Startup vs. Corporate Life - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lawnstarter.com/post/87331474878/startup-vs-corporate-life <comment><USER3> > People claim that startups work you hard, I personally don't see it. From > people I've talked to, I'd say 50 hour weeks are average. That's about what > you see in corporate America these days.

I think only in America would somebody say 50 hour weeks don't count as working you hard. Also, the average US working week is 35 hours, 37 in "information" industries:

[http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm)

The fact is that past 35 hours most people just aren't very productive, and a startup asking you to work 50 hours is going to get just as much "busy- looking" time as a corporate job asking you to do the same. Don't work at any job that expects you to work 50-60 hour weeks. Those companies are unhappy places.

<comment><USER4> I came to say exactly this. 50 hours is completely crazy, and if you're doing it often, you should look for another place ASAP. Fuck, 40 hours is already on the verge of being crazy if your job is intellectually demanding.

I've worked in one startup, another one on the process of becoming a small corp (i.e., already adopting process in a much serious scale) and a corp. The best by far, if you value your life outside the job, is the corp. The worst was IMHO the second one, which had the worst of the two worlds: from the startup world, disapproval stares whenever you left without doing enough overtime, crazy schedules overall (I learned later that some mandatory things were actually illegal in my country) and permanent fire-extinguish mode; from the corp world, bureaucracy and lots of meetings. This was in Europe, not in the US.

<comment><USER5> "50 hours is completely crazy, and if you're doing it often, you should look for another place ASAP. Fuck, 40 hours is already on the verge of being crazy"

I feel badly for you that you've been at jobs that have made you feel that way. I've worked 50ish hours for a long time, generally in jobs I enjoy and in compensation structures that rewarded me for do intellectually stimulating work.

But 50 hours a week is hardly crazy. Do whatever works for you, but I want to combat this strange myth that nobody can be productive after 35 hours a week. It's obviously false from my experience (and I would guess the experience of many, many people on HN).

<comment><USER6> 35 or 50 hours or whatever is a pretty arbitrary number, I would agree most people have different limits on how long they can work, but I think the larger point is that for intellectual work, more hours don't imply more output. Or at least, not sustainably.

Not at my current employment, but I know there have been jobs where, say, 3:30 would roll around and my brain would pretty much fried for the day, but I felt obligated to stick around for an extra hour and a half because I'd get disapproving stares if I peaced out early. That extra hour and a half the company got of my time as not a useful hour and a half though. Or conversely sometimes I'd stay late because I was engaged with some sort of problem. Either way, the number of hours really had very little to do with my productivity, and trying to "force" it was never particularly useful.

If I were a manager, and I saw a person was treading water, I'd rather them go home and have them come back the next day refreshed, rather then have them stick around being miserable to meet some arbitrary number of hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article misses some of the _very good_ reasons to work at a Megacorp in terms of job security. I know, I know, it's one of those things that developers of our generation have been taught not to care about. "No job is secure", right?

The truth is, startups are _much_ less secure, have in many cases _serious problems_ in terms of future opportunities. And most importantly - <USER2> saying "the job market is great, you can always find another job", this is just _historically false_.

Please, read what Patrick Mckenzie has to say on the matter here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7611848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7611848)

And Thomas Ptacek's writing on this as well here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7612575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7612575)

"When Sonicity failed in 2001, I had a track record as a lead developer on a successful, well-reviewed enterprise product, the lead engineering role at an ISP that might still have been among Chicago's most popular, and research publications at least one of which has a cite record that a lot of ACM journal submissions would envy. Not to mention, I had cofounded a company that had raised a significant amount of money. I was living in San Francisco at the time. I had to move to Ann Arbor to find my next job."

<comment><USER8> Startups might force you to leave because they die, but giant corporations will make you WANT to leave because they're terrible to work for. This is more of a general note than anything else (as in, not just programmers), but many of my friends who have taken corporate jobs have ended up leaving them for something else, like a startup or consulting shop, because while the pay was great, the work was boring and the culture was just awful. Startups can be like that too, but generally even if they are you have way more power to change things.

It's all a trade-off. You trade the fun of constant change for possibly better, but definitely more reliable, compensation. That is, until your company starts downsizing because someone up top bought 1 too many Ferraris.

<comment><USER9> > giant corporations will make you WANT to leave because they're terrible to > work for

Some might be. Some are great fun to work at.

<comment><USER10> I'd love a list of big corporations that are actually great to work for. It seems like Google is in this camp (I know, not for everyone, but it seems like most people have positive experiences there), maybe Facebook. I hear mixed things about Microsoft. What are the top ten BigCorps to work at as a developer?

<comment><USER11> This is pretty easy. All of them, if you're on the right team, working on the right project. Broad generalizations are pretty useless for something so intensely personal.

<comment><USER10> Ok, so it's possible to have a great experience at any huge tech company. That doesn't mean there aren't some with a better chance than others (it also doesn't mean that there are). Also, while everyone experiences things differently, I think there are probably some things that most people will agree on as good things and bad things in an employer. I will venture to name some:

The opportunity to work on hard/interesting problems; good salary/benefits relative to the industry; the company is interested in advancing your career/training you to be better when you leave than when you came in; the company places an emphasis on engineering rather than treating it like an unfortunate necessity; programmers are given some level of autonomy or self- determination, the structure is not overly hierarchical; the company tracks developer productivity in reasonable ways rather than based on LOC or ass-time in seat.

There are probably a lot of other things that could go on that list, and at some companies, I'm sure that all of these really depend on where you are in the organization. But I can't believe that these and other things can't be influenced by corporate policy and practice, and that there aren't some companies that make these sorts of things a priority when others don't.

