Practical guidelines for beautiful Python code - <AUTHOR> http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/beautiful-python-code <comment><USER2> I'm not sure about #2. Is it really that good idea to extend types? Or to be precise — to extend non-abstract classes?

It leads to unintuitive behavior:

        >>> IntField(5, 'abc') is IntField(5, 'abc')
        False

whereas

        >>> int(5) is int(5)
        True

also:

        >>> IntField(5, 'abc') == 5
        True

not to mention:

        >>> IntField(5, 'abcd') == IntField(5, 'xyz')
        True

IMO this would be better, more flexible approach:

        class MyIntField(object):
            @property
            def val(self):
                return self._val

            @property
            def name(self):
                return self._name

            def __init__(self, val, name):
                self._val = val
                self._name = name

            def __eq__(self, other):
    	          	return (self.val == other.val) and \
                       (self.name == other.name)

</comment><comment><USER3> #1, "Object Oriented structure should always map to well defined mental concepts in the problem domain," is a recipe for producing excessively complex code. You end up focusing on the parts themselves, instead of their interactions, which is actually the important part.

<comment><USER2> > You end up focusing on the parts themselves, instead of their interactions, > which is actually the important part.

Aren't interactions on what CRC cards put emphasis?</comment></comment>


Radioactive water at Fukushima Daiichi: What should be done? (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-1-radioactive-water-at-fukushima-daiichi-what-should-be-done/ <comment><USER2> Anyone who lives in Colorado receives a dose of many Fukushima's a year. I have a radon counter in my basement and watch the count ebb and flow with the seasons.

One self luminous exit sign contains about 0.00074 PBq of tritium. The Fukushima stored water contains about 0.76 PBq of tritium, enough for about 1027 signs. I suspect there is far more tritium in the exit signs in Tokyo then there is in the Fukushima water.

[https://www.everglow.us/pdf/tritium-exit-sign-fact-sheet- lan...](https://www.everglow.us/pdf/tritium-exit-sign-fact-sheet-lanl.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Tritium undergoes beta decay and has a 12 year half life. Beta decay from a sign or your watch can only partially get through your skin (and skin is continuously shed and contains melanin). If you drink (or eat plants/animals in a tritium contaminated foodchain) then you bypass that protective layer and can damage organs that have far less resilience to radiation exposure.

<comment><USER4> Right. So put it in an oil tanker, take it someplace with permafrost, pump it out, and let it freeze. A few parts of Hokkaido are cold enough. In a century, it will have decayed enough to be a non-problem.

<comment><USER3> I don't think I'd want to bank on stable permafrost for a century. And one would probably want to put some care into site selection and construction as seismic hazards got us here to begin with. The residents of Hokkaido might reasonably not be warmly welcoming to this idea. I don't know enough about tritium impact to sublimation rates, but that would presumably be a problem. But point is taken about enclosed and chilled storage for 84-96 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My old Physics teacher always said to put it on cornflakes. The surface area of all cornflakes in existence (back of the envelope) would result in totally harmless concentrations, undetectable above background. Of course _getting_ the waste evenly distributed over all the cornflakes is another matter, one for the engineers...

<comment><USER6> No one knows with any confidence whether radiation levels below background levels are harmful or not.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no- threshold_model](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model)

<comment><USER3> Doesn't work that way if you ingest it, right? And obviously not all radiation is equal (alpha, beta, gamma) and even among those they have varying level of energy based on source.

The concern here - if I understand correctly - is that it's ingestion and absorption of a low half live (more energetic) beta emitter.

<comment><USER6> No, I don't think the distinction between ingestion and external exposure is fredley's point. Indeed, a fixed amount of radiation is much _more_ destructive when ingested.

But regardless, that's not the point I'm disputing. I'm disputing whether "the radiation has been reduced to background levels" necessarily means the negative effect of the radiation has been made negligible. Rather, assuming the linear-no-threshold model, the number of radiation-induced deaths will not decrease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So oil tankers can apparently carry some 300000 tons. Three or four oil tankers full would then be enough storage space for the onsite water. Couldn't we fill some tankers and have them release the water far away from any fishing grounds?

<comment><USER8> ...and damage some preserved ecosystem in the process. Great idea!

<comment><USER9> That brings up a good point. There are a few nuclear zones that no one lives in right (Chernobyl came to mind after watching that hbo show)? Why don't we at-least get some value out of of these sad situations and convert one to a nuclear disposal site?

<comment><USER10> IIRC this is already happening in Chernobyl - other than all the wildlife preservation & tourism there is a big solar power plant being built:

[https://phys.org/news/2018-10-chernobyl-life-solar- power.htm...](https://phys.org/news/2018-10-chernobyl-life-solar-power.html)

The article says they aim for up to 100 MWe capacity in the future, which would be nice, yet still illustrates how very powerful nuclear reactors are, with each of the 4 now inactive Chernobyl blocks producing 1000 MWe (and 3x times as much heat!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's Part 2: [https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-2-radioactive- water-a...](https://blog.safecast.org/2018/06/part-2-radioactive-water-at- fukushima-daiichi-what-should-be-done/)

</comment><comment><USER12> "Under the scenarios being discussed, the water would be diluted to 60,000 Bq/L before being released to the ocean. This number alone seems alarming, but is the concentration level that has been legally allowed to be released from Japanese nuclear power plants and reprocessing facilities such as Tokaimura for decades."

This is what needs to happen, any other action is kicking the can down the road. Another substantial earthquake or time will do the same.

Additionally 60kBq/L is larger compared to other isotopes because of tritium's properties. As long as this isotope is diluted properly there is no possibility of biological aggregation or concentration of this, it is just hydrogen, chemically speaking.

</comment><comment><USER13> Uhhh, culture a bunch of spores of radiotrophic fungus[0] and dump them all over the area?

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

<comment><USER14> Those are able to feed off radiation, but they don't shield other beings from it. It's not like oil-eating bacteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Quick question / thought, why not run it through beds of sand that take some of the radiation and bury that sand somewhere? Eventually as you run the water through the sand long enough it should become less and less irradiated right?

<comment><USER16> I'm guessing if there were a way to filter out the tritium they probably already would have. The article states that they already removed other isotopes from the water, but not the tritium. This leads me to believe there is something particularly tricky about separating it from water. Hopefully someone with some knowledge can weigh in here as I am curious as well.

<comment><USER17> Tritium natural decays pretty quickly. Half life of 12 years.

<comment><USER18> Which is a good point, but "half life" doesn't mean "all gone". It'll take some x cycles to get it down to some safe level y. So the water needs stored until then, if it's not being released somewhere.

Meanwhile, it keeps accumulating, because the problem is caused by groundwater leaching into the contaminated reactor area. So at some point, accumulated volume p will probably exceed available storage area q, which seems to be where we are now. So it has to be dumped somewhere.

The solution is almost certainly to dump it at sea, but I don't think they can get away with dumping it right on the coastline, politically.

<comment><USER19> > at some point, accumulated volume p will probably exceed available storage > area q

Maybe they should stack a second row of containers in the second floor then? (hey, we doubled the available space with only steel beams, some concrete and a welder! we can build upwards!, is like magic!)

<comment><USER18> Gosh, why didn't they think of that?

Every difficult engineering or social problem can be solved by the clever one- line idea of some dude on the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm far more worried about what happens when the next tsunami strikes. Getting rid of tons of contaminated water sounds important, or the sea will come and take it in one go.

</comment><comment><USER20> That water emits 3.6 Roentgen

</comment><comment><USER21> So, this means I can eat fish caught in the Pacific ocean again?

Is the radioactivity low enough?

<comment><USER17> It has been low enough the whole time.

Radioactivity is super easy to detect even at harmless levels. Sunburn is a far (probably a million times? More?) bigger concern with similar effects (radiation burns possibly leading to cancer), yet people still go outside.

<comment><USER22> Because sun is also healthy in the right dose. Its all about the right balance..

<comment><USER23> Or lack of sun is also unhealthy by the you can't win for nothing principal.

The whole Fukushima aftermath is a good example of the Mike Tyson Principal: Everyones got a plan till they get punched in the face. There were plans how to prevent this kind of mess until it actually happened.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Help Wanted: More and Better Abbreviations - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dnnrly/abbreviate/issues/4 <comment><USER2> Why do you link to a particular issue, instead of the repo as a whole?</comment>


Actual OIS performance: Lumia 920 against iPhone 5, Galaxy S III, HTC One X - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/25/iphone-5-lumia-920-image-stabilization-face-off/

<comment><USER2> _sigh_ So the OIS actually does work as well as claimed, which boggles the mind why they felt they had to fake it in the ad.

