Why SaaS is in Trouble - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dennybritz.com/2015/07/18/why-saas-is-in-trouble/

<comment><USER2> I completely disagree with the article. There are innumerable small businesses that do not and never will have their own cloud setup, no matter how easy you make it.

SaaS is exactly what they need because if they can access the Internet then they can use the service. This is simple to understand and use. Your local plumber, baker and candlestick maker have no idea what the cloud is, let alone open source software.

<comment><AUTHOR> No disagreement here, but depending on which type of SaaS service you are talking about your local bakers and plumbers make up a very small number of the users (or revenue). They don't use Analytics, expensive CRMs, payroll services, etc. Services like these make most of their money from larger corporations or tech companies who are more likely to move away from the SaaS cloud.

But you're totally right about services where the majority of revenue comes from local SMBs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The author mentions Slack as a winning, for now, SaaS but then talks about deploying open source SaaS projects to your own cloud or servers using containers.

But, is there an open source version of Slack? No.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the confusion, I mentioned Slack as an example as software that replaced something that was not defensible (Hipchat). It wasn't meant to be an example for open source or container software. My mistake for not making that clear.

That being said, I believe there will be a good open source version of Slack at some point. In fact, there is quite a number of people who do not want to move from Hipchat to Slack only because they need to deploy it within their own infrastructure because of compliance.</comment></comment>


Understanding Bihar's Super 30 Phenomenon - <AUTHOR> https://www.newslaundry.com/2019/07/29/iit-super-30-bihar-anand-hrithik-roshan <comment><USER2> Unpopular opinion: this is not the way engineering should be taught, to ace a stupid test. I understand these are economically underprivileged kids and I wish them best, but I would really love it if someone followed up on where they end up after graduation.

I'm hoping that as the economy develops further, the need to go to such extremes will diminish and folks can pursue their true calling.

<comment><USER3> Taxpayer money shouldn't be spent in funding such competition.

While education systems in west are focused towards collaboration, Indian education system makes them compete against each other like wild dogs.

When will India understand, it's not about competition but collaboration.

We can argue this system creates very few winners and a lot of people feel like losers in this system.

If they made them feel better, they can increase their net education output which would be far better than showcasing any specific rank or endorsing any specific brand like IIT.

<comment><USER4> >While education systems in west are focused towards collaboration

Citation needed. Capitalism is basically "free for all competition" in a nutshell.

<comment><USER5> that's a cynical view. Capitalism is the freedom to buy and sell from whoever you choose. If what you choose to sell is something so unique, you'll escape competition.

<comment><USER6> Oh no, if you want the cynical view of capitalism it's that the already rich create a rigged system in which they are able to exert disproportionate influence on the government and regulators that affect their ability to create and preserve their own wealth. They then use this influence to push weaker competitors out of the marketplace, eventually creating a single monopoly on an industry. Allowed to go to its conclusion, you replace political empires with financial rule.

That's just the short version. "free for all" is actually the optimistic view in my opinion. At least in a "free for all" metaphor you have the assumption of equal standing and "the strongest" winning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IITians are demi gods in India. This status puts a lot of pressure on student at a young age to crack this entrance. So much so, that there are regular cases of students committing suicide due to the pressure from society and family.

For many who don't know, there are coaching classes where preparation for the exam is begun as early as the 5th or 6th grade.

It took me 2 years to get over the failure of not getting into IIT. It's a really messed up situation. I really hope parents understand the situation and stop traumatizing their kids.

<comment><USER8> For a lot of kids its the only way out of the hood. Especially these kids in super 30. If they don't make it its back to poverty. If they get in they have the ability change their entire families socioeconomic status including parents and siblings. Its like pro athletes or rappers trying to get out of the hood. Its hard to do.

To a lot of kids it is a life or death situation.

<comment><USER7> That is really sad if true.

It's ok to say that cracking the entrance exam is going to give them a great platform on which they can build their future.

But telling a 16 year old to clear it believing it's a matter of life and death . That has to be one of the biggest failure of the parents/society/educational system.

I really hope that Internet education reaches a stage where no one has to face such a situation. Being one of those failed students, I would like to tell any one who is trying to clear the exam and reading this. Try your best, it's ok if you don't clear. If you persist and keep working hard with whatever you have, you will do wonders.(Ignore people who say otherwise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Entrance exam culture is biggest bullshit of the century India facing. On one hand college dropout are starting startups and disciplined intelligence thrown in to mindless clerical works, ultimately proving first idea works better than the second.

<comment><USER10> Very similarly, the tech industry requires you to leetcode non stop. I wish it stops too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Indian education system is completely messed up. It destroys any trace of passion, curiosity, or thinking different. What the world needs more of isn't competent bureaucrats (which IIT produces a lot of), it is people who are creative, passionate, and courageous. I hope to god we never import the Asian exam mentality to the us.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately we already are. See SAT prep schools and test prep industry in general in the US and abroad for an example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Was not that bad when I was growing up. Sure there was pressure to become engineer/doctor but IIT was not be-all end-all. There was always DCE, REC. Have things changed that much in last 20 years?

<comment><USER14> > but IIT was not be-all end-all. There was always DCE, REC.

Its a way to use as filters at later stage of life. Job or marriage (see iitiimshaadi.com). Top 2% or top 10%.

<comment><USER13> Man I am glad I missed all this. And not even sure how this would have worked. Back in my days at IITB we had about 350 boys and 7 girls.

<comment><USER15> Prettier/fairer the girl, the higher the IIT rank of the guy. Isn't that how it's been working since forever?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On a personal note the brand IIT has helped me in making me what I am (whatever that be). Even though I did not make it to IIT, the aspiration to get into IIT made me push myself to my limits. The preparation to get in helped me in getting top score in my state engineering exam allowing me to gain admission to the "best" engineering college of my state. That led to easy job placements, getting selected for lead role ( my manager actually said that he selected me just by the Engineering school I graduated from.. He was happy so I guess I didn't do too bad on real life performance parameters) and getting accepted for research based masters by prof who knew about the college.

So coming back to the point, the IITs inspire you to dream and be ambitious and bold. I think for that matter alone, the premium value of the brand needs to be preserved. It has helped people from small towns like mine, where people don't know the difference between IIT and ITI, to aim high.

</comment><comment><USER17> IITians.. paid for by the Indian tax payer. But of no use to India, but US.

<comment><USER14> > IITians..

Why target only IITians, even non-IITians migrate in large numbers. Also, they are not 100% to blame for this, if you foster a good environment nobody will leave. Everyone is to be blamed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Move adaptation - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_30_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_30_\(film\))

</comment><comment><USER19> Related to this, check out Dakshana ([https://dakshana.org/](https://dakshana.org/) ). They're a very well run charity with great metrics, and their Annual Reports are interesting reading.

</comment><comment><USER20> Trailer link: [https://youtu.be/QpvEWVVnICE](https://youtu.be/QpvEWVVnICE)

It has English subtitles.

</comment><comment><USER21> > I know you have watched Super 30, the movie, so have I

Wow, a lead that just begs the reader to stop.

<comment><USER22> It is written for an Indian audience, presumably. Would you expect all articles to be written generically or to your cultural tastes?

<comment><USER23> No, but the article could use a two sentence explanation of what is "Super 30"</comment></comment></comment>


Google, Facebook and Zynga on a hiring binge in California - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/03/high-tech-industry-on-hiring-binge-in-california-google-facebook-and-zynga-lead-the-pack.html

<comment><USER2> I joined linkedin this week, 16 hours later I was contacted by a Google recruiter "impressed" with my software engineering experience.

I listed my current job title 'Software Developer'. No description, no technical bullet points, nothing, just a title. Thats what they were "impressed" with.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about the "5 million dollar bonus" (I'm guessing restricted stocks) to retain one top engineer? We must be switching over from brawn to brains in the human value chain, which is apt, as the ENTIRE value of NFL teams doesn't even equal the value of any ONE of the companies mentioned (Total value of Facebook is $50B while total value for combined NFL teams is ~37B for example). Either that, or we're in a bubble. I, being the incurable optimist, vote for the former.

<comment><USER4> Well it depends on how you look at it.

Elite brawn (elite NFL player): 20M / year.

Elite brain (elite programmer): (way)<1M / year.

Note: I didn't compare brawn to say, Zuckerberg, because that would be more like comparing the owners of the team.

Just my $0.02.

<comment><USER3> "Elite brain (elite programmer): (way)<1M / year"

"Elite brain" isn't some clean up hitter lighting up code or architecting for you. Elite brain is CTO, or EVP of technology. In terms of e.g., basketball, the Micky Arison of Apple is undoubtedly Steve Jobs, so LeBron is someone like Jony Ives. I'm quite sure Jony is walking away with way more than $20M after designing the iPod, iPhone and iPad (some speculate it's somewhere in the $150-200 Million range).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've noticed a spike in emails from recruiters for jobs/gigs in California recently, both from the companies cited (I've had emails from all 3) and from others. I've lost track of how many times in the last week alone I've had to tell recruiters "I'm not willing to move to California at the moment". Thinking of making a macro for it.