All that being said, I asked the question because I've never worked at a big company before, and maybe I'm totally off base. I was genuinely curious. I'd be happy to hear people's impressions of different companies, or a real explanation for why all big companies are the same and none of them are any better than any others at keeping their developers happy. But just waving your hands doesn't seem any more helpful than overbroad generalizations.

<comment><USER11> I've worked at big companies, small companies, and government agencies. You're asking for specifics based on generalizations, which is what I was suggesting you can't really get.

Corporate policy in Corporate America is, much like everything else, basically the same across the board, for legal reasons. What's written down isn't the real driver of company culture and individuals enjoyment and fulfillment in their jobs though.

I've worked ridiculously horrific hours for substandard pay, but _loved it_ because of the team and folks I was working with (common thread from the military: working in the face of adversity breeds camaraderie). The company, boss, the end users could have cared less and provided nothing on your list of 'good things', but it was still a job I enjoyed working at.

I've also worked for companies that checked every 'this should be awesome' box, and found it soulless, with a poor team of folks doing just enough to skate buy on their cushier salaries and lower hours.

Anecdata aside, it's like asking if it's possible to have a good life in America: it depends on what you want, but probably, yes. Where you live, what you do, who you socialize/work with, etc. is highly personal, and drives everything. While YOU (hypothetical you) may think the Silicon Valley is amazing, I know great folks who want nothing more than to live 50 miles from their neighbors in the woods in Maine. They're happy, etc. doing what they do, living how they live. They'd be miserable in NYC or the Valley. Likewise, hypothetical you would be miserable in their log cabin in the woods.

You might love Google or Yahoo or Microsoft, while someone else absolutely hates it. That's got VERY little to do with policy, and nearly everything to do with your personal life philosophy and the team/individuals you end up working with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's worth noting that there are tons of successful small to medium sized companies which don't fall into either category.

I've made a career at them so far, both avoiding the corporate culture and the start-up culture, while gaining the tight-nit teams, stability and learning challenges.

Examples include agencies that have developers, smaller development shops, bootstrapped product companies and more that I'm not thinking of at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article doesn't mention if you join the start-up as a 1) partner (who holds a portion of the company), or 2) as a full-time employee. Even most people will be in #1, but I think it is worth-while to call this out.

Personally I have experience in #2, and it was a three-year old start-up. The experience was awful.

First, I was all on my own, I was told I would wear a lot of hats and would learn a tonne. The reality was I googled a lot, and just copied and pasted the solutions and code snippets off Internet and hoped those would work well enough to meet my need. Take a look at stackoverflow and you will understand what I meant. To make this really concrete, say setting up a server. Before VMs were more popular, I would need to actually get a Dell (bcos it was cheapest, period), removed the Windows, installed Linux, then the fun began: apache, postfix, mysql, spamassassin, etc etc. Do you have time to thumb through each of the excellent documents? We are not even starting to code!!!! On top of that, I also needed to do powerpoint (we had to use Windows because those VCs we met loved Windows), helped to proof-read the product specs to make sure it wouldn't promised anything that would take even Microsoft 80 years to build, and clear the thrash before I left office.

Second, as an employee I didn't have much say on the product design, and technical roadmap, this is especially true if you are someone who is fresh from school, I joined with 6 years of professional experience, but still I didn't have much say on the product features. I was just the guy who did the implementation specified by the biz guy (the CEO), nothing more. I also thought it could be this particular company was fucked up, however talking to engineers from other companies reviewed this phenomena is far from unique.

This kind of work is not much fun if you have a tight deadline and changing requirements from the sales (usually the CEO), especially the one who peddles the products doesn't have a technical background. On top of that, you are most probably doing so many things that you will not likely to have time and energy to sit down and run through the work that you have done.

Make no mistake, I am not saying corporate life is good (I am now working for a US MNC), it has its own set of shit, that I will leave for other day to bitch about

<comment><USER3> > I also thought it could be this particular company was fucked up, however > talking to engineers from other companies revealed this phenomena is far > from unique.

While it's by no means unique, that doesn't mean it's not fucked up. There are a lot of terribly-run companies out there. Misplaced loyalty keeps them alive longer than it should. You should quit whenever a company sucks; life's too short.

<comment><USER13> Totally agree. I left the company after one year and joined an MNC. Although the BigCo has its own issues, but the upside (stable income, more resources, clearer roles and responsibility, etc.) keeps me until now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Depending on how you count things, I've been part of 5 startups and 3 megacorps (none smaller than 40,000 employees) (plus a couple regular old mom and pop small businesses when I was young).

If I can draw any conclusions, I liked the megacorp work much more while I liked the small business work environment more. I've spent about twice as much time in startups and small businesses despite having significant opportunities in the corporate world.

In the small business (startup or mom & pop) everybody is pulling their weight or they're gone. But the work, especially the startup, tends to be lots of "getting set up and doing things for the first time". You want to solve your customer's problems, but first you have to set up this or that server, or get the dev team using some new code profiler, or building up the QA team from scratch. It's a _long_ walk before you can really start attending to customer issues directly because there are so many issues internally to work out. However, your individual contributions can make or break a company, your impact locally can be _huge_. That's really rewarding.

At a corporate job, the problems you get presented with are bigger and often very interesting, you work for a 1,000 pound gorilla who can (in theory) throw lots of weight and maturity behind solving it. The biggest projects I've ever worked on were at these kinds of places. You won't ever really have a big impact on the company, but you might participate in having a big impact on the world. At the end of the day, the single most rewarding things I've ever done have been while getting a paycheck from a megacorp. However, there's tons of dead weight you have to deal with. Bad employees get masked over by the size of the organization and work they aren't doing simply gets shifted onto one of the other nameless drones there.

If you want to be rewarded on both levels, don't think of the megacorp as the company you work for, think of the program or project as the "company" and try to get put on lean, thinly staffed, high risk projects. Your impact will be to the project, and it'll be huge, but the corporation will bring huge and interesting problems to you to work on.