<comment><USER3> So maybe The Verge's whole freakout over it was completely unwarranted? Maybe Nokia knew what the effect of OIS would be when they made the ad -- after having done the R&D to develop the camera in the first place?

<comment><USER4> I disagree: I think it was somewhat warranted. The fact the end-result looks similar to the faked result is beside the point.

Many countries, the US included, have decided that if you cannot fake product demos in advertising _unless_ it is clear that's what's going on. Hence the "Sequences Shortened" text on the iPhone ads.

It is rather unethical to produce a marketing video that fakes functionality and doesn't make it clear that's what's going on. You may well not be over- exaggerating anything, but personally I don't think that's relevant.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that the "Sequences Shorted" text doesn't make anything clear at all. It's a barely noticeable cop-out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If we're honest, this is hardly surprising. Before Nokia made it's commitment to Microsoft, they were a company at the forefront of phone technology, including their cameras. However, what this does actually do is beg the question of why they opted for Microsoft. I'm without a doubt in my mind that if they were making Androids right now, they'd be dominating.

<comment><USER7> I know this is going to be controversial.. but they actually made the right move. MS is supporting them and without that help, Samsung and HTC wouldn't give them a chance. Also, in my particular point of view, WP is way more aligned to Nokia's style than Android.

Honestly, as an user of the four OS (iOS, Android, WP and BB) my favourite is by far windows phone. Not only it feels different but also I found it way more stable. Everything is subjective anyway

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Regardless of zoom levels or other disadvantages, this is a honest comparison of true results you would get from each phone. It's a moot point to argue technicals you have no control over.

Overall, the 920 just seems way clearer, and objects have much sharper edges.

<comment> at-fates-hands I noticed that too - the colors seemed deeper and richer as well. The colors on the iphone seemed a bit washed out.

Just another reason I will most likely get a WP when I'm due for another upgrade this winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Others have mentioned the different "zoom" levels already. Please correct me if I am wrong but doesn't the zoom level have a direct impact on the differential caused by movement of the camera?

Imagine the following: You have two microscopes mounted on a similar device like seen in the video. The first microscope shows everything two times larger than the second one. If you move "shake" both microscopes the same way you will see more "shakes" when looking through the first one. Isn't that correct and can't this be applied to what is shown in the video?

<comment><USER10> Engadget has been _suspiciously_ friendly to Nokia lately (I haven't seen them take so many interviews with so many employees from one company before), but I still find it hard to believe that they would increase the zoom level themselves for the other smartphones to make them look worse on purpose. Surely there has to be another explanation for why all the other smartphones look zoomed in.

<comment><USER11> re: engadget being _suspiciously_ friendly to Nokia.. i think that if you're willing to actually send a reporter to Espoo, Finland (of all places), Nokia would likely be happy to provide access. especially so, given what now appears to have been a significantly overblown reaction to their introduction of the technology (as the actual usage results appear to validate what was demoed, even if not shot with the Lumia at the time)..

and the Lumia 920 camera apparently has a narrower focal length (which results in a wider field of view), so it can capture more on-screen than than the iPhone; hence it looking particularly 'zoomed-in' when compared side-by-side.

additionally, and i'm not entirely sure about this, but the digital image stabilization software (in contrast to Nokia's actual/mechanical OIS) found on the other phones may have some cropping involved to help smooth-out shaking which would be typically most noticible around the edges..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Depending where the camera is located on each phone, that foam holder will "amplify" movement on the outer sides. I hope they put the phones with the cameras near to the center inside it and switched them too. Otherwise this might be very wrong.

<comment><USER13> I hope they positioned the phone how someone would actually hold it when they were taking the video. For example, on the iPhone I'll always hold the phone with the camera at the top (portrait mode) or the camera to the right (landscape mode) since the volume buttons will then be up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand why Nokia doesn't just make a commercial instead of some home movie blog post? Their tech is better so advertise that; Part of Apples success is controlling the 5W's of presenting their information to customers. Another thing is that if engineers with DSLR's are Nokias marketing department, they are in big trouble.

<comment><USER10> They did but they did it with a professional camera and implied it's the Lumia 920, when it wasn't. I'd be fine with them doing a commercial but actually using the device to show its capabilities. Filming with a much more advanced camera and then saying "that's how Lumia 920 does it, too" is just false advertising, and that's what they did initially.

<comment><USER15> so you are convinced that Apple used siri in all those commercials they show?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yikes, that is quite a large phone. Lumias look like great phones but must they be so large?

<comment><USER17> It is large. It's thicker than my HTC Titan, but I suspect it will feel really good in your hand. As it is now, the only surface contact I have when holding my phone are the edges.

I wouldn't mind giving up a little thickness for comfort holding the device. I think in the race to make things thinner we might have gotten carried away. Imagine a phone as thin as box board...now imaging trying to hold it.

<comment><USER15> 920 has rounded edges that make it comfortable to hold. the sharp (jewel like!!) edges of iphone make it uncomfortable. Lumia 900 is very similar in how it feels in hand. Give it a shot and decide for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Engadget has also done a low-light comparison today: [http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/26/lumia-920-low-light- shoot...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/26/lumia-920-low-light-shootout)

920 seems to live up to the promise also in this regard.

<comment><USER18> I wish they shot something with _motion_ in low light... From pictures my friends post online, my biggest complaint about most point and shoot (and phone) cameras in low light is not digital noise, but motion blur. I would prefer manufactures to bump the gain and take faster exposures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> forget the image stabilization comparison. the 920 image _quality_ is incredibly better than the others.

</comment><comment><USER20> On one hand - the image stabilization on the Lumia appears to be great. However, the image quality on both the iPhone 5 & Galaxy S3 were much worse than I've experienced in day to day use. I've used both phones personally - and the video quality on the iPhone and GS3 is much better than what was shown (even if it's not "stable"). Any idea on why the quality on those was much lower than in real life?

<comment><USER10> Were you walking while filming? He wouldn't be able to showcase the differences in image stabilization for each phone if he tried to stay as still as possible.

<comment><USER20> Yes, in my day-to-day use of each camera I've been moving. I guess my point is - there seems to be a massive quality degradation in what I've seen from personal use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While this 'actual performance' is far from rigorous science, it's still great to see the Lumia performing so well.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not to give in to conspiracies of any sort, but these videos prove nothing.

1\. Why are the zoom levels different?

2\. I'm certain the HTC One X can shoot more decent videos than what we saw.

3\. Are we dealing with equivalent bitrates?

4\. Isn't Image Stabilization a post-processing solved problem? I mean, it's great to have it in real-time (after a google search, it seems all three do have the feature), but there's nothing wrong with post-processing when you REALLY care about the final quality of your work.

<comment><USER23> 1\. Lumia have wider field of view.

4\. Today commercially available video post processing algorithms can only solve relative stabilisation between frames of video, because inframe stabilisation is still very slow for modern hardware.

*Edited. 4 was "No, because post processing can only solve relative stabilisation between frames of video, it does not work within one frame."

<comment><USER24> >4\. No, because post processing can only solve relative stabilisation between frames of video, it does not work within one frame.

Apparently you haven't seen this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLLJBfRzXIQ#t=0m57s>

<comment><USER25> try doing it in a mobile device with 30 full hd frames per second... Still, it's pretty amazing, pity it isn't actually in CS7

<comment><USER24> Who says post-processing has to be in real time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All of the others seem "zoomed in". I've heard someone say it's because the others use digital stabilization, which means they have to crop the middle of the image to stabilize it against the edges, or something like that. Is that true? Because then OIS seems to significantly improve image quality in video recording as well.

<comment><USER25> It makes sense 920 has 26mm focal length, S3 16mm, iPhone 5 33mm (equivalents). Smaller focal length - wider field of view so it makes sense that iPhone feels zoomed in. I can't see the difference for S3, though. Magic?

<comment><USER10> But even the iPhone 5 looks more zoomed in then Lumia 920, though. Look at the initial filming, when he films the other people filming him. They are bigger on the iPhone. The quality is poorer as well.

<comment><USER15> read the message above you. The lenses have different focal length. 920 gives you broader field of view so you can get wider picture and more light. iPhone doesn't. That's why iPhone looks zoomed in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think if you were trying to hold a still shot the image stabilization will work great. When moving around, though, both cameras still look pretty bad to me. The rolling shutter I think is still the weakest link. To be fair, even high-end DSLRs don't have that solved, but it would be great to see somebody come up with a solution.</comment>


Understanding International Trade and Why Trump's Approach Is Misguided - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/discourse/understanding-international-trade-and-why-trumps-approach-is-misguided-b5626a9a3fe1 <comment><USER3> The article has a somewhat rose-colored view of free trade agreements - <USER2> practice, they tend to include many environment-, worker- and consumer-hostile clauses (which is predictable, since the agreements are negotiated mainly by industry representatives). I can't find the source currently, but I believe one of them (Possibly the TPP?) had a clause where a patent holder could forbid the export of any item covered by their patent (even after it was sold). The direct opposite of free trade.