Also, I've come close a few times to telling recruiters to tell their clients to please discover the joys of ssh/sftp/dropbox/basecamp/email/irc/phone, ie. telecommuting. I'm increasingly finding it funny that employers care where my body is considering how an extreme gap there is between the demand for qualified engineers and the supply of available+interested+affordable ones.

<comment><USER6> And some of us would love to work for company X, but bought houses during the bubble and are now effectively stuck where we're at.

I'd would be great to telecommute, but most aren't up for that as jedberg illustrates.

<comment><USER7> If you are a superior candidate (significant years of experience, many successful products that you were one of the couple key dev members on), interview anyway. There are relocation benefits usable to the large players with deeper pockets, one of which includes third-party companies that will buy and resell your house from you via a subsidy provided by your new company.

<comment><USER6> I'm over $150k upside down on my house. No one is going to make up that difference.

<comment><USER8> If you're that far in the hole, does it really make sense to keep throwing good money after bad?

<comment><USER6> Im not sure what you mean exactly. Sadly I have a recourse loan because i refinanced which means the bank can come after my assets if I default. Being a well paid programmer for a decade means i have assets to take unlike many people in my situation. They aren't limited to taking just the house and ruining my credit, so I'll be gambling to some degree if I try to walk away from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No kidding! They keep stealing my people! ;)

Seriously though, it's been making things tough. We've really had to step up our game lately to make compelling arguments. Luckily, we have some advantages over those guys, like being able to push code live to millions of people with pretty much no bureaucracy.

<comment><USER10> Play against their giant corporate structure. They can't adapt and be flexible, but you can. You might not be able to match their salary + bonus, but you can do other things. How about giving your employees more vacation time? A lot of them are not living in the same town as their family, they will value having time to spend with family, or to travel. Google has what? 3 weeks of time off? Give them 6 if you can. Pitch it as, "sure you can make all that money, but will you have time to spend with you kids or to travel?"

Also, let some people work from home if possible. Let them keep flexible hours, make 11 to 3 core hours and let people come in early or leave late ... It is stuff that might take lots of red tape in large companies.

<comment><USER11> Google does all that stuff already.

<comment><USER10> 6 weeks of vacation? starting up?

<comment><USER12> 3 weeks at start; 4 weeks after 3 years; 5 weeks after 5 years: [http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/ind...](http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/index.html#ta)

By "does this already", rdouble probably meant: work from home, flexible hours, etc.

More vacation time in lieu of salary may also be a tough sell: Google allows up to several (3? 6?) month of unpaid personal time off, making it pretty easy to trade salary for vacation "on demand".

<comment><USER10> So no 6 weeks starting up then. Yes he might have meant 'work from home' and 'flex hours' but the main point was extra vacation time.

I think it appeals to younger people as they like to travel, and many probably live away from their parents and friends, and it appeals to developers that have children, as they would like to more time with their family, and most importantly, that time is not arbitrarily convertible to cash.

Sure Google would let them take unpaid time off, but paid time off is even better.

The main point is that Google being a large company it is harder for it to adjust and make changes. That vulnerability should be exploited and taken advantage by smaller startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Which is why for some reason's it's good to be an entrepreneur outside of California. Recently traveling to the US this was quite a revelation: being in Europe (Amsterdam) can also be a competitive advantage.

<comment><USER14> I don't follow unless you are saying that other areas are less competitive.

There is a good reason that CA is hot for tech companies. It's the whole ecosystem.

Were it not for the ecosystem, these same folks are smart enough to found or move their companies elsewhere.

<comment><USER15> I think he meant that not being in California is an advantage because you don't have 3 hulking giants (and more) taking practically 100% of the available engineers. Whatever is left is fiercely battled for by the smaller companies.

<comment><USER16> Some people just want to work in small companies. I get recruited from Google and Facebook regularly. I'm not ready to work in that kind of environment. I know lots of people who aren't. I work with several of them. We want to do things those guys aren't going to do.

<comment><USER17> ditto here. After my experience with Amazon, it definitely made my mind that big corporation are not happy places in general.

Sure, I could tell people I worked on the Kindle and I did a bunch of the ui and framework (worked well in bars with girls), but the bureaucracy of a large company just sucks your soul. You have to cut through so much b.s. to just get anything done. I remember at some point the documentation of some features were taking more than the implementation and testing itself, just to satisfy some guidelines.

Aslo, unless you are starting your own company, a lot of smaller companies are a crapshoot.

I really think that mid-sized nimble companies are the best (between 50 and 180 people). If they are doing well, and are growing, there is a lot more opportunity in such companies career wise, and friendship/social wise than in a large corp. You just create better bonds with your mates, working towards a common goal, without political bs., and you have the chance to see all parts of the business closer (in large corps, you are just in some part of engineering, with no visibility to the business decisions).

This month I just moved to Yammer, and so far it has been awesome experience. (btw, if any of you guys are looking for something new in SF let me know firstname.lastname@example.com. We are looking for great engineers, both server and client side. Also this is a company that practices <http://programming- motherfucker.com/> for real. There is no forced scrum, tdd, tbd, or whatever. It is up to the individual engineers in teams to come up with something that works well for them, as long as things go well.

I would say other similar companies to Yammer in the Bay Area are: EventBrite, Square, Evernote, etc...

Stable, growing, real business models, and yet fun to work at.

If you are an up and coming hacker, join one of these companies, work for a while (and get real salaries, and equity), meet great people, and move on to your own thing when you are ready.

Just my 2 cents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone here in California not asked for a raise in, say, six months? Headlines like this mean the demand curve has shifted. If you don't communicate that fact to your bosses, they will likely not recalculate the market clearing price for your labor for you. (If it had gone down, on the other hand...)

<comment><USER19> > Anyone here in California not asked for a raise in, say, six months?

Sure, the suckers on H1B work visas who are waiting for their green cards, which can take several years... Given that your H1B visa is tied to a particular job at a particular company at a particular salary, and your green card application resets if you change jobs, it obviously discourages H1B workers from fully participating in the free labour market.

Not that I'm bitter or anything, ;), but I was exactly in that situation last year, getting hounded by recruiters for jobs much more appealing that the one I was in. But my H1B visa and green card application, not to mention the financial responsibility of providing for my family, prevented me from considering those positions.

So I said adios to the US, played my trump card of being married to an Australian, and I now have permanent residency in Australia without any restrictions on who I can or cannot work for (unless it's a government position that requires I be a citizen, which doesn't interest me anyway).

FWIW, Amazon's Singapore AWS data center is working out just fine from Down Under as I work on my startup...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "San Francisco's Twitter… has more than 400 employees and plans to grow to 3,000 employees by July 2013."

Wow. Planned staff increases:

      Google: 25%
      YouTube: 30%
      Facebook: 50%
      Twitter: 650% (over 2 years)

That is amazing. I am very curious what organization and methods Twitter has planned to manage scaling up like that.

<comment><USER21> I hear Facebook has internal guidelines that say they can't grow by more than 60% y/y.

<comment><USER22> In _Founders at Work_, McKinsey's consultants are quoted as recommending growth be no greater than 25% because past that, the corporate culture is lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> These three companies have each now opened offices in Seattle too. I suppose that could end up heating up that market as well.</comment>


Self-Driving Cars: Who Is Responsible When Someone Dies? - <AUTHOR> http://www.eejournal.com/article/maybe-you-cant-drive-my-car-yet/ <comment><USER2> Wally Rhines of Mentor Graphics recently discussed the need for simulation testing for autonomous vehicle systems. He quoted the CEO of Toyota as saying that 9 billion miles of testing would be required, and pointed our that would take 300 cars, driving 60 miles per hour, 24 hours a day for 50 years. He argues that the only way to achieve that level of testing is (therefore) simulation.</comment>


Clear cutting 12000 year old forest for barely profitable lignite - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw.com/en/clash-in-german-forest-as-red-line-is-crossed/a-36606405 <comment><USER2> In another 12,000 years it might grow back.

<comment><USER3> Forests come back a helluva lot quicker than most people think. In this case, where they are pit-mining, you might be looking at a hundred years or so, rather than the 20-30 if they had just clear-cut it and let it grow back.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not entirely true, unless you only consider the visual aspects of the forest a human can perceive. If you include the microbiome and soil along with the fauna and species diversity. Those are unlikely to ever return except in terms of far longer periods, if ever.</comment></comment></comment>


Coronavirus can travel twice as far as official 'safe distance' - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074351/coronavirus-can-travel-twice-far-official-safe-distance-and-stay <comment><USER2> The paper is said to have been retracted on March, 10th as I read on Twitter. I'll see if I can find the source on the journals website.

