Ask HN: How do you hire good developers? - <AUTHOR> I'm co-founder of a startup that's going into an expansion phase. We are backed by a large VC and have more demand for our product than we can supply. Our problem is that we cannot attract any good developers. Every time we find someone we want to hire they turn us down in favour of some of the tech giants. We offer high compensation (salary, vacation and options) and interesting problems to work on using the latest technology, but it feels like the good developers that don't run their own startup is too afraid of the startup world. We know how important a good core team is for a startup, so we don't want to hire people we don't think fits in our team. Right now we are relying on a bunch of consultants to keep the company alive, but that doesn't feel like a long term solution.<p>So help us HN; how do you attract good developers to a small startup? What can we offer people (besides the "safety" of a large company) to give us a shot? <comment><USER2> As a dev I will say this the hiring process sucks. I have learn that during the interview process unless it is written down and signed then it is probably a lie. Companies will say anything to get me to sign a piece of paper. Saying you use the latest technology or work on interesting problems doesn't tickle my pickle.If you want to get me excited about working for your startup take me out to lunch. Let me talk to the people I would be working with on a daily bases. Let me ask them what they think about the project and day to day operations and such. The best interview experience I ever had was just that simple. I knew I could work along the guys and they gave me a clear picture what to expect working there. Salary is always negotiable and all that other stuff.

<comment><USER3> > I have learn that during the interview process unless it is written down and > signed then it is probably a lie.

This happened to me when I took a job at Microsoft and it sucked. The worst thing was that when I asked around I found that Microsoft does this kind of bait and switch all the time and that a lot of other people were in a similar situation and thought that it was normal.

It's not normal. People should not lie to you about what a job is going to be, and there are many companies that will try to give you good information about what the job will be like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's partly a matter of priming the pump with a one or two fantastic initial hires. Go above and beyond to get a couple terrific people on board (offer a title, or an opportunity to earn a title, or a big piece of equity, etc.), and then you have "and we have an amazing team" as a big new piece of your sales pitch to the rest.

Anecdotally -- from my own job search experiences, and from my experiences hiring engineers at a few different places -- a candidate's sense of the people they'll be working is a huge factor in their decision. Make that factor strongly in your favor and you'll be in good shape. Also, don't be afraid to have a rigorous technical interview process -- I think that can double as a sales pitch for great candidates who want to be at companies that recognize and appreciate their skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great advice. I will try to reach out to some more high-profile people here in the local community. Maybe a nice title and a position with lots of freedom could interest someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My first guess is that maybe your "high" salary isn't high enough. That's usually the reason that companies think there are no good developers out there.

They're out there. But they're expensive. How much are you offering?

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be right, but we are pretty certain that we pay at least 20% more than the larger companies around here. Nobody has requested a salary that we have said no to. The feedback we have been given is that we do pay better, but that it feels safer for them at a larger place or that they have found something more interesting.

I understand that the domain (finance) we are in isn't the most attracting for some people, but we try to pitch the exiting parts like scalability and machine learning.

<comment><USER6> Many people are uncomfortable talking about or negotiating salary. So the feedback you are receiving might just be a candidate's polite way of reframing their choice that was actually based on salary.

Also, are you factoring equity into the total value of your offer when you say something like '20% more than ...'? I'm not sure it would be reasonable if you are. I experienced a start-up offer once that handled it that way. There was a base salary offer, then a listing of stock options and their current value, and then the "offer" was equal to the sum of the two. That showed me the company has a serious flaw in understanding the riskiness of their own stock, or in empathizing with people who can't use stock options to pay the rent, or both.

<comment><USER7> I think you are exactly right on equity and expose a problem of startups and recruiting that borders on disingenuous at the very least. VCs fund multiple startups expecting many to fail. As I've seen first hand, a prototype can land a million dollar convertible note at a $10m cap. For the founders to then turn around and act like 1 percent of the stock is really worth $100k isn't even close to reality. To account for realistic exits you probably need to cut that by 1/3\. So to match a big company offer of $100k salary and $100k equity (of liquid stock), you need to match the salary and offer 3x equity for the compensation to be about equal.

Yet most startups won't match salary and then try to pretend that their equity is worth way more than it is. "We'll pay you $70k but give you $150k in equity so the comp is more!" When the reality is the comp is actually significantly less if equity is more fairly valued. In this fictitious example, the $220k offered comp is really more like $130k, so about a 30% pay cut from the $200k offered by the big co. Startup equity isn't worthless, but it needs to be valued at a significant discount which varies by the stage.

<comment><USER6> This is one of my favorite posts about valuing start-up options: < [http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/11/how-much-are- startup-...](http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/11/how-much-are-startup- options-worth/) >.

But, funny enough, any time I have been in a negotiating position with a start-up, they act deeply offended that I would _even ask_ about liquidity preference, makeup of the board, etc. Many of them refuse to answer these questions. It really flushes out a lot of insecurity and reveals toxic attitudes when founders won't talk frankly about this stuff.

Basically, the start-up world is about providing lifestyle employment that subtly devalues and manipulates skilled workers who don't happen to know enough about employment, or haven't had much life experience with it yet. _Sometimes_ this can be profitable for early stage employees, but most often it is only profitable for outright founders and investors. Holders of regular options rarely make money from them, and when they do it rarely is significant in their lives and usually doesn't compensate them for foregone wage they could have earned in other jobs.

Unfortunately, there is a steady supply of people who value affiliation with a certain tech in-group, and lifestyle aspects of a job, like foosball tables, beer night, dog-friendly offices, etc., more than competitive wage. Usually these people don't realize they aren't being paid or that their options are not worth what they think they are worth, and later they become dissatisfied with the arrangement but have no negotiating power to change it.

Another toxic side effect of this is that some start-ups can have wildly varying pay levels for employees of the same stature in the firm. If two different people are brought in as data scientists, say, but while one of them was completing a Ph.D. the other was working and experienced some of the poor compensation stuff, then when each is hired, one of them will do a better job at negotiating and have a better understanding of what is reasonable. The other may just be happy to have a job after grad school.

Fast forward a few months and both of the data scientsts are each doing a great job and are each adding about the same amount of value to the firm, but one is paid more, and by being paid more is probably also viewed as a higher- status employee and may be closer in line for a promotion or an additional raise. Virtually never will the firm "do the right thing" and adjust the lower-paid person up to a matching salary, because there's no market force compelling them to (due to that employee's asymmetric lack of knowledge about the situation).

Founders and investors often foolishly think of these information asymmetries as arbitrage opportunities, as one might in a financial market. But for extracting productivity from human workers, it usually doesn't work that way, and you're carrying a lot of risk that the whole company will become a toxic place that can't be saved even by vast amounts of "culture" engineering.

Note that rarely is it the founders / investors who are behaving irrationally in these cases (at least not w.r.t. their hiring efforts). It's more often the entry level or bright-eyed engineer who doesn't want to think about unpleasant negotiation or fairness in salary levels, and accepts free lunches in place of 401(k) matching.

<comment><USER7> Agree with all that you said and I have seen it first hand as I tend to be a poor negotiator and overly trust people. My main issue is the selling of the "mission" by investors and founders. Even in the first comment of the article you linked, Mark Suster talks about people obsessing about options. Certainly we should all be doing stuff for more than money, but if founders and investors weren't concerned at all about the money why not make these companies non-profits. The reality is they use the information asymmetry for their benefit and then try to pretend it doesn't matter and people should be about the mission. If you want a mission join the military or the peace corp. Your B2B app isn't a "mission".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You're probably in the Bay Area -- and if you don't want remote developers you're shutting yourself off from all of us who wouldn't move there no matter how high the compensation.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're actually in Copenhagen. Probably should have mentioned that in the OP.

Point taken though, we should consider taking in remote workers. My only "fear" is that it will be hard to build a good company culture without a "core" team sitting in the same location. We have some remote consultants working on our gui right now, and even though they do a fantastic job, it adds quite a lot of overhead in management and I'm not really satisfied with the knowledge sharing between the remote and the on-site teams. I guess there is a lot of room for improvements on our part here though.

<comment><USER9> It will be hard to build a good company even if everyone sits together...heck, it will be hard to build a bad one. I don't necessarily think that remote is or is not the answer, but finding the right person regardless of where that person lives and what that person needs is the problem.

I'd add that extrapolating from consultants to employees is fraught with hazard [the same is true for extrapolating from employee to consultant]. The context for the relationship is different. Anyway, reducing management overhead should not be a goal...managing people is a _full time_ job. Probably one of the hardest ones out there when done well.

Think about it this way: somehow the company leadership views people doing a fantastic job as unsatisfactory. Despite needing to ramp up staffing. Is that an attractive culture to potential hires?

Good luck.

<comment><USER10> This book[1] answers nearly all the questions a company would have about going remote. Might be a worthy read for the OP.

As you pointed out thought, remote or local, doesn't say much, there are other things that are more important.

[1] [https://37signals.com/remote/](https://37signals.com/remote/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Are you _sure_ you're offering above market? I can't tell you the number of times i've been contacted by a company with a 'great market rate' salary, offering me a better position than I'm in, for _way_ less than my current salary.

2\. Smart people want to work with smart people, so make sure the people doing the interview are doing the right things to attract the right folks. If I see a red flag in an interview, I'm going to be very weary.

