Ask HN: Moving to Philadelphia - <AUTHOR>

I've been living in the Boston area for 10 years, and have really enjoyed working in the tech scene here but I'm strongly considering a move to the Philly area for family reasons. Can anyone give me any tips or info on Philadelphia? What's the tech scene like? What are the big companies? Where do people live? What do people do for fun? <comment><USER3> Check out the Main Line. It comprises the nicest suburbs in the area. Affordable enough on a dev-salary. Best place in the area for a family - <USER2> safe. And many companies line the Main Line up through King of Prussia (also a decent area).

If you want to live in the city, I highly recommend Logan Square/Art Museum area or Rittenhouse if you've got the dough. I lived around Logan Square for about a year and I felt incredibly safe even late at night. Northern Liberties is a great place for brogrammers - it was a little too much for me.

DuckDuckGo is the coolest company around that I'm familiar with. Tech scene is good. Tons of meetups.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on considering moving to the most awesome city in the world. ;)

The Philly tech scene is small but dynamic and growing every day. For a sense of the scene, read Technically Philly and subscribe to the Philly Startup Leaders listserv [2]. The major clusters are Old City Philadelphia, home to N3RD Street and other related makerspaces, Center City, University City (near UPenn/Drexel), Northern Liberties as was mentioned. There are a bunch of suburban tech clusters as well, and the city is pretty evenly split between the two, I'd say.

There are tons of meetups in any given week on anything ranging from VR to Android to data. There are a couple of big conferences here every year including Emerging Tech for the Enterprise [4]. We also just hosted FOSCON. We have an active geek community in Geekadelphia [5].

Big companies (depends on what you think of as big): DuckDuckGo, Curalate, Linode is relocating here, Comcast is the number one employer in the region and is increasingly working on more cutting-edge tech projects (although obviously also still has all the features of a large corporate entity), Urban Outfitters down in Navy Yard. Then there are plenty of pharma , financial, and eds that make up the meat of the city's white-collar industry: GlaxoSmithKline, PNC, Temple, Drexel, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, etc.

Where to live? A loaded question depending on what you value. Some people live in the city to be close to everything. The coolest neighborhoods right now are Northern Liberties and Fairmount, probably. Some people live in the burbs for the schools. Some burbs are closer and more accessible by train than others. Depends on what you're looking for.

Any more details, feel free to shoot me an email. It's my profile. I'm happy to answer questions!

[1] [http://technical.ly/philly/](http://technical.ly/philly/) [2] [http://phillystartupleaders.org/](http://phillystartupleaders.org/) [3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N3RD_Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N3RD_Street) [4] [http://phillyemergingtech.com/](http://phillyemergingtech.com/) [5] [http://www.geekadelphia.com/](http://www.geekadelphia.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Currently go to school in the city, Temple University. I have both lived in the city on Spring Garden Street and lived in the suburbs of the city all my life. I live around the Main line area and like eatonphil said it is the nicest area of the suburbs.

First Ill talk about the main line, it is a great place to grow up/ or live if you are in your mid to late 20s. From Ardmore, Lower Merion, Bryn Mawr, Malvern, Paloi, Exton, and continuing on to King of Prussia have a lot of great places to live and a lot of companies. Espically in Malervn their is a large presence of companies. I take the regional rail train from the suburbs into the city for school and it is super easy and kind of relaxing.

In the city, certain areas of the city are blowing up right now and it really is a fun place to live. I lived around 12th and Spring Garden and apartments were being built in every empty lot and there are so many young people its a great place to be. There is so many great bars to go too and amazing restaurants throughout the city its awesome.

</comment><comment><USER6> Northern Liberties is the place to hang out. Lots of craft beer, restaurants, etc... Tons of new real estate popping up (some cheaply constructed ), but rentals are widely available for all budgets. Extremely bike friendly. But be aware because Jersey drivers. Avoid walking around shady areas. Stick to the burger (between Girard and South St). Avoid parts of Temple and SW Philly. Start-up community is taking off. Beware of job postings that list Philadelphia. Conshohocken is NOT Philadelphia, nor is Norristown.

</comment><comment><USER7> As others have said: Places to Live: In Philly ['Rittenhouse', 'Fishtown', 'Old City', 'Kensington']. Suburbs ['Mainline: Wayne, Ardmore, Bryn Mawr ...to name a few'] . Happy to answer any more questions if you have them. Email (temporarily) in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thank you for this post.I live in the middle of PA and am planning on making a move into philly, so this info will be useful to me too.

From what I can tell on meetup.com there are plenty of meetups for various technologies. The tech scene won't be as big as in boston, but it seems sufficient.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I probably take the Boston scene for granted, but at the same time I'm not looking to join the next future unicorn, I'm just looking for a steady job at a good company that I'll enjoy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Comcast, L-3 Comms, and Lockheed for starters. North 3rd street (N3rd st) is where all the cool people hangout

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone, appreciate the info!</comment>


An analysis of a worst-case scenario password database reveals patterns - <AUTHOR> https://www.unix-ninja.com/p/Password_DNA <comment><USER2> This is just ridiculous - if you want me to read something, don't print it in light grey on barely lighter grey:

[http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/GreyOnGrey.png](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/GreyOnGrey.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Odd, doesn't look like that to me: [http://i.imgur.com/wREiKKE.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/wREiKKE.jpg)

Version 51.0.2704.103 (64-bit) on OS X 10.10.5

<comment><USER2> I'm using Firefox 47.0 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. That was an untouched (apart from clipping to size) screen-shot.

This is the thing about wonderfully complex, beautifully crafted, responsive themes - can you really be sure they look the same to others as they look to you? For me, it's just completely unreadable.

Just to add, I also find the image you've posted very hard to read.</comment></comment></comment>


Pony (programming language) Cheat Sheet - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZsNoKDZL_N5QtRWtWYLjYoPVAebww5Ag <comment><AUTHOR> I put together a cheat sheet for the Pony programming language ([https://ponylang.org](https://ponylang.org)). It provides a quick reference to some things that I think are useful for folks who are getting started with the language. It isn't meant to be a stand-alone resource, rather it should be used in conjunction with other learning materials like the Pony Tutorial ([https://tutorial.ponylang.org](https://tutorial.ponylang.org)).</comment>


Reify: enable ES2015 modules in any version of Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benjamn/reify <comment><USER2> Fascinating. This is really nice for REPL environments. I'm not sure I would use it in production.</comment>


The fly-by, Wi-Fi hacking machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/the-flyby-wifi-hacking-machine-20130524-2k5xg.html <comment><USER2> I find it interesting they go over what's considered "insecure" yet completely left out whether any of these networks were WPS enabled, which is crucial when considering the security of a wireless network. Not even the pie-graph shows it.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree, WPS is devastating, but he can't use his motorcycle to attack those effectively. He'd have to stay in one place for a while to do a Reaver- style attack. Apparently he can collect enough data for offline cracking even at typical motorcycle speeds?

<comment><USER4> Beside brute-forcing the PIN with reaver, one can test for defaults first, a lot of people do not change them (or are even aware of WPS being enabled in the first place).

Title's a bit misleading, I clicked it expecting a some kind of a rpi+drone rig. This is still a _drive-by_ , not a _fly-by_.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, I was hopeful to see some Wardroning ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> its really interesting how the evolution of small chips powers alot of new possibilities. (and possible threats, like this or drones etc)

combine rasperry pi + google glass + kinect + leap motion + myo and you could do a number of interesting things that wont make some kind of Iron Man suit look all that scifi ;)

I am obv. dreaming, but still, exciting times to be in as a software developer.

<comment><USER7> MYO + Google Glass alone looks like an interesting concept[1] (of course, snowboarding makes anything look cool.)

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=oWu9TFJjHaM#t=56s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to know more about his head mounted display, but Google isn't being helpful (or maybe I'm asking it the wrong questions). Anyone have any links?</comment>


Ask HN: do you ever clean your email marketing db from inactives? - <AUTHOR> I used to do periodically clean our email db by hand, but it quickly became time consuming, so I built an internal tool to easily run list cleaning in Mailchimp and other ESPs.
It's pretty simple: it connects to the Mailchip API, looks at each contacts, identifies those inactive and either classify them in a special segment (e.g. "Inactives") or archives them directly. It also reduces bounce rate since it checks the validity of all the new incoming emails (e.g. from mispellings in form submissions, spambots etc) before the first email goes out.
I'm now thinking whether it's worth to launch this publicly. Would anyone else use this? How do you currently maintain email lists for your companies?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I worked on CRM and Marketing automation software for quite a long time, and we always maintained lists by doing staged cleanings. We would place people in segments based on their interaction until we hit that point where we would move them to an inactive segment completely (but they may have gone through 10 segments first). We would occasionally target the inactive list with special offers but in general we didn't do it with regularity. The lifecycle and journey of the email through different segments was really quite specific to the client type and the journey type.

So to answer your question more directly, it is a critical part of what people need to do to have proper response rates and to minimize issues with third party filtering systems. There is an absolute need for this type of stuff, I am just not sure if there is a large market opportunity here. Enterprises should be doing this already so you target would probably be SMB's and other similar businesses, which means lots of work for low dollar sales most likely. Maybe I am wrong there, but that's my initial thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks, SMB is a very valid point. Were you working with b2b or b2c customers/subscribers?