Edit:

There it is. Bing Translate works for their website while Google Translate failed:

[http://www.translatetheweb.com/?from=&to=en&a=http%3a%2f%2fk...](http://www.translatetheweb.com/?from=&to=en&a=http%3a%2f%2fkns.cnki.net%2fkcms%2fdetail%2f43.1223.r.20200304.1634.008.html)

Here's the PDF behind the Withdrawal statement button:

[http://c61.cnki.net/cjfd/Withdraw/SYYY/SYYY20200304003.pdf](http://c61.cnki.net/cjfd/Withdraw/SYYY/SYYY20200304003.pdf)

According to Bing, the withdrawal statement gives no reason and reads as follows:

 _" The withdrawal statement "Practical Preventive Medicine" march 5 through the first author of the network is: Luo Wei; HaiZheng; Xiao good ness; and so on: together in public transport aerosol-borne transmission of the new coronavirus pneumonia concentrated outbreak epidemiological investigation application withdrawn. Editor's Department of Practical Preventive Medicine"_</comment>


Worldwide Distribution of Blood Types - <AUTHOR> http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm <comment><USER2> How do they identify who is a 'native'? And does it not seem a bit suspicious to anybody that the area where the 'A' blood type crops up in Africa is also the same area where slaves were picked up from and returned back during abolishment?

Also, if you overlay the O graph on top of the B type, you see some correlation with the language family ([http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Languengl...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Languengl.gif)) in Africa.

Unfortunately, the addition of european languages in South America spoils the correlation.

I bet it would be quite interesting to compare ethnic groups with language families and blood types.

</comment><comment><USER3> For some reason I've always had the impression that O was rare. I cross checked with wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type#ABO_and_Rh_distribut...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type#ABO_and_Rh_distribution_by_country) and it seems a bit less than A (O+ and O- compared to A+, A-, AB+ and AB-), but no means rare. Did anybody else have this prejudice?

The 'native' part also seems a little dubious. What is that supposed to mean in terms of their samples?

<comment><USER4> Yup, I had exactly the same reaction (I was even just about to post the wikipedia url, before I read your post).

I may have been getting a few ideas mixed up though - certainly someone with O- is quite rare, but O+ is very common. And then there is the fact that if you are O-, you are guaranteed to have the lowest likelihood of finding a matching donor.</comment></comment>


A Plea for Lean Software (1995) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Articles/LeanSoftware.pdf <comment><USER2> It is worth re-posting this, and re-reading Wirth's works every couple of years. The module concept of Oberon's predecessor Modula-2 is still unrivalled today: _.def modules that specify the interface and that can be compiled separately from their_.mod implementations, which may not even exist when a client application can already be coded against the compiled interface in a type-safe way.

Also, Wirth's book Compilerbau (in German, not sure if it was translated) is a piece of pristine clarity; at just ~100 pages in pocket paperback form, everyone reading it immediately feels writing a compiler or byte-code interpreter is simple and they can do it.

<comment><USER3> I love Wirth's work, but that has been available in Ada, Mesa, Mesa/Cedar and a plenty of other languages as well.

And since it is available in Ada, it is rivalled today.

More to the point, Ada allows for multiple interface packages, an idea also copied by Modula-3, where the same package can be exposed in different ways to multiple clients.

For example, the same package can have a public interface for in-house consume that is wider than the official public interface for third parties.

<comment><USER4> > For example, the same package can have a public interface for in-house > consume that is wider than the official public interface for third parties.

Isn't this similar to package private in Java or internal in C#?

<comment><USER3> Not really, because the interface is separate from the implementation and you can provide multiple interface packages for the same implementation package.

So client A sees mylib-public-A, client B sees mylib-public-B, but both link to the same mylib so to speak.

<comment><USER4> Ahhh, neat!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "With Project Oberon we have demonstrated that flexible and powerful systems can be built with substantially fewer resources in less time than usual. The plague of software explosion is not a "law of nature."

What then, in the software world, is a "law of nature", and how might we discover such a law/s by examining evidence, such as, the evidence deposited over the last 25 years of software proliferation?

Might we examine source code, or executable code?

Or number of users?

Or revenue from sales?

Or aesthetic qualities of the source code, such as structure, legibility, or maintainability, or portability; or qualities of the executable code, such as size, performance, or intuitiveness of the UI?

<comment><USER6> One thing that has been sorely missing IMO in the last 25 years of software proliferation is a complete usable system that can be understood in its entirety by a single human being in one lifetime.

It doesn't have to be your day-to-day desktop, but for learning, research and experimenting I think solutions with that goal would still be worthwhile.

<comment><USER7> Viewpoints Research Institute (VPRI) tried to make such a system around 10 years ago [http://www.vpri.org](http://www.vpri.org) (e.g. [http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf) )

IIRC it bootstraps from a prescheme-like language into a Smalltalk-like dynamic language ( [https://www.piumarta.com/software/maru](https://www.piumarta.com/software/maru) [https://www.piumarta.com/software/cola](https://www.piumarta.com/software/cola) ), and uses PEG parsers ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMeta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMeta) ) to implement domain-specific languages, e.g. the Nile graphics language ( [https://github.com/damelang/nile](https://github.com/damelang/nile) )

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I am aware of the research at VPRI. However nothing coherent seems to have come out of it. Yet I am running a complete Oberon system on my laptop as we speak. And all source and documentation is available at [http://www.projectoberon.com](http://www.projectoberon.com) I really liked the idea though.

<comment><USER8> I really wish he would release the updated Oberon book in another format besides PDF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't really buy the core premise that "Enhanced user convenience and functionality supposedly justify the increased size of software, but a closer look reveals these justifications to be shaky".

Users can still choose to use vi, or emacs, or textpad, or whatever stripped- down, fast, minimalist software they prefer; the old stuff hasn't gone away. Meanwhile, my IDE re-compiles/re-parses my program as I type, and tells me immediately if there are errors. I choose to use the bigger, "slower" program because it makes me dramatically more productive. Sure, input latency might not be as good as a barebones editor, but that cost more than pays for itself (as always, for me -- YMMV).

I can appreciate the aesthetic desire for a lean, minimal program, but to ignore the very real productivity benefits that come from tolerating larger programs is, I think, myopic.

This comes up around here a lot in the context of slow web pages; a very important thing to note that I think is often overlooked is that it's not just the user's productivity that matters. If developers have to spend 2x the time optimizing their code to fit in a limited memory allocation, then that's 2x the cost to the consumer for the same amount of features (or 1/2 the features for the same price). If speed/performance is a feature that your customers want to pay for, they will let you know. If it's not, then your competitor will eat your lunch by building more features that users actually care about, while you optimize your existing feature-set.

Programs are bounded by "feels slow" on one side, and "expensive to optimize further" on the other. If 99.9% of your users (i.e. the lay users, excluding the experts in the HN crowd) don't perceive your program/page to be slow, why would you optimize further? Sure, if you're Google, a few ms faster can equate to millions of dollars of revenue, but that's not the fitness landscape that most software evolves in.

<comment><USER10> > If 99.9% of your users (i.e. the lay users, excluding the experts in the HN > crowd) don't perceive your program/page to be slow, why would you optimize > further?

And how do you know if they perceive it to be slow? I suspect that if you did optimize it to be faster (e.g. lower latency interactions), they would notice the improvement, even if they weren't sure why it "felt" better.

> If speed/performance is a feature that your customers want to pay for, they > will let you know.

I don't buy that. Customers often don't even know it's a possibility that their software could be faster.

In my experience, often lay users don't think of individual programs as being fast or slow. They either assume the "internet" is being slow, or their computer is slow. However, I think they do notice when performance is better. They say it "works better" or "feels more reliable", but they don't necessarily know why.

<comment><USER9> > And how do you know if they perceive it to be slow?

Ask them, or listen to what they are saying without you asking. (I.e. UI/UX research 101.) For an IDE with a large userbase (for example JetBrains' product line), there are plenty of bug reports / user reviews which complain about performance, and so it's possible to get a picture of how many users perceive your app to be slow.

Note, I chose my words carefully there -- if your users don't perceive the site to be slow, they may still respond positively to imperceptible performance improvements. To measure that you do A/B experiments. There's a lot of ink spilled on this subject; Google has done some really good research here.

> Customers often don't even know it's a possibility that their software could > be faster.

Fair, I probably oversimplified there. More precisely, "If speed/performance is a feature that your customers will pay for, you should be able to measure that fact."

You don't necessarily need to invest in the performance improvements to measure this; when Goole investigated this they simply added artificial delay and measured the effects on revenue. From this you can estimate the gradient of the $-revenue / ms-latency slope, and figure out how much it's worth investing in improving your app/site's latency.

<comment><USER11> > so it's possible to get a picture of how many users perceive your app to be > slow.

No, it isn't. That's "Recognizing Survivorship Bias 201".

<comment><USER12> People, depending on their expectations, will perceive your app as one of these categories:

\- A: not slow

\- B: slow, but still using

\- C: intolerably slow and no longer use it

Indeed, you can't measure C with a survey. But for most apps, it's probably reasonable to assume a distribution of thresholds where, if B/(A+B) (ie, the result you get on a survey of users for "is it slow") is less than 5%, there probably aren't many in C.