A brief example of the many horrors contained in the for-now dead TPP: [http://infojustice.org/archives/34189](http://infojustice.org/archives/34189)

And industry representatives defend such terms by saying that they are 'standard' for trade agreements (that they _also_ mostly wrote!), as if that somehow makes it better, not worse.</comment>


Show HN: ZenQalendar, a smart budget calendar - <AUTHOR> https://zenqalendar.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! Here's some back story..

The project: Ever had a question like "When can I buy that?" or 'Can I afford that vacation 6 months from now?". The answer to those questions is ZenQalendar. ZenQalendar is a smart budget calendar which makes future predictions based on your spending habits.

Me: A month ago I successfully launched freshjobs.io on here ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17793024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17793024)), here's my next project!

I'm on a mission to learn to code by making 6 projects in 6 months (this is 3 out of 6), with my final project being at the end of the year in December. The dream is to live from these projects by that time and help people across the world by building things that are truly helpful to those people.

All feedback and bug reports are much appreciated. Go easy on me, I am still a total newbie dev!

I vlog my journey here: [https://www.youtube.com/lukehero](https://www.youtube.com/lukehero) I post regular updates here: [https://twitter.com/itsLukeHero](https://twitter.com/itsLukeHero) I do a write up after each project here: [https://medium.com/@lukehero](https://medium.com/@lukehero)</comment>


Securing API calls made on behalf of a user from an untrusted environment - <AUTHOR> http://www.andreas-dewes.de/en/2015/securing-api-calls-made-on-behalf-of-a-user-from-an-untrusted-environment/

<comment><USER2> I think this is usually called a ticket-granting-ticket.

The key details are how to authenticate the client to the middleware and setting expiry and anti-replay on the ticket issued to the client.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah fascinating, I'll look that up! I couldn't find anything on the subject but then again I didn't know what term to search for, and I imagined that somebody must have come up with this since it's not rocket science. However, I didn't see this implemented in any API I know, so I thought I share it.</comment></comment>


N.Y.P.D. Says It Used Restraint During Protests. Here's What the Videos Show - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/14/nyregion/nypd-george-floyd-protests.html <comment><USER2> > A video of five or 10 or 30 seconds does not tell the whole story, of > course. It does not depict what happened before the camera started rolling. > It is unclear from the videos, for instance, what the officers' intentions > were or why protesters were being arrested or told to move.

It's right there in the article, after you scroll past all the videos. Many of these videos are totally missing their context. Here in Chicago, I saw police force a woman to the concrete as she was screaming ... after she threw something into a police cruiser that set it on fire.

Why did we see so much more violence from these protests than we've ever seen before? Part of it is COVID and the anxiety from being bottle up and out of work, but part of it is also the normalization of the masks:

[https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary- effects/#masks-...](https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary- effects/#masks-hurt-our-perceptions-of-one-another)

<comment><USER3> Your post is missing context as well. Was anyone injured when the cruiser was set on fire? Was the woman armed? Was she literally any sort of physical threat to the officer or officers who threw her to the ground?

<comment><USER4> Maybe I'm some sort of fascist, but I have zero problems with an officer using force to arrest someone who firebombed a police car, regardless of anyone was injured or she was an immediate threat after.

<comment><USER5> I've seen so many examples of excessive and unwarranted force from the US police, by now hundreds of incidents.

<comment><USER4> I'm not excusing excessive force, I'm saying fire bombing in general is a felony and police should be able to arrest a suspect and use force if they don't comply (obviously reasonable force).

<comment><USER3> There is no evidence in the comment about this incident that indicates the suspect resisted in any way. This is what I meant about "missing context."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Constraint for the US police means not shooting live rounds into the crowd.

From the transition from British royal subjects to US citizens, some of the "subjects" part stuck...

</comment><comment><USER7> There are 4 kinds of lies.

Lies

Damn lies

Statistics

Selectively chosen video snippets

<comment><USER8> Are there video snippets out there that show a different story? Or is this just a general plea of "well we don't know the whole story so we should reserve judgement until later(when everyone has forgotten about it)"?

"Lies" implies there's an intent to deceive, but most of these cases the reason why the rest of the footage isn't available is because people only start recording when things go south, so everything leading up to the event inevitably gets left out. That's very different than "Selectively chosen video snippets", which imply that somewhere there's footage of the whole incident, but anti-police activists are editing the footage to generate maximum outrage. It also doesn't help that some police officers think that recording is an act of aggression, further making the footage harder to acquire.

<comment><USER7> Use Google, check for 'New York Cops attacked'. You should find several reputable news sites showing police officers being attacked and beaten.

Watch for yourself. Decide where you think the truth lies. I think I could videotape just about any street fight and selectively choose when and for how long to show a clip to fit an agenda....

<comment><USER9> > "Watch for yourself. Decide where you think the truth lies."

Capital "T" truth does not lie solely in a video clip. Just as with _literally everything_ online and everything digital, we need to be good _consumers_.

In the case of the George Floyd killing the is a witness video (over 10 minutes), security camera video (over 5 minutes), plus officer body camera. These of course have POV issues, audio issues which need to be considered. Despite these defects, there is the narrative of Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck for over 8 minutes, which is evidence of the cause of Mr Floyd's death.

I have yet to read any comments here which take seriously how this firehose of brutality videos should be consumed--let alone making _any_ decisions about "truth".

When I was a young adult, the biggest issue concerning the internet was the potential danger of anonymous people online. Post Facebook, the danger was putting something online now, that you'll regret later.

Today, impact of the videos from the George Floyd killing is enormous.

What about the next video? I would like to hear more about thoughts on consuming videos, and presumed truth of any video.

And watching just some of those videos was sickening. All of this violence is sickening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They did.

This is "restrained" by their standards.

</comment><comment><USER11> What I see is most cops not wearing masks. So from the get go they are out to kill people. That says more about their mindset than anything could and proves that it's not just one bad apple but the entire profession that's out to harm and murder people. Fuck them and their supporters.

<comment><USER12> Case closed then, F policing as a profession and everyone who sees it as a vital component to a civilized society? NYPD are well aware that they are vulnerable to this virus and in turn to spreading it not just to you but to other cops, but in order to keep a lid on rioting, while growing increasingly shorthanded in number, in tools, maneuvers, plainclothes units, or effecting arrests (regardless of the disinterest in those being prosecuted), they need all the oxygen they can get. I'm not saying that $42,500 is not enough money in NYC, just that this is an exigent need for oxygen, not biological warfare.

<comment><USER11> They can get their fucking oxygen through their fucking masks like everyone else. When they start wearing masks, I'll consider seeing them as human beings again. Until then, they are just walking coronavirus factories who murder people in other ways too.</comment></comment></comment>


PHP 5.5.8 Released  - <AUTHOR> http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.5.8 <comment><USER2> A bugfix point release hardly worth mentioning.

"This release fixes about 20 bugs against PHP 5.5.7 components."

</comment><comment><USER3> >Passing DOMDocumentFragment to DOMDocument::saveHTML() Produces invalid Markup

Of the few things PHP should be great at, parsing and generating html markup is close to the top of the list. Yet DOMDocument has given me so many headaches...

</comment><comment><USER4> PHP has a reputation as a language that makes dead easy to write very ugly sphagetti code. As far as I learned a lot has chaned since last time I was using PHP - something like 5 years ago.

Is there any good book or other resource which describes _modern_ PHP with best practices, parts to avoid, etc?

<comment><USER5> I'd recommend this for modern PHP: [http://www.nodebeginner.org/](http://www.nodebeginner.org/)

It's a great intro on how to write sphagetti code with out losing face.

<comment><USER6> Are you sure it's a PHP book? It says it's a node.js book.

<comment><USER7> I think he is being sarcastic

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aaaaaaand cue 250+ comments complaining about PHP, mostly centered around issues that were much bigger in 2009 than they are in 2014...

<comment><USER9> Aaaaaaand before that happens, cue multiple comments whining about how it's about to happen.

<comment><USER10> 20 GOTO 10

<comment><USER11> Interesting believable factoids about PHP:

1\. PHP supports goto since version 5.3.0; people speculated that term "troll driven development" in announcement was not a joke.

2\. $ variable prefix in Perl was a joke about Hungarian notation and first BASIC dialects. PHP take that joke seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this compare to the latest HHVM?