<comment><USER2> I worked on both, b2c and b2b. The journey's and acceptable patterns differed between those broad categories but the underlying process was identical.

SMB market would be where I think you'd have the greatest success with a product like this, again you'd just have to see what people are willing to pay. What I have seen is most of these types of products are priced either in bands based on # of subscribers or on a per record basis. You would have to just see what it is worth to people and see if you can monetize it at a rate that is worth the effort. I'd think there is a way just given how many people need services like this in the SMB market space, but they also can be a tougher market to sell into and keep happy. They'll pull the trigger faster on sales but can be very demanding of your time in support and in general expect a lot for the price they are willing to pay. Enterprises will demand a lot of support but they accept paying a premium when they are getting what they need, in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> List hygiene is important but from what I've seen most companies have their own way of handling it (or not handling it in many cases). For most orgs the platform defaults are good enough. What's most important from my perspective is deactivation and also identifying when customers/contacts switch either to a different channel or create new accounts with new contact info. That said there are already a handful of list hygiene tools in the space. But if your tool is compelling and you can figure out where to position it then sure it's worth a shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for you feedback, really appreciate it! Very good point on identifying duplicated accounts across same/different channels. I really agree deactivation of disengaged prospects can really impact deliverability to the entire list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about we stop giving the right to companies to immediately start email spam due to "required sign ins" for one time purchases?

<comment><AUTHOR> GDPR is alredy pretty severe on this</comment></comment>


Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it's an optical drive - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/91344-isostick-the-usb-memory-stick-that-thinks-its-an-optical-drive <comment><USER2> To all the people doubting the use of such a device, many OSs don't currently work "out of the box" with unetbootn and other such tools.

I've personally had problems with RHEL and Windows XP, and I can guarantee there are others.

With RHEL, you had to copy the rpm repo on the CD to another storage medium and manually set up the repo. This is because the default repo is set up to detect an optical drive, mount it, and use it as a repo. That's a pain.

Windows XP has problems with continuity between the restarts involved in the install process.

Emulating an optical drive would fix those problems and allow any ISO to run unmodified.

A final benefit is the multi-ISO support on one drive.

<comment><USER3> It seems like you would still need to copy the rpm repo to another medium?

Apt changed my life...<3 debian.

<comment><USER4> Hm? I read the GP as saying

"If you boot the iso from a harddrive (or the equivalent, a 'normal' usb stick) the installer fails because it explicitly looks for a CD/optical medium containing the repository"

With the gadget in this article that wouldn't be an issue anymore: The thumbdrive _is_ an optical drive for all the OS knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At least link to the kickstarter project: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elegantinvention/isostic...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elegantinvention/isostick- the-optical-drive-in-a-usb-stick)

Looks awesome though, I'll grab one. And I bet that I'm able to change the microSD card ;)

<comment><USER6> They link to it in the article.

<comment><USER7> I think the principle is that you give direct traffic to the important link rather than the content aggregator.

<comment><USER6> It wasn't just a 'content aggregator'. There was actually an article there, explaining it. I found it to be useful beyond just the kickstarter site, so I have no problem with them linking to it instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the big difference here is that we get the potential to put multiple disks on a single usb device. From the technicians perspective I'd like to rid myself of the big stack of cd's i have that i use to install windows, or run diagnostics, or any of those things. I remember thinking to myself last year, man if only someone made this. And low and behold here it is. I may have already talked my boss, (he's the owner, I'm the Technician Manager.) Into pledging for 5 32 GB models. (Something like 1,100 dollars ish.)

<comment><USER9> That's what we're going for! Thanks for the support! Hope your boss does the pledge, the more the merrier!

After working as a tech for several years, I know I always wanted something like this. It's great to finally build it and help everybody out!

Best Regards - Eric Agan, Elegant Invention

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Earlier this year I was working building the network for a security conference and one of the guys had a similar device‡.

It came in really handy when we had to install all the servers (he had multiple flavors of Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc.).

I've been meaning to pick one up, for the rare times when I find myself somewhere needing a bunch of boot disks; but I can vouch that at least this one is really neat.

‡ <http://www.zalman.com/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=431>

<comment><USER11> Very nice, it's cheap enough too [http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-VE200-B-Black- Drive-Enclosure/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-VE200-B-Black-Drive- Enclosure/dp/B004TO3XZW)

you could throw a 64GB SSD in there and still be below the price of the 16GB Isostick [http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-SSDNow-Solid- SV100S2-64GZ/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-SSDNow-Solid- SV100S2-64GZ/dp/B004BDORM4/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> And presumably those iso's can be DVDs of your favorite movies as well. Something for the netbook crowd.

I've had sticks which, when attached, show up as two devices, one is an optical drive with the disk of drivers already convieniently mounted in it :-) and the other the stick drives writable side. So the technology isn't particularly new of course but I like the notion of multiple ISO images on a stick and an easy way to select them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did anyone else notice that the ISOs have to be stored on a FAT32 partition? Doesn't this limit you to maximum 4GB ISOs? The OS X Snow Leopard ISO (at least last time I checked) is about 8GB. Seems pretty limiting to use Fat32. If it's a self contained system, why not use a better filesystem?

<comment><USER9> We're supporting FAT32 because it's the most universally supported (and easiest to support). Other filesystems will be supported in future updates, for sure. In the meantime, the management software will split the files automagically into .iso.1, .iso.2, and so on (or you can do this yourself).

Hope that helps \- Eric Agan, Elegant Invention

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am doubtful if this is usable with all the firmware compatibility issues it will have to tackle. My Mac's firmware for example refuses to boot anything other than OS X from a regular external USB DVD drive. I had to play tricks with Parallels and Bootcamp to get my Windows installation files on my 2nd HDD to start the installation.

Plus there are also software issues - Windows XP used to send reset to the USB controller on boot for example that would need to be worked around somehow in the Isostick's firmware.

More than anything most modern OSes and hardware setups boot just fine using standard USB stick based installers - Win 7, OS X and various Linux distros.

<comment><USER9> We're really pushing for Mac compatibility. Mac firmware is very picky, for sure, it seems to have very strict requirements for SCSI command support on optical drives.

Resetting the USB controller and such are no problem for isostick, it will come right back up in the same state it was left in.

Excellent point that modern OSes don't need the optical drive functionality. I still use my isostick to carry around lots of OSes and switch between them with ease, though.

Best Regards - Eric Agan, Elegant Invention

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the reply. If you can get my 2010 MacBook Pro to boot Windows and Linux using Isostick, you already have my money :) - lack of that functionality has caused me lot of pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It turns out that it's possible to make a single file that is both a bootable ISO image that can be burned to a CD, and a bootable hard-drive image that can be written to a mass storage device (like a USB key), to create a storage device that is bootable on x86 machines with a BIOS, x86 machines with EFI, or PowerMac machines.

It's possible, but it's not pretty: <http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/4957.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> Why is it not possible to directly boot from an iso? It doesn't seem that hard, technically, although I'm sure there are good reasons against it, or someone would have done it by now.

It would be great if we could install unetbootin (or something equivalent) on a flash disk, select which iso to boot, and have it boot.

I know this is possible for linux-based images, but I'm talking about something generic.

</comment><comment><USER17> To make an OS think a USB stick is a USB optical drive, it's already been done for years in China

<http://baike.baidu.com/view/628264.htm>

You can make a USB stick like three virtual devices, a USB-HDD, USB-CDROM and a USB-ZIP.

It's all about firmware and USB stick chip. Many made-in-China USB sticks support this out of the box

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh god - this will end up saving me $100 in under a year, just in raw cost of CD-R and DVD-R. What a great product! If they'd just stick with a proper key- ring; those damn things break all the time, I think I'm on my second or third USB-drive, just this year because it's broken.

</comment><comment><USER19> At last. Brilliant idea.

I still wonder if there's a USB computer-to-computer cable hiding in the hard to search for internet which allows one to mount an ISO in some desktop software and the other to see it as an optical drive.

But try searching terms like USB, ISO, and not get bogged down in normal results.

</comment><comment><USER20> The Sandisk U3 series of drives can already do this but in a slightly less integrated fashion.

This was also a nice attack vector on Windows machines as you could insert a usb stick with attack code on the CD partition, which then wrote its output to the flash partition.

<comment><USER16> I have two of those sticks. Do you know if you can expand the partition to arbitrary sizes?

<comment><USER20> You can, but it was a huge pain in the ass the last time I tried. It looks like things have moved on since then: <http://u3-tool.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER16> Fantastic, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does this really solve the whole problem? I've seen BIOSes (even on reasonably recent machines) which were unable to boot from an USB key, but I'm not sure that they would all have been able to boot from an USB optical drive either.

<comment><USER22> That's not the problem it's trying to solve. AFAICT, if you can't boot from USB, you're still out of luck.