3\. Get involved in a community! Whatever your stack is, start going to meetups for it, release some open source, give talks on your infrastructure, etc. Pretty soon you can be one of the names that comes up when someone is looking to work with a certain technology.

Look at Jane Street's model. They are a tiny (or, at least used to be, maybe now they're just small) compared to the big companies. They are _the_ OCaml guys, they don't have a big team, but if you want to make $$$ are interested in functional programming, you absolutely look into working there and their name comes up in a lot of conversations. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER12> From my experience, paying the premium to get on GitHub, StackOverflow, and any other major job post site as well as paying mid to upper six figures will always bring in good candidates.

Also offering a killer relocation package to candidates that aren't located near you can help.

<comment><USER13> Mid to upper six figures alone aught to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Simple: Give developers good reasons to join. It's not always about perks and benefits. Everyone wants their work to mean something.

Alan Eustace, SVP of Engineering @ Google, is often called their best recruiter. You might find some ideas that apply to your situation > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvebAGerh88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvebAGerh88)

</comment><comment><USER15> Most people don't jump for lateral moves. That leaves two options. Pay a lot more or find someone that can grow into the role. It's that simple. Or spend a lot of time, money and energy looking for someone that's dumb enough to jump for a lateral move.

<comment><USER16> I jumped for lateral move. For a better work environment and culture. To escape high pressure and assholes.

<comment><USER15> fair point. but, I suspect that they are a high pressure environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1) your space is "boring" and a start-up is high risk; you will naturally have to evaluate a larger number of applicants before finding the right one. From my experience when I worked in banking (USA, c2005) we had a hard time finding devs; in adult-content (c2009) applicants were plentiful; now I'm back in regulatory compliance and devs are "hard" to find; my associates in the-next- hot-lo-mo-so app have more candidates

2) You may be able to find one good dev-hire as a core builder; and continue to run with consultants going forward. Many times I've been able to engage a dev-consultant part-time and continue to increase the engagement - transitioning into full-time (or close to it).

<comment><USER18> Don't mean to derail the thread, but how come applicants for adult-content were plentiful? I would expect most people to try to avoid that area, if only for the reputation "costs"?

<comment><USER10> Towards whom? Handling HA in porn websites, especially in the top-20, is quite a challenge IMHO and any mid-to-senior DevOps/sysadmin position in such a company would carry some weight to a resume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> would help to see how you're advertising the role if you can share (keep the company name hidden if you want..)

other thing is, are you getting applications? is it after the applications that they leave you?

and where are you based?

</comment><comment><USER20> Its a slow grind using the traditional approaches. The current best developer in my group I hired after a 2.5 year search.

I would look for people that have side projects that are open sourced online. It shows they have a passion for what they do.

People who understand core programming concepts but program in a different language are ones I would consider if there are few candidates available in the language you use.

</comment><comment><USER21> "We know how important a good core team is for a startup, so we don't want to hire people we don't think fits in our team."

Is this code for "cultural fit"?

</comment><comment><USER22> To attract great engineers, show them these interesting problems that you're trying to solve. Talk about it publicly. Start an engineering blog. Network at tech events.

You're right in that a startup represents risk - what else can you offer in place of that risk? More money? More time? More freedom? More opportunity? You'll have to figure out what ticks with the developers you're trying to attract.

</comment><comment><USER23> Would you consider remote contractors? I (think I) am a decent full stack guy, and used to be a Quant (mentioning that because you said in the comments that your startup is in finance). Now I do contracts to fund my own startup. My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm a Senior Full-Stack Software Developer+Engineer born and living in the US with 14 years experience. I have a job right now, but I'm in the "Active Looking" status. I'm remote only, but would like to visit the company once in a while. I know how to ship. Hit me up.

</comment><comment><USER25> As someone who considers himself a good developer, I'll try to share some points with you. Hopefully they will be helpful, even if I'm positive you'll find at least one of them outrageous.

1) Companies don't do a good job of communicating their story. A typical job ad is a listing of technical terms. I don't care about them for the most part. What I want to hear is your story. That includes: \- Who you are, how you came to be \- What the problem you're trying to solve is, whom it will help. Do I make the lives of poor children better or do I help yet another rich bastard from Wall Street to get even richer? Now, for me that matters. \- What you have done already, what worked, what didn't, what you plan to do next \- Who the people you have are, their backgrounds, their culture, their interests, their personalities \- What the working culture is like, the process, the values, the priorities, the attitude \- Handling of all kinds of non-standard situations, personal conflicts. What if someone wants to work remotely, needs specific hardware/furniture, would like to take a break for whatever reasons, then come back? Will this be discussed or faced with a stone wall? \- Technical stuff, just to be thorough, in the last place though

Basically anything and everything to tell me who you are. Otherwise I can't distinguish between you and hundreds of others. The job ads which are personal stand out, sadly these only come as frequently as the year digits change.

2) If you want someone to come to work for you in your office, you absolutely must provide a complete and thorough relocation package covering the entire expenses. It's been said before in the thread, but it deserves to be mentioned as a separate answer.

I don't know much about Denmark, but I'm familiar with Germany. Let's say you were based in Munich and wanted a great developer to come to you. This is what I'm thinking:

\- To rent and set up an apartment in Munich you'd need at least 10-12K Euros in cash upfront \- Contracts are typically for a year minimum, that's another 15K Euros in delayed obligations \- If I come, find out after two weeks we don't fit and want to leave, I'll end up with a huge debt of close to 30K Euros, a punishment just for trying a new job \- If I stay, with the demeaning salaries offered by German companies, it'll still going to take some 12-18 months to compensate those expenses. Meaning I will be working for free for all this time. \- Verdict: I'm staying home. Even a job as a cleaning personnel is better than that, as in more lucrative and safer. But of course I'll just find a remote job for whomever pays the highest bid. Developers are in demand, you know.

And this is not even the worst. In France you need to have someone to vouch for you financially to be able to rent an apartment. In Belgium the minimum contract duration is either 3 or 8 years (considered short-term and long- term). Also, in France you have to pay some yearly tax as a tenant. What if I leave after a couple of months? Who's going to settle that when the year end comes, while I'm away with my visa long expired?

In short, unless the company is completely taking away those risks and problems, there's just nothing that could compel me to move.

3) Pay good money. I think for a good developer a very basic arrangement should start at about 4000 Euros as takeaway money, after taxes, rent, utilities and everything else. If that is someone who stands out, the price is higher.

4) Be flexible in all kinds of arrangements. Payment, working hours, holidays, everything should be open for negotiation. Things like NDAs and non-competes will scare away many great developers who have their own projects. Since you are run by VCs, they probably force you to require those documents to be signed by any hire, and that is a problem you'll have to solve before looking for great people.

5) Be nice and respectful with people. Don't push them through humiliating technical interviews. Don't tell them their CV is a lie. Don't tell them they have a wrong degree, they are not smart and don't have what it takes to be a great developer. Germany companies are notorious for being extremely arrogant and condescending, but others may be different. Just know if you have those personality traits, you have to keep them in check, as people from other cultures may find them plain hostile.

If you have these basics covered, you shouldn't have much problem finding people.

<comment><USER26> Can not agree more. That explains well about how LinkedIn screws itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Start searching in role-playing groups. Seriously. Talk about your ideas to the people who play.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why not try to post in this month's Who is hiring? thread?

</comment><comment><USER28> Leave some contact information.</comment>


FCC's deregulation of business data lines could mean a price hike - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcworld.com/article/3190015/internet/fccs-deregulation-of-business-data-lines-could-mean-a-price-hike.html <comment><USER2> I wonder how much money Ajit Pai is making on the backend.</comment>


Google Latitude comes to the iTunes Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2010/12/13/google-latitude-comes-to-the-app-store/

<comment><USER2> Previous submissions, same story, different source:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2000127> \- apple.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2000320> \- engadget.com

No comments (yet)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure we'll know soon enough, but I wonder how much this affects battery life. When apps like TomTom GPS go into the background and keep using location services, my entire battery can be used in just an hour or less it seems.</comment>


Efficient Parallel Set-Similarity Joins Using MapReduce - <AUTHOR> http://asterix.ics.uci.edu/fuzzyjoin/ <comment><USER2> For even more goodness: [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/mirek/papers/2011-SIGMOD- Paralle...](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/mirek/papers/2011-SIGMOD- ParallelJoins.pdf) (This paper briefly mentions and cites the topic paper.)

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like it's right up my alley. Thanks!</comment>


Semantic Experiences - <AUTHOR> https://research.google.com/semanticexperiences/ <comment><USER2> I turned myself into their desired lab rat for the "Semantris" blocks game. I "lost" the game, but on a few occasions really it didn't match the word I was giving a clue for. There seemed to be no way to say "nope, that's not what I meant" \-- which would seem to negatively reinforce what I thought the goal of the game was (to train the AI overlords on the semantics). I "lost", really, when the AI bot made mistakes. Perhaps the AI bot real goal is training me to make better, more obvious, clues. Weird.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting indeed.

The arcade game of semantris was really annoying because as soon as you got a word wrong the new words started to pile up making finding the original keywords difficult.

The tetris game was more pleasing and a funny thing happened to me as I tried to destroy the block "internet" with a word "google" and the second last block eliminated was "monopoly", hah. Mildly amusing.

But I'm curious to see what kind of applications can/will be made out of this.

<comment><USER4> Are you color vision impaired? Because I had no trouble distinguishing the words even as they moved?