<comment><USER13> It looks like this is mostly bug fixes. So I imagine this will have little impact on HHVM

<comment><USER14> Also, I believe HHVM is looking for 5.4 parity, also I would imagine that some of these bug fixes would not need to be looked into since it's two entirely separate projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> workhere-io Since anything PHP-related on HN is bound to spur the usual PHP hate, here's something that might confuse the haters: PHP is actually faster than Go in many cases (according to [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7...](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7&test=query&f=5mdc-0-0)).

<comment><USER15> I do not consider myself an hater (I have used both php and go). I would say the results on that page are consequence of php having more mature database drivers (written in C) than go, that is still in its infancy. If you look at for e.g. Plaintext it is more in line with what one would expect from a compiled language versus an interpreted one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> God, these comments are awful

<comment><USER17> I hope that's just mild disgust and not surprise... it's HN. History repeats itself every twelve minutes.

[edit]Which is not to say I don't agree with the "PHP is garbage" comments. I just also agree with the "seriously, we read all of this the last three thousand times PHP articles were posted, please shut up" snark.[/edit]

<comment><USER18> If PHP is garbage, every article about PHP should be about PHP being garbage to make sure everyone stays away from PHP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Disappointed with the comments in here, I was really expecting at least one joke about Python 3 adoption.

</comment><comment><USER20> Thanks for letting me know! Going to update on my development environment so I can run our tests against it to be sure nothing broke.

</comment><comment><USER21> Friendly reminder that we can't have anything involving PHP without:

* complaints about features it has or has not

* a reference to that "a fractal of bad design" article

* how language x is better

* sarcastic, ironic or post-ironic notes about the above

* one guy pointing out we can't have anything involving PHP without the above

<comment><USER9> * before any of this happens, multiple comments whining about how it's about to happen.

<comment><USER22> He covered that in the last two bullet points

<comment><USER23> The post may have been edited. I've seen this happen with blog posts as well (someone points out an issue, blog post fixed, so the original comment makes no sense)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ruby 2.1.0 is out.

<comment><USER25> Grayed out means down voted, right? But why?! First good comment on the thread: no bitching, no need to click the link to find ~20 fixes, here's the alternative, never look back. Period.

<comment><USER26> As someone who's professional life generally revolves around Ruby, and in the past has revolved around Python and PHP.. it's a stupid comment. PHP is a perfectly capable language of producing high quality products.. and that is what actually matters.</comment></comment></comment>


MakeCode editor for breadboarding - <AUTHOR> https://makecode.com/blog/maker/hello <comment><AUTHOR> This started as my intern project during the summer of 2016. Happy to answer any questions!</comment>


Driving a cockroach - <AUTHOR> http://web.ncsu.edu/abstract/science/wms-cockroach-steering/

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, this is really weird. As a dabbler in robotics I've converted toys into robots but not actual living bugs. I'm really not sure where this sort of thing leads either good or bad.

<comment><USER2> Where does this lead?

[http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/13242/2009/12/starshiptro...](http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/13242/2009/12/starshiptroopers_l.jpg)

Actually, this is the sort of thing makes me glad to be alive at this point in history.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Is com.americanexpress.amexservice? - <AUTHOR> I just checked my "screen time" app on my iPhone, and I see that app identifier? I don't recognize it at all.
It says that I've used that app for 3 hours+ this week already.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Only did a quick search but it seems like it's the iOS package name for the Amex Mobile app[0]

[0] [https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/customer- service/digital/...](https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/customer- service/digital/amex-mobile-app.html)</comment>


Mass Shootings Are a Bad Way to Understand Gun Violence - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-bad-way-to-understand-gun-violence/ <comment><USER2> Yes, but it takes sensational events for people to realize. Notice how after these extreme weather events suddenly people are recognizing climate change as a thing? People are stupid like that, but we take what we can get.

<comment><USER3> The other side believes the same thing though.

This boils down to the age old question of whether the method matters, or just the results. If we're okay getting our goals with bad methods, do we have a right to get angry next time, say, Donald Trump denies climate change due to one cold weekend?</comment></comment>


Apple has admitted to purposely slowing down iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-explains-why-older-iphones-appear-to-be-slowing-down-2017-12 <comment><USER2> Two things could've made this situation better.

1\. Make the damn battery user replaceable! If you know it is depleting resource and you designed the phone to last longer, this should be the case.

2\. Be transparent to the user. Show in Battery Settings how the battery is doing and whether or not the OS is throttling itself.

There is a third one, put in a bigger battery. I think Tesla does this with Model S. Be nice to customers.

/rant

\- pissed off customer with a slow iPhone 6 that is probably affected by this.

<comment><USER3> i miss swapping batteries, or carrying more just in case.

they could actually make phones with batteries just small enough to swap out a bigger pack

<comment><USER2> Yes. If they could make a tray and flap to hold the nano SIM card and still make their phone water resistant, they can engineer the phones to have user swappable batteries. They just choose not to because it is not in their interest for their customers to keep the phones longer.

<comment><USER4> That may be part of it. It's also that people like thin phones, and replaceable batteries place mechanical requirements on the phone that make it thicker.

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised this is not being used as a competitive marketing strategy. If another major company developed a phone with removable battery and still be as trustworthy as Apple, it would be great and put pressure on Apple..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Short version: My 6S with a "healthy" battery is severely throttled. It normally runs now at 911Mhz and often less. It is practically unusable, and it happened suddenly, recently. Something about Apple's story doesn't add up still.

Longer version: My 6S battery got replaced back when the sudden shutdown at 20% thing first started happening. (I actually got them to do it out of warranty for free.) One app says it is at 87% health 1500mAh vs 1715mAh original capacity. I've read that Apple won't even replace the battery for you until it drops below 80%, but my phone is unusable right now. Basic animations don't work right. (I might get two frames of an animation.) Siri is unusable, as another commenter described. Another app reports the speed the phone's processor is running at. The majority of the time, mine is throttled to 911Mhz. Sometimes it's a bit more, if my battery is at 99-100%. Other times it's even lower. This is a 1.8Ghz processor, according to what I've read online. Turning low power mode off and on doesn't change anything.

Something just doesn't add up about this.

<comment><USER6> How cold is it where you live? What happens if you keep your phone at room temp for a few days?

<comment><USER5> It's starting to get cold, but I work inside, and my phone almost never drops below room temperature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's cut into Apple's bullshit. LiOn ageing is not unique to Apple. The problem is that their batteries are so horribly low powered (1800 mAh for iPhone 6s), especially for the price of the overall phone, that normal known ageing patterns would render the battery below spec of max power the iPhone draws at peak performance. It's BAD design. Note 8 ships with 3300mah and iPhone X with 2700mah. Both cost a $1000. Which one do you think will last longer if 2500mah were the max power threshold?

<comment><USER8> Android as an OS is far less power efficient than iOS, vendors combat this by supplying hardware with larger batteries while often sacrificing the quality of abilities of other components with the applicable space on the PCB / main board layout.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. Anyway, I hope that Apple release a thicker iPhone, with bigger battery. Maybe we are reaching a maturity level of the market, where they can differentiate the iPhone more.

<comment><USER8> If you want a thicker phone, why not put a battery case on it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If improving stability was the intention, why haven't they ever warned anyone that it would make their expensive, perfectly functioning phone relatively useless?

Nothing about their reason rings true. If it were the case then why didn't the previous IOS installation have limited performance before the update?

</comment><comment><USER11> A big learning experience for me has also been that you shouldn't ever update an iPhone.

Whatever version of iOS you got out of the factory, stick to it, because developers just don't give a fuck about performance.

Between iOS updates, performance considerations aren't made for older models at all. Newer iOS versions are developed against higher end models. I don't give a fuck what the compatibility charts say, of course Apple's iOS team ensures that it works, that doesn't mean it works _well_. And it definitely doesn't mean it was intentionally designed to work against that model whatsoever.

As a reminder, iPhone 6's original iOS version was 8. We're coming up on 12.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've used coconutBattery to check the health of the battery in my 6s and it reports the number of charge cycles and the maximum capacity. Is this data stored in the battery or the phone? Does replacing the battery reset the cycles counter?

</comment><comment><USER13> How does the iPhone know the battery has been replaced? Cycle counter? If the cycle counter is stored on the battery then fine but if stored on the phone then it seems like replacing the battery might not solve the problem..