<comment><USER15> This is a nice description. For me, working at a mega-corp is like living in a city. There are people who take my garbage away and keep the barbarians out. I don't have to do those things, so I can focus on what I enjoy: Developing new technologies, for which I'm rewarded. I've set myself up as a sort of entrepreneur living in this city, where I can take on more speculative projects, but at no risk to my own money.

I make damn sure that what I'm taking away is not only money, but also learning, even if it's at some cost to the efficiency of any particular project. And should I ever get into a start-up, I'll benefit from having observed the inner workings of a business from end to end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're an employee then the differences are not so great and you can spend time debating the minutia.

If you're a founder, the risks are real and the costs significant. You'll probably earn little to nothing, for a great expenditure of time, effort and emotional investment, for a very long time, all the while knowing that you could've been earning money/pension/progression elsewhere.

There's absolutely no guarantee (in fact the odds are very heavily against) that you'll even come out the other side having much to show. You _may_ have positioned yourself for a career as an employee elsewhere, but whatever monetary benefits follow are unlikely to make up the losses incurred as a founder of a startup.

And then there's the dark times along the way...

</comment><comment><USER17> I chose the corporate path for reasons never mentioned: education. At a fortune 500 company with a high entry bar, i'm surrounded by really damn good developers who mentor me. There are best practices, and explanations behind them.

My friend at start ups seem to me to have not had the same further education that I have. Maybe some will figure out all the same things on their own, but it will take longer. Hard to say. Some of them at 27 are the 'senior developer'.

<comment><USER18> I have to agree with this for the most part, coming from the startup side.

I'm on my second startup (started at age 23), both of which I was unfortunately the most senior, and at times, the only developer.

There are often times that I wish I had a more established structure around me to facilitate learning the lessons it takes you a while to learn on your own.

That said, before I was in a startup, I also found that I sometimes had a habit of asking too many questions of more senior guys at my mid-sized company. The negative side of this is that not going through the paces of learning those things on my own, I started to feel like I was missing out on developing the critical thinking skills that it takes to learn those things on my own. I was skeptical that I wouldn't be able to move into a role with nobody else to lean on all the time.

After being the most senior guy at a startup for a few years (except for the occasional times when I've contracted with people who have 5+ years more experience), it's helped me develop the problem solving skills that I'm not sure I would have with a resource working right next to me. The lessons are harder won, but sometimes it can be more satisfying to come up with that continuing education on your own (and, well, with the help of the internet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I do not agree that in corporate you make lesser impact. Big company usually produces things used by real people.

Also I find most start-ups to be very conservative in employment arrangement. Option to work remotely or part time is usually deal breaker. In corporation it is norm after you establish yourself.

But I think best career is to build lifestyle business. Get a few customers, some products and just keep incrementally extending it for decade+.

<comment><USER20> > I do not agree that in corporate you make lesser impact. Big company usually > produces things used by real people.

It really depends on what kind of _impact_ one is looking for. The author touched on this point but think he could have made it clearer that working at a startup gives you the _possibility_ of having a significant impact on a product with limited reach while working at a larger company gives the _possibility_ of having a smaller impact on a product with much greater reach.

This is not always the case of course, you could work at a startup that creates an extremely popular product (though it may not be considered a "startup" for very long then) or work for a corporation on a project that will never see the light of day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I graduated in 1997 and, since then, have worked at:

\- 2 big companies

\- 2 small steady-state businesses (<100 people)

\- 4 startups (one as a founder)

So far my best experience has been at Google, where I work now. Here are some of my reasons:

\- I have a lot of opportunities to learn because there are so many people with diverse skills and expertise and Google has the resources and motivation to let people investigate novel technologies.

\- I work with amazing technology. Google has the resources to devote many engineers to internal development tools and production technologies.

\- I don't have to work with (many) crazy people. At startups and small businesses, I found that one crazy founder or manager (who is probably related to the CEO) can completely ruin the experience. Google has processes to avoid hiring such people or to deal with them post-hire.

\- The work I do effects a lot of people. My Mom has commented on features that I've implemented. And, since we usually work in small teams, my impact isn't usually diluted by a lot of people.

\- There is a lot of project diversity and ability to relocate (if you want). So far I've worked on Google's support systems (Dublin), search (Dublin), App Engine (Sydney) and Chromecast (Mountain View).

\- I get paid well without a lot of risk. At Google my base salary is pretty high and I can treat my bonus and equity awards as extras that I don't need to count on. And the bank can count on Google too so I can get a reasonable mortgage.

Not everything is perfect, of course. Two months ago a bunch of work I did was thrown away because my manager's manager's manager's manager didn't like it (his reasoning was sound but...) [1]. And bigger companies are under increased scrutiny so you have to be more careful about privacy, regulatory compliance, etc. A lot of things that you would just do at a startup require consultation with lawyers at a big company.

And my other big company experience really really sucked. I won't go into the details here but I ended up quitting in about 3 months.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/22n3uv/squirrels...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/22n3uv/squirrels_possibly_coming_to_chromecast/)

<comment><USER22> _I don 't have to work with (many) crazy people. At startups and small businesses, I found that one crazy founder or manager (who is probably related to the CEO) can completely ruin the experience. Google has processes to avoid hiring such people or to deal with them post-hire._

That really hit home for me. Part of the severe burnout I'm experiencing is from years of dealing with people from a pill-popping, paranoid nutcase founder to plain old manchildren who thrive on creating drama.

(This was in the SV/SF "startup" scene, though most of the "startups" were actually just small, privately held companies who seemed to use that label when they were in the red, didn't have a clear direction, and wanted people to work more hours.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm just finishing my MSc and I feel so lost and hopeless. I just started to evaluate my options to enter the job market. I'm not sure what is corporate life like for a software engineer in the US but in my country I'm finding out that it has more to do with requirement analysis, evaluating the best COTS (things like Microsoft NAV, SAP, TIBCO seem to be common) for the client and then configuring and deploying it.