<comment><USER11> That's bad science.

<comment><USER12> User surveys are never going to be good science. Surveys are confounded by massive variation in response rates. For instance, I haven't filled out a user survey in many years because I have better things to do. They can only ever give a vague indication that something might or might not be a common issue.

The scientific approach to find out if app slowness is a problem is to make a much faster version, give that to some fraction of users in an RCT and see if their usage goes up. But that makes no sense for a business. If you make the effort to develop a fast version, just give that to everyone and move on to the next thing that might get you more users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Nikolaus Wirth: A Plea for Lean Software (1995)_

He spells Niklaus, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth). And yes, he has a sound, pragmatic attitude towards software systems.

Nikolaus is another famous person.

<comment><USER2> Nikolaus with an "o" aka St. Nicholas or (Saint) Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greek descent based in what is now Demre, Turkey.

<comment><USER5> In 1931 the Coca-Cola Company began placing Coca-Cola ads in popular magazines. Archie Lee, the D'Arcy Advertising Agency executive working with The Coca-Cola Company, wanted the campaign to show a wholesome Santa who was both realistic and symbolic. So Coca-Cola commissioned Michigan-born illustrator Haddon Sundblom to develop advertising images using Santa Claus.

For inspiration, Sundblom turned to Clement Clark Moore's 1822 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly called "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"). Moore's description of St. Nick led to an image of a warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and human Santa. (And even though it's often said that Santa wears a red coat because red is the color of Coca-Cola, Santa appeared in a red coat before Sundblom painted him.)

In the beginning, Sundblom painted the image of Santa using a live model — his friend Lou Prentiss, a retired salesman. When Prentiss passed away, Sundblom used himself as a model, painting while looking into a mirror.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 'strongly typed language increases the productivity' How was this tested? Was there a control group? I would argue that currently Javascript and Python have been greatly improving the productivity. The type system works well in the maintenance, API definitions and 'no unit tests' scenarios, but when you have to do something you don't have yet any clue about -for exmple at the start of a years long app development project, the type system is just in the way.

<comment><USER15> > How was this tested? Was there a control group?

I agree this deserves some study. But...

> when you have to do something you don't have yet any clue about the type > system is just in the way

Even if you don't have any clue, you usually know the types of your functions and data structures.

I mostly write Python and OCaml code. Each langage has its use cases, but I rarely feel the OCaml type system is in my way. When it's in my way, it's because my code is incorrect in an obvious way.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the type system helps in that, but for a unit testable product you need factory methods, which produce some valid and invalid cases. If you write simple tests for those it is a type checker on it's own and the type checker is just overhead. If I could choose my next project from two similar implementations where the other would be type checked and the other unit tested with basic datatype factors (at least) I would choose the unit tested one.

I would use typed API's though, because it saves documentation reading time and makes the editor autocomplete to work like magic.

<comment><USER10> > If you write simple tests for those it is a type checker on it's own and the > type checker is just overhead.

This is not true. Unit tests cannot replace a type system, just like a type system cannot replace unit tests.

You need a unit tests because a type system cannot check for all possible types of correctness.

However, unit tests can only check for the presence of bugs; they cannot prove their absence. On the other hand, a type system can prove that certain classes of errors cannot exist in the program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If curious see also

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17872400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17872400)

2014 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8537970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8537970)

2014 (and better) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8301511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8301511)

</comment><comment><USER17> thank you very much for this official resource, I just knew djb's copy. There's also the predecessor in german reading "Die Software Explosion" [https://darknet.mro.name/1994-wirth- explosion.txt](https://darknet.mro.name/1994-wirth-explosion.txt)

IMO a great read for everybody interested in long-term reliability or sustainability.

</comment><comment><USER18> crazy back then, people were still complaining about c and c++. c, easy language to get started, but a bazooka to your foot and head.

<comment><USER19> I feel like C is like the old joke where a man goes to the doctor and says, doc I got broken bones in a dozen places. And the doctor says, well stay out of them places.

<comment><USER3> See Azure Sphere for such example, while MSR advocates moving away from it, the Azure Sphere team has decided otherwise, advocating its use as main SDK language, due to market culture.

The expected end result, in spite of the mitigations put in place, is the Azure Sphere 20.07 Security Enhancements bug fixes release.

[https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/internet-of- things/az...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/internet-of-things/azure- sphere-20-07-security-enhancements/ba-p/1548973)

<comment><USER19> Joke cuts both ways.

I write firmware in C because flash memory costs us money. I wouldn't recommend C or C++ otherwise. Stay away.

On the other hand C is kind docile as long as you avoid doing 'insert long list of sketchy stuff'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coinbase now supports the Bitcoin Payment Protocol - <AUTHOR> http://blog.coinbase.com/post/86563321757/coinbase-now-supports-the-bitcoin-payment-protocol

<comment><USER2> That UI stinks. Who would know to click on the QR code to open a payment request? A payment request doesn't even involve addresses that are visible to the user, it makes no sense that it is under "send to address".

<comment><USER3> Hopefully they just have a really big click target and clicking on the address would have worked too, although I admit some clear verbage or a button would probably be better. It is good practice to link images and areas around actions in general, because users do tend to click on them.

<comment><USER2> QR codes aren't the sort of thing anybody has been trained to click though, there's no other cue to even begin to suggest that it might initiate a payment request. To me that would just be a QR code of a Bitcoin address that is in plaintext to the right of it. Showing me this page I would have said there's no payment request support at all.

<comment><USER3> Looks like even for handling the older URI protocol they don't underline the linked destination address to send money to unless you hover over it: [http://blog.coinbase.com/post/78127728420/support-for- bitcoi...](http://blog.coinbase.com/post/78127728420/support-for-bitcoin- payment-urls)

So destination address could be clickable in this. I think they should keep it underlined, though, personally. I guess even Google is throwing that out lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love Bitcoin Payment Protocol (except for its reliance on the "old" system of CAs), but I am not sure what is the use case here.

Is it just for payments where both sides use Coinbase? That sounds ridiculous, but that's what I see on the picture. And I still don't get which side needs to use Coinbase.

By the way, Bitpay already uses BIP70 - if your mobile application supports it, you just scan the barcode and the URL is included.

<comment><USER3> The motivation write up here was pretty good for explaining the differences between this and and the usual URI method: [https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawiki)

URI method (what I'm used to from clicking a link to pay): [https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawiki)</comment></comment>


Photo-overload: Everyone's taking pics, but is anyone really looking? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/photo-overload-everyones-taking-pics-but-is-anyone-really-looking/article4365499/

<comment><USER2> Is anyone looking? Hell, the people that take them don't even look at them. My wife and I spent a year travelling in Asia, and took a billion pictures (10K?). I'm sure 8500 haven't been viewed except in a page of thumbnails, and of the 1500 that have been viewed, there's probably 50 that have been viewed more than once or twice.

Perhaps its a technology question: maybe there isn't a suitably engaging discovery tool on my desktop to get me into my own library. Or perhaps the human capacity to enjoy our photographic progeny is just exceeded by our capacity to produce.</comment>


Ask HN: How far should parents control their children? - <AUTHOR> In order to raise a responsible and a "good" human being, how far should parents control vs give freedom to their children? And how does that change with age?<p>Here are some examples:<p>- study : if you see that your child is not keeping up with his homeworks, etc. would you step in and force him to study, which might save his future, or let him do as he likes and then assume the consequences of his actions?<p>- religion : would you teach him your religion because that's what you beleive to be true, or let him search and choose for himself, knowing that if hou had taught him he has more chances to grow up having your beliefs, and if not he might end up in hell according to what you believe.<p>- Would you just teach not to visit bad websites or would you put parental control filters, and do you best to "protect" him? <comment><USER2> I have a two-year-old, five-year-old, and seven-year-old. All boys. These are my personal opinions.

I find that treating them like people instead of subservient goes a long way. I.e. a bit of latitude in their own life goes a long way. You want them to be able to think for themselves, and my job as a parent is to 1) steer them clear of black holes, 2) help them up when they make a mistake, but not coddle them, and 3) help them find their own path in life, whatever that may be.

To your examples:

Study: some kids like to study, some don't. The best way to ensure they study is to establish a routine. The best way to create a routine is sitting with them while the routine is established.

Religion: Well you have to start somewhere. If you subscribe to religion, teach them. If they go in another direction, support them. In general, explaining the world as you see it to your children goes a long way in shaping their view.

Internet: Yes on parental controls. This just comes down to protecting them, the same as you might watch them as a park. Younger children are much more likely to stumble onto something bad than seeking it out. Parental controls just help that. As they get older, you have less ability to control external influences, so you better hope you did a good job in instilling morality and a sense of independent thought.

Just remember the most important rule, your kids learn from you. You set the example. Be the best you can be around them and they will come out just fine.