<comment><USER7> It's simple voltage/current measurements. An iPhone 6s might start off with an effective capacity of 1800mah, that reduces to, say 1250mah in 2 years. If your iPhone requires 1350mah for peak performance, you're out of luck

<comment><USER13> Yea I've used a variety of battery charging circuits in designs I've done and measuring voltage and current are pretty easy but measuring capacity is not obvious instantaneously — you have to store a history of how voltage changed while charging or discharging. And sometimes you don't get a full discharge or recharge and the person may use the phone while charging. As a result you have to save a history of multiple cycles to try to average and account for various situations like that. So the result is that you have some driver that saves a value or set of values someplace. And replacing the battery I would assume would not reset this unless there was some Id or value stored in the battery in an eeprom. So my assumption would be that simply replacing the battery may not immediately fix the problem, you may have to totally discharge and recharge your phone multiple times to essentially reset the low pass filtered history of your battery charge discharge cycles. So I guess my question would be if somebody tested if after replacing the battery they instantly had higher performance or not..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can attest that the problem Apple is describing happened to me on Android. After about 2 years of heavy my Nexus 6P started shutting off immediately at 15-20% battery. I poked around the internet found lots of other people with the same problem, almost always recommending calling support rather than any workarounds -- I give it a shot and two weeks later I have a new phone.

<comment><USER15> Except of course your Android phone SHUTS OFF when the battery is degraded. Apple has designed iOS to let you keep using the phone (perhaps at a slower speed) even with a degraded battery.

Apple keeps your phone working longer. Why isn't this the story? Because this is exactly opposite to the agenda of people that want to knock Apple. The stories of how Apple designs devices to fail and require new devices is totally false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can't they just admit they retract support from old OS versions that works best with older hardware?

</comment><comment><USER17> I want the option to turn this off.

<comment><USER18> I bet the Jailbreak community will come up with a workaround, assuming your phone has a Jailbreak option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why not just have removable battery? It can be easily replaced.</comment>


Tesla Model 3 is the top selling American car in the USA - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/08/tesla-model-3-is-1-top-selling-american-car-in-usa/ <comment><USER2> Aren't the three "foreign" cars ranked above it also made in America?

<comment><USER3> Yes, but it doesn't mean they're considered American. If you would, according to that logic you'd have to say that the iPhone is a Chinese (Korean/Taiwanese) product.

But yeah it's a bit silly to bring nationalism/politics into a comparison of car sales. The whole comparison is really designed to mislead people who don't know better and don't look any further, to conclude something that isn't really true. Because where various manufacturers produce >10m cars, and multiple American manufacturers did >6m, Tesla averaged about 0.1m last year and will do about 0.25m this year. That's pretty sweet, but not the conclusion most people would have when they read a Tesla car was the top selling American car in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where are these numbers coming from? The publication only cites itself as a source.

<comment><USER5> From a website that has published around 30 pro-Tesla articles in the last week alone[1], which headlines such as:

 _" Tesla Model 3 Total Cost of Ownership Estimate — Crushing It"_

 _" #1 Highest Grossing Car In USA = Tesla Model 3 … Model Y Will Crush "Tesla Killers" … German Wake-Up Call"_

 _" Tesla Model 3 = Lightning, Model Y = Thunder"_

 _" New BMW 3 Series Too Little, Too Late To Slow Tesla Model 3 Disruption"_

 _" Tesla Model 3 = 4th Best Selling Car In USA (Maybe)"_

 _" #1 Tesla Model S Dominating Large Luxury Car Sales In USA"_

 _" Tesla Crushes Quarterly Delivery Record"_

[1] [https://cleantechnica.com/?s=tesla](https://cleantechnica.com/?s=tesla)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Which mostly has to do with having few models (65% of production is in this one model) and a national sales focus (50% in US), rather than the car selling (or rather, manufacturing) so well.

There's multiple US manufacturers which produce >6m cars a year. Tesla is looking at about 0.25m or so. Interestingly enough Tesla has a higher market cap than Ford.

Still, I can't say it's not impressive. Q3 2018 production is more than 3x what it was in Q1 2018. That's pretty ridiculous (although to be fair, growth was flat in the years prior).

</comment><comment><USER6> Why are 90% of the cars on that list terrible? After the Telsa you need to read all the way down to number 15 to find something else i'd actually want to drive/admit owning.

<comment><USER7> Tesla has an effect similar to iPhone, where people spend more to have it than what they used to generally for a car before. Even Tesla leadership was surprised by it (they expected to get to $35k sooner, but also didn't expect to be able to sell so many cars at $50k).

<comment><USER8> Sounds reasonable, but do you have a source?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> not counting SUVs & trucks

<comment><USER10> Not many people count trucks as cars though.</comment></comment>


Here Are The Women of Y Combinator And They Are Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/30/ladies-of-y-combinator/ <comment><USER2> Ah I love these moments when I know that I am writing a risky post and I will very likely be downvoted, but here it comes!

How is this fair? Doesn't it qualify as "sexism"? You know the thing that was heavily debated on HN in the last weeks when some people were treated based on their gender? "I mean these people are put forward because they are %s, and if they were not %s they would not even qualify to a full page article. Based on that story %s seem to have an easier time because of their gender" % ( "women", "women", "women"). Sorry for the Pythonic syntax but if you saw "men" instead of "women" you'd have totally different stories and the big S word: sexism.

Plus, the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly". If I were a girl I would certainly feel kind of weird that out of the 4 ideas 1 is directed towards women, 2 are directly relevant to "standard" feminine tastes: clothing. Also the journalist is a woman... I want to see women promising us Big Data analysis or the new portal around cars, not some stuff that reinforce stereotypes!

I am sorry but I will say that sexism is gone when EVERY trace of it will have disappeared, and there won't be any "X women that succeed and they are awesome" but the title will be "Z ideas that will help you buy clothes" with guys and girls in the same article.

<comment><USER3> _How is this fair?_

Why does it need to be fair? This isn't grade school... (For the record, I don't think this article is unfair but I don't see why that would matter.)

 _Doesn't it qualify as "sexism"?_

No... How would this be sexism (discrimination based on gender)?

 _if you saw "men" instead of "women" you'd have totally different stories and the big S word: sexism._

Huh? There's no reason to highlight "The Men of YC". There's nothing remarkable about a bunch of guys trying to get tech startups off the ground. Women are typically underrepresented in this group, so this is noteworthy.

 _Plus, the ideas might be good for business but it's very very "girly"._

Websites that cater to women are few and far between, women are typically willing to spend a lot of money on these types of sites, and it shouldn't be suprising that women develop businesses that they themselves would want to use. If you haven't noticed most startups tend to be a bunch of geeky guys developing geek-related crap that only geeks are really interested in. Same difference.

 _Also the journalist is a woman..._

And? Isn't that appropriate? I'm sure the article would be fine if a male journalist wrote it but you shouldn't be suprised that a female journalist was hilighting sucessful women in tech.

Your weird interpretation of sexism is baffling.

<comment><USER4> _Huh? There's no reason to highlight "The Men of YC". There's nothing remarkable about a bunch of guys trying to get tech startups off the ground._

This is true. From an information theoretic perspective, this story more interesting than the converse would be. However, I've been told many times that information theory and probability is not a defense against charges of sexism.

For example, consider the question "do you plan to have children soon?" From an information theory perspective, it provides useful information when making a hiring decision. And the information is more notable for a woman than for a man, since a woman who gives an affirmative answer is far more likely than a man to vanish from the workforce. Yet it's normally considered sexist to ask this question, particularly if you ask the question only of women.

How do you reconcile this difference?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Disclaimer: I am a guy.

I apologize if this comes off as a strange sentiment, but I find stories like this pretty condescending. It's almost like reading a story about some achievement by a kid with special needs and I need to stand up and cheer for these women. These women are amazing for whatever they have done, regardless of gender.

<comment><USER6> Really, how is it different from "Minnesotans in YCombinator" or "Indians in YCombinator"? It's someone choosing to highlight and celebrate a subgroup in a particular feature article. I don't see anything condescending about it at all.

<comment><USER7> it's condescending because as a guy, and someone who has worked very very hard, sometimes you ask yourself: but what about me? I deserve some kudos as well.

<comment><USER8> It's also condescending towards the women. It's really hard to shake the internal feeling that perhaps you only got featured because of your gender, and not your brilliant idea, as well as the external perception that that may be the case. I don't think posts like this benefit either audience, in fact.

A hard working guy with a world-changing idea shouldn't be overlooked in favour of a mediocre woman who is remarkable because she is a woman.

<comment><USER9> I also think that Y Combinator's application process and brand is so meritocratic that it deflects the effect you're talking about.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but Techcrunch choosing to explicitly feature the women from YC, not the interesting ideas from YC, creates the effect -- that's what I'm referring to. Mind you, being in YC may minimise the impostor syndrome.

<comment><USER9> TC has written a dedicated post to virtually every single YC startup from every batch for the last several years. We did about a dozen posts on Demo Day alone this week. So writing _one_ article that points out that YC is more diverse than it used to be out of the 100 or so we will probably ultimately write about companies from this class seems reasonable to me.