<comment><USER9> Some BIOSes will, oddly enough, boot USB optical drives but not USB mass storage. No idea why, it may have to do with the fact that way too many USB flash drives have piss-poor SCSI command support (they speak SCSI Block Commands, USB is just used as transport).

Here's a hilarious list of common problems in USB sticks: [http://www2.one- eyed-alien.net/~mdharm/linux-usb/target_offe...](http://www2.one-eyed- alien.net/~mdharm/linux-usb/target_offenses.txt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why would I pay for something that I can do with unetbootin?

<comment><USER23> Does unetbootin allow you to choose from multiple ISOs to boot now? It didn't last time I checked. I realize there's ways around that (like manipulating syslinux config files: [http://tazbuntu.blogspot.com/2009/05/multibootin-with- unetbo...](http://tazbuntu.blogspot.com/2009/05/multibootin-with- unetbootin.html) ) though.

I like to use YUMI for booting from one of many ISOs on a single USB stick: <http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/>

This kickstarter project's idea of having the USB stick handle all this for you would be great.

<comment><USER3> So what does this isostick do that YUMI does not do?

<comment><USER6> It pretends to be an optical drive, allowing you to boot on systems that will boot from a USB CD Drive, but not a USB stick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> this device may be misused for malicious purposes, e.g. a backdoor which autoruns itself after stick insertion on windows(autorun.ini)

</comment><comment><USER25> As seen on Security Now...

<comment><USER9> o_o Really? I've been listening for a mention, did I get one? \- Eric Agan, Elegant Invention

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why? Put Grub2 on a jump drive. It can easily present a list of ISO files to boot into as well. I mean, a drag and drop solution or a script to rebuild the grub menu would be nice, but not worth $100. Or am I missing something technical here?

I guess I don't understand why you need to emulate a DVD drive except for legacy operating systems. When I burn ISOs or images to a jump drive, they show up as DVD media in OS X and Windows 7, and the installers for every version of OS X that I remember and Windows 7 will all install perfectly from a jump drive.

It sounds like this is just a piece of firmware to do the trickery of processing the ISO. There are Sandisks that show a CD and a Flash drive and it's all done in partitioning, there's no software involved and it's undo-able via software.

I can only see this being useful if you have a BIOS that boots from USB-CD but not USB-HD. Again, I may be missing something. This sounds cool, but I'm not sure why exactly.

<comment><USER27> Hypothetically, a device that allowed you to throw a bunch of isos on a flash drive, and automatically threw up a grub-like chooser would be really nice. Yes, I can write a disk to a USB stick, but it starts to be a little clunky since you need a partition for each iso.

Ideally I want all of my install disks on one drive, since I never know if I need Ubuntu, Windows 7, Windows XP, 64 bit, 32 bit, etc. I'm tired of juggling physical media and isos.

<comment><USER26> No, Grub can boot from an ISO file (no "burning" or partitioning required). You can drag and drop it on a jump drive that has Grub installed and boot to it.

You could even patch Grub to scan the first partition for filenames ending in ISO and present them in the boot menu automatically.

This would be a starting point: <http://www.panticz.de/MultiBootUSB> I might hack around and see if this can be automated and made to be user friendly.

<comment><USER27> My understanding is that you can't chainload non-Linux OSes from Grub2. And though I'd rather be loading Linux OSes, most of what I'm doing is installing Windows. So that doesn't really solve my primary use case.

Also, yes, the howtos I've read sound very fiddly, and it would be a lot more attractive if it were automated and user friendly. If this is done in hardware to look like a CDROM drive, that is the most automated and user-friendly solution. Even a fully-functional Grub2 that can chainload Windows isos will still be a little less elegant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this appears to be something that mostly solves a problem related to old BIOSes, no? Because I can "burn" .dmg and .iso etc. to SD cards or USB memory sticks and boot them just fine from EFI on my MacBook, as if they were optical discs or external hard drives. I know this is possible with most modern BIOSes, too, so apart from the actual hardware identification of the device, cleverly claiming it's an optical drive, what valuable utility does it provide, and what problem does it solve?

<comment><USER29> No. This is useful for stupid OS-es that don't like being on a USB stick.

<comment><USER30> The problem is I can't think of any. Windows, Linux and Mac OS X all support installation from a USB stick.

<comment><USER31> As others have pointed out in other threads, some versions of some distributions of Linux will only load their resources from an "actual" optical disc drive (e.g. /dev/sr*).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Guys, why is this newsworthy... I recently made a bootable ubuntu usb stick after a couple google searches and commodity $15 8GB stick from BBY sale bin.

Maybe I'm missing something important here, but the technology to burn an ISO to a USB is freely available why would anyone spend extra money for this rig.

<comment><USER33> try burning multiple isos to a single usb stick.. next time read the article

<comment><USER3> YUMI does this apperently. I had never heard of Yumi before, but I read the comments (and the article) so now I know about it.

So given our new knowledge what does this do that yumi does not?

<comment><USER34> Yumi uses GRUB directly for the boot, so I believe it's limited to Linux only (AFAIK, Grub can't direct boot an iso)

<comment><USER3> Unless things have changed GRUB can boot other operating systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> JUST FUCKING STOP IT. Don't use an ISO in the first place. Just make a USB drive with partitions and copy the damned data onto the USB drive. If you want a bootable partition, use syslinux, as detailed here:

<http://thefowle.livejournal.com/470622.html>

<comment><USER25> I don't think you understand the point of this. It will allow you to create read only USB drives. This means that people who work on computers all the time now don't have to haul a case of CDs around because viruses could possibly jump onto their read-write thumb drive. They can now setup a thumbdrive with all their tools and it's "read only".

<comment><USER35> $ cat /etc/fstab

/ /dev/sda2 ext4 ro 1 1

<comment> ryan-c That really doesn't protect the device from an infected system - it can just remount it rw. You need a hardware write blocker to protect against a malicious system.

<comment><USER25> You don't need a hardware write blocker, the beauty of "burning" an ISO to a thumb drive is that the ISO format doesn't allow writes. There is no way at all to write to it unless you rewrite the drive itself in which case it becomes fairly obvious.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs: ESports Joins the Big Leagues - <AUTHOR> https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/infographics/e-sports/?cid=eml-np-briefings-briefings-textlink-201801-- <comment><AUTHOR> The study (linked at the bottom): [https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/infographics/e-s...](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/infographics/e-sports/report.pdf)</comment>


Installing Nvidia CUDA on Mac OS X for GPU-Based Parallel Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.quantstart.com/articles/Installing-Nvidia-CUDA-on-Mac-OSX-for-GPU-Based-Parallel-Computing

<comment><USER2> I thought that OpenCL was supposed to be the "open" standard for GPU computing... why is everyone rallying around CUDA instead? (seemingly)?

<comment><USER3> Easier to program (at least for me it is easier to understand a piece of CUDA code) and there is a lot of good documentation for CUDA.

Another plus for CUDA is that it lets you use C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> given that OS X ships with OpenCL, which already runs on nvidia hardware, and is open, and portable, i don' t understand why anyone would want to switch to CUDA.</comment>


Inequality is Everywhere in Tech. And Tech is ok with it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shaft/inequality-is-everywhere-in-tech-and-tech-is-ok-with-it-63673f7b0ec6 <comment><USER2> > contract security personnel, (often African American) who have to live 100 > miles away because they cannot afford to live near work. And when they > return the next day, their workplace will have been cleaned and manicured by > a contract landscaping company that is staffed by mostly LatinX individuals > being paid minimum wage.

Isn't this more reflecting a lack of diversity in the security and landscaping industries than the tech industry?

Why are landscapers disproportionately Latin X? Do their hiring practices discriminate against non-Roman citizens?

<comment><USER3> This is a bit like women fighting against being relegated to secretaries in the work place in the 80s being told that maybe the problem is firms are discriminating against male secretaries.

<comment><USER2> It's not "like that" at all unless you completely ignore the context.

The article is arguing that the real problem is that landscapers are paid less than software engineers, instead of questioning why there is racial segregation into landscaping in the first place.

Why are those Latin X people not allowed to become doctors, lawyers, investment bankers instead of landscapers? Are all those industries too racist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have tried to discuss similar issues here...

My frustration is moreso with the flagrant and 'at all costs' wealth posturing that is a part of contemporary tech recruitment strategy and how it fails to extend to paying the staff at these state of the art food services a livable, or even market(1), wage

(1) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17612190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17612190)

</comment><comment> gib-monies >convert all contract staff into full time employees with benefits

Everyone should get a 20k signing bonus and a work PC as well if we really want to tackle tech's diversity problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Given schools are more segregated than they were in the 60s [1] its perhaps not surprising that people do not notice the lack of diversity.

And of course if there is an empathy gap and people are focused on themselves they will not notice all the service jobs are done by minorities or if they do not think too much about it.

[1] [https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/segregation-worse-in- sc...](https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/segregation-worse-in- schools-60-years-after-brown-v-board-of-education/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is why we need to recognize (constantly) that Tech has no voice in matters of morality.

Double that for Hollywood, btw.</comment>


Now all Windows developers have been thrown under the bus - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/now-all-windows-developers-have-been-thrown-under-the-bus-7000019912/ <comment><USER3> I don't follow. RC version has been available for some time. Do they put a lot of changes into golden master?