Maybe with some ABAP in the way and in some cases some J2EE/WSDL/SOAP or C#/.NET webservices to interact with it. It looks like it's almost impossible to escape this kind of work here, the main employers are outsourcing/consulting companies like Accenture, etc.

I fear that if I go this way I will never be able to escape because I will be gaining experience in this areas and my career will be stuck in this world.

I won't be touching anything like Python, Ruby, Scala, RabbitMQ, Redis or any other technology that might be used by companies were someday I would like to work for, and do real development/engineering.

I'm sorry for my ramblings, I just feel so lost and depressed and would like to get it off of my chest before I explode, and maybe find some advice and guidance from you guys.

<comment><USER24> It may be an unpopular opinion on HN, but I would urge you to seek meaning in your life in something more fundamental than your career. Once you find your identity in something more important (God, family, relationships... don't hate, HN ;) ), it's actually easier to make an objective decision about what to do for a living. It makes it easier to take intermediate steps (unfulfilling in the short-term) between what's available and what the future may hold. I would even dare to say that it makes you more adventurous in your career because failure in your career no longer equals failure in life. You are not your code.

The perfect job isn't always on your doorstep, and it doesn't define the rest of your future. For my first job after school, I was writing enterprise APIs in old, deprecated languages for a large insurance company, and I had the same fears you do. However, I am now working at a cutting-edge startup writing Android apps. They were smart enough to see potential in me rather than a collection of acronyms and technologies on my resume. Working hard is important no matter where you are. Showing genuine interest in the startup is also huge.

<comment><USER23> Thanks a lot for your comment. It hit home. I don't have many friends or relationships, my family is really small (no siblings or cousins) and I'm far from home, and my life is centered around finishing my deggree and programming/learning new technologies. I feel I don't have anything else, so if I fail at it, I have failed in life.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It gives me some hope which is invaluable as I have very little of it right now.

<comment><USER24> Glad I could help you out a bit. If you ever need someone to talk to, you can always email me at email@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A few straw men in this article.

 _Most people in corporate life are expected to look busy when they aren't, and put up the appearance of working long hours._

There are plenty of larger companies you can work for where this isn't true.

<comment><USER18> Read more carefully.

"Of course, this will vary from company to company. Facetime wasn't valued at the big company I worked at, for instance."

<comment><USER26> And that's different from startups how?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I spent 3 years at one of the name-brand Wall Street firms before starting my own company. This essay rang true to me. It's now 5 years into my "startup" (Aside: can I still call it that? We have 25 employees and millions in revenue.)

I have no regrets. My goal is for our employees to have the kind of environment we always wished the large companies we used to work for would have. In fact, many of my early employees were "corporate rescues", bright engineers that had been languishing in comfortable corners of large bureaucratic BigCo's that we convinced to join us, mainly on the promise of actually being able to use Python as part of their day job and work on meaningful/interesting problems.

At our "startup", we use the best tool for the job; we only work with bright people; we focus on results; we never stagnate; and, we deliver on an important mission. Also, our engineers get to open source a lot of work that isn't core to the business (see e.g. [http://parse.ly/code](http://parse.ly/code)).

The only BigCo's that I've seen that have tried to maintain that engineering- friendly environment are e.g. Google and Facebook, but for those companies, size still becomes a limiting factor on impact. As the essay put it, "Proportionally, you will have a bigger impact on the company's future than you will working for a corporation."

Product development also has a different feel when you're trying to create one of the world's next great software companies, rather than when you just happen to work at one that already holds that title.

<comment><USER28> I command you for building such a culture at your company. This is not a easy task, even at startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'll comment based on the context of the question submitted. The student is a sophomore. If the student were about to graduate, if newly out of college the answer would require some thinking.

If they are a sophomore I would say, startup hands down. As a sophomore I would assume they don't have any experience, or any risk, or any real need for money. It easier to do a startup at that point in life. They will find if they love it or hate it. It's better to test the waters then, instead of after college when they have real risks, a real need for money (house, spouse, kids, etc)

Me personally, I founded my first startup my junior year of college, which lead to co-founding a second startup while in grad school. Both startups had little to no profit. There were weeks where I easily put in 40-60 hours+ a week in along with a full time engineering course load. And yes, I still maintained a social life and remained active in campus organizations.

Post-graduation, I'm on my 3rd 'corporate' job. My current job and previous employment were with publicly listed, multinational companies who decided to start innovation centers/incubators...not only build their next generation of products, but in-source everything back to the US.

I also think it's a fallacy to generalize the work, and people in startup vs corporate life. My first employer, I ran circles around most of the developers, and had to be there 8 hours a day...I rarely worked more than 8. My 2nd job, I was the least senior of all the hires and everyone ran circles around me. My current one, I'm in the middle of the pack as far as experience, and hours are reasonable.

tl;dr While in college do a startup.

</comment><comment><USER30> When does a startup stop being a startup? When they reach a certain age, or reach a certain revenue, or when they go public/get acquired?

I know there is probably a more technical definition, but when do they cross that line in real terms as it relates to the risks and pains of working at a startup, like this article mentions?

<comment><USER15> A couple features of start-ups:

1\. Many-hat-wearing. People adapt to the jobs that need to get done, and there is little or no supervisory hierarchy.

2\. Possibility of exponential growth.

I'd say if both of those things vanish, then it's either because the business failed, or stopped being a start-up and is now a mature business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > People claim that startups work you hard, I personally don't see it. From > people I've talked to, I'd say 50 hour weeks are average. That's about what > you see in corporate America these days.