This might be an accessibility issue?

<comment><USER3> I do have mild red-green color blindness although I'm not completely sure how the game is even supposed to work. So once you get a word wrong it shows new words that are still connected to the one you're trying to eliminate? But yes once the old words moved out of the green top 4 box I could not distinguish them from the rest.

<comment><USER4> So the rules are there is a highlighted word above the bottom 4. Type a word you think is semantically related to that highlighted word. Then the game will sort all words by its relation function. If the word you supplied is in the highest 4 (sorts to the bottom 4) then it explodes and you get a new word near the top of the list.

The words in the box are irrelevant once you explode a word because they are sorted by the old semantic relationship.

The highlighted word is light blue and all the other words are a medium grey. That's why I thought you might have a vision issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to really struggle with cultural references.

Sleippnr triggered "hamster" instead of horse.

"Long way down" triggered "game" instead of "motorcycle".

"Pecking at her nose" got "hairbrush" instead of "crow".

</comment><comment><USER6> A hallmark of good game design is making your losses feel like your fault and not the game's. You lost because you weren't good enough (yet), not because the game was unfair.

But when you're playing the blocks game and "two wheels" destroys "shoe" instead of "motorcycle" or "Jimmy Hendrix" is "drums" and not "guitar", it's a bit frustrating. Worse yet when you have to type "sweet food" five times in a row before it correctly guesses "cake". Things it thought are more "sweet food" than cake: protein, cheese, strawberry, dinner.

Finally, while we can make some fun associations ("rawr" will identify "lion") it's inconsistent regarding cultural references. "Kazooie" will correctly identify "banjo" but "swan lake" will select "pier" instead of "ballet".

I understand the point isn't the games and that the creators don't really have a direct input in these choices, but I found the game otherwise so enjoyable, I wish this wasn't an issue. As it is, carefully planned strategies are punished instead of rewarded. It was fun for a bit, though, and I thank you for that enjoyment.

</comment><comment><USER7> Too many words gotten from just typing 'sex'.</comment>


Ruby gaining a safe navigation operator: '.?' - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/11537 <comment><USER2> I think a good case could be made that, if you're designing a new dynamically typed language from scratch that doesn't have to support older code, safe array/object navigation should be the default.

My argument for this is you should design for the most common use case first, and most commonly people will want '.?' behavior. You can still check explicitly for null in the other cases, or even introduce a more cumbersome non-safe navigation operator. The resulting code will overall need fewer checks, be more readable, you'll have fewer crashes and exceptions, and it will generally do the right thing.

I occasionally write toy languages and this is one behavior I think I got right recently. Along the same lines, but as a more extreme measure, I would argue that invoking a method call on a null object should return null instead of throwing an exception.

<comment><USER3> I wildly disagree, because I get waking nightmares from the amount of implicit "wtf why doesn't it even enter my method" behavior that would imply, but I upvoted you because I think it's a very interesting idea and I wonder what others think.

<comment><USER2> I agree that the invokation idea is relatively wild, that's why I made it into a separate point. There are somewhat successful languages out there where sending a message to a null object doesn't do anything. If this is a class of bug that happens to you frequently, it's probably not for you. But once you get into the mindset that each method call is prepended by a virtual conditional, my hunch is you would know pretty quickly why your method isn't being called.

<comment><USER4> And most Objective-C (one of those languages) developers I've talked to about this would recall nightmares about that behaviour.

<comment><USER5> The main problem I've seen with Objective-C is due to the fact that nil has truthiness, so this code is dangerous:

        if (input.isInvalid()) {
          reject()
        } else {
          accept()
        }

If input is accidentally nil, it's an invisible bug.

The other main complaint is when you have a long string of methods unexpectedly turn out nil at the end, it's a pain to figure out which one it was.

<comment><USER6> This is entirely incorrect.

nil is a pointer to the value 0, and in C there is only one value that evaluates to a logical false, which is 0. Invoking a method on nil returns 0. This itself alleviates the kind of nil-check-chains discussed in this thread:

        [[[user profile] name] isEqualToString:@"Paul"];

        [user profile] && [[user profile] name] && [[[user profile] name] isKindOf:NSString] && [[[user profile] name] isEqualToString:@"Paul"];

if user.profile.name is nil, then that expression evaluates to the value 0, which as we discovered, is the _only value that evaluates to false in C_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been hoping this would show up in JavaScript after playing with CoffeeScript a few years ago. Being able to do:

        foo?.bar?('baz')

was quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER8> Similar to the new null-conditional operator in C#?

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn986595.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn986595.aspx)

<comment><USER9> Groovy's predates this one, but yeah, looks similar.

<comment><USER10> I remember Groovy didn't allow ? on indexes like in the third C# example:

      int? count = customers?[0]?.Orders?.Count();

I remember asking for it but it never came. I don't think Ruby's proposed .? syntax would work with indexes either unless they use [? ].

Neither Java nor Groovy has the int? declaration shown which enforces the optionality. The C# version looks more versatile.

Back when Groovy was more popular, its backers also discussed a cascading ? on their mailing list but it never happened. If C# had cascading ? then the example above would be

      int? count = customers?[0].Orders.Count();

because the first ? would ripple to the subsequent member accesses and index lookups.

<comment><USER9> Yep. I remember waving my arms and crying for ES6 to have '?.' back when the spec was open, but there was a lexical issue.

It's frustrating to have such useful features blocked by such seemingly small problems as ambiguous patterns of characters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand why this needs a special syntax -- to me ruby already has a little too much syntactic variation.

Why not just extend fetch or try e.g. -- .try(:profile, :thumbnails, :large)

<comment><USER12> I agree with this. I don't see why new syntax (which looks kinda confusing, IMO) should be added to solve a problem which can be solved with a method. A naive-2-minute implementation:

        module Chainable
          def chain(*kl)
            k = kl.shift

            if self.respond_to?(k)
              v = self.public_send(k)
            else
              v = nil
            end

            return v if kl.empty?

            unless v.respond_to? :chain
              raise ArgumentError, "can't chain on `#{k.inspect} => #{v.inspect}:#{v.class}`"
            end

            return v.chain(*kl)
          end
        end

and then this:

        class Object
          include Chainable
        end

<comment><USER13> Because the proposed version can be made a lot faster, even before considering that your version doesn't handle method arguments

<comment><USER11> > Because the proposed version can be made a lot faster

It being faster has nothing to do with the syntactical appearance of the operator. I think it's more pertinent to ask why does .chain_try or .tries or .fetches need a special operator than whether it's a convenient addition.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't _need_ a special operator for other reason than that by specifying the VM-level behaviour it can be made a lot more efficient.

And at that point naming it after something that are legal method names would be problematic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Should be noted that Ruby on Rails has had try [1] for years, which is something that I've noticed has a tendency to be the classic band-aid for loose error handling.

[1] [http://www.rubydoc.info/docs/rails/Object:try](http://www.rubydoc.info/docs/rails/Object:try)

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems like a perfectly valid opportunity to use the Interrobang character?

      foo‽bar("baz")

<comment><USER16> I don't have that on my keyboard, only ¿.

<comment><USER17> XCompose is your friend. At least when running X.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't this just encourage lazy and vague programming? It sounds like it cuts down on a lot of checks in certain situations, but I'm struggling to think of a coding pattern that's actually well designed that requires so many checks at the last minute without knowing what type and data you're dealing with.

<comment><USER18> To clarify, in the article linked they give this example: u.?profile.?thumbnails.?large

Using that operator a single time or whatnot seems handy, but chaining it like that just seems like poor practice to me.

<comment><USER19> It's in deep nesting like that that such an operator really comes into its own. If you only use it for single cases, it really isn't worth it.

In the article the 'problem' code is:

        if u && u.profile && u.profile.thumbnails && u.profiles.thumbnails.large
          do_something_with(u.profiles.thumbnails.large)
        fi

which repeats u 5 times, and the entire u.profiles.thumbnails.large twice!

which would be replaced by only asking once.

even worse (although somewhat clearer, perhaps) is what I've occasionally seen:

        if u
          if u.profile
            if u.profile.thumbnails
               if u.profile.thumbnails.large
                 do_something_with(u.profile.thumbnails.large)
               end
            end
          end
        end

And even the super verbose version there still can raise exceptions when you get slightly mad data - say you decode some JSON which has u.profile.thumbnails as "null" (a string) rather than actually a null. asking

        if u.profile.thumbnails

will be true - but when you request u.profile.thumbnails.large, you blow up.

You can achieve similar effects using only exceptions, but there's a good argument for using exceptions only for exceptional circumstances.

        begin
           do_something_with(u.profile.thumbnails.large)
        rescue NoMethodError #or similar
           # oh no!
        end

which (alas) also will catch all noMethodErrors in do_something_with. So you then end up with

        begin
          tmp = u.profile.thumbnails.large
        rescue
          tmp = nil
        end
        if tmp
            do_something(tmp)
        end

which is super ugly.

I may have got details wrong - not being a rubyist, but I think this is the general gist of where a nestable operator makes much much cleaner code, which catches more errors.

<comment><USER13> And it's worth pointing out that the above is also _slow_ whether you depend on exceptions or just the long if version, and depends on having methods with no side-effects, as several methods gets called multiple times.