<comment><USER4> I would say we try our best not to (except for bug fixes, of course).

<comment><USER5> That pretty much sums it up. The 8.1 changes, so far as I can tell, are bugfix/stability changes.

The article feels like click-bait to me. The little blurb on zdnet about the author helped me better understand where he's coming from: Matt Baxter- Reynolds is a mobile software development consultant and technology sociologist based in the UK. His next book, "Death of the PC" is out in September.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To those who keeps saying "VS2013 preview and Windows 8.1 preview" are enough, so what? How is that any excuse not to release the finished code to the developers early so that they don't have to trust MS on this? How about we do our own testing and feel confident that our apps are ready on first day.

There is absolutely NO reason to hold it back until Oct to release the same code that they can release now to people who paid for the perks of getting RTM early to make sure they feel confident.

Why take any risks when there's like a whole month for the developers to test and validate against the final RTM/GM build?

</comment><comment><USER7> This guy has no idea what he is talking about. We have got VS2013 preview and windows 8.1 preview since june and developing apps for it.

<comment><USER8> The question is how much different is the preview than the release? They haven't said. I'm running 8.1 preview right now and it seems pretty solid.

It's still a departure from previous behavior and warrants at least an explanation about why or how developers should approach the 8.1 release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Am I misremembering something, or similar thing is going on with Google? As far as I remember, few last Android versions were introduced in a 'oh and by the way, it's shipping today' fashion. I guess you could argue only negligible percent of user have access to day 1 Android upgrades, but still - <USER2> doesn't count as early access in my book.

<comment><USER10> Not really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> yeah, i'm using VS 2013 preview at work, and i have windows 8.1 preview at home free just because i owned a copy of windows 8

what the hell is this guy talking about?

<comment><USER12> "Preview" is not the same thing as the finished version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" By now it's clear that Microsoft execs _love_ buses. Why else would they be so keen to throw everyone they work with under one?"_

...what?

<comment><USER14> Way too many "partners" and others who thought they were collaborating with Microsoft over the years.

<comment><USER15> The author is implying that if one loves throwing people under buses, they must necessarily love buses.

Which doesn't make any sense, like the rest of the article. Couldn't even finish reading it.

<comment><USER16> TBH we do have really nice buses here at the Redmond campus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a Microsoft developer with access to Windows 8.1 Preview, I remain unaffected by any alleged bus collision.

Beyond that, Windows 8.1 was RTM'd on August 23rd. The typical timeframe would be a few weeks later it would be released to MSDN and TechNet subscribers which would place us around September 15th.

Now, there have been rumors galore around whether MSDN/TechNet subscribers would get access to Windows 8.1 on the typical timeframe and conflicting messages from Microsoft spokespeople. I was curious so I just spent 10 minutes reading everything I could find on this topic on a "within past 24 hours" Google search. I can't find a source. The only source anyone I could find mentions (if they mention a source at all) is The Verge:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/27/4663074/microsoft- announce...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/27/4663074/microsoft-announces- windows-8-1-rtm)

The Verge gives its source as "Microsoft":

 _Many had hoped MSDN or TechNet customers would get access to Windows 8.1 shortly after RTM, but Microsoft says this is not the case._

Is there a link to a site where they got this information? If it was a phone conversation, who did they speak to? Many of the rumors that were formerly going around were sourced from a small Microsoft office in Europe from an employee speaking off the cuff. Are they using that same source or do they have a new source?

It could be very true that Microsoft is not releasing early to MSDN/Technet but I haven't seen a reliable source cited yet. I'm curious if anyone else knows precisely where this information is coming from.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Journalism" at its worst. Better write a friggin pie recipe if you don't have a real subject.

</comment><comment><USER19> The comments on the blog are pretty brutal to the author.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have been an MSDN subscriber for more than a decade and you can count me as someone who is more than a bit annoyed.

One of the perks of being a sub is the fact we get bits within days of RTM, the purpose being lead time for code updates and new releases, but the majority of subscribers are geeks who just want the new thing now.

The irony of the Ballmer retirement happening recently brought back youtube clips of the 'Developers, Developers, Devlopers' chant. It is easy to forget that working with developers in a first class way, was one of the many ways that Microsoft won such incredible share over time.

I used to explain it to friends and colleagues this way, when they would see the enormous binder of MSDN DVDs at my office. I would tell them that Microsoft would rather give me copies of everything for free than sell 100 copies at Staples. Not because I am special, but because they know if they win my allegiance then I will build software that requires windows. The cycle continues and by simply being nice to developers, they generate huge numbers of corporate IT customers.

For the longest time I felt this was true...but then it changed.

I cannot put my finger on an exact date, but it was after .NET came out. There were quite a few VB people upset by .NET but by and large it was broadly accepted as good and the community grew. It was probably around the WPF/Silverlight days that things started going sideways. The market was starting to fracture as mobile was gaining traction, ASP.NET was stagnating and something was not right.

Over the next several years there were so many platform misfires and misadventures it was hard to know where to spend your time. The dev evangelism team did not make the macro transition to a more web centric community as well as they should (people used the web 13 years ago but so much dev learning still happened in user groups and at small conferences) and when there was competition for mindshare from Apple and Google in the mobile space – Microsoft was on the sideline. Two huge companies waving promissory notes of riches if we would just come build apps with them and Redmond still could not figure out if we should be using Silverlight or HTML5.

Which brings us back to today, there are still so many mixed signals. Windows Phone has some great hardware but their iteration pace is lacking and while I love my Lumia 1020, my love is really for the camera, not the OS which still seems to be missing too many things (and no, I am not talking about apps). Windows Azure has vastly improved but they still don't compete with Amazon on price, SQL Server has gotten better and better over time and no one doubts it to be VLDB capable but while they focused on BI and esoteric elements of the engine – the NoSQL world sprouted up with the only response from Redmond being effectively– 'those document databases are not all that great.'

So is not giving us access to the Win 8.1 RTM really that big of a deal? No, but taker in the greater context it is just one more in a series of insults to what was once, your most valuable customers.

You don't win the enterprise and then force your will upon developers, you win developers and let them force their will on the enterprise.

They forgot that.

<comment><USER16> I spent many years as a Windows developer and your story resonates with me too.

Now I work in Azure. Basically "in the elevator" I bumped into this high-level developer evangelist. I gave him an earful of my own and and made him promise to have lunch with me.

If there was one or two succinct points that I could convey to him, what should it be?

<comment><USER20> There should be an intense, almost religious push internally to make Scott Guthrie the new CEO. Not likely I know, but platforms that developers depend on such as Windows, Windows Phone, .NET, Azure etc - should be something he runs. The Microsoft dev community has deep respect for and a strong relationship with very few people and he is far and above the most central of those figures.

The communal touch points that DE folks used to be so good at are gone now, I have about 5 or 6 close friends in my region all of whom are all like myself, independent consultants using MS stack, none of us have heard from our DE in years. User group support has vanished, local meetups where the DE will come show us and teach us stuff used to happen at least every quarter and even more often - have not seen one in years. What I do see are sales people who are only interested in talking to me if I can push Sharepoint Enterprise into a large company. Nevermind that it does not make sense, nevermind that developers by and large despise Sharepoint, that is what matters right now to them. It should be the other way around.

Also, if they are going to dangle money out there as an incentive to developers to build Windows 8 and Windows Phone apps, it should be incentive, not token. You want me to stop working and build something great - give me a way to propose it and a budget and if Redmond thinks the idea is good, fund it. Not some 5K in advanced revenue shit. There are tens of thousands of highly talented developers who love the Microsoft stack who would build amazing new experiences for Windows and Windows Phone if someone could help them do so and the current incentives are just laughable. iOS and Android are lotteries that could let me win big, if I am going to gamble my future I am going to do it there. But if Microsoft created an incubator system that let me propose an idea, get it funded and guide me through the process and ultimately help to promote the app - they would have developers fighting to get in.

<comment><USER16> I'll try to convey as much of this as I can.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: B2B / enterprise sales - <AUTHOR> All of my previous businesses were consumer-facing, meaning my marketing was basically AdWords, SEO, etc and customers came to me.
Now I'm selling a service directly to business. Most likely it would go through the HR department and/or Legal.
I cannot wait for "networking" or word of mouth to generate business, I need to proactively sell this product.
The problem is that I've never done b2b sales as an entrepreneur or employee. I have no idea how it works - does cold calling actually work? Cold emailing? I've sent people unsolicited emails and calls in the past looking for mentorship or jobs, but never to sell them something.
I don't have any contacts inside my target market, so that's not really an option.
Where do I begin? Any good books on this subject out there that aren't spammy ebooks written by hucksters? <comment><USER2> Yes cold calling does work and also cold emailing (although be careful not to come off spammy when cold emailing). Try to establish a connection before just emailing. Your best bet is to work your connections and their connections.

I know you said you do not have contacts in the target market, but maybe some of your friends, family, coworkers, etc.. do. How did you get interested in this market? Someone or something led you down the road this product so follow that road back to see who along the way can help you now.