<comment><USER3> > I find that treating them like people ... goes a long way

+1 on this

I treat my kids as equals, because they are. I try and pass on my life skills (with explanations as to how/why I find them valuable) to them in the same way as I try and pass on my dev skills to more junior programmers - an improvised mixture of example, coaching, coaxing, and occasional whip-cracking

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Parent-child relationships are more about mentoring and guidance than control. Pure force is almost never an adequate answer to any problems that a child experiences. How on earth can you force someone to study without fundamentally harming him, if he has a bunch of underlying problems that effectively prevent him from learning? No way, it's just a lazy approach and unwillingness to figure out the real problem. Also, there are many things, that you can teach only through personal example and overall context inside a family. Bad websites? If you are spending enough time with your child, teaching by example, family culture and discussion, explaining what is right and wrong, he is very unlikely to develop any interest towards "bad websites". Besides, the idea of blocking all possible sources of negative content is pretty laughable from a certain kid's age. As for the religion example, I have no idea why one should want to teach children any religion apart from maybe some historical and cultural perspective.

<comment><USER5> I'm interested to know: do you have any children, and if so, what age? Not that that is the end-all-be-all of knowing how to parent, but comments like "explaining what is right and wrong, he is very unlikely to develop any interest towards 'bad websites'" make me think that you don't have much experience trying to raise children. They test boundaries. They misunderstand morals of stories. They have primal urges. They disregard social customs that they see as irrelevant. I'm constantly explaining right and wrong to my children and they are probably slowly getting it, but it's a process.

<comment><USER6> Of course it's a process. Please excuse me for using your post as a spring board, but:

When you try to impose rules upon children that don't make any sense for them in the situation they're in, and that they may simply be mentally incapable of following at that point in their life (cf. the primal urges), it is not going to work just like that.

Children need to make up their own mind, and given the limited experience they're coming from, for many years that mind will of course look a little different from what a grown-up opinion would be.

That doesn't mean the grown-up opinion is necessarily right, by the way. It has not seen the world from the perspective of the child. The grown-up mind may very well reach another conclusion if it had seen that world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > religion : would you teach him your religion because that's what you beleive > to be true, or let him search and choose for himself, knowing that if hou > had taught him he has more chances to grow up having your beliefs, and if > not he might end up in hell according to what you believe.

It's a fallacy to even suppose that children can be raised in an ideological vacuum. Religion is morality, history, worldview, behavior, traditions, habits and more all wrapped up into one. Why would I want to deprive them of all that especially if it s a faith I subscribe my life and salvation to, even if it were possible? If it were possible, I would be a complete fraud myself, something that I would think would be setting a terrible example to my children.

<comment><USER8> > Religion is morality, history, worldview, behavior, traditions, habits and > more all wrapped up into one. Why would I want to deprive them of all that > especially if it s a faith I subscribe my life and salvation to, even if it > were possible?

This is perhaps the best argument I've heard for raising your child in religion. I suppose it should be obvious, but I had never thought about it like that before.

<comment><USER9> Why would you need religion when there is modern philosophy? Ancient beliefs, unproven history, inappropriate behaviours (in modern society) are wholly inadequate

<comment><USER8> This (at least this specific comment thread) isn't a discussion on if belief in a religion is justified, but rather the acknowledgment that if you believe you have found the answer to life, the universe, whatever, you would almost certainly feel obligated to pass it on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is extraordinarily difficult to force a wilful child to do anything. My now-12-year-old daughter was _very_ reluctant to learn to read, but we insisted that she read to us every night from her second year in primary school onwards. It was exhausting and emotionally demanding work that myself and my wife dreaded doing every evening, but now she's a good reader, and enjoys it. Would she have become a good reader anyway? I have no way of telling, but wasn't willing to take the risk that she mightn't, reading is too important

As for homework - in our house it absolutely must be done. It's like brushing your teeth - no excuses, ever. I don't care that it's often useless and boring, what I care about is that _their teachers stay engaged with my kids_ , and staying in the loop with homework is essential to that

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a 16 month old, so I'm struggling with these same questions. Here's what I'm thinking (now), with the caveat that this is subject to change a dozen times in the next week. :)

Study:

My parents never forced me to study and I turned out okay. Instead, they used to praise me for working hard while working obscenely hard themselves.

For me, this combination of strong models and positive feedback accomplished more than forcing me to do homework ever could have.

Religion:

I was raised in a very religious family. My Mom grew up extremely religious and my Dad converted. Thing is, I was never told what to believe. Both of my parents wanted my sister and I to be critical of our religion and think carefully about what was just doctrine from a different era and what was true morality.

In the end, I pulled away from my religion because I couldn't see through all the mindless restriction and the hypocrisy.

However, now that I have a daughter, I am religious again. In fact, she's getting close to her baptism. The way I see it is that if I raise her religiously, she has a chance to be religious when she gets older. Or, she may choose a more secular life. Either way, she has a choice. If I don't raise her within our religion, she still has the choice, just a more difficult path.

I think parenting is about giving our little people options. It is not about telling them what to think.

As for media, I wouldn't dare put parental control on any form of media. Instead, I would prefer that Lauren grow up knowing that there are predators online, but that she should trust her judgement and tell me or her mom if anything confuses/scares her.

Frankly, I hope that Lauren is smart enough to beat any kind of parental control scheme that I could come up with. But, if she is and she gets in trouble, she might be scared to tell me.

Straight up, I want her to tell me that she tell me that she is being bullied, or pressured into sexting. And, if she's afraid that I'll get mad because she broke the rules, I'll lose that.

<comment><USER11> How is growing up outside of religion a more difficult path to freedom of religion than growing up within one?

Wouldn't growing up in one religion be more constraining to her with regard of all other religions?

There is one step from being non-religious to any religion, but to move from one religion to another you have on you the burden of having to leave your current religion.

<comment><USER10> I'm a sample of one so take this with a giant, highly critical grain of thought, but for me, being raised within a religion gave me the freedom to see that all religions are fundamentally the same.

They have different names for things and in some cases, certain stories resonate better with me. But deep down, the Zen expression 'ten thousand forms, one suchness' absolutely applies.

My phone is about to die, so I'll cut it off, though I suspect that I'll revisit this throughout the day!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a parent myself. (But I had a couple.)

Whenever the subject of parenting comes up, I like to throw this cherrybomb into the discussion: Judith Rich Harris

"Judith Rich Harris (born February 10, 1938) is a psychology researcher and the author of The Nurture Assumption, a book criticizing the belief that parents are the most important factor in child development, and presenting evidence which contradicts that belief."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Rich_Harris](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Rich_Harris)

To see how this idea may play out in practice, consider the fierce debate over tiger mothering from a few years back.

Here's the HN discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090678)

My take on Tiger Mom Amy Chua's methodology (at the top of that thread):

"Chua probably believes that its her strictness and strong principles that are leading her children to excel. And these have their role, no doubt. But I would propose, following Harris, it is her oppressive control of their social lives which is the much stronger factor."

<comment><USER13> That seems to be an example of "parent is important factor in child's development though not in the way the parent intended" rather than "parent is not important factor in child's development".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm no expert and my kids are still young (one is just about to start school) but I have a philosophy that guides me here.

I don't think you'll get "good" people if they are unable to evaluate decisions and make them independently of you. This means they need to be comfortable doing this, which means they must have practice, i.e. experience with making free decisions. But you want to guide them to the right way to approach it.

If you imagine the ideal behavior you want to inculcate as a function, and the worst-case behavior you want to absolutely prevent, picture these as two functions. Somewhere in the region between these two functions is the kid's actual behavior. You are implicitly creating a region of allowable behaviors between these two functions. If you are a caricature tiger parent, there is no region, just two overlapping functions, and your kid has no experience of autonomy, they are completely unfree, unhappy, and unequipped to handle real life.

On the other hand, a completely absent parent doesn't define those functions at all. The kid is totally unmoored. Sometimes kids in this situation figure things out on their own and feel like they benefited from not having a parent telling them what to do or not to do. But an awful lot of kids from this circumstance do not make it to a successful, free, or happy life. So this can work (I think it probably works better than caricature tiger parenting) but I don't think the odds are that good.

What you need to do is build up the child's ability to make decisions. To do that, they need to experience making decisions and experiencing the repercussions. When they're a baby, they have no control, the functions overlap. When they become an adult, they are mostly on their own (though you should still intervene to prevent disaster). In between the two, you want the region of autonomy between the two functions to grow as they get older and get better at making decisions. So even when they're pretty young, you want to give them some berth. And make sure they trust you to help them, especially with making decisions, which means, telling you something doesn't trigger an intervention automatically.

That's my philosophy in a nutshell.

</comment><comment><USER15> > if you see that your child is not keeping up with his homeworks, etc. would > you step in and force him to study, which might save his future, or let him > do as he likes and then assume the consequences of his actions?

Homework is almost universally a waste of time[1]. You'd be better off encouraging them to do whatever is interesting, than forcing them to do homework.