As far as I see the proposed version will work equivalent to assigning the result of each method invocation to a temporary, and doing the next check on that, which gets far more ugly if you have to write it out

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting timing, _python-ideas_ has also been discussing this, leading to a new _PEP 505 - None-aware operators_ :

[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0505/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0505/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe we could use something more readable? What about:

        if posts.comments??.likes??

or

        if posts..comments..likes

instead of

        if posts.?comments.?likes

That would mirror the usage of ?? as the nil-coalescing operator in Swift.

</comment><comment><USER22> Affectionately called the "Elvis operator" by my development team.

<comment><USER10> Elvis is actually the name in Groovy for the ?: syntax (C# uses ??), not for the ?. syntax.

The name "elvis" was promoted by the then-project manager of Groovy in an attempt to change the origin meaning of "G-Strings", the name for interpolated strings in Groovy. It originally alluded to the item of clothing, but in an attempt to sanitize Groovy's image for marketing, he wanted it to have meant the string on Elvis's guitar, so he created an accompanying fun-name for the null coalescing operator.

<comment><USER22> That's fair. I come from a C# background and Mads Torgersen himself refers to the C#'s ?. syntax as the Elvis operator see ([https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/3-711](https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/3-711)) 30:50. It's all in good fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good, I guess it's a way to legitimise .try() I like it.

</comment><comment> V-2

        Ruby can't use "?." operator.

        Can we use ".?" syntax

Why couldn't Ruby use "?."?

<comment><USER24> For whatever reason, Ruby allows method names ending with ? or !. AFAIK the general practice is to use ! for methods that perform a mutation in-place (e.g. list.sort! would sort a list in place, list.sort would be expected to return a new list) and to use ? for methods that return a boolean (e.g. list.empty? would indicate whether the list is empty).

<comment><USER25> > AFAIK the general practice is to use ! for methods that perform a mutation > in-place

That's not quite the usual statement of the rule: ! is for methods where there exists a "dangerous" version and a "less dangerous" version, to denote the more dangerous version. A common example of that is methods where one version returns a copy of the original object with some modification applied and the other version modifies the original object in place, but IIRCT that's not the only distinction it is used for in the standard library and, more importantly, in-place mutations that aren't paired with a "return-a-modified-copy" method _don 't_ get the !.

<comment><USER26> Please define IIRCT as I cannot find what it's meant to mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That thread has some incredibly bad syntax ideas towards the bottom (#22, #23). A binary operator with a space in the middle?

</comment><comment><USER28> I am not familiar with Ruby except for the casual exposure to it through Sass but couldn't he just go for only

      if u.profiles.thumbnails.large

instead of these successive checks?

<comment><USER11> No, because you cannot access thumbnails on profiles = nil.

<comment><USER28> Why can't I access it? I'm genuinely curious about this.

<comment><USER29> The child objects may not exist. "u" is nil (a null pointer, more or less), calling "u.profiles" sends the :profiles message to nil. NilClass probably doesn't have a :profiles method, so this will probably raise a NoMethodError exception.

As for why this is a common problem, "u.profiles.thumbnails.large" is is probably a chain of Rails/ActiveRecord model associations[1], which generally map to table rows . If there the "profiles" table doesn't have any rows "WHERE profiles.user_id = users.id", then ActiveRecord will leave a nil[2] (or empty array) in user.profiles. This is true for all foreign key relationships, so you often end up having to do something to protect against null values (no rows) every time you move between models.

Sometimes it is possible to work around this by always creating the associated model when the parent object is created, that only works in a few cases. Note: I recommend against doing tricks to auto-build the associated model on first access: that kind of "clever" solution can lead to confusing bugs later on. (I learned that one the hard way)

[1] [http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html)

[2] ibid, 188.8.131.52 "The association method returns the associated object, if any. If no associated object is found, it returns nil."

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the detailed answer. I think it's safe to assume that Ruby is a bit complicated at least for me but my main point was if he is just interested in checking for the `large` prop (I am not sure about the proper term here in Ruby), I'd expect him to just check for it directly and if this fails, he goes on to the next step as planned and that's why it seemed bit redundant to me esp. I didn't see any exceptions handling done to make use of the fail of previous checks on that chain to instruct the end user or dev accordingly.

Again excuse my ignorance of the subject and technical details in Ruby.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The joy of iPad - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/apple/the-joy-of-ipad/ <comment><USER2> Nice to step back every now and then to appreciate the wonders of modern technology.</comment>


An overview of the JavaScript ecosystem - <AUTHOR> https://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/a-javascript-ecosystem-overview/ <comment><USER2> Nice post.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Prevent Website(s) from Fingerprinting? - <AUTHOR> I use Mozilla (71.0), with add ons - ghostery, privacy badger, ABP, No script. In privacy setting, for Mozilla, i chose custom,i.e to block fingerprinting.
I ran EFF's Panopticlick [1] and it should that i am still being fingerprinted.<p>how to stop this?<p>[1]https://panopticlick.eff.org/ <comment><USER2> Just saw this today:

An ongoing comprehensive user.js template for configuring and hardening Firefox privacy, security and anti-fingerprinting

[https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks- user.js](https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js)

<comment><USER2> Good news! The latest Firefox 72 blocks third-party fingerprinting by default.

[https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/01/07/firefox-72-fing...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/01/07/firefox-72-fingerprinting/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> there really isn't any simple way of being fingerprinted that I've come across other than generating noise, but I am not an expert in this area.

Anyone else want to chime in that has experience in this area?

</comment><comment><USER4> I am not an expert in these but isn't' tracking IP address also part of fingerprinting ? If thats the case, other than using something like TOR, can you really hide that ?

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you tried setting privacy.resistFingerprinting in about:config?

</comment><comment><USER6> Use tor browser, its designed so that every one has the same fingerprint iirc.</comment>


Yale researchers create anti-laser - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/hardware/137581/new-anti-laser-tech-paves-way-optical-computing <comment><USER2> But where will we find all the inverse-sharks?</comment>


Canada is using ancestry DNA websites to help it deport people – VICE News - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/wjkxmy/canada-is-using-ancestry-dna-websites-to-help-it-deport-people <comment><USER2> Effective and accurate. Not sure why this isn't standard across the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> Deportation in Canada has always been big</comment>


Americans wary of Facebook 'power,' survey shows - <AUTHOR> https://techxplore.com/news/2020-03-americans-wary-facebook-power-survey.html <comment><USER2> Upsetting really, but expected. It demonstrates the real power of propaganda when it's crafted by these huge tech giants.

It also shows that when change eventually comes that it'll likely begin outside the US (with stats like that US politicians would dare not act).</comment>


After Paris Attacks, French Cops Want to Block Tor and Forbid Free Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-paris-attacks-proposed-french-law-would-block-tor-and-forbid-free-wi-fi <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10685815)</comment>


Apple Says there are Only Two OS's - OS X and Windows 7 - <AUTHOR>

I've gotten tired of watching the spinning beachball, so I decided to switch back to Linux. A friend has a dual boot set up on his mac - OS X and Linux, so I bought a little macbook pro and . . .
Bootcamp Assistant only supports Windows 7
After updating the OS X on the system, my arch linux boot disk cannot find the disks - which it could prior to the update - so I can't even flush the hd and make a single boot machine.
Looks like apple is now an entertainment company.
Does anybody know of a nice laptop that I can use - preferably Arch (Ubuntu seems to be going (or have gone) the way of bloat and slow <comment><USER3> There's no need to change your OS (especially because the OS really doesn't matter anymore). If you're tired of the beachball, get a RAM upgrade. I can upgrade my machine (which has 8 GB) to 16 GB for about a day's pay (or two). And I don't make very much money right now. Changing the OS usually takes an entire weekend (tweaking things and moving stuff takes longer than many of us think). So by the time you get it done, you've probably broken even.

Unless you like doing this sort of pain, in which case you can't be helped :)

<comment><AUTHOR> my main machine is an mbp - which is maxed at 8 Gig. Every day it starts paging under at most a modest load. This is an artifact of the operating system and Safari (which leaks memory)

I had the same issues with uSoft windows which led me to switching to Mac's. Early macbooks and mbp's did not do this, but have been getting progressively worse since Snow Leopard. Lion has a very nice interface and a lot of convenience, but, for me, it's getting intolerable.

I'm reverting to Linux for development work. I'll probably keep the mac for graphics

<comment><USER4> Run Chrome not Safari.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you get a early 2011 MBP you might be about to install linux on it. The models afterward have a new UEFI that does not allow OS's that aren't "allowed".

Lookup the new UEFI to get more information about it.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Looks like apple is now an entertainment company._

Looks like a non sequitur to me.

Apple was never in the business of selling general purpose hardware.

Running Windows via Bootcamp is just a courtesy for the multitude of switches from Windows.

Why should they bother supporting an OS that has extremely few desktop users, and dozens of variations?

<comment><AUTHOR> These are strange ideas.

Apple was a computer company until they brought out the iPod. I believe that about 80% of their income now comes from non-computer products - with an emphasis on entertainment.

Running windows was critical to Apple's acceptance at the time they switch from power pc to intel processors because of Microsoft's dominance of the computer market. Bootcamp allowed Apple to sell into the PC space - <USER2> which they would not have been able to overshadow Microsoft.

Just think back about 5 years.

And why should they bother supporting Linux? Read Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

<comment><USER6> _Apple was a computer company until they brought out the iPod._

No, they was an integrated computer/os company (some even call it an "computing experience" company). Selling (or buying) hardware was never the whole point of an Apple, just the one with higher margins.

