https://youtu.be/s86-Z-CbaHA](https://youtu.be/s86-Z-CbaHA)

<comment><USER76> That's a consequence of the axiom of choice, which has historically been a highly controversial axiom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> That had interactions between protons and neutrons been but a tiny bit weaker or stronger than they are, the universe would probably contain a lot less carbon, nitrogen and oxygen ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple- alpha_process#Resonance...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple- alpha_process#Resonances)), perhaps precluding existence of life as we know it.

</comment><comment><USER77> Gravity is not really a force or objects "attracting" themselves but a consequence of the curvature of spacetime.

At least that's my pedestrian interpretation :)

<comment><USER40> What releases energy then, when objects are accelerated towards each other?

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I usually ask people to imagine they are putting a rope tight around the earth, following the equator (idealized sphere).

Then they add 1 meter to the rope (it is now longer by a meter) and spread it around the earth uniformly (it hovers above the earth, everywhere at the same distance from the earth)

Estimate that hovering distance.

Try yourself to estimate it, then make the calculation.

</comment><comment><USER79> Exactly anything you can think of can be represented as a segment of pi's infinite decimal expansion.

<comment><USER80> [https://github.com/philipl/pifs](https://github.com/philipl/pifs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> A man can fast for more than a year without die [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast)

</comment><comment><USER82> The life cycle of the lancet river fluke: [https://www.damninteresting.com/a-fluke-of- nature/](https://www.damninteresting.com/a-fluke-of-nature/)

</comment><comment><USER83> Many statements here:

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

<comment><USER84> > which states that entropy, or a loss of the energy available to do work, > must rise over time.[2] Stars will eventually exhaust their supply of > hydrogen fuel and burn out.

Since entropy is a statistical quantity, the second law of thermodynamics is a statistical statement. And because modern physics essentially deals with Hamiltonian systems, it can be proven that a time exists when entropy goes down again. The intuitive proof is really nice. Since energy is conserved, one can imagine the global state (position, momentum) as position in a park covered in snow. So someone walking through it will eventually walk over his own footsteps. Not precisely but it's arbitrarily close, the longer one waits.

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

I really like that theorem

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> That 'normal' matter only makes up 5% of the universe. That some omnipresent dark energy field makes up the majority (63%) of the universe.

</comment><comment><USER86> From Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths: a neutrino of moderate energy could easily penetrate a thousand lightyears of lead.

</comment><comment><USER87> That mitochondria have their own DNA and used to be separate organisms. Or when I heard that trees feed each other and fungi through their roots.

</comment><comment><USER88> You always weigh less in the morning compared to the previous night because you have exhaled carbon atoms from your body!

<comment><USER89> Isn't most of reason you weigh less in the morning than at night due to the amount of water weight you have lost while sleeping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> That something trivial like seeing speckle patterns in my eyes when I'm tired is proof of the quantum nature of light.

<comment><USER33> Interesting. How does that work?

<comment><USER90> I'm sure I'll do a poor job articulating it. It's similar to bokeh that photographers are familiar with. You look at a light source and the light seems to bounce through the pupil and back out again. If there's a drop of liquid on your eyelashes you'll see a bokeh ring with interference ripples around the edge.

I just remember as a child I thought it was strange, then in high school physics I saw how laser light was always grainy, and even things like the solidity of matter can be thought of as optical illusion (caused by the wavelengths of visible light casting a well-defined shadow).

Then later I got into photography and realized what you can do with even a little knowledge about light and optics. I still have a sense of wonder about it even though I'm an average shooter at best.

Hope that all made sense.

<comment><USER90> This is what I'm taking about, when I was a kid before I got fitted with glasses, I remember the world looking like this...

[https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/99407/what-is- the-...](https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/99407/what-is-the-cause-of- inclusions-in-my-bokeh)

<comment><USER33> OK, but that's proof of the _wave_ nature of light, not quite of the _quantum_ nature.

<comment><USER90> Let's try to work the problem in a way that avoids pedantry, just for a moment.

This is one of my favorite PBS clips from the 80's in which Richard Feynman explains how strange the nature of light and by extension all of electromagnetic radiation.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHJ7FmV0M4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHJ7FmV0M4)

If you listen carefully, you notice that he never talks about wave/particle duality (because he wasn't giving a classroom lecture).

What he does talk about is an electric field that waves slosh around in, and that something "elaborate and complicated" is going on at a deeper level.

That's what I'm on about, if you were pressed to explain it so that a bright child would get it, how would you do that?

<comment><USER33> For _this_ problem/phenomenon, I'd probably just talk about waves and interference. I might mumble something about something elaborate and complicated going on at a deeper level, or I might ignore that and just talk about waves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Trees form out of thin air.

</comment><comment><USER5> Black hole singularity is infinitely dense and zero size

</comment><comment><USER91> Hot water freezes faster than cold water (sometimes).

</comment><comment><USER92> This question feels AskReddity

</comment><comment><USER93> camels have three eyelids

</comment><comment><USER61> look at the time-lines of the universe and some of the entries, especially the last few, are mind blowing ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future) )

e.g.