If you're working at an early stage startup then in general nobody should "work you" at all, rather you'll work yourself 60+hours a week because you ACTUALLY HAVE SIGNIFICANT EQUITY in the company and therefor you want to see it grow quickly.

In a corporate environment you don't have any "skin in the game" so to speak so there's no incentive to push yourself.

If you're working at an early stage startup and you don't have significant equity then you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER32> 'significant equity'. Who outside the founders and maybe five first employees really have that in a startup? If owning 0.1% which gets diluted to 0.01% before the startup sells for say 40MM bucks four years later is significant to you...

<comment><USER31> It depends on what you mean by "startup" I suppose. I've worked for three and in each I've been one of the first dozen or so employees. You don't have to be a founder but I think that being a core "early employee" with a fair equity stake is the right way to get the real "startup experience". Anything else is like.. well working for an established company, and doesn't have the same vibe, or excitement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Most startup vs corporate discussions all come down to a lot of anecdotal evidence that falls on both sides of the spectrum.

I have worked for several startups as well as several "big corps".

Without naming names; I'm just going to lay things out in a sort of chronological order.

<TL;DR>Try to find something you love there are good and bad in both startups and big corporations.</TL;DR>

Big Co #1)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

I was brought in as an intern; this was my first exposure to the professional IT world. I learned a lot, the job was secure, benefits were good, nice people all around too.

I was groomed for the spot I was interning and when a full time spot opened at one of our locations half way across the country I was asked to take that opening and move. While the job was secure, benefits were good, and the pay going into the full time position was pretty stellar I felt dissatisfied at the time and didn't want to get "stuck" working there the rest of my life, so instead I turned down the offer and jumped to startup #1.

Startup #1)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

This was a great environment, we were having a lot of fun. People were working a few extra hours, but nothing too bad. I really enjoyed it there; they really took off and these days they are now a "big corp".

Things probably would have been ok if I had stayed there instead of moving on to startup #2

Startup #2)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Work environment was great; very small close knit team. I loved every minute of it right up until I was layed off unexpectedly and the company closed their doors virtually overnight due to their single largest contract being dropped with no notice due to a change in federal government funding policies.

Still not too jaded by things; both startups had been pretty good to me so far I moved on to

Startup #3)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

This place was just insane. People constantly were being asked to work more and more hours even while the company appeared to be growing quite quickly. Then the police showed up at the company to arrest the CEO; he subsequently went to prison for some type of loan fraud (I never looked into the exact details).

This didn't slow things down though; his equally honest son was there to take over the reins of the company. He demanded even more hours of everyone while trying to slash costs/spending everywhere. We were actually called into a company meeting where he pointed out the window at the parking lot and said, "At 8pm at night this parking lot is virtually empty. That is unacceptable. I expect people stay as long as it takes for our deadlines to be met."

Not long after that happened my boss came to me and told me that he was quitting because a sale of the company was imminent and that it was not going to be good for the employees. He advised that I get out early because the job market wasn't going to be able to absorb that many programmers after the sale. Things were pretty bad; I was already unhappy; so I took his advice and moved on to startup #4. Less than 3 months after I left the company was sold in a major acquisition where the purchasing company was after our high profile clientele. Almost the entire development staff was killed; our products were all killed; existing clients were moved to the product of our competitor who had bought us out.

Startup #4)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Tiny little startup; one major investor. I worked way too many hours, but I enjoyed it. We never turned a profit and eventually ran out of money. Eventually they couldn't even make payroll. They were unable to pay me about $10K in salary that I was owed due to there being no money left. The end.

Startup #5)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Holy dear god and anything that is holy; this place was a living hell on earth. Unfortunately, the job market at this point had turned really sour so I couldn't find a job to save my life. So I accepted a position with this terrible startup. I was working 60+ hours a week, every week. I was getting calls when I wasn't at the office to come in and put out fires even at 2 and 3am. It was incredibly terrible and awful.

I was finally fed up with startups. So I decided it was time to move on to big co #2

Big Co #2)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

This place was so good to me. The time off was great; I was used to working my ass off from startup culture so I was able to put in half as much effort as I normally had to and was still getting more done than the people around me. Meanwhile most of the development team was just coasting by and doing the bare minimum while complaining that they had too much to do.

Despite what experiences other people had; this worked out great for me. 3 years in a row I was promoted and given stellar raises for my outstanding contributions. I was traveling on the companies dime frequently; which I really enjoyed as well. All in all I really loved this place. I also did not feel like a "cog" here; I was making major contributions to key projects at this place.

Startup #6)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

So it was with some real hesitation that I left Big Co #2. At this point I was actively recruited, not by some recruiter, but by a former colleague to come and join startup #6. I out right refused to entertain the idea, but this colleague was very persistent and kept talking about better pay, fat stocks, etc... He promised me a wonderful company culture, etc... and as he said, "It can't hurt to at least come in and talk to the VP."

So I had a sit down with the VP at this very new, but very well funded, startup. I was offered a ridiculously huge pay increase as well as stock that would vest in 3 years. It turned out that the cost was my life. I was working 7 days a week including holidays; usually from 8 am until 1 or 2am. Despite what everyone says; yes more hours can me more work gets done. But at what cost; my health was on a steep decline due to lack of sleep primarily. I was feeling burned out as hell at the 2 1/2 year mark but pushed on since that stock vest was so close.

The CEO though was a complete megalomaniac asshole (and this is being nice) that never liked me from the beginning. Despite the fact that I personally implemented more projects and delivered on more customers than any other developer in the group; he fucked me out of my stocks by firing me 1 month prior to them vesting. I got zero out of that. The VP called me an personally apologized and told me how unfair it was and that he even he couldn't believe that the CEO would be that big of an asshole especially considering how much it was going to hurt the company to have me gone.