 _I believe that about 80% of their income now comes from non-computer products - with an emphasis on entertainment._

And I believe that if you call the iPhone or the iPad an "entertainment" device, you are missing like 80% of the big picture. A phone is an indispensable everyday tool, not to mention a business tool, for the majority of the population. And the iPad has elements of what computers for the general public (including professionals) will look like, ten years on. Like this one: 1/4 of European doctors use an iPad for work: [http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-57379622-243/study- euro...](http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-57379622-243/study-european- doctors-getting-ipad-fever/)

Even if it's 1/10 or 1/20, it's a mighty impressive trend, from a market segment that was a tiny 1/1000 niche before the iPad.

Actually, Apple made MORE inroads into the enterprise with the iPhone and the iPad than they ever did with the Mac.

 _Running windows was critical to Apple's acceptance at the time they switch from power pc to intel processors because of Microsoft's dominance of the computer market._

No, it was not. Actually Bootcamp, and the running windows capability, came much after the switch from power pc to intel, a year or more after. For quite some time there was no option to run Windows on an Intel Mac.

 _Bootcamp allowed Apple to sell into the PC space - without which they would not have been able to overshadow Microsoft._

They haven't "overshadowed" Microsoft. Apple's share went from 5% to 10-12%. Microsoft still have 7-8 times that much.

And, since Mac's share was in an upwards trend (from 2% when Jobs come aboard), even before the switch to Intel, no one can say how much this switch influenced the market share increase.

Where Apple DID overshadow MS is in the media player, phone and tablet space. And there it doesn't run on Intel, it runs on ARM.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Location Finder – Find the optimal location to meet your remote team - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesurfoffice.com/location-finder/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN!

I built a simple free tool called Location Finder. I saw it is often very hard for a remote team to find the right spot where to meet. Location Finder calculates the most optimal location to bring everyone from the team together.

The flight algorithm considers: 1) Average travel time per person (the most important criterion), 2) Average number of layovers per person, 3) Estimated flight costs.

This tool is based on Kiwi.com API that searches flight connections of more than 500 airlines. It is not a booking tool - it acts as an 'advisor' to help you discover the optimal location to host your next company meetup.

It is my first project shared on HN, hope you are not going to turn it down in the comments.</comment>


As Finland Reels, Microsoft Doubles Down With Nokia Phone Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/09/03/business/03reuters-microsoft-nokia-decline-insight.html?hp&_r=0

<comment><USER2> The influx of new software, design and consulting companies by ex-Nokia employees will certainly have some kind of effect.

With its Bridge Program, Nokia encouraged those that were laid off to become entrepreneurs by giving away free training and grants. [http://publications.theseus.fi/handle/10024/52495](http://publications.theseus.fi/handle/10024/52495)

The grants from the Bridge program are running out. At the same time, the government needs to reduce its spending by around 10%. Our tech sector and startups are heavily financed through government controlled institutions that will certainly face budget cuts.

Soon we'll be in a situation, where there are hundreds of very capable companies in dire financial situations.

I run a small web application development company in Oulu, Finland. I started the company in 2009, a bit before Nokia's struggles started to materialize. We're a 3 person development team specializing in developing large scale javascript applications. One designer, two developers.

I'm terrified. I'm scared of the influx of competition. I'm scared that local demand will dry up. Sometimes I'm certain that the sky will fall down.

At the same time I see a lot of potential for co-operation with the new companies. Finding employees should definitely be a lot easier now. The startups haven't tied themselves to just a few subcontractors like Nokia, so they all are potential new clients.

As you can see, I'm mostly confused. I see the Microsoft-deal to be primarily a good thing. I believe that in the short term it will stop the layoffs and at least ease the uncertainty a bit.

A friend was able to put into words the feelings many of us have been going through today, and for the last few years: "Denial-Anger-Bargaining- Depression-Acceptance #Nokia"

</comment><comment><USER3> Canada survived Nortel's flameout, although Nokia seems even a bigger part of the economy, or at least was.

<comment><USER4> Finland is a lot smaller than Canada, 1/6th the population, 1/7th the GDP (per Wikipedia).</comment></comment>


Largest Ever Clinical Study on Vitamin D Shows We're Wrong About Crucial Benefit - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/largest-ever-clinical-study-on-vitamin-d-shows-we-re-wrong-about-a-crucial-benefit <comment><USER2> This article comes from someone who is well-credentialed but not in the specific topic of Vitamin D. His attribution of its current popularity is based on a flawed hypothesis: That the current popularity surrounding it is about fracture cases in senior homes. He focuses on correlations of fractures to supplementation, speedily dismissing any other evidence of benefits as cherry-picking, giving no figures about how many overdose cases he is seeing(what cases there are must be quite rare, since I've observed that clinicians writing about D3 have gradually bumped up their recommended upper limits for the past decade running with no end in sight), and failing to discuss other causal factors of his main point(e.g. D3 has been shown to be anti-inflammatory which would lead to less pain, more mobility and increased fall risk). I have to conclude that it's a scare piece.

I will stick with my D3 supplements, TYVM.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      The results showed no association between vitamin D levels over a lifetime and the risk of fracture.

Actually, the paper says mostly the exact opposite: "There is _high quality evidence_ that vitamin D plus calcium _is_ associated with a _statistically significant reduction in incidence of new non-vertebral fractures_. "

The article focuses on the limited apparent benefits in the smaller populations and only on hip and vertebral fractures. Well, sure, I can see how an 80-year-old who has been D-deficient for a lifetime will not have his brittle bones suddenly cured by D or Ca suppementation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where did you find that line? Are you sure you are reading the correct paper? [https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3225](https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3225)

At the end of the paper it says: _Genetic predisposition to lower vitamin D levels and estimated calcium intake from dairy sources were not associated with fracture risk_

<comment><USER4> The paper that the article links to is this one:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24729336](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24729336)

That quote appears in a sentence near the middle of the "MAIN RESULTS" section.

The sentence you quoted does not disagree with this at all; it's unclear what it has to do with the "supplemental D has no benefit" argument.

<comment><USER5> Hmmm.

The original article this was republished from is here:

[https://theconversation.com/vitamin-d-a-pseudo-vitamin- for-a...](https://theconversation.com/vitamin-d-a-pseudo-vitamin-for-a-pseudo- disease-101907)

The third paragraph of that article says:

      The largest ever clinical study on the benefits of vitamin D
      in preventing fractures is now reported in the BMJ, with over
      500,000 people and around 188,000 fractures from 23 cohorts
      from many countries.

With a link on the "largest ever clinical study" text to:

[https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3225](https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3225)

The article presently pointed at by HN (on sciencealert.com), is a re- publishing... with the link removed.

Seems kinda dodgy. :(

HN mods - It'd probably be better to link to the original article, as the sciencealert one looks to have specific, strategic problems. ;/</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learning Advanced Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/

<comment><USER2> "javascript : the good parts " is a very good book to keep handy.</comment>


BlackGirlsCode Raises $21,000 To Fund Summer Of Code Program - <AUTHOR> http://techli.com/2012/07/black-girls-code-fund-program/ <comment><USER2> I realize that the realities of the limited resources available for charities and non-profits is what leads to the ethnic and gender based targeting, but this just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is it a good cause? Yes. Teaching any disadvantaged group a useful skill is a great thing, but solving a problem of exclusion with further exclusion is, in principal, bad.

I grew up in a poor, mostly black, rural county in Virginia. The opportunities for learning to code were zero. There was no computer science class, while students attending public schools in the DC suburbs of northern Virginia got to have programming classes starting in middle school.

People WANTED to learn to code, but they couldn't. These were poor people, of all colors and genders.

Will this make Women's Studies graduates and professors happy? Yes. Will it make African-American Studies graduates and professors happy? Probably.

I could point out the bullshit in this idea in so many ways, but I'll stick with just one:

Among black americans, which group has a lower graduation rate? Males or females? Which group is more likely to be unemployed, males or females? Which group is more likely to be incarcerated? The list goes on.

I know it's not cool to help boys/males these days, but all the statistics point to a dramatic problem with young men of all races today. It's too bad that there isn't a powerful special interest group backed up by a bunch of humanities professors looking out for the impoverished non-black non-females of America.

Charities should be based on need and helping the greater good, not on playing favorites.

<comment><USER3> I read your rant a few times and I've yet to see your point.

 _Charities should be based on need and helping the greater good, not on playing favorites._

This isn't a charity. A black woman started this program to address a legitimate need that she saw. Others who agreed with her gave her money to do it.

Where is the bad in this? How is this anything but a net positive for the world?

<comment><USER4> I understand where the GP is coming from.

Teaching kids to code is an absolutely nice thing to do. But segregating based on color or gender or caste is never a good idea. What if a poor white or Asian or Hispanic kid wants to join this class? They'll be turned away?

To give an example: India is a deeply divided society, based on caste/religion etc. In many educational institutions, huge percentage of seats are reserved for the so called "lower" castes. So a kid, who gets very low grades, can get into a good institution, just because he is from a lower caste, _even_ if that kid's family is rich. On the other hand, a poor kid from a so called "higher" caste, can't get in, even after getting high grades, as there are only so many seats and competition is tough. This has wrecked havoc in the Indian society, as absolutely dumb kids get into good colleges, while bright kids are left out.