[1] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math- homework....](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math- homework.html)

<comment><USER16> Interesting. My kid is going into 4th grade and probably 98% of all the homework he's ever brought home has been math. I've been wondering why. I certainly didn't think it was based on rationality :) They have reading goals as well, but it's not required or guided in any way, they can read whatever they want. That seems like a worthwhile task as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can't control, but you can build respect for your opinions. My parents consistently gave me level headed advice that served me well. When I deviated from their advice and opinions, often I would be unhappy with the outcome, reinforcing the idea that I can trust their advice.

With regards to the homework, my parents set an expected GPA and left me to my devices. I didn't do homework for easy classes, and worked quite a bit on the hard ones.

</comment><comment><USER18> Father of two boys (10 and 13), French.

Homework : I am behind their back, forcing them to plan ahead (this includes catching up over the weekend). They got used to that and now do their homework on their own, I still check and will continue until high school.

Religion : I am an atheist, the whole family is into science, I am open about my theory that religion is nonsense but that it brings some mental order and peace for some people. I let them choose to think what they want but this is not a big discussion subject anyway.

Internet : my first aim was to make sure they are never exposed to something they are not actively seeking. Which means paternal control, one they will be someday able to avoid if they want to. I put some strict rules : zero personal information published, including their first name. They are putting pressure to show their face in some videos but this is still a "no". I told them that Internet has dark corners and that they can find horrible things if they are not careful. The younger one (more independent type of child) did not listen and watched something about zombies. Still had nightmares but clearly let's a lesson.

</comment><comment><USER13> As for religion, it depends entirely on how you view it. Most parents have at least a small set of values (whether they be open-mindedness, tolerance, hard work, generosity, etc.) they wish to impress upon their children and they frame those as real virtues, not simply potential virtues. Whether you include religion among them is simply a matter of whether you consider religion among a set of possible virtues, an essential virtue itself, or, in the case of adamant atheists, a vice or weakness.

<comment><USER19> Yes. Every parent works to transfer their sincerely-held beliefs to their children because every parent wants their child to succeed.

"How do I raise a 'good' person?" implicitly indicates the parent's intention to transfer their own moral and social values, which comprise the core of religion, to the child (and there's nothing wrong with that; that's how it's supposed to work).

This type of ethereal, fundamentally subjective teaching _is_ religious education. A mature mythos around the core is not the element that causes people to value religion, and discarding that mythos cannot automatically make a religious sentiment non-religious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a parent of a 3 year old, I haven't yet had to deal with this, but I have thought about it. My view is that a parent is supposed to protect and guide a child to prepare them for adulthood and being self-sufficient once they are of age. To that end, I plan to take the general viewpoint that on the major stuff I will force requirements from my child. On everything else that is far less important, I will let my child make decisions so that they can learn cause and effect and the consequences of those actions. Doing this I hope to shield them from terrible decisions that affect their lives in a major or permanent way and let them experience the good and bad of the decisions which have less impact. So...

study - this is in the "major" category. I will push them to do well and have expectations that are challenging and in line with their ability.

religion - my wife cares about this so she is going to raise them as Roman Catholic (which both of our families are). I actually am not a fan of organized religion but I don't see the big harm since no one in our family lives their life around it at all (hell, we don't even go to church), and it can help teach some core values which I do approve of. I plan to encourage my daughter as she gets older to think critically about the role, if any, she wants religion to play in her life and press the fact that she should seriously evaluate it again as an adult.

online controls - i'm not going to filter her internet or anything but I will strongly stress the dangers of communications with random strangers on the internet. the COPPA law helps here, since children aren't supposed to be able to have accounts until a certain age (12 or 13 I think?), which is an age where they are fully capable of understanding what is being explained to them regarding the dangers. of course, anyone can fill out any age they want when signing up, so there is still a concern that has to be monitored. Also, youtube kids is pretty good at filtering out the inappropriate content. some stuff slips through, but overall it's pretty solid.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm a parent of 2 teens and a pre-teen. As such, it's still too early to tell whether our approach has worked but fingers crossed.

With regard to how much you make them do things like homework. Our view has been that they don't necessarily act in their own self interest.

Sometimes what they want to do and their self-interest match and it's all good. Our eldest has generally been like that.

Sometimes they need a bit of a nudge: our youngest has needed help building up her confidence. For a while she didn't want to do certain activities because she didn't feel she was good enough. We made her continue some but not all (we had them try lots of things when they were young) even though she wouldn't have chosen to continue. It was definitely the right thing to do and she'll be the first to say so.

Sometimes they're obdurate little sods but you love them anyway. We have one of those too. Everyone in the family agrees he's a lot like me at the same age so there's not much hope for him (only kidding).

Religion is interesting. Both my spouse and I were fairly religious as teenagers in different traditions and before we met. Neither was observant by the time we had children. We've encouraged them to find out about religions and take part where they've expressed an interest; school friends for all of them have been from all the major faiths (just how it turned out). I'd characterise 2 of them as being fairly liberal/open-minded about religion. The other one has been a strong atheist from a very young age.

For parental controls, the approach I've taken has been to not restrict access particularly. However, I've said that I reserve the right to look at their devices whenever I want and, if I find something unacceptable then all hell breaks loose. I haven't defined unacceptable particularly clearly but they're not stupid. So far so good although I am assuming that I'm still better at this techy stuff than they are which may be rash.

All in, it's been interesting to say the least. The 3 of them are quite different and we've had to explore different approaches with each. Having said that, they have lived relatively sheltered lives (good schools, stable home life etc) so it's not like we've had major external challenges as a family.

Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

</comment><comment><USER19> The answer to these questions, like most other important questions, is "it depends". Each parent and each child is different. The dynamic of the parent- child relationship, including the relevant hard-baked personality factors, is very important. Kids come more pre-developed than people want to think.

</comment><comment><USER22> From what I know, if you want to rise a responsible and 'good' human being you should allow it to be good and responsible in the first place. It means not controlling. Controlling someone is taking over someones responsibilities. Controlling someone is making him (not, ir)responsible.

</comment><comment><USER23> It depends on the child. Children are mini-people, and they all have different personalities and temperaments. Some will do really well with a very independent approach, some will need more guidance. What they all need is love and respect.

</comment><comment><USER24> guide, not control.

<comment><USER13> The "guide not control" recommendation needs to account for both the severity of the potential consequences of an action (e.g., playing in traffic on a busy street) and the maturity of the child (e.g., a two-year-old will not be given the option of choosing his own bedtime whereas a 17-year-old may be better able to handle the consequences of less sleep due to staying up late).

<comment><USER25> The stuff with serious consequences shouldn't come up often if at all if you've started guiding far enough in advance.

By the time they're in high-school they should know the reason you don't cheat on exams, drive drunk and do weed (varies by state) isn't because you can't do those things but that on the off chance it turns out badly you're gonna get screwed hard enough that the risk isn't worth taking in the first place. Nobody should have to tell them to wear hearing protection around power tools and not get drunk three nights a week because by the time that those things are an issue (high-school/college) they should be familiar enough with the concept of long term wear and tear to draw their own conclusions about what's appropriate.

It's an annoyingly circular definition but good enough guidance removes the need for control.

<comment><USER26> > they should be familiar enough with the concept of long term wear and tear > to draw their own conclusions about what's appropriate.

From ages ~15-22, I averaged less than 6 hours of sleep a night, ate north of 4000 calories of junk food a day yet had visible ab muscles with minimal exercise, could stay up ~36hrs before I'd have to crash if I needed to, all but the worst cuts, scrapes, and bruises healed completely and disappeared without leaving a mark in 12-48hrs, I simply _did not get_ hangovers _ever_ , could push myself to run a pretty damn fast mile despite not being a runner and not feel it at all the next day, and so on.

I don't think I had a very good handle on what long-term wear and tear was like except in a very abstract way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> People write books in attempts to answer these questions and it's pretty hard to provide detailed answers here but I'll chime in a bit...

All children are people, and all people are different in how they learn and react, and what intrigues and inspires them.

My advice is to first understand your child is a person and to treat them like one, as opposed to a piece of personal property or a "dog" you can command to do tricks.

Study: Yes, you have to "make them do things" they don't want to do, like take a bath, clean their room, do their homework, and help with household chores because they'd rather not.

When our youngest was 17 he was failing his Senior year in High School and I pulled him aside and explained that if he had visions of sitting in his bedroom playing video games all day after he got out of school what he'd find was me putting all his stuff on the curb and turning his bedroom into my home office and he could go find someone else to house and feed his lazy ass. He bucked up, graduated, and is now a manager at the company he works for.

Religion: We live in the "Bible Belt" where a lot of what is preached comes from "Ministers" who are more interested in what's in the "collection plate" than teaching the lessons Jesus laid out. I stopped attending "Church" when I was a teen because I realized this but since most all of my children's friends went to church they wanted to go as well and my wife and I let them and gave them rides so they could attend and then we'd discuss what they were told and taught afterwards. It wasn't long before they started seen contradictions between the sermons they heard and what Jesus said and taught and my wife and I would go over these with them.