"Due to the gradual slowing down of Earth's rotation, a day on Earth will be one hour longer than it is today"

"From its present position, the Solar System completes one full orbit of the Galactic Center"

"All the continents on Earth may fuse into a supercontinent (Pangaea Ultima, Novopangaea, or Amasia)"

"Tidal acceleration moves the Moon far enough from Earth that total solar eclipses are no longer possible."

"the Andromeda Galaxy will have collided with the Milky Way, which will thereafter merge to form a galaxy dubbed "Milkomeda" ... There is also a small chance of the Solar System being ejected. The planets of the Solar System will almost certainly not be disturbed by these events"

"time until stellar close encounters detach all planets in star systems (including the Solar System) from their orbits"

"time until those stars not ejected from galaxies (1–10%) fall into their galaxies' central supermassive black holes. By this point, with binary stars having fallen into each other, and planets into their stars"

"estimated time for rigid objects, from free-floating rocks in space to planets, to rearrange their atoms and molecules via quantum tunneling. On this timescale, any discrete body of matter "behaves like a liquid" and becomes a smooth sphere due to diffusion and gravity"

"... they [Positrons] find a distant electron to pair with and the two enter into a highly excited state of positronium, with a radius larger than the current universe. Over the next 10^141 years they will gradually spiral inwards until they finally annihilate"

"time until a supermassive black hole with a mass of 20 trillion solar masses decays by Hawking radiation ... marks the end of the Black Hole Era. Beyond this time, if protons do decay, the Universe enters the Dark Era, in which all physical objects have decayed to subatomic particles"

"... time for all nucleons in the observable universe to decay ..."

"... estimated time until all baryonic matter in stellar-mass objects has either fused together [into iron-56] ... or decayed from a higher mass element into iron-56 to form an iron star"

"Estimated time for a Boltzmann brain to appear in the vacuum via a spontaneous entropy decrease"

"estimate for the time until all iron stars collapse into black holes ... which then (on these timescales) instantaneously evaporate into subatomic particles ... Beyond this point, it is almost certain that Universe will contain no more baryonic matter and will be an almost pure vacuum until it reaches its final energy state ..."

"Because the total number of ways in which all the subatomic particles in the observable universe can be combined is <big number> a number which, when multiplied by <big number>, disappears into the rounding error, this is also the time required for a quantum-tunnelled and quantum fluctuation-generated Big Bang to produce a new universe identical to our own ..."</comment>


Choosing an online payment provider - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndaniels.com.au/online-payment-processing

<comment><USER2> Those selling downloadable products may want to take a look at FastSpring. For subscription based services, there's now SaaSy.</comment>


Show HN: Tool to Convert a YouTube Channel to an Alexa Skill - <AUTHOR> website: https://www.alphavoice.io/demo.html
Alpha Voice helps you create voice applications for Alexa without coding. Convert your Youtube Channel or Podcast to a voice application in 10 minutes.
Looking for Any and All product feedback. <comment><USER2> Very cool!

</comment><comment><USER3> Super useful for my YouTube channel. Extra cool when it opens on Fire TV.

<comment><USER4> I agree, seen that thing. That was cool to ask and see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> just opened the site and see the top menu which is superimposed on the text on the page, you should fix it guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Fixed it let me know if there is anything else you recommend.</comment></comment>


SourceForge Acquisition and Future Plans - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ <comment><USER2> Too late. Ublock even blocks sourceforge. The damage is done.</comment>


Cyber Security Awareness Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://iatraining.disa.mil/eta/disa_cac2018/launchPage.htm <comment><USER3> It... requires Flash? Is this the challenge?

<comment><USER4> Isn't flash inherently a security risk hence why none of us have it installed these days?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Today Chrome is at version 68. I understand that government departments love to have explicit version support but why does this site use Flash, require IE 11 (not Edge!), old browser versions and just all this stuff that is _basic_ infosec stuff.

Perhaps this has some good information in it but if they're going to build it in this way then it's probably worth keeping internally and not releasing to the world. I think at this point it's probably harder to build something in Flash and find someone to build it in Flash than in more modern web technology.

<comment><USER6> Reverse Psychology, these are phishing attacks where they want to hack you and study your behaviour. Is it any wonder the head of the UK's MI5 Andrew Parker did Behavioural Science at Cambridge Uni?

Knowledge is power and you can not undermine the military in anyway, the military is all about control of the warzone and today you are the enemy combatant, so every asset is deployed against you to control you from the day you were born. If you think this stuff is limited to just hacking computers, consider the fact social engineering is a valid hacking attack vector. Are End User Licence Agreements just massive obvious warrant canaries when considering the legal prose?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I passed! (Did not install flash)

</comment><comment><USER8> Requires javascript. Requires flash.

Is our^H^H^H my military really so backward?

Is it from bureaucracy? Or, are there really people who think this is legit?

How can I get this garbage improved?

<comment><USER9> Based on the comments, I thought it was an old training...then I saw the banner on top said 2018.