Splurge on a premium LinkedIn account and hunt down contacts in the market. See where they are within your network and seek out introductions.

Once you land one or two clients use them to build out. HR and Legal are two very well connected groups of people and they tend to talk among themselves at various networking events and within their circles. Get references and use their connections.

Finally, you missed an opportunity here by not linking to your product/service. Even put it in your profile here. I know I would have looked at the site to see if (a) it was something that I could use, (b) if I knew someone that could help you, or (c) just to put on my radar if something popped up down the road.

Finally participate in forums, blogs, etc... to promote your product. Don't spam them, but become a resource in the market space. It may take some time to build a reputation but if people see you can be trusted as a resource they may just buy your product.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would definitely not be spammy. I receive some of these emails myself and I do not respond to anything spammy. I take a high empathy approach to things so I've got to be genuine. That's actually why I doubt whether cold contacting can work at all; another reason is that I imagine buyers are constantly being bombarded with offerings and they just tune everything out.

I didn't post my link here because it doesn't exist yet. I'm trying to commit to pursuing this, pretty much every aspect is vetted except for my doubt regarding selling.

Thank you for the advice.

<comment><USER2> I think you might be surprised at how well cold contacting works. There is no question it is a skill not everyone possesses and, especially with email, there is a fine art to being a good seller and sounding spammy. For me, if the email sounds like a product I may be interested in now or think I may be interested in the future I will tend to look at the site at least. If I like what I see I may file it away for later use or possibly forward to someone I know. If I really like what I see I may research the company some more, see if I personally know anyone using their products or if there are any reviews of the product/company. From there I may decide to respond to the email right away or file away for later use. I would say though that on average 8 out of 10 times I will make it to the website to see what the product is. Most good cold emails know you may at least have some relation or use for their product.

What does turn me off is a constant barrage of emails or calls trying to force sell me on the product. If I hear from you more than 2 or 3 times and I haven't responded you may get either a nasty response from me to stop calling/emailing or just get a rule created to auto delete your messages.

Another good avenue is to check Meetup.com for events in your area. Try to attend as many as you can where you think the audience may be in your target market or at least have contacts within your market. Signup for notifications of upcoming events in your area as well. I have had great success meeting people at random events that I hadn't even thought to attend. Even if you don't get a sale out of the event, making one new contact at each event can pay off huge down the road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think networking is essential here. Ask your friends (and friends of friends) to introduce you to HR / legal folks within their employers. Be politely persistent. It may take several asks, especially for the most important connections.

Well-crafted cold emails are remarkably effective. Subject lines are key, concise content, close with a specific ask ("can we speak / meet at this date and time?") Lots of good content and examples out there on this. If no reply, send a follow-up three days later politely asking for a response.

</comment><comment><USER4> The ability to actually pick-up the phone and call prospects separates then men from the boys in this game. Yes, cold email can be useful to start a dialogue. But true business developers know they must use the phone.

Here's a solid read on the subject by Mike Weinberg, if you read nothing else-- Chapter 14 Planning & Executing the Attack is brilliant! > [http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6482841.Mike_Weinberg](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6482841.Mike_Weinberg)</comment>


Protesters want to publish browsing histories of who voted to strip privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2017/03/30/privacy-payback-protesters-want-to-publish-browsing-histories-of-republicans-who-voted-to-strip-privacy-rights/ <comment><AUTHOR> A PROTEST, crowd-sourced by several groups. It does seem like appropriate payback. One can only hope that such a protest can sustain itself for long enough to be effective. One-time publication may not be enough.

Perhaps someone can publish analytics on the browsing histories as well so we all can know who is viewing what.</comment>


The Perks Are Great, Just Don't Ask What We Do - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/the-perks-are-great-just-dont-ask-us-what-we-do-d5abc6867103?source=rss----d16afa0ae7c---4 <comment><USER2> So what else is new.

If you work at Facebook or Google you're benefiting directly from the similarly shady practices they used to grow on their way to being "pillars of tech" today.

Do you remember when at LEAST 20% of Facebook's revenue came from Zynga? Like less than 5 years ago? Many speculated it was considerably higher, but Facebook never provided a full accounting (1).

Or do you remember when Facebook literally had an "affiliate marketing panel" that they worked with at the C-suite level packed with guys selling weight loss affiliate slop? Almost impossible to find reference of it now, was well known in many circles and you can still see references of it here and there. (2)

Or maybe when Google was caught colluding with a notorious gangster when he turned state's evidence to demonstrate to the DOJ how quickly Google was willing to skirt around laws to sell illegally imported drugs? They were fined $500,000,000.00. Google was. (3)

50onRed is clearly engaged in scumb-bag advertising practices, but at least they keep good company.

(1) [http://allthingsd.com/20120423/zynga-accounted- for-15-percen...](http://allthingsd.com/20120423/zynga-accounted- for-15-percent-of-facebooks-revenues-in-q1/)

(2) [http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/11/16/dennis-yu-rise-and- fall-...](http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/11/16/dennis-yu-rise-and-fall-of-a- con-man-in-the-affiliate-industry/) & [http://www.jimcockrum.com/blog/2011/10/19/the-biggest-dog- in...](http://www.jimcockrum.com/blog/2011/10/19/the-biggest-dog-in-affiliate- marketing-is-starting-to-sound-a-lot-like-me/) & [http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/how-to-spam-facebook- like-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/how-to-spam-facebook-like-a-pro- an-insiders-confession/)

(3) [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/google- forfeits-500-million-g...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/google- forfeits-500-million-generated-online-ads-prescription-drug-sales-canadian- online) & [https://www.wired.com/2013/05/google-pharma-whitaker- sting/](https://www.wired.com/2013/05/google-pharma-whitaker-sting/)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think one of the dirty secrets that doesn't really come across until you've been in the entrepreneurial trenches for a while is that most people who make a lot of money end up doing so not by being paragons of morality, but by skirting rules and doing things other people may find questionable or unfair. YC itself acknowledges this to an extent by saying that good founders are moral, but that they are not "goody-two-shoes" and they break rules "that don't matter".

Of course, the material value of each rule is in the eye of the beholder; surely the cab drivers of the world felt that there was material value to adhering to their regulations and that it would not be moral or necessarily safe to circumvent those regulations. Then Uber came along and its founders entered the pantheon of those that break "rules that don't matter". Ditto for Airbnb.

Most types of marketing and PR are morally dubious. But you have to play that game if you're going to get anywhere.

That's the secret that entrepreneurs have to learn, the secret that doesn't get shown in the profile pieces or the television specials. "Might makes right" in this world and if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to loosen from a theoretical moral ideal to a practical one that is informed by the competitive landscape of capitalism. You can nitpick and find fault with most money-making techniques, so you just have to try to do something you can be reasonably comfortable with, acknowledging that in a competitive landscape, sometimes uncomfortable choices have to be made.

If you _do_ find something that makes money and has no competitors, thus allowing you to not worry about underhanded techniques to steal your marketshare, take advantage of your early position to decisively corner the market. That means employing the same techniques that would be employed against you, because those techniques _will_ be employed against you pretty soon. I know this because one of my companies was roundly beaten after a spammer started a competitor and engaged SEO link rings to inorganically alter his ranking, among other tactics that I was morally "above" until my company was pwned that way. Now I understand you must play that game, that everyone plays that game, and they just don't talk about it because it doesn't help them to do so. It helps them to keep potential competitors naive.

Playing by the rules may be the cool way to do it, but in the real world, it doesn't work, because there is someone who is willing to break those rules. How many entrepreneurs started on something like Uber but quit because they saw the regulatory landscape and a) didn't have the millions to fight cities and the cab industry; b) didn't want to run afoul of city regulations in the first place? Do what YC does: break whatever rules are in your way and then afterwards say they were rules that "didn't matter". If you say this from a position of success, people will believe you.

<comment><USER4> > _Now I understand you must play that game, that everyone plays that game, > and they just don 't talk about it because it doesn't help them to do so. It > helps them to keep potential competitors naive._

Yeah, and that's the primary reason I increasingly _don 't want_ to be an entrepreneur. Call me naive, but even if I could somehow handle the necessary sacrifice of conscience to be able to compete in the marketplace, I think I wouldn't like the person I would become very much.

<comment><USER5> but then unfortunately you'll be an employee of an entrepreneur that crosses that line....

..and if you are morally above that, then you'll work as a rent-seeker in a government office that taxes that entrepreneur.

only way to win, is to not play.

<comment><USER4> I had an employer once who was about to cross the line, by getting a project from the gambling business. A cool software/hardware project (service interfaces for casino machines) that seemed to match my skills. I flat-out declined participation. He actually was very relieved, he was himself uncomfortable with it.

The other time I threatened my employer with leaving on the spot if I ever see the shady spam-marketing tactics they were discussing popping up on my blog. I'm not sure if it worked or if they decided to never again talk about marketing strategy in my presence.

There are many jobs out there that are morally acceptable. Not as many as I'd like, but fortunately I've managed to find one, and I'm sticking to it at the moment. But yeah, I get your point - after hearing stories about various shenanigans my non-tech friends were asked to do at their jobs, I'm under firm impression that most companies are in fact fucking over their customers whenever possible.