Charities should never ever be based on color, gender, caste etc. Charity should be based on need and need only. Any kid who wants to learn to code, should be welcome, irrespective of their color. It does however, make sense to say no based on affordability - meaning, saying no to a rich kid makes sense, as he/she will find another teacher anyway, because he/she can afford it.

Again, she is doing a great noble work, no question about it. It would be even more awesome, if she just taught all kids, instead of just black kids.

<comment><USER5> > But segregating based on color or gender or caste is never a good idea. What > if a poor white or Asian or Hispanic kid wants to join this class?

Charities are free to focus on where the most need is based on the limited resources they have. There is a significant lack of women of color in US tech circles, so there is nothing wrong with a charity targeting that. Charity by definition won't be able to focus on everyone.

> To give an example: India is a deeply divided society, based on > caste/religion etc.

This is a US-based charity targeting people of color living in the US. Comparisons between the US and India are not helpful here.

> Charities should never ever be based on color, gender, caste etc. Charity > should be based on need and need only.

This is nonsense. Those that would benefit the most from this charity program already face discrimination and lack of opportunity BECAUSE OF their race and gender.

> It would be even more awesome, if she just taught all kids, instead of just > black kids.

It would also be awesome if social barriers didn't exist at all and this kind of program wouldn't be needed, but we don't live in that world. That said, this program is absolutely doing good work and is right to target who needs this kind of assistance the most.

<comment><USER2> The assumption that people face discrimination because of race is ham fisted and wrong. People face discrimination in the U.S. largely because of their CULTURE. Dress the wrong way, speak in the wrong dialect (whether that is an Appalachian dialect or a Memphis African American dialect) at a job interview, and you are likely to be discriminated against.

A huge number of black Americans in the U.S. face discrimination because they grew up in a culture which affects the way that they dress, speak, and act. The Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has a fascinating book called Disintegration about the various cultures present in the African American population in the United States. The particular culture of African Americans that faces the huge barriers of discrimination, bad schools, and bad upbringing are referred to in his book as "the Abandoned." As a white American who grew up in a trailer park in a mostly black area of the rural south, I happen to have a knowledge that most white Americans I encounter don't SEEM to have. And that is that the vast majority of discrimination against black americans is selectively directed against the "Abandoned", mainly in a passive, rather than active way. It is much more insidious in that sense.

I bring this up because too often I see whites who simply don't know anything other than what they learned in a college class say that "blacks" face barriers. It is much, much more complex than that. Here's a quote from a New York Times book review of Robinson's work:

"During the past four decades, Robinson persuasively argues, black America has splintered into four subgroups: the Transcendent elite; the Mainstream middle class, which now accounts for a majority of black Americans; an Emergent community made up of mixed-race families and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean; and the Abandoned, a large and growing underclass concentrated in the inner cities and depressed pockets of the rural South."

<comment><USER5> > The assumption that people face discrimination because of race is ham fisted > and wrong. People face discrimination in the U.S. largely because of their > CULTURE.

Ah of course, if only people acted more white they wouldn't have all these problems! /s

Improving ones class status or conforming to mainstream, white ideas about acceptable culture do not in any way stop or erase racism. Systemic and institutional racism affects all people of color. That some have different experiences or are affected differently is to be expected given how racism intersects with class and gender.

> As a white American who grew up in a trailer park in a mostly black area of > the rural south, I happen to have a knowledge that most white Americans I > encounter don't SEEM to have

You definitely may have a different experience compared to other white people, but you aren't black and don't live that experience, this factoid isn't relevant. By definition you cannot claim to know black experience first hand because you are not black.

> And that is that the vast majority of discrimination against black americans > is selectively directed against the "Abandoned", mainly in a passive, rather > than active way.

I don't dispute that the most marginalized people are the most affected by racism, classism, etc. However, that doesn't mean that racism doesn't affect people of color who have class privileges.

BlackGirlsCode is a program directly targeted at the people you call "Abandoned" (get way to establish other-ness by not calling them people and implying that at some point these people were cared for by the mainstream). The whole reason why this program exists in the first place is to help people who have been hit the hardest by racism, classism, and gender discrimination.

<comment><USER2> 'Abandoned' is Eugene Robinson's term. He is a famous, left of center political commentator and writer for the Washington Post. He is black, and if you had any idea of what you were talking about, you would realize that 'Abandoned' doesn't reference them being taken care of by the mainstream at one point. It references the fact that the 'white flight' of the 1950's - 70's is a misnomer. It was really a middle class flight from cities, but the black middle class was delayed in their "abandoning" the inner cities due to racist housing discrimination policies in white suburbs. Once these were taken away in the 60's, the black middle class also fled the cities.

"Ah of course, if only people acted more white they wouldn't have all these problems"

This statement is exactly what I'm talking about. As if there is one 'white' culture in America. There isn't. I speak in a different manner at work than I do at home. My native dialect is not considered acceptable in business. I don't say y'all or ain't, and I shorten my words into the Anglo-Saxon, northeastern dialect that is the de-facto business standard English of the U.S. If I don't, I suffer the consequences. 'White' is a race, not a culture. But again, you completely miss this. I guess you also think that a black person who speaks in a north-eastern anglo-saxon dialect is 'acting white' correct? This is such bullshit, and it is the epitome of a person who learned about culture in a classroom, rather than living in a truly integrated environment.

My best friend growing up was victimized (physically attacked) by 'Abandoned' kids because he did well in school and 'acted white.'(there words, not mine) Nice to see this type of thinking isn't limited to just them. /s

The majority of white people I encounter who claim to be multicultural have never even spent the night under the roof of a person of color, let alone attended churches or social gatherings to truly understand that its about culture, not race.

<comment><USER5> > It was really a middle class flight from cities, but the black middle class > was delayed in their "abandoning" the inner cities due to racist housing > discrimination policies in white suburbs. Once these were taken away in the > 60's, the black middle class also fled the cities.

You are right that white flight is really a class flight, but we should be clear that whites overwhelmingly benefited from this movement for a variety of reasons, including their easier access to better economic status and the enactment of racist laws that prohibited non-whites from participating in moving to the suburbs.

However, calling people "abandoned" still doesn't make any sense. How can a group of people be abandoned if they were never included in the mainstream in the first place? In a capitalist economy like the US, the middle class depends on the poor to continue to function and that kind of classism is a big part of our society. Ultimately all that matters is that people of color still face many barriers and oppressions, micro and macro, every day and those oppressions are intersectional with race, gender, and class, among other things.

> This statement is exactly what I'm talking about. As if there is one 'white' > culture in America.

In the US, there IS only one mainstream culture and it places whiteness above other races. When I say white culture, I do not strictly mean the various cultures and histories of lightly skinned people. Rather, I'm talking about mainstream American culture: white, hetero-normative, imperialist, capitalist, and patriarchal enterprise.

> My best friend growing up was victimized (physically attacked) by > 'Abandoned' kids because he did well in school and 'acted white.'(there > words, not mine) Nice to see this type of thinking isn't limited to just > them. /s

I'm sorry that this happened to your friend, but if you are insinuating that calling point problematic statements is the same as physically beating someone, you are saying that problematic shit is above criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a simple test I use for these cases... it's called the "Least Restrictive Subset Test", or LRST for short. You apply it to see if targeting a specific group is worthwhile.

It works by asking two simple questions:

1) If I marketed to a less restrictive subset, would I capture a smaller percentage of my target audience (in proportion to the population)? For example, if I said, "GirlsCode" -- would I still get ~10% black females attending? I suspect you'd get the expected percentage of white females attending, so if white girls were my target audience, I needn't restrict the audience any further. But for black females I would.

2) If I market to this restricted subset will I likely increase the total number of my target audience in attendance. For example, if I said, "WhiteMenCode" do I expect more white men to attend than if I said "MenCode"? I suspect probably not (at least not people serious about coding, versus just trying to prove a point about race). But BlackGirlsCode probably will increase the total number of black females who are serious about learning to code.

I think BlackGirlsCode passes the LRST.

<comment><USER7> I can see your point but I think it is pretty clear that most of the minority groups are at a disadvantage to start with (Asian and Jewish minority in US are exceptions, their income is higher than average, the proportion of Jewish representation in law schools, for example, is disproportionately higher, perhaps 35% at Harvard, but that's an exceptionally well-accomplished group).

If the parents don't have enough money to feed the kids, the first thing on the mind would not be the next programming language to learn, it would be about the meal for the next afternoon. Compare that kid to someone whose parents are able to afford the education of kids at the top, most expensive business school or law school of the country. They are not competing at an equal level. Unfortunately the average black happens to be much poorer than the average white (although there are more poor whites than the total number of poor blacks but that's because the blacks are about 13% of total, whites are about 72% of the total). [edited]

I don't think anyone in Brazil would have an event "Latina hackathon" but a "Latina hackathon" in US would be understandable.

[http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/us/study-finds- medi...](http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/us/study-finds-median- wealth-for-single-black-women-at-5-236905/#ixzz210IRpCE3)

Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5

Among the most startling revelations in the wealth data is that while single white women in the prime of their working years (ages 36 to 49) have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61 percent of their single white male counterparts), the median wealth for single black women is only $5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, such a lot of negative comments. HN really sounds mean sometimes. Sure, it is a charity program targeting a specific group of people. But that's true of essentially all charities. The Boy Scouts only help boys, PyLadies only teaches women to program in Python, the The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria doesn't help people with cancer. The organizers are adding to the social good and helping a deserving group of girls. Good for them.