Big Co #3)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

At this point; as one might imagine I was rather jaded by the whole startup scene. So I went to another big co. I said going in; "I'm done. I'm taking a job at this big co and I'm going to stay there until I retire."

Most people sat around here pretending to be busy when they really didn't have enough work for all of the employees. There were no opportunities for me to advance because there really wasn't enough work to go around; and people who had work to do sure weren't going to share. They were going to hold on for dear life in case layoffs came they wouldn't be the ones to get hit. And those layoffs sure came. In my 3 years there 3 rounds of layoffs hit. Each time I was sweating that the executioner was going to come for each time. And each time I was granted a stay of execution.

I was bored out of my mind and worried that it was only a matter of time before I got cut.

I started interviewing at other places; I considered several startups, but due to my past experiences I turned them down. I was really selective and focused on trying to find a position that valued my time, my knowledge, presented challenges, and had stability.

Eventually I found a small team within another big co that really seemed to fit with what I was looking for.

Big Co #4)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

That brings us to today. I work on a small team within a huge organization. We create products that make a big difference. We value creativity, productivity, and personal life. This is a team, more than any that I've worked with in the past, where we like and respect each other and I like to see these people outside of work. Will I stay here until I retire? I can't answer that, but I can say I love my job. It is challenging and rewarding, but it allows me to have a personal life as well.

<comment><USER34> Cheers mate, thank you for sharing, it illuminates the discussion well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have my reservations about the startup world, but the question about risk management is strange. Young people shouldn't necessarily be worrying about that just yet.

Hell, worry about the risk of getting stuck in a situation where 50 hour weeks are "normal" and not a serious failure mode. Companies of all sizes know that young people a) have a lot of energy, and b) are easier to screw over salary- wise.

</comment><comment><USER36> _> "I tried to be as objective as possible"_

 _> "Finally what do you really care about: name brand or doing cool work?"_

I did a lot of boring, mundane work during my time at some startups as well as interesting work at others. It's either subjective or not informed by enough experience to say that only startup work is cool work and you can't find cool work at a larger company.

</comment><comment><USER37> A little too rose-coloured, this article.

If you want to slog it, really give all you got to someone else's project, a startup is the way to go. You're likely to learn a lot, and your decisions will have direct impact on the well-being of the company.

If you want a stable job that you can put out of your mind when you're not at the office, forget about startups.

</comment><comment><USER38> One difference that was not mentioned is how much of your time is spent in office politics. For early-stage startups it's close to zero. In corporations you spend most of your time doing politics and dealing with consequences thereof, such as doing work that nobody needs just to placate the management etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> The one thing that I like about startups more is the camaraderie you have with your teammates. That plus interesting work makes startups a hands down winner over cubicle life.

</comment><comment><USER40> I really like the final line "Finally what do you really care about: name brand or doing cool work?"

Very true and something I feel so many people fail to realize.

<comment><USER41> Doing cool work? Many startups want fresh grads to be taping together CRUD apps! MegaCorps will often ask the same of you, but have more paths toward getting deeper into both the product and the stack.

<comment><USER28> I am always surprised by this point of view.

1) There is nothing wrong with taping together CRUD apps if it achieves a goal or makes a big impact for your startup

2) There is a good amount of grads that can't even tap CRUD apps together, let have CS degrees

3) At MegaCorp people are deeply specialized in their roles, its like a assembly line -- you don't get to design the car you screw the bumper on (if that)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I see startups as mirage to fool young professionals into thinking they are working less when the exact opposite happens.</comment>


Grow your network with Rapportive - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rapportive.com/grow-your-network-with-rapportive

<comment><USER2> This blog exhibits one of the major problems I have with startup blogs that aren't hosted on the site of the product (and even some that are actually hosted there): the lack of navigation to your product has stopped me from visiting your site.

I click on the word Rapportive on top expecting to be taken to the site but no I am stuck on the blog, I even went so far as to look in the article for a link but found none.

These blogs can be great for getting your product out there but it really sucks when they make navigating to that product harder.

/Offtopic

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not a problem with the blog (hosted or not) it is an issue with the startups implementing them.

The precise thought and passion that goes into the product should affect all aspects of the startup including blogs, Twitter accounts, about pages, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a pretty heavy user of Rapportive (I built <http://crm.raplet.info> to make it into what I needed). But I worry that the silicon valley mindset (where _everyone_ is on LinkedIn, Twitter) is holding the product back to some extent. When I deal with large sluggish institutions (schools, government), Rapportive struggles to find any relevant information on the people I'm talking with.

<comment><USER4> When I click on the link in your install procedure 2. I get an error message "We're sorry, but something went wrong.

We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly."

<comment><USER5> Thanks — I'll follow up with you about this at @hello_world</comment></comment></comment>


Early Mockups for Firefox's Upcoming New Tab Page - <AUTHOR> http://techlaze.com/2011/11/firefox-new-tab-page-mockups/

<comment><USER2> This is a copy of Safari's Top Sites, down to the smallest detail (even the icon to toggle it is the same)

I'm not saying it's bad to implement a good feature from another browser. I'm saying the article is shit because the _only_ reference to Safari is this:

Rather that just copying Chrome, Safari and Opera, Mozilla has tried to innovate a concept that already exists on many popular browsers.

So if by "innovate" you mean "copy exactly" and by "many popular browsers" you mean "Safari" then yes it's accurate.</comment>


Is Facebook Local a worthy competitor to existing location-aware check-in apps? - <AUTHOR> https://sg.news.yahoo.com/facebook-local-worthy-competitor-existing-location-aware-check-032335798.html <comment><USER2> Sounds like Facebook is working on a Yelp killer rather than an event discovery tool.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, "local" is a huge add market in aggregate so there is healthy competition in places.