<comment><USER8> In which case, I'd love to see companion articles on other types of diversity to remove this debate entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact that these businesses are run by women is only tangentially relevant.

Shoptiques is a particularly interesting business. It creates value where none really existed before. Boutiques can't establish a real web presence, and mid market girls don't have access to NY/LA/London boutiques. This is an online business that creates value from thin air. Execution is the key, and the execs seem to be totally on track.

99 dresses is a potential home run but like all marketplace businesses it is tough. My favorite thing is that they are so low class. I love the idea that chicks are swapping dresses from F21. It is just so real and honest. I want them to be a major success just to spite the people behind renttherunway.

The daily muse looks like a newspaper to me, so I don't get the business. Hireart seems like a gimmick.

Women or no women, I'll be an ass and say what I think.

<comment><USER11> > Women or no women, I'll be an ass and say what I think.

Excellent point. I think the key to true equality is to disregard the differences (gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc) and just look at simple things, such as performance, execution, success, value creation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What stood out to me immediately, is that 3 of the 4 sets of founders are first generation immigrants.

<comment><USER13> It's Americas secret weapon <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0Y9j_CGgM>

<comment><USER14> *Secret weapon we are trying desperately to get rid of

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find it interesting that none of them are technical founders. Were there no women who coded in this batch?

<comment><USER16> I carefully read the article several times and notice there is no mention of these womens ability to make coffee or sandwiches either.

I'd have to infer that at least some of them can both cook and code, and further that neither fact was significant in of itself in being able to found an internet based business.

Obviously it can save money if you can make your own sandwiches, which many may choose to do.

<comment><USER15> one is important...the other is not

<comment><USER16> Never underestimate the business value of being able to make a good sandwich, appreciate a good meal, and to make people comfortable.

As the comment I replied to remarked about the tech ability of the founders I'd have to say that I'm willing to bet that the young Australian woman that started a trading site with her younger brother very probably has a good grip on the mechanics of web site building and operation. Further she appears to have had the good sense to outsource for the tech when scaling up for the American market.

I've been involved in a number of businesses that have gone from small to international, nearly half with women founders and nearly half with tech founders (with some overlap). In almost all cases the telling important factors weren't gender or tech ability but that elusive EQ ... the ability of the founders to rally a team and have them hold the faith while deals were formed and products deployed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How did the author overlook the female construction engineer of PlanGrid (one of my favorite YC startups this batch), or the domain expert (pharmacist) at MedMonk (which is one of the more likely to save lives of the YC batch)?

</comment><comment><USER18> _Blah blah gender blah blah sexism_ , etc., etc. We may have reached the Seymour Skinner point here at HN: "I don't have any opinions anymore. All I know is that no one is better than anyone else and everyone is the best at everything." (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_Just_Want_to_Have_Sums>)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sexism exists in technology and especially the startup world. I've seen it over-and-over again in my experience.

My wife and I co-founded a successful web company together. We have pretty much the exact same background: Engineering grads from same program at the same school, same age within 10 days of each other, we both worked in SV as software engineers before launching our startup. We even both played competitive soccer.

However, over the years it is has been a common occurrence that with an introduction to a new tech/startup person, there's an assumption that I'm the technical person. I get spoken to in that way, and my wife is assumed to be non-(or less)-technical than I am. In one such a meeting, we were asked who is the CEO (from a veteran entrepreneur), she responded that she was, and the guy chuckled. We asked him why what was so funny about that? He mumbled and tripped over his words without explanation.

When we work together, thoughts of gender don't even come to mind. We're too damn busy trying to build something that someone gives a sh __about.

</comment><comment> barry-cotter Hirealert is interesting independently of the founding team but once they get any real traction they've got a target a mile wide on them for implicit discrimination lawsuits in the USA for any videos that make it possible to distinguish ethnicity. This effects voice explanations as well.

Also this

 _We really try to work with data to understand which questions work the best. You can think about it like designing the SATs for different jobs_

is for all practical purposes illegal in the USA due to Griggs v. Duke Power Company[0] and the misbegotten offspring of legal reasoning uncontaminated by any knowledge of statistics that is the 80% rule[1].

But who knows they might survive and thrive and hiring is a ridiculously huge market. Good luck to them.

[0]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Company>

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_impact#The_80.25_rule>

</comment><comment><USER20> "Vidisheva isn't just a pretty face..."

What's up with that?

<comment><USER6> Ordinarily, I'd agree with that criticism. But the preceding paragraphs talk about her modeling experience (which is valid because it's a fashion-related startup). So to me it seems fair to play off that.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that just sounds like journalistic flair to me. You could easily see the same from the other direction, "Mr. Schwarzenegger isn't just a bundle of muscles..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Funding female founders arises from the same basic logic of funding minority founders: it's just good business.

For every demographic that you consciously or unconsciously ignore as an investor or business owner, you're depriving yourself of all the potential business that demographic attracts.

</comment><comment><USER22> Aren't they forgetting Jessica Livingston? This should be titled "The Women in the ycombinator batch"

<comment><USER23> I think it is clear that she's writing about female founders in this batch and not YC partners.

She neglected to include the co-founders of Plangrid (Tracy Young) and Medmonk (Somaira Punjwani). They, too, have fascinating backgrounds. (Since presentations were only 2.5 minutes, it was easy to miss some if you had to leave the room.)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How's working in the Silicon Valley today? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently on the lookout for a new job after finishing my PhD in CS, but my last question didn't receive much love.
Therefore now, all-new, condensed and brief: How is working in the valley today? Especially if you are not much into the social media side of things and like to get your hands dirty the old-fashioned way (e.g. C,C++, system-level stuff, infrastructure, bare-metal development and so on)?
Would you recommend moving there despite the housing situation and inflation tendencies?
How many hours a week is the rule? >50? >60? >80? Is the income worth the additional hours and is there much left to live from after taxes and basic expenses? Is the working culture and atmosphere still inspiring? (Has it ever been?)
Real-life experience and tips welcome :) <comment><USER2> Longtime lurker, never posted on HN before. I am a mid-career software engineer working for a hardware company.

I don't live in the Palo Alto area and SF itself, because the cost of living is incredibly high. They are nice places for sure, and the social scenes there are more developed. You will have to pay to play there though.

Housing is very expensive, rents are very expensive. I see it as a tax on job portability. The important upside is that SV is the center of the universe for interesting computer science work. I have lived in several other places, and if you want to prioritize your career, and I am certain SV is the place to do it.

I am what is probably now considered "old-skool" (e.g. C++, semiconductors). There are still many opportunities in this space. Mail email me at email@example.com if you are interested in talking about a job opportunity; the startup I work for is hiring.

I don't like the typical SV startup culture, I find it pretentious and too youthful. The HBO series Silicon Valley is more accurate I think than the general public realizes. That's a bit ironic since I work for a startup right now. :P I find that older engineers make much better decisions, and I'm pleased to be able to work with late-career heavy-hitters in my current company. It makes for a much more stable work environment, and our biz-dev prospects are more realistic than the social media rocket-ship blastoff overnight model.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The important upside is that SV is the center of the universe for > interesting computer science work.

This is so true! (Even by my limited experience) Comparing job offerings in my home area vs offerings of any random company in the valley, the SV company wins. It's unbelievable how few interesting CS jobs there are in the rest of the world in comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I moved out to Silicon Valley a little over two years ago. My experience with the area has had its positives and negatives, but it has mostly been negative.

I worked in QA for a little over a year at a startup in Mountain View. Firstly, the hours were horrible. I was consistently working twelve hours a day during the week and at least four hours a day one day per weekend. This was finally pared back after I and another member of the QA team started to complain about the hours. Neither the pay nor the equity I received was really fair for the amount of work I put in.

Furthermore, whenever I attempted to advance my skills beyond the QA position, I was blocked again and again. I was only allowed to commit code after I got fed up with an issue, fixed it myself, and basically begged a developer to look at it. It was a two-line fix; however, most of the developers assumed I couldn't write code properly simply because I didn't have a CS background.

Lastly, it was the management layer directly above that finally made me decide to quit. My manager and one of the developers I worked with consistently had this annoying feud going on between them. I was always stuck in the middle of it. All I wanted to do was to complete my job and go home without a headache. Towards the end, that became impossible.

So, if you want to work long hours for horrible compensation, to be pigeonholed into a position and never be allowed to grow your skills, and to be surrounded by people who cannot seem to grow up, then come to Silicon Valley and try your hand at being part of something that may or may not become the next greatest company.

<comment><USER4> I don't see anything that you've said that's unique to Silicon Valley, except perhaps for the extreme hours which I never experienced. Especially the "QA gets no respect" bit; I jointed Lucent for a QA including programming QA stuff job and it was a miserable, never again, I advise all my friends to avoid it like the plague.