<comment><USER9> _The Boy Scouts only help boys_

And only straight boys! No gays allowed there (in general).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I love about this initiative is it solves several problems at once, and builds a foundation for related groups (women in general, and black people in general) to gravitate to this field. They'll naturally find people similar to them and make it easier to relate to their peers.

<comment><USER11> "They'll naturally find people similar to them and make it easier to relate to their peers."

Relatability is the key thing. You're spot on here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been following this program for a while and even got to meet Kimberly at O'Reilly Fluent earlier in the year.. her enthusiasm is infectious! As important as her work is to the girls, though, I particularly hope she inspires other _adults_ to take on this mentoring role so that everywhere can have its equivalent.

Things like this are springing up all over. For example, here in the UK, Code Club has been founded by two women to create and support after-school programming clubs: <http://codeclub.org.uk/>

<comment><USER13> I volunteered for when they come to Detroit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One line here stuck out for bad statistics:

"According to research gathered by BlackGirlsCode, African American women make up 4.8 percent of graduate enrollment in computer science programs, while only 0.03 percent of female Hispanic freshmen intended to major in computer science in 2006."

To start with, the line implies that these two statistic are related, but they are about different ethnicities, at different education levels comparing completely separate metrics!

Secondly, the 4.8 percent statistic seems to imply that this is under- representation, but being that African Americans make up ~12.6% of the population and women are very roughly half of that, 4.8 percent seems really close to demographic representation.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great, and good for them.

However as often happens, people are now complaining that they shouldn't have a programme just for black girls since it's racist/sexist. It's not. People/groups who need help and are disadvantaged, should be helped. If 2 babies are born, and one is very healthy and one is very sick, we should give the sick one more medical attention than the healthy one. We should not give everyone the same amount of help, we should try to ensure that everyone has the same chance. That means giving one group more help than another. 'Everyone having the same chance' is what happens when we get rid of racism/sexism (we're not there yet).

<comment><USER15> 'Everyone having the same chance' is what happens when we get rid of racism/sexism (we're not there yet).

Indeed. Someone wrote a post about how being born white and male in America is like starting a character in an RPG with boosted stats.

It does have a hint of truth to it. There is literally nothing a white man can't do in America whereas other races have significantly less chance of achieving the same success, especially Asian Americans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is such an important initiative! Several teens that were in my Media course (focused on Minority Women in Technology) are attending the Atlanta Session.

</comment><comment><USER17> Several comments claim that targeting by race is inherently wrong. I disagree. Anyone want to back that claim up with logic?

<comment><USER9> Sometimes people in the privileged group (male and/or white) don't like targetting based on race/gender when it's negatively affects _them_.

<comment><USER18> This kind of "logic" really bothers me.

Just because a chunk of a certain demographic is comparatively "privileged", we should gloss over all those who struggle to make a living simply because they were born a white male? If anything, being born poor and white can be _more_ difficult because people bitch about your "privilege" each time you ask for the slightest degree of help.

If you're poor and white, you're pretty much screwed when it comes to being able to afford colleges. Most scholarships serve people that belong to a certain (non-white) race, religious, or military background. You don't get access to any tutoring and you're usually working after school to help support your family, so it's borderline impossible to get a 4.0 GPA and even begin qualifying for non-racial scholarships.

Outside of racial profiling within America's law enforcement (which is a huge, huge, huge problem that desperately needs to be fixed), there's really no "white privilege" in America. It's "high-income privilege." Anybody born of a wealthy family has a chance, and anybody who isn't suffers. The problem is that we're still looking at race when determining how much support to offer instead of looking at how much a person needs it.

<comment><USER19> > Outside of racial profiling within America's law enforcement [...] there's > really no "white privilege" in America.

Spoken like a white person. As a fellow white person, let me tell you: you're wrong.

Some years back I shaved my head for a year or so. The difference was astounding. People treated me very differently. Suddenly they were scared of me. I mentioned to some friends that people were now crossing the street to avoid me. One of them, a tall black male, said, "Well now you know." And he's right. I look for it now and I see white people doing stuff like this all the time. I'm sure I miss a lot of it, too.

Anecdotes aside, a study shows that people with white-sounding names get 50% more job callbacks than people with black-sounding names: <http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html>

I agree that there's substantial class discrimination, and further that being poor in the US is a bucket of shit. But although white privilege may have lessened in the last 50 years, it is still alive and well.

<comment><USER9> Another way (as a man) to get an idea of what's going on. Join a kitting/crochet group. Try to learn how to knit. (There's knitting circles all over the place) You'll find yourself in a female dominated environment, tis a kinda weird feeling at first, and a bit eye opening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ok, cool. Everyone has their ideas, they all make sense (we're all reasonably rational people here) and, in an ideal world, I agree that we should not need or have these groups. Except... the under-representation is already there, so we have to deal with it. And I think BGC is a damn fine way to deal with part of it.

Is there anyone here who is NOT a white male and would care to comment?

<comment><USER21> While agree with your comment, I think your last comment is unwarranted.

Just because somebody is a white male does not devalue their point. Moreover, you should really never judge an argument based on the person making it.

<comment><USER19> Hi! White male here.

I am absolutely less qualified to comment on racism. Because I very rarely experience it, and often don't notice it when it happens.

Similarly, I also believe that one should be suspicious of non-technical managers who have opinions on how to code.

Experience matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Our mission with BlackGirlsCode is to "change the ratio" of women of color in technology and that begins with introducing computer programming and STEM subjects to girls of all colors at an early age. "

It's not only for black girls. I suspect it's for all but white though so they still exclude based on color. And of course age and gender.

I really wish people would stop reinforcing racial discrimination of all sorts. Even the age discrimination is a bit offensive. I understand it may be easier to get funding when you can present a narrow group.

<comment><USER23> That is why (for example in Python) there is PyLadies, and that is why there is every other general Python group, in which there is no group-wide disadvantage for white men. Most of these groups I have been to, have mostly been white men with lots of alpha-nerding going on. I can't say I have seen any overt instances of racism but I still totally appreciate that minorities could be uncomfortable and benefit greatly from a support system that could increase their comfort level in the community and make them feel more assured.

I don't see this as a zero-sum war against white people and I hope you don't either.

<comment><USER22> I don't see it as a war against anybody but whenever you discriminate based on race you are encouraging others to do the same. I don't like to see race brought up in every facet of life. If it wasn't such a commonly used differentiator then everybody would feel comfortable in any group because race would be insignificant.

Taken to the extreme, it becomes downright immature and pathetic. Do we really need a group specifically for blacks, and one for asians, and one for mixed black asians, and one for mexicans, and one for indians... etc? Give me a break. I wish we could all just collectively grow up.

Actually that's not quite right. Young children don't tend to segregate like that. They have us beat in that area. It's only once they learn our ways that they start to do it. Again, because it is continually reinforced as a part of society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are 3 ways to respond to the critics of BlackGirlsCode: 1) The weakest response is to grow upset and say nothing 2) The average response will post a comment in defense of good sense 3) The best response is to take action. So hit this link up and give Black Girls Code a boost of support and morale <http://www.blackgirlscode.com/help-us-grow.html>

Finally, when PoorPeopleCode, WhiteBoysCode or Latina Hackathon call upon the Hacker News community for support, for the sake of whatever you believe in, GIVE BACK so that others can do what you do. It is NEVER about exclusion. The _meme_ is about recognizing "I'm blessed with talent, skill and experience so I help to pay it forward".

I just took the highest level of action by sending my gift of support of $100.

Don't just sit there shaking your head; do something!

</comment><comment><USER25> Why not NonCodersCode?

There are plenty of poor, uneducated white girls and boys who could benefit from programs like this.

Oh, what's that you say? We already have _enough_ people with their skin color in the computer science field? Shame on me! You're right -- ignore the white trash.

The (attractive, affluent, _privileged_ ) whites who enjoy ignoring white trash are right -- poor, uneducated whites are unimportant. In fact, poor, uneducated whites (especially the toothless ones) are less important and less worthy of help than attractive, affluent, privileged people with more melanin.

</comment><comment><USER26> I like the idea of the program, but specifically "Black girls"...

<comment><USER27> Why not? This is one of the hardest hit economic demographics in the country. I don't think targeting it to be specifically for them is bad; in fact I think it is probably best. This demographics tends to get lost in the "need more women in tech" crowd.

<comment><USER28> >Why not?

I agree - IF we can also agree that groups for "White Women", "Bald Hispanic Men Under 40", etc... are also allowed.

Society needs to come to a consensus on this. Either there is a useful purpose to segmenting private groups by age, gender, race, income, etc... or there isn't. If there is a valid purpose, then we should all agree that all possible combination of these factors are _equally_ valid.

The end result is that some poor white woman won't be able to attend because of the color of her skin. I'm not sure what happens to her mulatto friend...I guess it depends how black she looks.

<comment><USER27> But this is nothing more than naive pedantry. There is a very large economic demographic in this country that is apparently at a disadvantage. It's called black girls/females. It's not bald hispanic athiests, or freckle-faced Irish mormons or celebrity scientologists that have blond hair.

There is a real problem that can potentially be solved. You can play this game if you want but there is quite clearly a qualitative difference between groups like "black girls" and "bald hispanic men under 40." It's just ridiculous; it's sophomoric to conflate the two.