I figure Facebook becoming the website for a lot of businesses is one of the things that drove Google to push so hard on plus.</comment></comment>


Tesco Bank says attack cost it £2.5m and hit 9,000 people - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37915755 <comment><USER2> At an average of £277/account it's interesting to speculate on the method used here

By increasing levels of awfulness:

\- an inside job. Bad but humans have betrayed trust placed in them since long before Judas

\- a credentials exploit. It seems not to be a mass hit on ATMs as Tesco allowed people to keep withdrawing. So potentially a long term phishing exploit to gain passwords. But seems a very long game so ...

\- deep systems penetration on scale of Bank of Bangladesh. This would be worst for Tesco and for the industry - to have people inside with control over account transfers without your knowledge is a shutdown the bank level of problem. This seems unlikely too as they have not, y'know, shutdown the bank.

So my speculation has led pretty much nowhere. We don't know what happened, so we cannot take sensible precautions.

If I have to guess, it is not the worse case scenario. That's too horrific and Tesco has not seemingly rebuilt all its system from source.

So I guess we plump for credentials exploit and a very fast offshore payment. It's doable if Tesco's anti-fraud is not at the top of the game (as they are new, run their own backend and are a grocers not a bank it's quite probable)

Inside job seems unlikely - too many accounts too many things to go wrong.

But I am jut guessing now. Too little data as Sherlock said

</comment><comment><USER2> It's surprisingly frustrating not to have details on this - and indeed most other attacks.

I think we as an industry need full disclosure on all attacks (anonymised to encourage reporting)

However we as customers need full disclosure on all attacks with attribution so we can move our accounts to safer banks.

A strange dichotomy</comment>


The Water-War Myth - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2215263/

<comment><USER2> This article is baloney. We've already seen water wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

 _Because of saltwater intrusion from the sea into the aquifer, and recirculation and evaporation losses of pumped groundwater, the quality of the water is deteriorating faster than fresh rainwater can desalinate it. This means that Gaza residents must acquire water from beyond their borders, which are closed at present; build a large desalination plant; or eliminate agriculture within the next two decades, said the two researchers, Assistant Professor Charles Harvey and Dr. Annette Huber-Lee of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering._

When the water from the aquifers in Gaza became too salty and contaminated, Israel withdrew from Gaza.

The "security barrier" follows no above-ground border or political boundary. It looks completely random. However, if you plot the underground "mountain aquifer" then the security barrier matches the boundaries of the aquifer.

<http://anthropik.com/2006/08/israels-water-wars/>

We in the US bullied the Canadians into signing a water-rights treaty that enforces US water-rights laws. Our water-rights laws state effectively that once you turn a pipe on, you can never turn it off. In exchange, CA banned export of water to the US.

On a similar note, I live in Colorado. In both CO and UT, it is illegal to collect the rainwater that falls on your property, because state laws and court rulings hold that that rainwater belongs to someone else. The fancy technical word is "senior water rights."

<comment><USER3> "it is illegal to collect the rainwater that falls on your property"

Stupid lawyers, stupid laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any "water shortage" is really an energy shortage, considering that oceans exist and so does desalination. Purifying arbitrarily polluted water is feasible given nuclear power. (Nuke subs do not carry supplies of drinking water, for example.)

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Power in France costs ~$.03/kWh. So to boil a kilogram (i.e., a liter) of water (ignoring the heat of fusion) takes 100 J = .03 kWh which costs about $.001. Looks good to me. (I mean, those little water bottles sell for like $5/liter.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article has been bookmarked in my delicious account, so when the national guard gets called into North Georgia, I'll have a good reference.

Dealing in absolutes with topics like this sure does make me cringe.

<comment><AUTHOR> _North Georgia_

Georgia the state of the United States or Georgia the former republic of the Soviet Union and now independent country?

<comment><USER6> Heh. State of Georgia, near S. Carolina.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> could it be that everyone fears withholding of such a basic resource (in trade) because they know they will instantly face anger and disbelief from the entire international community? oil is psychologically different from water.

</comment><comment><USER8> What a snooze-fest and illogical article. Because countries have solved such disputes in the past therefore the idea that these disputes could turn into shooting wars is a myth? Really? That's the logic they want to use. The author even states that such conflicts have led to serious tensions.This just seems like a slow news day for someone.</comment>


Ruby people on Twitter, and other ways to keep up with the community - <AUTHOR> http://devver.net/blog/2009/01/ruby-people-on-twitter/

<comment><AUTHOR> If there are any other great source for what is going on in the Ruby community I would like to know... So point things out to me that I might have missed.</comment>


Life Among the 'Yakkity Yaks': Autism and Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061123564007514.html <comment><USER2> Creativity and mental disorders may stem from a similar genetic predisposition. For example, it may help if one can see the world in two ways (bipolar disorder). Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton may have had Asperger syndrome too, although they could be just isolative and difficult. John Forbes Nash, a founder of game theory, who won 1994 Nobel Prize in economics had a history of Schizophrenia

<comment><USER3> Manic-depressive illness was often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia in the United States in the era when Nash was hospitalized. He subsequent course of illness is more like manic-depressive illness than like schizophrenia. If I remember correctly, the author of the acclaimed biography of Nash acknowledges that he may have been misdiagnosed.</comment></comment>


What can 6,000 electric vehicles tell us about EV battery health? - <AUTHOR> https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/ <comment><USER2> I own a 2012 Nissan Leaf which has had major battery degradation (first battery went under 70% in only 33k miles, second battery currently around 85% at 45k miles = 78k miles total on both). But on this site, the 2012 Nissan Leaf has less than 2 years of data and shows zero degradation during that time. So it seems like the data is questionable.

<comment><USER3> I thought leafs had poor battery cooling compared to most cars (air vs liquid cooling) and thus poor lifespan.