A good example is "gay marriage". Jesus said "there is no marriage in heaven" and to "love one another", and they all grew up around a few gay couples that are close friends of ours and knew they were loving and kind and caring people who were hurt by the huge anti-gay stance of the evangelicals we're surrounded by. By the end of "High School" they didn't want to go to church anymore because of the hate and vitriol they saw promoted there, but they also studied the Bible on their own to better understand the teachings of Christ and to defend themselves and their beliefs and by the end of High School they knew and understood scripture better than many of the adults that were "teaching" it to them.

Life Lessons: We gave each of our kids their first car and told them they'd be buying their 2nd one themselves. They all hated their first car because it wasn't a brand new sporty car their friends would be envious of, and they all smashed that first car up while being stupid and then whined when we didn't buy them another. And then they all worked hard, bought their own 2nd car, and not one of them has crashed their cars up since, or complained their car wasn't "cool" enough to be seen in.

Internet: I've been making web sites and web software since the mid-1990s so they all grew up with it. I explained that there's a lot crap on the internet and they'd be wise to not waste their time on the crap they could find there. And I told them I could, and would, track the sites they visited and pull the plug if they got stupid on it. And I explained that even if I was not tracking them, the access providers they use and sites they visit are tracking them so they needed to aware that others might find out what they do there and expose them and they'd better keep that in mind because they'd have to deal with that all on their own. But I never put any restrictions on what they could find there because they'd have none as adults and could find it somewhere else anyway.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Yeah, you have to deal with that too. Our approach was to teach them that it's fine to party but don't make a career out of it. Don't aspire to be the most drunk or do the most drugs at the party, and that doing hard drugs is always a stupid choice. All our children grew up seeing friends, family, and acquaintances do stupid shit to get high and when high and the consequences that ensued as a result and we didn't shield them from that. We were very up front about it: "Uncle Joe is in jail again because he's a dumbass who's spent his life chasing drugs and that's why we're not bailing him out, and we won't bail you out either if that's the path you take, so don't expect or ask us to.

None of them wanted to be like "Uncle Joe" and none of them went that route.

The short of it is, raise your kids to be adults from the get go.

</comment><comment><USER28> As long as your child isn't irritating me or my child in a public space I do not care.

</comment><comment><USER29> These are largely false dichotomies.

1\. Study - Starting at the beginning, be involved with your kids and their schoolwork. A big part of this is being with them while they do their homework. First, this helps you solidify points that they may not have understood from class. Second, this gives the parent opportunities to share various sorts of life skills -- time management, problem solving, learning strategies, etc. Obviously the parent needs to have restraint so that the child still has ownership of the homework, but that's not terribly difficult if the parent is aware of that parameter. If the parent thinks that the kid has too much homework, then I suggest having a talk with the teacher(s). Hands down, the number one predictor of student success is parental involvement with a child's education.

2\. Religion - Typically, when young, just tell them what you believe. They are children and will largely accept it in its entirety. Once they start asking questions, explain to them that other people believe different ways, and when the child is ready, they can decide what approach they want to take with religion. Make sure to explain to them any potential repercussions of not toeing the party line (e.g., a born Muslim openly revoking the religion of Islam in the KSA). Note that they will make this choice whether the parent "permits" them to or not. The real question is the attitude the child takes towards the parent after they have decided. In the example of a parent believing that their child will go to hell in the even that the same religion is not followed, then I think the problem there lies with the parent -- either they need to accept this possibility and the fact that the child will choose no matter what, or they need to embrace or more tolerant religion.

3\. Internet use - This is actually a tough one. I strongly suggest controls on any computer that is not the child's -- mainly to avoid malware. Tell the kid you are doing so and why. Ideally, as your child is growing up, you have been able to teach them at least a modicum of internet/tech literacy, but that still won't guarantee the safety of your computer. As for the child's own device, I suggest teaching them best practices from the time they start using computers. Once they are teenagers (or even earlier), they will be able to access any sites they want, whether your want them to or not. If you are concerned about a certain type of website (e.g., porn), then have a discussion about these topics before or right as they and/or their peers become curious about such subjects (usu. around the early onset of puberty around 10). Explain to them your thoughts and feelings about these sites, and (perhaps most importantly) tell them that they will have to make up their own minds about these types of sites. As said before, they will do so whether they are "permitted to" or not.

These questions seem to be oriented towards control. This "works" only as long as the child's ability to think independently is suppressed. This may last a lifetime, but it usually doesn't. It also leads to parent-child conflict once the door to independent thinking has been opened.

Modeling desired behaviors is usually the easiest way to get a child to exhibit those behaviors. This works both for "good" behaviors as well as "bad" ones. That said, most people who are regarded as "good" parents, even with the curtains are pulled back, are ones that model the behaviors/values they want their kids to have, explain those behaviors/values to their kids, mentor their kids within the child's context, and support the child's decisions, even if they differ from the path the parent would have taken.</comment>


Buffalo Bets on SolarCity Factory - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/03/a-solar-bet-to-recharge-buffalo/516207/ <comment><USER2> There is no hope, unions and civil serpents kill all in Buffalo</comment>


Suicide Contagion and the Reporting of Suicide (1994) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00031539.htm <comment><USER2> Would you guys stop posting about suicide? I've already been measuring the speed I'd hit the ground if I were to jump from my balcony. I'm serious. Maybe this is why mainstream media doesn't report on suicides.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if this comment was meant to be snarky, or illustrative, or in any way not a direct statement of fact, but I will never take such a comment lightly.

Are you okay? Please call a friend and talk, or 1-800-273-8255 (national suicide hotline, for US people).

If you want to talk to someone but don't have anyone to turn to, my email is this same username at endofunctor.org

Life can be hard sometimes and I know it doesn't feel like things will change, but it will pass. You will feel better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Thank you all for the kind comments. Although this is a real struggle to me, I didn't mean to bring all the attention to my issues. Thank you sincerely.

I am certainly not the only one here struggling with these kind of problems. I come to HN to distract my mind and learn new things, but it is tough when you try to get away from something happening in your life and you have to face it here. Some people don't realize how depressing some topics/discussions are and they don't realize how this can affect others already struggling with depression or other related issues. I'm sorry for asking what I asked, but I fail to understand why topics like suicide are coming up here more often.

<comment><USER4> Distractions are good, but HN also still has some remnants of a "community", and depression has been a recurring topic here for years. There are some factors that can make small business and startup founders susceptible to severe depression, and it wasn't that long ago that we lost one of our members to suicide -- and at this point, unfortunately, I'm sure there have been others, statistically speaking.

A few people, like me, have decided to start talking more openly about depression rather than trying to maintain the appearance that nothing was wrong. I was motivated by Stephen Fry and by a few other events around the same time, including the suicide of one of my clients.

I don't think anybody understands depression well enough yet to give advice that will work for everyone. (I sure as hell am long past wanting to receive any more advice; I _hate_ being told to talk to a professional.)

But, if you'd like to just chat about stuff for a while, my email address is in my profile. Open invitation. You wouldn't be the first. It might be better than jumping out a window.

On the balance though, I think it would be good to de-stigmatize depression a bit. People who struggle with depression shouldn't also feel alone.</comment></comment>


Amazon Removes All Apple TV, Chromecast Listings from Its Website - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2015/digital/news/amazon-chromecast-apple-tv-ban-1201630010/ <comment><USER2> Good old free enterprise competition! It's interesting that Amazon has decided that the strategic value of limiting access to these products by removing from Amazon is more valuable to them than the revenue and engagement from people purchasing them. Amazon Fire hasn't done well at all, so I'm not seeing the end-game.</comment>


If You Sold Your Apple Stock Today, You're An Idiot - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/apple-laughing-stock/

<comment><USER2> Once again MG demonstrates his utter lack of understanding of how even the stock market works. And this guy was in demand as a VC? Unbelievable.

>But here's the thing: those expectations were ridiculous and flawed and once again show that analysts have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to Apple.

If those expectations were ridiculous and flawed then the price of the stock was also ridiculous and flawed, since the price of the stock (aside from wild speculation) is a function of expected future earnings of the company. They blew the earnings call, and the price dropped. Not rocket science, not a knock against Apple as a company.

In fact, you could have likely sold your shares of Apple yesterday, and rebought them today and made a profit, making you not an idiot, but a clever arbitrageur.</comment>


L.A.'s Most Derided Piece of Public Art Is About to Light Up Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-is-triforium-lit-up <comment><USER2> _> Given the decay of time and the risk of turning it on, the team is using custom-built LED triangles that sit atop each hand-blown glass prism to light it up._

I think they've inadvertently created an interesting new dimension to the artwork here. Software developers especially should be able to appreciate the feeling of being unable to properly reengineer a flawed system due to expense or expedience, and just slapping another layer on top instead. Sort of like a celebration of path dependence. I'd like to see more examples of long-form artworks that gradually evolve through different artists and eras.