<comment><USER3> I come from banking in the Midwest. While I worked some long hours occasionally, it was never as bad as what I have experienced here in Silicon Valley. I'm specifically talking about the geographical Silicon Valley, not just the tech scene in the area. On top of that, I'm going to claim unrealistic work / life balance is something common to this part of the country. I've returned to banking out here, and I still find there is an unrealistic expectation of how many hours an employee should work a week.

With that said, I don't really mind the long hours if I am properly compensated. It's not the long hours that bother me. It's the thought that I have nothing better to do than to serve the company at any time of the day. Employment is a mutually beneficial economic relationship. Out here, it seems that a lot of employers think the employees should be thankful they are allowed to work there.

<comment><USER4> I'm from the Midwest myself (sort of, Joplin, MO is at the edge of the West and is culturally Southern). Never worked here, though, but I don't get the impression _insane_ hours are acceptable here. Have worked in the Boston area, roughly in the '80s, and D.C. area, roughly in the '90s. No insane hours either place, aside from some occasional, short term, customer driven projects, which are a very different thing.

As for your latter point ... don't know. When I was "junior" the talent shortage was dire. When I was "senior", I wouldn't put up with such things, but even in cases where I got recruited without having much of an idea of the workplace culture, I don't ever remember a "you should be thankful you are allowed to work here" attitude. Might have been luck of the draw, although in plenty of those places a failure to have hired someone like me at the time would have resulted in the company dying, so....

ADDED: D.C. might be a special case: The culture is overwhelmingly influenced by government contracting, and the government is loathe to pay overtime. And contractors tend to get paid by the billed hour, so unpaid overtime costs them money. And at least compared to Boston a decade earlier, the time you spent in the office was a greater factor in judging your performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've worked all over the U.S., and oddly enough, am now only working in SV. Been here about 3 months.

Single? Young? Do it in a heartbeat. Get as much experience doing various things as you can. In the right spot, you can't beat the experience here. I'll also second what the others said about culture: go walking around downtown Mountain View or Palo Alto sometime and just listen to the chit-chat. Very cool stuff.

Older? Married with kids? Heck if I'd want to do it. Those same really cool 20-something masters-of-the-universe are probably also a major pain to have to deal with. Yeah, it'd be cool to bump into somebody in an elevator and start discussing NoSQL. No, it wouldn't be cool to go to some function like a PTA meeting or some meeting of the city council and have dozens of upper-income dweebs with little experience in conflict resolution.

I would also be very careful that you're not getting screwed over by a young startup that's going to crash and burn and take you with it -- or become one of the drones for one of the super huge companies. The sweet spot is between those two extremes. I imagine it would be extremely easy to wake up in two years and find you've lost a huge chunk of your life with little to show for it. Don't do that.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would say first, it depends on your personal life.

Depending on where you're coming from, moving a family out here may be a challenge. If it's just you I absolutely would recommend it, if not I still would recommend it, but there just are far more considerations to think about.

How many hours you'd work tends to have a wide range. All the current responses suggest insane hours are guaranteed. I probably work between 40-50 hours a week. The week before our last big feature release it was probably 60 or so, but that is the exception not the rule. This is going to depend entirely on the stage of the company you work for and the company itself.

As for salary, I make about 60-70% more than I would have if I stayed in the midwest. I also would be making 30% more if I was working for a big company as opposed to a startup, though with substantially less equity. That being said, I pay 2-2.5x for my apartment than I would have paid back home. However I can walk to work and have my groceries delivered - thus don't have a car payment, car insurance, etc, so it is somewhat evened out. At the end of the day, I make enough to have plenty to live on.

The biggest thing for me though is the atmosphere, not just where I work, but in general - tech is the norm and walking down the street (at least in soma) I frequently hear people talking about database performance, or whether AWS is worth the price, or about a new library being released that makes doing X easier. I love it - for the first time in my life I'm surrounded by people who are as passionate (and often even more so) about the same things I am, it's something I don't think you can really get anywhere else. And is absolutely worth whatever the difference between what my net income after expenses is here as opposed to the midwest.

<comment><USER7> >love it - for the first time in my life I'm surrounded by people who are as passionate (and often even more so) about the same things I am, it's something I don't think you can really get anywhere else.

Are there any universities with a similar atmosphere?

<comment><USER8> I'm curious about this. I went to a good university (though not known for CS), and I thought that most of my classmates were apathetic/just in it for the money. I certainly never saw the sort of enthusiasm that I see from people on HN (or my co-workers at my startup job).

Are places like CMU or MIT utopias of hacking-related discussion?

(I mean at the undergraduate level, that is)

<comment><USER9> I went to Harvard and spent a lot of time at MIT. While not universal through the campuses, you can definitely find environments with the feelings described above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Life is hell as it is too expensive and traffic is bad. Eighty hours is minimal if you work for a small shop. Pay is subjective..it is all about sucking up rather than merit.

Valley has been long dead.

</comment><comment><USER11> Let's just say Silicon Valley has the most opportunities, which means that if you don't like your current job (bad boss, long hours), you can find something better quite easily.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've lived in a few major metro areas, so I'll take a shot at helping you. I'm interested in seeing if anybody else has run into these things happening to them, as well.

Coming from a background in CS, you have a definite advantage. There are a lot of tech companies out here, but I would not limit myself to that if I were you. There are plenty of opportunities where tech is an overlap with the actual focus of a company. Try not to get stuck in a particular mindset about what job you'll do, especially if you are just finishing your PhD and stepping into the "real world".

The Valley (I'm including all of the SF Bay Area, as well), is a great place, with a lot to offer. However, it can be a hard and cold place, especially if you don't know anybody out here.

Unless you're traveling along El Camino Real, or going into the center of cities, traveling is a pain. Services such as the Caltrain have limited stops at certain locations, and stop running at 10:30pm or midnight (depending on the direction). Muni can be packed and pass by usual stops if there isn't enough room (ususally will only happen around Chinatown and Northbeach areas). And BART is... a topic for another day.

This has given rise to Uber and Lyft providing a great convenience, but one in which you pay for. Sometimes having excessive multipliers on the usual fare you're charged. Taking an Uber in SF during a Giant's game day will see a spike in fare, for example.

The culture is its own thing. Having lived in Chicago and NYC, I've had my share of interaction with enough people. People in the valley are very friendly and very helpful—up front. Rather than not talking to you, or brushing you off, people will act very excited to meet you and talk with you. However, do not take this as them having an actual interest in you, or anything about you. This lone difference had made it difficult for me to actually understand who is a friend, and who is not out here.

Related to that, the dating scene out here is the same, from my experience. A lot of girls I've dated out here are looking for a guy who has a particular "thing". Whether that be he teaches yoga, has a dog, does art in the park, something they can tell their friends about. In NYC my experience has been a bit better. Girls seemed to be more attracted to me based on my personality, and "charm" for lack of a better word. I didn't feel the need to have a "thing" going on, just me being me.

Housing and where you live greatly alter your enjoyment. This also depends on what you want to do.

If you're looking for night life, you should definitely live in SF, Palo Alto, or San Jose. Anywhere else limits you to particular metros, or how much money you're willing to shell out for an Uber. There is a lot going on at any time in those 3 places, that finding groups, meetups, events, will be a great place to socialize.

Housing is expensive. Very expensive. But it's not terrible. A lot of companies take into consideration housing, so your paycheck will reflect being able to afford to live.

Your paycheck might look like a lot at $120,000, but it's not. Between rent, taxes, food, travel, you'll be living well, but not as well as some might think.

It's a good place to live, especially if you're in your 20's and want to further your career, and love technology. Outside of that, it's just another place with its own quirks.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty much spot on. I live in San Mateo. Firstly, what I pay for my basic apartment here would have easily put me in one of the nicest places back home. Nightlife doesn't exist. The traffic is horrible if you are headed up into SF or down into San Jose. I manage to save $1K per month on my six figure salary. At first, that sounds like I'm doing pretty well; however, look up the cost of a house in the Bay Area. In August when my lease is up, I'm taking what I have managed to save, and I'm going home to where I can afford to live, not merely sleep.

<comment><USER13> I'm curious if you'd be willing to share your monthly take-home and your monthly rent... or maybe at least what percentage of your take-home you're paying for rent?

<comment><USER12> Since this is a child comment under my post, I'll chime in, too.

When I first started out here, I was making aprox $6666 a month ($80k annual). Of that, I would take home around $4100 after taxes and withholdings (including travel expenses which were reimbursed when you file your taxes).

Of that $4100, $1600 would go towards rent (which was only because I found a deal from a friend). You now have $2500.

This seems not too bad, until you factor in utilities, random car repairs, saving for vacations (or maybe just skip the vacations and save for a fancy casket).