> _only way to win, is to not play._

Let's get on with Basic Income. It will be much easier to stick to your morals without the threat of going hungry hanging over your head.

<comment><USER6> > Let's get on with Basic Income

Won't that just cause all the amoral people in politics to begin promising to raise the basic income more than the next politician will, reducing all policymaking to a race to bribe the populace, so that they'll ignore all the other amoral things the politicians are doing?

<comment><USER7> At least they'd be bribing the populace rather than the wealthy.

<comment><USER6> The wealthy would still get bribed, and a lot more than the pittance that the populace would get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me a bit of an experience I had at an event around 2000 or so. Most of the folks there were heavily academic, but at lunch I found myself sitting with one of the organizers who was clearly cut from different cloth, so I asked what he did the rest of the year. After a couple of rounds of vague responses about how he helped companies use email to get in touch with potential customers, it finally dawned on me that I was sitting at the table with a SPAMMER. Pretty much lost my appetite at that point.

My takeaway is that spammers, malware authors, even identity thieves, are among us. They can seem like perfectly nice people. They might even _be_ perfectly nice people except for this one bad habit, this one ethical blind spot, that enables them to do things from which the rest of us would recoil in disgust. The company in this story might be an extreme case, but I'll bet a lot of people asking "how could they not know" have themselves worked at companies that made at least some of their money in less savory ways. Sometimes it might be why that company survived while contemporaries faded away. Silicon Valley from its earliest days has been full of people who benefited from carefully redacted history, whether they knew it or not.

<comment><USER7> You talk as if the 'rest of us' in tech are so innocent and pure. Spam is small potatoes compared to the ethical violations many big tech companies get up to on a daily basis.

<comment><USER9> Yea, good point. We live in an age when a whole set of duplicitous practices are now just referred to as "growth hacking"

<comment><USER10> Ugh, the number of dark patterns trying to cost me money just to purchase a damned ticket on Ticketbastards today.

Seriously by not clicking the right boxes I could have agreed to pay an extra $42 in add-ons/services for a $15 ticket that had its own $6 in fees added.

<comment><USER11> For Ticketmaster? That's odd, I deal with them quite a bit, and while they've definitely got a racket going on, usually they aren't opting you in for extra stuff (because you'll juts call to complain to their support and get it changed). I _have_ seen them accidentally auto-select certain additions before, but that was a non-standard option on that event, and it was definitely a mistake.

<comment><USER10> They like to do things where they offer you something with a yes/no option but don't explain that it's an offer (no call to action or question) and put the price of the service in the smallest text possible.

<comment><USER11> Oh, I would believe that. They'll make it easy for you to add charges on, and make it confusing as to whether it charges you (if you aren't familiar with the page), they just don't generally have them defaulted to on in my experience (and I buy a lot of tickets from them). They're very good at being just annoying enough to use that you don't like them, but generally not so annoying that you'll _refuse_ to use them, which combined with their existing market dominance keeps them on top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I worked at a web development studio. One of our clients was MannaTech, basically a marketing company that sold snake-oil to parents of sick children, claiming it could "cure" everything from cancer to down syndrome. They were under investigation by the Texas DA at one point.

We tracked our work hourly, so I donated all the money I made from that particular work to St. Jude's hospital, which actually _does_ cure cancer in children, but it still irks me to this day.

<comment><USER13> Looked this up, and it's not only selling snake-oil to parents of sick children, it's _MLM_ selling snake oil to parents of sick children. I honestly didn't think such a level of depravity was possible.

Oh, and they had Ben Carson for a spokesman for a while. Amazing.

<comment><USER12> Yeah. My new policy is that if an employer wants to have any sort of business dealings with MannaRelief or MannaTech, it's them or me - I'll walk away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to work for a company that was purchased by a Multi Level Marketing _cough_ pyramidscheme _cough_ company similar to Herbalife. They purchased us for our technology to power their platform. There was supposed to be very little overlap with their business, so I did not feel too worried about it.

As time went on, our focus was more on how to sell more of the parent company's products. I also learned more on how the MLM business really worked, and I was disgusted at how the system preyed on the vulnerable. With very few jobs in the area, I continued working there. I eventually moved and turned down requests to work remotely.

None of my co-workers seemed to have cared. Either that, or they understood it was still one of the better tech opportunities in an area with very few.

<comment><USER15> In Utah County, by chance?

<comment><USER16> > Multi Level Marketing coughpyramidschemecough company similar to Herbalife

Definitely could be Utah county, but

> one of the better tech opportunities in an area with very few

Probably not Utah county. The greater than 4000 tech companies[1] in and around Utah County cannot hire software engineers fast enough.

[1]: [http://siliconslopes.com/about/utah- economy/](http://siliconslopes.com/about/utah-economy/)

<comment><USER17> where do you look for jobs in utah? Craigslist seems pretty dead. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Working at this type of company will eat at your soul. Really, you only have about 40 years of work in you.

It sounds like a lot, but when you consider is takes a few years (sometimes more) to figure out what you like. A few more to get good at it. And then you have maybe 20 peak years of productivity, you sure as hell don't want to spend any of it at something you can't respect.

When you are done with your career at 60 or 65, you want to be able to look back and say "I did this" or "I created that" or "I helped this many people", not "I worked at that shitty adware company for 2 years because they have me free food and beer"

</comment><comment><USER19> Interviewed at a company called Rakuten Loyalty in Boston a few years ago. At that time it was the exact same thing, a malware / adware browser toolbar company, and they also sold white label toolbars. Took me the entire interview to figure out what they actually did. Their website [0] now has very little information about what they actually do, with a generic contact form. But an archive.org [1] of their old website shows the truth. Funny how they hide what they actually do now.

[0] [http://www.rakutenrewards.com/](http://www.rakutenrewards.com/) [1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20121216021038/http://rakutenloy...](https://web.archive.org/web/20121216021038/http://rakutenloyalty.com/solutions)

<comment><USER20> I guess I'm not entirely shocked since Rakuten the parent company and Japanese ecommerce site has very questionable tactics like emails you can't opt out of and forcing new employees to sign up a large number of friends/relatives to the Rakuten credit card.

<comment> nommm-nommm Huh? How exactly did the "force" you to get others to sign up for a CC? I also have no problem opting out of Rakuten emails.

<comment><USER20> New employees at HQ have quotas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I interviewed at 50onRed a few years ago soon after I left college. I went through the interview process, received an offer, and was on the verge of accepting.

It was at this point I realized that I barely understood what the company actually did. I set up another in-person interview, except this time with the roles reversed. I asked them to walk me through their products and platforms so I could better understand what I would be working on. Ten minutes in, I realized what I was looking at. I treaded water until the end of the interview and called them a few days later to decline the offer.

The [engineering] team was solid, the tech was intriguing (a lot of expressjs microservices and interesting design patterns), and the offices were great. But given the wealth of compelling opportunities for javascript engineers, I couldn't come up with a good reason to work on something so insipid and manipulative. This article is strangely validating, perhaps in a schadenfreude kind of way.

<comment><USER22> Good for you. If more people were like you, companies like 50onRed wouldn't exist.

I think you may have meant "insidious", though, not "insipid" — because "insipid" is the opposite of "intriguing" and "compelling".

<comment><USER23> I think it works. The 'problem' 50onRed is 'solving' is not an intriguing or compelling one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Worth noting that the reporter on this story is a beat reporter who has been covering the Philadelphia tech scene closely for years now. She knows it like no one else.

<comment><USER25> Agreed- Juliana is top-shelf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had no idea there is a such a large industry doing this type of stuff until building a Windows 10 machine recently for VR. So many "free", seemingly kosher apps seem to install sneaky adware in the main app installation process these days

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

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/02/25/israeli- un...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/02/25/israeli-unicorn- ironsource-raises-105-million-ahead-of-ipo/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Today my mother got AD on her phone with "Android update", it was a pop-up from one of normal sites she visit. So she touched "update now" as she normally do with system messages about update... Then she confirmed, then she got 2 SMS, in one that deal was finalized. WTF? I've checked with Orange and indeed she was charged and subscription was started, 20 euro a month for some 3 shitty sms per week. They have turned this subscription off. THIS practices should be stopped. This is really a plague, I see those on my desktop and phone on regular basis, i know they are fake updates but most people don't..

<comment><USER28> My mother had this as well but with a game. We simply reversed the charge and continued pay the subscription like normal. They made one vague attempt to get that extra money then gave up. While I'm not a lawyer I doubt such charges would stand up on court.

<comment><USER29> Often the billing is directly on the phone bill which means the traditional chargeback system won't really help you (it's not a credit card charge and you probably don't want to try to chargeback your phone company). One interesting thing many people don't know is that telcos, almost always oligopolists, are themselves pocketing 30-50% of those fraudulent charges (as they are the payment processor and their rates are extremely high), which helps explain their ambivalence to these sorts of scams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I worked at a company very briefly in the early aughts. I thought I was hired to be on the team that built the platform. But before we would do that we needed to have a list of beta users. So my job was writing bots that scoured forums and other social networks for contact information (emails, phone numbers, names, etc.)