<comment><USER3> >> I'd like to see more examples of long-form artworks that gradually evolve through different artists and eras.

Much of this is actually illegal in many counties. Re-working a sculpture is seen as trampeling on the artists rights, specifically "moral rights" which cannot be contracted away. The classic example case of this is Snow v. Eaton Center.

"In Snow, a 1982 case at the Ontario High Court of Justice, the defendant had purchased a sculpture of 60 geese that they placed inside their shopping centre. During their Christmas celebration the defendant tried to attach ribbons to the necks of the geese. The plaintiff alleged that the addition of the ribbons modified his work in a manner prejudicial to his honour or reputation."

<comment><USER4> Litigating this seems like a pretty quick way to kill future sales of your artwork...

<comment><USER3> You can't. Artists cannot divest themselves of future moral rights via contract. If you want to change a work, you have to go back to the artist each and every time. If artists could simply lift them, moral rights would be just another thing waived in every sale. But moral rights are not copyrights. They cannot be used to prevent future sales (ie first sale doctrine).

<comment><USER5> That's true in the EU, which is why commissioned public sculptures and other forms of visual art have become a rarity of late in the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pictures of the original electronics: [http://eecue.com/a/1421/TriforiumControlCenter.html](http://eecue.com/a/1421/TriforiumControlCenter.html)

<comment><USER7> Wow! Seeing those pictures makes it obvious why they decided to add new electronics and lights instead of reusing the existing ones. Even with documentation that looks like it would be a real pain to interface with.

<comment><USER8> Looks like fun to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It may also be of interest to HN that Jona Bechtolt & Claire Evans who are leading this project are the core members of the band Yacht. Claire recently published _Broad Band_ [1] to acclaim, which explores the history of women involved in the early years of the internet. She also edits Vice's science fiction site. Both are very cool people who continuously crank out interesting projects.

[1] [https://clairelevans.com](https://clairelevans.com)

<comment><USER10> Here's a podcast in which I discuss with them this and their other fascinating projects [https://blog.lumi.com/wellmade/26-claire-evans-jona- bechtolt](https://blog.lumi.com/wellmade/26-claire-evans-jona-bechtolt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Back in the 1970s, a computer used 8-bit tape, in binary code—picture a roll > of paper tape with holes cut into it.

This seems like quite an ambitious project for 1975!

<comment><USER12> The idea to use _"a roll of paper tape with holes cut into it"_ to control a machine was _250 year_ old in 1975 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basile_Bouchon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basile_Bouchon))

(It took around 80 years to get a decently working implementation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Its primitive, custom-designed computer couldn't execute Young's intentions; the sound came out wrong, and the lights rarely synced as they should have.

I'm a bit surprised by this. Most professional artists I know put a huge amount of effort into working with / experimenting with the medium they're working in get the results they want. I don't know any (i'm sure there are some) who do one off experiments, they're usually pretty experienced with the materials / medium they work with.

<comment><USER14> It was built in 1975. How would they have a huge amount of experience in the medium?

<comment><USER15> Yes and it was much more difficult to write mocks and unit tests back then!

<comment><USER16> And imagine completing a project without being able to include npm packages such as leftpad. Unthinkable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! I have walked past it a few times and wondered how it was ever supposed to have worked, so its going to be wonderful to see it in action one day ..

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone know what computer the Triforium used originally? I searched around but couldn't find details.

</comment><comment><USER19> Walt Disney Concert Hall is more derided. Maybe that would be "architecture", which counts as "public art" for me, but perhaps not thee. Some would also name Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, but I like that one.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Hey, there's this new piece of technology, I think it will enable great things! Let's start off with a really big budget, very public project, first thing!" Ouch. Not that the software developer community has any room to talk.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sadly the artist died in 2007.

</comment><comment><USER22> What's the risk of turning it on? A short, inside of .. the concrete?

<comment><USER23> I wonder if the estimated multimillion restoration cost includes rewiring the structure. Perhaps the existing wiring just isn't suitable for use at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Its amazing that this was just 43 years ago. Thats nothing in the grande scheme of things.

</comment><comment><USER25> Oh, people don't like that? I always thought it was neat.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hmm... surely, the Hollywood sign would win any contest of "L.A.'s most derided piece of public art"?

<comment><USER27> >to deride: to speak of or treat with contempt, mockery, or ridicule; scoff or jeer at

Is the Hollywood sign really the target of that much mockery? Caricature surely but that's not the same thing.

<comment><USER28> The Hollywood sign wasn't always considered an icon. For many years between its initial construction in the 1920s and its restoration in the 1970s, it was poorly maintained and considered an eyesore: [https://theconversation.com/the- history-of-the-hollywood-sig...](https://theconversation.com/the-history-of- the-hollywood-sign-from-public-nuisance-to-symbol-of-stardom-78584)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> atlasobscura.com seems to show up an awful lot on HN, and I rarely find the links to be technically relevant or useful, but always full of ads. It would be nice to be able to filter them out

<comment><USER30> Atlas Obscura is another site I ignore since it requires Javascript for images to load.

<comment><USER31> install uBlock Origin, seems to work for me with JS enabled, though does seem to have a fullscreen nag, and a scroll nag...

The _WORST_ imho are the sites that ask for notification permission, to which my initial reaction is _FUCK YOU_... there's no call for that without a user initiated action.</comment></comment></comment>


I don't dwell on the past - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/12/i-dont-dwell-on-the-past.html <comment><USER3> Somewhat related:

"The weak regrets his words more than his silence; the strong regrets his silence more than his words; the magnificent regrets nothing." -- N. N. Taleb

<comment><USER4> Feels like an auto-generated aphorism.

Behold:

"The weak regrets his silence more than his words; the strong regrets his words more than his silence; the magnificent regrets nothing."

If you'd read that one first, it would be just as meaningful. Which is to say, not at all.

<comment><USER5> People are often afraid of speaking up. This ties in with the idea of the strong regretting silence as opposed to speaking up.

Your version isn't as meaningful.

<comment><USER6> Shouldn't it be the weak who are more often silent out of fear? I deliberately avoid using my True Name here so that controversial positions won't affect my employability, and I wouldn't do that if I had fuck-you money and a permanent home (economic strength).

<comment><USER7> One time I lost a large deal because the buyer's boss came across a controversial piece I'd written, and didn't think I was a good fit with their buttoned-down formal organization.

Later, I made a very similar deal for about 30% more money, that wouldn't have happened without losing the first one.

I reckon, better to lose by boldness than lose by tameness. Either one can bite you, but at least you get some satisfaction out of losing for being too bold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of Stoicism. Something that is simple but definitely not easy. Something I struggle with.

> It's important to remember that this is an exercise and not a rhetorical > device. He doesn't mean "think about" misfortune, he means live it. Comfort > is the worst kind of slavery because you're always afraid that something or > someone will take it away. But if you can not just anticipate but practice > misfortune, then chance loses its ability to disrupt your life.

[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/04/13/stoicism-101-a-practical- guide-for-entrepreneurs/)

</comment><comment><USER9> > Instead, I think that I am able to separate my identity from my work. > Perhaps it is a defense mechanism at its core.

I think this is the core of egoless programming; this, to me, has been the hardest thing to learn.

</comment><comment><USER10> I applaud Gabriel for his (non)accomplishments - particularly in finding appreciation for all of his brain-children, no matter what they've become. I don't think it is a defense mechanism, I think it is a healthy appreciation for the life-death cycle that everything experiences. A knowing that is only got by "trying and dying" multiple times :)

It will serve him well as a father too.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've learned to manage my emotions, including those that accompany failure, pretty well over the years, but there's still that initial involunary feeling of despair that, however brief, I can't get rid of. It's really nasty.

If you can get past that, I think you can overcome anything -- I've never faced a bigger personal challenge.

</comment><comment><USER12> If we want our life to go well, Epictetus says, we should, rather than wanting events to conform to our desires, make our desires conform to events; we should, in other words, want events "to happen as they do happen." - <USER2> from A guide to the good life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

I think this pretty much works for me now.

</comment><comment><USER13> Xamuel doesn't get much traction on HN but here he is spot on:

<http://www.xamuel.com/a-message-of-regret/>

He also has many interesting _very_ non conventional posts beside the purely "math nerd/tech nerd" ones.</comment>


What would you name an app that does restaurant reservations - <AUTHOR>

I am a building a restaurant reservation app like opentable, but without all the hardware needed to run a tablemap. I am having trouble coming up with a name that is simple enough for Hong Kong people to understand. Got any suggestions? <comment><USER2> I own quickse.at (Quick Seat), if you like it, it's yours.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about 吃哪裡 ?

It's pretty direct in its meaning, and that also implies a bit of a discovery aspect too, besides just a reservation system

<comment><USER4> Fyi for non-Chinese readers :)

Chinese => English: Where to Eat?</comment></comment>