In the end, unless you're mindfully frugal, you may be left with around around $12-1500 to keep in your bank account.

Which is great... if you're content with keeping the equivalent of a sub $20,000 salary.

To make it worth it, find a job you like, or a job that likes and values you. Look for areas you can expand and grow; not just in your current skillset, but in broadening outside of engineering, as well. Soft skills are very helpful.

As you get promotions (also called switching companies every 1.5 years out here), your salary will increase, but it won't feel as dramatic as the check says.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Was Benjamin Franklin's Basement Filled with Skeletons? (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-was-benjamin-franklins-basement-filled-with-skeletons-524521/ <comment><USER2> "The most plausible explanation is not mass murder, but an anatomy school run by Benjamin Franklin's young friend and protege, William Hewson"

<comment><USER3> And of course a complete disregard for human remains at the time. Nothing surprising.

<comment><USER4> If we hadn't broken the rules to study anatomy, we wouldn't have modern medicine.

Scientific advances are often made by pushing past the qualms of present cultural mores.

<comment><USER5> No kidding.

[https://www.thelocal.de/20170503/german-scientists-to- identi...](https://www.thelocal.de/20170503/german-scientists-to-identify- nazi-disabled-victim-remains)

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

[http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/02/guatemala.html](http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/02/guatemala.html)

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

<comment><USER6> The difference here, which I think is a major one, is that the examples you've listed disregard the wellbeing of humans who are alive. Benjamin Franklin may have disrespected the remains of humans (or maybe he didn't, there's no conclusive evidence here on the dying wishes of those folks in his backyard), but those remains are objects and not humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, or maybe his Hellfire Club membership was more than just pagan rituals...

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

<comment><USER8> Sort of on topic, the Hellfire Caves are really quite something, if you get a chance to visit them. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Caves](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Caves)

400m deep, dug by hand, to use the chalk for the road between Wycombe and West Wycombe. Quite the feat of engineering. Wonderfully creepy inside as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to be clear this was his house in London, UK. Not one in Philadelphia.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/36+Craven+St,+Charing+Cros...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/36+Craven+St,+Charing+Cross,+London+WC2N+5NF,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.1270809,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x487604cee7c6e4b3:0x66452e2e55d6fb80!8m2!3d51.5076423!4d-0.1248869)

William Hewson was a British anatomist:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hewson_(surgeon)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hewson_\(surgeon\))

</comment><comment><USER10> Because his closet was full.

(I'm sorry. I just couldn't help it :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Ah, the life of an early adopter!</comment>


What Jobs Would You Like to See Most? - <AUTHOR> https://findcovidjobscom949.substack.com/p/what-jobs-would-you-like-to-see-most/comments?r=55jcc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> firstname.lastname@example.com

We are a covidaccelerator.com startup, please let us know what your feedback is or if you have any questions/comments.

Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: Context-switching - <AUTHOR>

Here's my problem:  I find switching tasks, on the scale of hours to days, to be agony.
I am productive and feel good when I'm working on the same large project for, say, two weeks to two years, pretty much every day.  (Releasing early and often, of course. ;) I have momentum.  I get started the minute I get out of bed, and I have all the context there in my head, so I'm productive immediately.  After the work day, my subconscious mind is merrily cranking away, understanding the problem more deeply, finding simpler solutions, seeing connections and opportunities.  I track lots of little tasks and merrily bring them to completion.  I've done this happily at several software companies.
Two or more simultaneous projects, though, and I have a problem.  At a couple other software companies, I was a very bad employee: looking back, those were places that booked your time "50% on this client's project, 50% on that client's project" (or more subdivisions, even).  Every time I switch projects, I have to exercise extreme willpower to absorb the situation and see what needs to be done.  Each ramp-up takes a couple of days of agony to get some momentum.  My subconscious creativity shuts down.  The mental context never becomes rich and fertile.  Work is just an attempt to force myself to do some error-prone hack.  A couple days or a week later, it's back to the first project.  After a few weeks of this, my head gets "noisy".  I find myself losing track of details, unable to concentrate, making lots of dumb mistakes, feeling foggy and confused.  Reading becomes slow and difficult.  I find myself becoming stupid, lazy, and unimaginative, always craving some quiet time.  Or better yet, some sustained focus time.
Right now, I'm in grad school (Ph.D., 2nd year).  Grad school, it turns out, consists of running four projects simultaneously: three classes + teaching one class (or helping teach).  It's all hurry-up-and-do-something-else.  Each day is broken into three or four blocks, about one to two hours each: attending a class, office hour, grading, actually doing some classwork, blah blah.  Each week is broken into about 20-25 blocks like this, sprinkled among the four projects.  I seldom get much done during these blocks; they're too short to build momentum or finish something.  The real work happens during all-nighters: dropping everything, force-feeding my brain for a couple days, delivering something hurried, and then flushing it out of my brain to catch up on the other stuff.  (I remember almost nothing from my courses, even though I get A's.)  I find this agonizing, unproductive, and demoralizing.
How have you dealt with this in your own work?  Even outside of grad school, "makers" have to deal with "manager time".  Don't start-ups involve constant context-switching?  (Maybe it's not as bad as grad school, since the contexts are related.)
(If you know of any grad schools that run on "maker time", I'd love to hear about that.) <comment><USER2> These days my work is split between developing new software, keeping various systems and databases humming along and helping out anyone on our team on a wide variety of issues. My time is almost always in demand by someone and occasionally I get so many requests for help that days or even weeks go by before I can make effective progress on my own development projects.

When this starts to happen what I do is start making my own private scrumm burndown chart at the beginning and end of each day by adding a few rows to a spreadsheet with the estimated hours remaining on each of my development tasks along with a note on how I actually spent my day. I then review this with my boss and ask him whether or not he thinks I've been prioritizing properly and leave it up to him to adjust everyone's expectations (which is usually easy because I make sure to keep good records and structure our communications).

But while I'm fortunate to be working in a good team, there's no denying the psychic toll of constant task switching is disruptive. Unfortunately I know of no easy solution other than to spend the time to re-focus. Sometimes it can take a whole day of just re-reading code, making notes and fiddling around writing and rewriting little things before I can get back into a solid productive development flow.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I get started the minute I get out of bed, and _I have all the context there in my head,_ so I'm productive immediately."

Well there's your problem! Get some of it written down, on paper, Evernote, or wherever works for you. You will definitely improve your context switching if whenever you need to switch gears you can review your notes from the last time you were working on that task.

I work as a freelance consultant for several clients, and I keep different notebooks for each one. I don't think I'd be able to manage this if I tried to keep everything in my head.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know, I think you've pegged it. Keeping it in my head is probably the main factor.

I write down lots of thoughts and tiny tasks in a notebook as I'm working, and check off the tasks as I go, but that's not really setting up for context- switching. When I'm writing code, I'm following inspiration: playing out the idea in my head, or rather, using the act of writing code to cause the idea to become clarified and completed. While ramping up and while coding, the idea is taking shape.

Maintaining notes designed to enable context-switching sounds like something I could try. This is probably the key. This would enable working in smaller chunks of time, too.

Weird: Right at this moment, the thought terrifies me. I wonder if I'd have to completely change my creative process to make such notes.

Hmm.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I can see why that would be terrifying. You probably wouldn't have to completely change your process while you are working.

You might just be able to do a quick brain dump onto paper or software (maybe a mind mapping tool?) once you get to a good stopping point. It doesn't have to be everything - just enough to remind you where you left off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gallatin program at NYU - highly individualized doctoral programs.

Streamline reporting to "outsource" the crap normally required by you in the manager role - use work pipelines with highly detailed drop down representations of work status/problem status. Have your mentees/workers complete so that you can review & tweak where necessary to get the greatest amount of detail without having to review much -

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Val. From [http://www.petersons.com/collegeprofiles/Profile.aspx?inunid...](http://www.petersons.com/collegeprofiles/Profile.aspx?inunid=34916&reprjid=26&orderLineNum=1245783-1&sponsor=1&glevel=S), it looks like Gallatin only does master's degrees, but this shows that someone has been exploring in this direction.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's another idea: Instead of getting good at context-switching, are there ways to set up your life so you get to stay focused (and still pay the rent)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, obviously there are. I had that when I was an employee a few times. A friend of mine is studying organ in a master's program. She practices organ 2-4 hours a day, early every morning. She spends a month or two (or more) getting good at a really hard piece, really getting to know it, mastering it. I envy the day-to-day continuity that she has. Other stuff during the day is OK, like easy classes, but not something else that occupies the subconscious "workspace".

Could that day-to-day continuity be achieved in a scientific/mathematical grad program? In a solo business?</comment></comment>