It took me a week to realize what I was actually doing then another week to plan and execute my escape. The rest of the team were east european and did not give a fuck about what they were doing, it was good money to them.

They eventually did release a product with a few thousand users. Not long after, Facebook changed their signup strategy from schools to the general public and the rest is history.

</comment><comment><USER31> Maybe I just forget what it's like to be a beginner, but how on earth do you work on Ad Injection software and not realize that you're working on Ad Injection?!

<comment><USER32> I find it difficult to understand how you would even interview & accept a job without understanding what the company did.

<comment><USER33> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" \--Upton Sinclair

<comment><USER34> I really think this quote is a bit unfair here. Especially in the startup scene, many companies have quite vague product descriptions. I've worked at a place where it took me 3 months to figure out what they were doing (nothing immoral BTW, just very complex/diverse products).

<comment><USER12> But for those three months you had no idea whether what they were doing was moral or not, and you didn't check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Pro Tip: The "what questions can we answer about $COMPANY" section at the end of an engineering interview should be used to ask about the business model and revenue/monetization, not just the tech stack

<comment><USER36> More generally, not knowing how a company makes money should be a huge problem for someone candidating.

Given the choice, a company with a sane business model has less chances to go under (== not going through interviews again in 6 months), and it should also give an idea of how much and in which way the comapny has any chance to grow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's good to hear that all the C[ETF]Os of adware business found their employment at Facebook/Google/Amazon.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this jumped out at me too. I'm not very reassured about such morally dubious characters working for companies that control most of our digital lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> >Gill tells me he doesn't consider himself in the adware business. He prefers, instead, to describe 50onRed as a company that keeps content free for users.

I love that bit. How does injecting ads into random sites help keep content free for users?

Who's buying those ads by the way? Sure it sound like a terrible company, but I can help thinking that their customers are worse.

<comment><USER39> If anything, hijacking page real estate makes it _less_ likely the user will click on non-injected ads (which actually pay something out to the content creator).

I believe content creators have a right to seek compensation for their work - whether it's through ads, affiliate links, or a subscription model.

But what 50onRed does is thievery from the creators, plain and simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I worked in the user experience team at that one big American domain company (that's well known for mostly the wrong reasons.) Similar situation as the story: great coworkers, great pay, & great perks.

One of the products I was assigned was the interface for customers to configure those sites that are intended to monetize a domain with filler content meant to fool a visitor just enough to milk them for a few cents with seemingly legitimate articles/posts and an e-commerce feature that was essentially a storefront built entirely from affiliate links.

Unlike the individual in the story, it was immediately clear what my task was: make spamming the Internet as user-friendly as possible. Unfortunately there was no mental gymnastics I could do to reconcile that.

Especially since the second product I had was domain auctions, which alone is nothing more than virtual real estate, but together with the first product is the makings of a thinly-veiled means to skim money off the top of online purchases made by ignorant users AND to fool people into believing they could profit from otherwise idle domains (by first paying the company for the monetizing product first, of course.)

And a tiny fraction of our customers did make a good income with those 2 offerings but the significant majority would never net a dime.

Aside from the pay and perks, the only professional payoff was also having the company's support site in my charge. I was proud of the work I did on that and it was a feature of my portfolio. But it wasn't enough and I was too disillusioned and discouraged overall by the day to day work. It wasn't long before I let it get to me, my performance began to suffer, and I needed to get out of there. (Admittedly, the nature of the job wasn't well-suited to my strengths either so it was probably fortunate I lasted as long as I did...)

I was able to cash in quite nicely on the experience gained there with a good offer on an out-of-state position with a generous relocation package. So, no, it wasn't all bad and, like the person in the story, the coworkers were largely really great (some going to work for large, well-known tech companies) and though I value the experience overall, it revealed just how much money can be made if you're willing to profit from people's ignorance and greed, just by framing your product or service in a particular way.

</comment><comment><USER41> > "Like, man, this is a really nice office," he recalls thinking. "Open floor > plan..."

So "Tyler" wasn't a programmer, then. Got it.

<comment><USER42> Programmers don't have to dislike open floor plans. I know this because I am one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I went to a meetup that they hosted once, and it was pretty obvious that they were up to something, but they did have a really cool office.

<comment><USER12> I visited Limewire's offices, once. Three story office in Tribeca, with giant kitchens that were bigger than my apartment, game rooms, the works.

It seems to me that the more ambiguous your business strategy is, the more you have to show off to convince others that it isn't.

<comment><USER44> I think it's more like, if you have a cool office with nice kitchens you can pay your employees crap and they still think they're getting a great deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Mildly off-topic, but why do sites like this highlight the "top highlight"? I always find it really off-putting (in a "Oh, you tracking EVERYTHING I do" sort of way")

<comment><USER23> "sites like this" = Medium.com sub-brands. I don't know why Medium chooses to do that. I dislike it, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I interviewed three times at a company once which didn't seem to have a clear business model. Only in the last interview with the CEO did I realize he was running a ponzi scheme.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is like the Mickey Mouse version of the 'The Firm'.

</comment><comment><USER48> whenever I am looking at a company, I google it, I scrape Glassdoor, I look for news articles about it. "How do you make money" is usually on the menu of "things I specifically care about". I'd advise others do do the same. Learn well what the company you're talking to does to earn a buck and who they are beholden to.

I avoid adtech, myself.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've been to a Python Meetup there previously, nice office, nice tech talks. Their sponsor overview certainly didn't disclose what they actually did.

Makes me wonder about the other ad platforms in town.

</comment><comment><USER50> Sometimes this adware crap hijacks legitimate open source projects as well and installs on unsuspecting users like this guy:

[https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=78825](https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=78825)

</comment><comment><USER51> There are many businesses that are built around exploiting vulnerable customers or users, and it is common for such businesses to have contrived complicated ethical justifications for their conduct. I'm thinking in particular of law and finance.

</comment><comment><USER52> I also always wonder how the people working on engineering land mines do.

<comment><USER53> I once had a conversation with someone who had worked on surface-to-surface missile guidance.

He did it because he didn't make the connection between the circuits and the software in front of him and the deaths they caused.

Then there was a war and he saw the missiles on the news with pictures of casualties, and suddenly it was "Holy fuck - this stuff actually kills people!"

Some people think small picture, and he just couldn't get from the work on his desk to dead bodies without the help of front-line footage.

Of course there are also people who are just fine with that kind of work. I don't understand that ethical space at all - but from what I've seen they simply don't understand why anyone would have a problem with what they do.

<comment><USER54> I got this information second hand, but for what it's worth: There was a graduate student at my university that was well known and highly regarded for his stellar software engineering skills. At one point he took a job writing a missile guidance system. His reasoning was that there were two options, either he wrote the system, and could make damn sure it worked exactly to spec, or someone else would write the system, and do about as good a job as the other complex software engineering projects he had encountered. In essence: he took the job to minimize collateral damage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> i'm surprised the article never explicitly spelt out the main point - for most people, accepting a job offer is a major sunk cost, so it's a lot harder to quit a job even after a few months than it is to reject an offer from the outset. i'm pretty sure 50onred were counting on that.

</comment><comment><USER56> Odd that there aren't any visitor posts on their facebook page..

</comment><comment><USER57> My friend works at Spokeo. If you don't know about them they are basically a people search engine. He keeps asking me to work there, but I just cant get over the moral implications of scrapping peoples lives and putting it up for viewing for a price. Something about the product just scratches me wrong so I haven't applied. It is really too bad as their tech seems solid and the offices are amazing.

</comment><comment><USER58> _advertisers feel duped when they pay top dollar for what they believe to be "genuine, legitimate, honest ads_

Yeah right. No clean hands in that game.

</comment><comment> nommm-nommm There was an interesting defcon talk a few years back from someone who was a malware developer about his experiences working at a job developing malware.

[https://youtu.be/k2mdUcOXW6I](https://youtu.be/k2mdUcOXW6I)

</comment><comment><USER59> How do you not ask what the company does before joining as an FTE? Even discounting moral hazards... wouldn't you want to know what the mission is? Especially at a startup-y type of place?

</comment><comment><USER60> I'd always wondered how all those Bond villains got their henchmen to work on crazy remote islands. I guess the perks were good! Just don't ask what we do ^_^

</comment><comment><USER61> I remember interviewing for a search company, but then found most of the work and business was spent on adverts! No thanks Google!

</comment><comment><USER62> > you'd see ads on sites like Wikipedia or Target.com

Normally we call that vandalism. They should be facing criminal charges, not civil lawsuits and pressure from Google.

<comment><USER63> There's no case afaik, because they disclose everything in the original agreement when you install their software.

Unethical, sure, but there's little the law can do to prevent people from agreeing to such things.

Maybe a requirement for certain disclosures to be made more prominent (like for cigarettes)?

<comment><USER64> It would be an interesting case if someone tried this with the venerable TV industry: rent/borrow/buy our special HDMI cable/tuner, let us replace your ads, and we'll pay half your cable bill if you let us put our ads up instead.