As to your last point, so the perfect is the enemy of the good? The end goal is to help real people, not sit in an ivory tower and debate about whether "race even exists" or any of this nonsense. If calling the group "Black Girls Can Code" allows the group to raise more money and help a very specific group of girls, then that is good.

I think there is a good reason to think that if there was a group called "Woman Can Code" that this particular group/demographic would not benefit as much as it might as it is currently labeled (perhaps less participation, perhaps drowned out by the others, etc). We can be pedantic and cry foul that "Wah, there is not a White Women group or a Native American Transgender" group but that doesn't end up helping anyone.

The world is more complex than that. "Bald Hispanic" is not a comparison to "black girls" any serious person would make.

<comment><USER28> >There is a very large economic demographic in this country that is apparently at a disadvantage. It's called black girls/females.

The only point in your reply that I understand is that you believe black women are poor, therefore typical social rules regarding segregation don't apply.

>If calling the group "Black Girls Can Code" allows the group to raise more money...

By this logic you are OK with a group called "White boys can code" _IF_ it helped that group raise money? And why not, these could be boys from Appalachia who have Mountain Dew and Snickers for dinner every night.

I think this is a conversation worth having. At some point we need to go beyond convenient stereo types and get to the root of the problem.

<comment><USER27> > The only point in your reply that I understand is that you believe black > women are poor, therefore typical social rules regarding segregation don't > apply.

I don't know why you're having trouble understanding this. This stuff is pretty basic to understand. Your view is childish and pedantic. "Wah realizing there are social mores in effect in the real world is just segregation."

> By this logic you are OK with a group called "White boys can code" IF it > helped that group raise money? And why not, these could be boys from > Appalachia who have Mountain Dew and Snickers for dinner every night.

No, I think there are qualitative social implications that we all recognize when we stop making silly statements like "Why is there not White Entertainment Television." But I do think having groups as you suggested is a good idea but I think the naming of them should pay attention to social realities.

<comment><USER28> >This stuff is pretty basic to understand.

Well then help me...

>Your view is childish and pedantic.

Ad hominem, not helpful.

>No, I think there are qualitative social implications that _we all recognize_

Emphasis mine. Like what? Black people are poor, so they get a pass? Is that what you mean? Jesus, just say it.

>But I do think having groups as you suggested is a good idea but I think the naming of them should pay attention to social realities.

What are your version of social realities? You say this shit with a wink and a nod...You know blacks are poor, asians are good with numbers, jews are good with money, whites are oppressors, and gays speak with a lisp. Are these the "social realities" you speak of?

For the love of god, stop being so vague and just say what you mean. For instance, the following is my exact feeling on this matter.

There are only two non-bigoted positions to have on this issue. One, it's OK for people to segregate private groups by race, gender, etc... Or, two, its not OK at all. Any position in between can only be justified by relying on stereo types.

<comment><USER27> That's not ad hominem, look it up. Your view is childish and pedantic, exactly. You are more concerned with what you suppose to be technically "segregation."

You said all the racist stuff not me. I didn't say that blacks are poor so the get a pass. I said they are social realities that reasonable people, i.e. non- childlike pedants, that understand. :)

There are people still alive that lived under Jim Crow. It is only very recently that public bigotry against black people has been considered taboo. People always trot out "slavery's been over for 150 years" bit but the problems begot by slavery didn't go away over night. In fact, we have some moron on this thread spouting off about how whites are intellectually superior to blacks and the best response most on HN have to that is "Well, we should really consider charitably the intellectual possibility the blacks are 'stupider' than whites."

You've offered nothing more than a false dichotomy in your last statement. Black people have been inundated with the statements both direct and indirect of inferiority. As well, whether you believe it or not, many places even in our current situation are made to feel as the other. Being "black girls" is part of the identify of many "girls that happen to be black (if I'm going to play this pedantic game with you)." Therefore, what exactly with promoting a notion that something fundamental to their identity is good, i.e. "Black Girls Can Code?"

Maybe your jibber jabber would make sense if we were robots or Vulcans, but I mean, that's just no reality. I'm sorry, I can't change that for you. The world is more complicated than you think it is, welcome to Earth.

Do you really want me to explain all of the culture of the Western world to you? I mean it may seem that I'm shirking from a responsibility by not offering you one but it just seems ridiculous that you would need one.

<comment><USER28> >That's not ad hominem, look it up. Your view is childish and pedantic,

Oh, you said my _view_...If that's not ad hominem, then I should tell you that I think your view is idiotic and short sighted...I was holding back on that one before.

>but I mean, that's just no [sic] reality

Ok, I get it. The world is the way it is and we should not endeavor to change it. We should treat some people as special and others as not special. Score one more point for moral relativism.

With logic like that, I guess I should hope I'm not in a group that falls out of favor.

>Do you really want me to explain all of the culture of the Western world to you?

In all seriousness, I would be incredibly grateful to hear your version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I volunteered for BGC a few months ago and I am a white woman. The problem that this group is trying to solve can be summed up in the fact that there were plenty of black girls learning how to code, but not plenty of black women teaching them. I remember that we had two white women, one Asian woman, three white men, and two black women volunteering total. So I guess it's great that the internet community is so intent on over analyzing everything, but I'm pretty sure all of us would like to be able to teach any child how to code. However, Black Girls Code is clearly better at marketing themselves than all the other groups that I've never heard of.</comment>


How Software Groups Rot: Legacy of the Expert Beginner - <AUTHOR> https://www.daedtech.com/how-software-groups-rot-legacy-of-the-expert-beginner <comment><USER2> I have a value of "whoever has the highest standards in a room is the leader". The part where the new guys want to use good form, but are quashed, rang true to me. It's extremely frustrating when an underling wants to improve a process, but management has artificially low standards without good reason. It's a big motivator to start your own business, because no1 can fly as high as you can, when you're doing something you are passionate about. I never want to turn into the guy who crushes good ideas, unless maybe because of temporary time constraints.

The other thing that annoys me is when someone "does something in the name of good standards", but it doesn't fit, is not needed, is over-engineered, and hurts moral of people working on that code; because they are just not able to think for themselves, or it wasn't their idea, so they leap to standards as their authority, when it is too far a cry. They are posers to me. Its like when someone is a beginner in thinking for themselves, and are slaves to accepted "norms", or even a beginner in humility, when they have to have their own way, and cannot accept another, because they think managers have to have all the good ideas, not the best ability to lead.</comment>


Organic foods cut your cancer risk, study suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/22/health/organic-food-cancer-study/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the link to the study: [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2707948)

I haven't read through all of it yet but I'm curious if the reduction is purely because of a correlation between eating organic foods and simply eating less overall or other factors correlated with a healthy lifestyle (e.g. actually exercising).

<comment><USER2> My guess is this is going to correlate to eating more vegetables.

<comment><USER3> I don't see the direct correlation there. Organic is a choice you can make about nearly every product these days.

You can eat unhealthy fast food all day and be all organic.

<comment><USER4> Sure, in theory. However, organic produce isn't that much more expensive than conventionally grown produce, but organic meat is way more expensive than conventionally grown meat. I expect someone choosing organic foods will likely eat more veggies than someone eating conventionally farmed foods.

Also, it's pretty hard to find organic fast food. Most restaurants that push organic foods are a bit more expensive, so again, people would likely avoid them.

<comment><USER3> Definitly biased but we have all that in switzerland. Like Organic snacks/fast food on the roadside.

From my experience I can tell this is also the case in Austria and the Netherlands.

I also know people eating exclusively or mostly organic but still a meat heavy diet (I do as well).

I would want to argue it's not a income question but the average life quality is probably just that much higher.

As a reference organic meat in shops is about twice the price. In take aways way less as service is the actual main cost.

Edit:// lowest available meat quality is probably a factor to. All these countries have rather high minimal standards compared to many other countries at least

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The point of the USDA sticker is not avoiding pesticides. That would be false anyways, there are organic pesticides in use. The point is everything else required to earn that sticker. That is why I avoid conventional products.</comment>


James Gosling on radioactive cache RAM chips and the death of Sun (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/at_the_mercy_of_suppliers <comment><USER2> 3 things

1\. This problem used to occur in ceramic packaging. A physicists the early Intel discovered this problem.

2\. Those who say ECC isn't necessary are usually the ones who never measure error rates.

3\. Cheap x86 killed Sun, not this.

<comment><AUTHOR> On pt 3: Perhaps cheap x86 would have killed Sun anyway. But it could be possible that this Ultrasparc-ii disaster and the subsequental loss of huge clients were the killing blow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, it wasn't even the RAM, it was the packaging, that had in turn made the RAM chips also radioactive!

<comment><USER4> A stray alpha particle from the packaging won't turn the RAM die radioactive, but it _will_ flip bits which is the problem Gosling is describing.

<comment><USER3> He says the packaging was radioactive, but (I assume) it would have been discarded at the factory during assembly.

So where did the particles come from at runtime?

<comment><USER5> The CPU packaging is the material that the literal silicon is mounted on and sealed with. The CPU pins go through it. Sometimes there is a metal heat spreader attached to it. It's not the plastic wrap and box product packaging.

Wikipedia has some good photos of the UltraSPARC II CPU packaging: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_II)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also, this should be labeled [2010]

<comment><AUTHOR> How do I change the title?

<comment><USER6> You can do it for a couple hours by clicking 'edit'. After that, we have to do it. We did it.</comment></comment></comment>