This is our tax dollars at work. I wish we had politicians that would spend our money wisely, rather than just keep increasing military budget and build crap.

<comment><USER10> I had to take i earlier this year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Step 1: Install Flash

Step 2: Fail Test

<comment><USER12> Step 3: Uninstall Flash

Step 4: Pass test?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I ended up taking this training at my first summer internship at a private contractor for the Navy a couple years back. Interesting seeing it here on HN, but I never really thought the training was really that standout to begin with.

Definitely felt way more like a way to train non-technical employees to not get phished and to keep security principles in mind in the workplace. The game-ification aspect actually seems beneficial compared to other similar training I've done in the past though!

</comment><comment><USER14> Ahh yes, this is an annual thing in the military where, at the end of the fiscal year, commanders start putting pressure on subordinates who haven't completed this course for the year. Everyone is threatened with not being allowed to go home for the weekend until they prove for the 100th time that they know not to accept downloaded songs from co-workers, not to let Tina into the SCIF without her badge, and not to let the shady guy at the cafe use your smartphone.

<comment><USER15> Also lock down your Facespace account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I maintain two browsers - a secure one, and an insecure one. The insecure setup runs in a VM, and the profile is on a disk shared from the host - <USER2> the host side symlinks the associated directory to /dev/null.

Seeing that anyone still uses Flash just makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Get Adobe Flash Player

This one's tough.

</comment><comment><USER18> is this for real?

<comment><USER15> DoD IT professionals are required to pass this annually.</comment></comment>


HN Chicago Meetup: Wed 7pm - <AUTHOR>

Howdy all,
Our monthly Hacker News Chicago meetup is Wed at Clark Street Ale House.
http://www.meetup.com/hnchicago/events/172979432/
If you haven't had a chance to come check out our events, this will be a good one to get started.  The weather is turning nice and we'll be out on the outdoor patio at Clark Street Ale House.
Come meet collaborators, friends, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts and argue aimlessly about why your framework is better than mine. :) <comment><USER2> Wow, I had no idea. I'll see people there. Free drinks on me for anyone with a truly awful job interview story.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whoops! Totally missed seeing this.

Why is this post #99 four days later?</comment>


Racial Quotas, Harvard, and the Legacy of Bakke - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339778/racial-quotas-harvard-and-legacy-ibakkei-ron-unz

<comment><USER2> I wonder if there is a racial difference in alumni contributions. That, IMO, would be a fair reason to discriminate for or against a group.</comment>


Manage and Secure Environment Variables in Serverless - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DieProduktMacher/serverless-env-generator <comment><AUTHOR> A Serverless 1.x plugin to manage environment variables with YAML and turn them into a .env file on deployment.

Supports encryption with KMS, multiple stages and custom profiles.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get "unstuck"? - <AUTHOR> I started a business overseas last year. It didn't work out, and I ended up broke, unemployed, and needing to leave the country I was in.
I have been looking for work in the Bay area all this year. I've applied to companies big and small, flown out several times for interviews, and so far I had one offer at a small startup at the beginning of my search (during the brief time I could afford to stay in SF). Unfortunately I didn't jump on it and by the time I followed up they had hired someone else. The companies that flew me out were bigger and seemed to be interviewing like crazy, but maybe not hiring like crazy. I was usually the oldest person in the room (almost 40) for all of the interviews. I'm not sure if it's an age thing or if I was just unlucky with the interviews that I had, but having a job search going on more than half a year, it's hard to stay positive.
It seems like with my unusual background (self-taught, a lot of time overseas, no big names on my resume) and not knowing anyone in the area, blasting out applications isn't working, and I have much better luck meeting people in person, but I can't afford to stay in SF while I look.
Currently, I'm living with family, in a "flyover state." (Sorry for the vague details, but I'm obviously trying to keep this anonymous.) I really don't know how to break through. I know there is supposed to be a talent shortage but I also know the best jobs aren't advertised. At this point I'm afraid my best (only) option is getting a job in a Starbucks here, and save up until I can relocate and get a similar job in SF, and then start meeting people and interviewing locally.
I guess I'm just looking for some alternative ways of looking at the situation, or anyone who has been in a similar situation, or general advice on getting hired in SF with a non-traditional background, or anything else I might be doing wrong or not seeing.
Thanks, HN. <comment><USER2> Why do you have to be in SF? Every time I go there I see the streets are full of people who can't possibly live any place else it seems even though they can't keep a roof over their heads.

There is a software industry in other towns you know.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's not really one where I am. If I'm going to relocate somewhere, it seems like SF is "where the jobs are". Maybe I should broaden my search a bit, though. Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Running Erlang/OTP on Mac OS X - <AUTHOR> http://rudamoura.com/erlang-on-mac.html

<comment><USER2> Or you can just run "brew install erlang"

<comment><USER3> Don't use homebrew or macports or anything like that. If you're installing Erlang for development purposes (you'd be using a release otherwise, right?) use Erlang's answer to `rvm' etc., kerl: <https://github.com/spawngrid/kerl>

Works fine on OSX.

<comment><USER4> what is wrong with brew solution?</comment></comment></comment>