Methinks the broadcasters would pounce down like a ton of bricks and their lawyers would use every loose corner of the law to bury you perpetually `a la Aereo.`

<comment><USER65> I have this vague recollection that friends whose families subscribed to HBO in the 1980s said they didn't show ads at all, because subscribers were directly paying for the programming through their subscriptions (whereas free- to-air stations felt they had to run ads because viewer weren't paying directly). Was this actually true? Does anyone else have a similar recollection?

I'm just wondering if there was a particular moment when people's intuitions about where you could expect to see ads on television changed.

<comment><USER66> AFAIK this is still true of HBO.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is design intrinsically about being unique? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I don't think so; it's about being harmonious. Otherwise you have the triumph of form over content.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's about solving everyday problems.</comment>


Topical treatment wipes out herpes with RNAi - <AUTHOR> http://www.harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/topical-treatment-wipes-out-herpes-with-rnai <comment><USER2> And so began the thread that everyone was a little afraid to post "hooray!" in.

<comment><USER3> Boffery needs to check in with these folks for possible cross-promotion opportunities...

<comment><USER2> (Context: I'm the cofounder of a pre-launch site called Boffery, a visual private diary of a user's sex life.)

Everyone tells me that, and everyone is right. There's one service I'd love to partner with if I ever got the chance. Hopefully you'll never need to use this, but inSPOT is getting popular in the Bay Area as a way to discreetly tell people you may have given them an STD: <http://www.inspot.org/gateway.aspx>

<comment><USER4> I think 4chan getting admin access to your accounts is going to be even funnier/embarrassing than twitter.

Beware, sometimes your website exists only to serve as a visual warning to others...

<comment><USER2> Ha, yes, that's a major concern for us. We lucked out and found some very experienced people who've worked with federal financial data. We're assuming major security threats from (before) Day Zero.

One advantage is that all Boffery accounts are private. No one knows you have an account on Boffery unless (1) they email you a friend invitation on the site and (2) you accept. While this only protects against certain forms of attack, it does make us a slightly less inviting target. There is no Barack Obama or Kevin Rose of Boffery until they choose to publicize their accounts elsewhere.

Plus we will not use a dictionary-searchable admin password. Ha.

I'm sure I will waste all my karma this fall asking HN to pick apart our security plans. But for now, I just wonder if choosing sex as the test of this sort of high-security, process-intense visual social network format wasn't just the thing to keep us from scaling TOO fast to keep up with reliability and security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most significant line from the article for me: "The World Health Organization estimates that approximately _536 million_ people worldwide are infected with herpes..."

That's really an astonishing number. From a utilitarian standpoint this finding must be incredibly important.

<comment><USER6> That number was a surprise on the low side for me, because I've often heard estimates that 25%-30% of adults in the US have HSV-2. Naively scaling that up to worldwide would have suggested up to 2 billion infections.

<comment><USER7> Except that that figure is quite high when you consider other nation's rates of infection

For example, Australia's rate of HSV-2 is around 12% while the UK is around 10% even though we have fairly similar cultural backgrounds when it comes to sexual activity.

I would expect that rate to be much lower in some middle eastern and asian cultures due to differences in culture regarding sexual activity.

536 million might be on the conservative side, but I would suggest it's nowhere near 2 billion.

<comment><USER8> Could also be measurement error...

<comment><USER4> Could be, but its probably also a cultural thing. Most Americans don't view oral sex as sexual contact, and yet, most STIs are transmittable from it. This, alongside sexual education in schools that focuses on that 1% (used correctly) failure rate of condoms and lack of hard scientific evidence it will prevent the spread of HPV, leading them to think "condoms are unreliable, so why bother?" has led to a thriving youth culture of unprotected oral sex...and later, when they become sexually active, unprotected sex.

And it just so happens one of the primary ways women catch HSV-2 is through a partner infecting them orally. There are "virgins" getting herpes in America.

Now, again, culturally, I've been told that Aussie men are incredibly chauvinistic, so maybe a smaller percentage is likely to engage in oral sex. I'm generalizing and speculating here , so take it with a grain of salt. In the UK, the sex education could be better. From talks with my friends from southern states, it seems you'd have to deliberately try to do worse.

<comment><USER9> Just to add a little elucidation to the sex-ed thing, the places that don't focus on abstinence as the only technique don't really explain the numbers. That's a 1% chance that after a year of regular sexual intercourse. Which makes the per-use numbers much, much smaller.

Furthermore, there was at least some issue in that many doctors were more conservative, and didn't really like talking about oral sex. (I heard this from a doctor who was complaining about this).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I regard eliminating STD's and developing 100% idiot proof contraceptives as quite important. Ideally this would lead to humanity getting over the whole sex thing once and for all and it can be relegated to stuff no one cares about like whether you like mustard or ketchup.

<comment><USER11> I think developing idiot-only contraceptives would be a major step in the right direction.

<comment><USER10> you assume evolution = getting better when in fact high intelligence is linked with a lower incidence of childbirth making intelligence a dead end.

<comment><USER11> Not really. I was a) trying to be funny and b) associating a more intelligent population with a hypothetical improvement on overall life conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting article. Does anyone know if this insight can then lead to curing already infected patients? My understanding is this treatment is a condom, not a cure.

<comment><USER11> It seems the technique could be used to stop the virus from spreading from cell to cell inside the patient, so, pretty much, it appears very close to a cure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hooray for genetic hacking. I really hope they can use similar methods to wipe out cancer cells as well - thought, cancer isn't a virus and there are lots of different cancer cells.

<comment><USER4> HPV is a cancer caused by the presence of a virus.

Diabetes Type I tends to occur in people that contain a certain blood virus (often they're born with it.) The next time you donate blood, look at your donor card. It'll relate your viral status just like it does your blood type. Apparently, they've discovered that children tend to develop diabetes if they're transfused with blood that contains the virus. (Sorry I can't remember its name. I just know because I asked about my status last time I donated and what it meant, and they explained "Basically, we can use your blood safely with children.")

Keep in mind its not a direct correlation: You might have the virus, but not diabetes. Or vice versa.

And outside of humans, Feline Leukemia is transmitted from close contact (such as fighting or sexual activity).

Hopefully this research, and research like it, will lead to breakthrough that allow us to better target virii and protect ourselves from them. The goal here, aside from eliminating life-impacting diseases such as HIV, HPV, and Herpes, but also eliminating the "common cold".

Finally people will no longer be able to say, "They can put a man on the moon, but they can't cure the common cold...".

<comment><USER9> Strictly speaking, HPV is a virus which causes cervical cancer (in almost every case), and to a lesser extent other cancers like mouth, anus and penis.

I believe (found a nature paper about) that a virus closely linked with diabetes is Coxsackie.

One of the issues with the common cold is that it mutates fairly quickly, IIRC and there are a lot of them. HPV does not (there is a vaccine for some strains).

<comment><USER4> Yes, all this is correct. I misspoke. I really should proof read my hacker news comments more. But thank you for correcting me and doing so in a polite manner.

<comment><USER14> There is a post-delay option on our userpages. I don't currently use it, but it's available to let us WYSIWIG-edit our comments before others see them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is brilliant. Things like these are why I love science.</comment>


I'm terrified of older web developers. Because I'm becoming one. - <AUTHOR> http://www.baycitizen.org/blogs/sandbox/im-terrified-older-web-developers/

<comment><USER2> Last semester, I took a class with Prof Gerry Sussman (of SICP fame). It was totally mindbending, and seeing his code samples (usually introduced by saying "I was hacking on this last night...") left me with a sense of awe and amazement. I can't even count the number of times I said "I didn't even know that was possible!" upon seeing his code.

This is a man who has been coding since atleast the early 70s, and is still in the top of his form. I would be happy to have even 10% of the skills he has. I think its very sad that a lot of people in the younger generation treat older developers as if they're out of touch and are dinosaurs from a bygone era. Sure they may not know Ruby on Rails or JQuery, but quite a few of them have mastered the timeless concepts and are a great source of wisdom and insight. I would love to work with and be mentored by someone who has "done his time".

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a strong intent on remaining a coder/tech guy for the rest of my life.

Why? Because the only thing I've gotten a real kick out of, for the past 15 years, is learning new technologies and applying them to projects. I get bored after a few years of working with the same tech.

Sure I've managed some projects and even some people, and still have to occasionally, but it feels like being a fish out of water, not doing something you were born to do.

I suppose there will be a day when you find yourself surrounded by younger people with technical authority over you, because you just couldn't keep up any longer. But maybe there won't, if you don't let it happen?

</comment><comment><USER4> Web development tools have changed so much that it is hard for a web developer with 20 years experience developing SW (most of which probably wasn't even in web development) to be vastly better than someone with 5 years experience. Contrast that to a C++ developer with 20 years experience to someone with 5 years experience developing C++.

It seems to me, however, that changes in web development are coming more slowly, and it is reasonable to expect that in 10 years the author of this post could be much more productive than someone with 5 years experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> Time to switch careers I suppose, or become a manager. Hopefully not a bad manager, but there are more bad or average managers than good/outstanding ones.</comment>