But your right it's not comprehensive. [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/07/nissans-bigger- battery-...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/07/nissans-bigger-battery-bev- the-2019-leaf-plus-review/)

<comment><USER4> my 2016 ioniq has still no perceivable battery degradation after 60k km. Maybe the technology has changed ?

<comment><USER5> Alternatively, it could be used a state of charge tracking mechanism that conceals battery degradation. Say the battery has 100KWh, but the remaining energy gauge reads zero after 80KWh are expended. You could be degraded to 90KWh but you wouldn't perceive any reduced usable energy until it degrades below 80KWh.

<comment><USER6> This seems contrived - the whole point of incomplete charge / discharge cycle is to spare the battery from degradation.

<comment><USER5> Yes, and my point is that the mechanisms to prevent battery degradation can often end up masking the degradation. This isn't nefarious, it's the byproduct of good state if charge management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tried to look up the 2012 Chevy Volt. There is only 2 years of data for an 8 year old car. Not sure what its trying to tell me about 8 year old batteries when there is only data for the first 2 years.

<comment><USER8> I saw that too. I have a 2012 Chevy Volt and it still gets on average around 32-35 miles (about original capacity) - The range depends a lot on driving style and climate control. I found out how Chevy over-engineered the system to only use 50% of the battery to maximize its life and the advanced cooling system. The fact that it has a built-in gas-powered generator allows it to be more conservative of the battery life.

<comment><USER9> > it has a built-in gas-powered generator

I've always wanted to drive a hybrid vehicle... how is the maintenance on this (I'm a 2005 toyota corolla kinda guy)?

<comment><USER7> I can't speak for others but I had a 2012 Volt and my assessment overall is meh. I'd say that the Volt nails average, its not great at anything and its not terrible at much. I loved driving electric, no shifting, just smooth power. The gas engine how ever would vibrate the car much more than a normal gas car does. Everything in the Volt is lightened - I think the roof might even be plastic. The rear view mirror would vibrate out of place when the gas engine was running. The gas engine is mostly used like a generator in the Volt, meaning it runs at higher RPM most of the time to charge the batteries. I can't tell you how many times I was at a stop light with someone in the crosswalk right in front of the car when the engine decided to start and run at 3500-4000 RPM. You get surprised looks when pedestrians think you are revving up for them. My advice, skip the hybrid and just go electric.

<comment><USER10> We like our second generation Volt. We bought it knowing that it's 55 mile electric range would be sufficient for 95% of my wife's driving, but we also wanted something she could use for occasional road trips of several hundred miles without range anxiety or needing to find an EV charger. Tesla was out of our price range at the time, but even now, level-2 chargers, much less superchargers, are still not as widespread as gas stations especially to the places she sometimes road trips.

The gas engine is somewhat whiny, but I don't find that it vibrates the vehicle.

We're at 62K miles, of which 54K have been all electric. I've had to change the oil once. Visits to the gas station are maybe six times a year. I think it's worked out to about 2000 miles per tank of gas. Put new tires on it around 50K.

As to build quality, yeah, it's an econobox with a very fancy drive train. Nothing rattles in it though besides all the random crap my wife keeps in the car. She's been very happy with it.

Per usual, it depends on your use case and your mileage may vary.

<comment><USER7> I live in CA. Driving the 2012 Volt over the Grapevine would cause the electronics to overheat and the car would slow down - it couldn't maintain 65 for the duration of the climb. Honestly, I got tired of adjusting the rear- view mirror. I ended up with about 35K miles on that car, about 65% of them on electric drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Key bit seems to be:

"..batteries are exhibiting high levels of sustained health. If the observed degradation rates are maintained, the vast majority of batteries will outlast the usable life of the vehicle."

</comment><comment><USER12> Did anyone find interesting outliers? Results surprisingly uniform.

</comment><comment><USER13> Issue I have with the tool is the graphic, and it seems everything is pretty linear. Adding just two numbers: reduction Per year and total Reduction after x years, would make it useful on mobile.

Another thing that would improve the tool is some statistics like the best 10% did this and the worst 10% did this.

</comment><comment><USER14> I found this video of an actual lithium battery recycling plant interesting:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxCFDWMPu38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxCFDWMPu38)

Eco-friendly method of recycling EV batteries

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a 2020 model 3, that is 10 months old. (Got it in December)

It's had 0% range loss. Still get the full 322. Pretty impressive.

</comment><comment><USER16> It looks to me like EVs are completely ready for prime-time, and the only thing holding them back is the inertia/greed of major manufacturers (who cannot sell spare parts or expensive maintenance regimes for them as easily).

Its just a shame that Tesla doesn't have a smaller car, the Model 3 is huge.

<comment><USER17> EVs themselves are ready, the infrastructure is still a limiting factor. We need to keep working until range anxiety isn't an issue

<comment><USER18> Not just range anxiety, I literally wouldn't know where to charge my electric car since I live in a city and have neither my own garden nor a garage, I would have to put some cable out of my window across the street.

There are a few charging stations around my neighborhood but there are a ton more cars.

<comment><USER19> Same problem in Manhattan. An electric car would be great for quick trips to nearby mountains for snowboarding/hiking, but finding _any_ parking spot near home can be a nightmare, let alone having to find one near one of the few charging stations we have.

<comment><USER20> Don't own a car in Manhattan? One can always rent an EV for road trips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://thebulletin.org/2009/01/the-limits-of-energy- storage...](https://thebulletin.org/2009/01/the-limits-of-energy-storage- technology/)

Get the word out. Batteries are bad hydrogen is good. Current hydrogen gas will have more energy than batteries at peak technology growth. This matters because hydrogen cars are cheaper, more scalable, and more inclusive than battery cars. Rich people get battery cars, you get a battery bike.

<comment><USER22> Hydrogen costs 9.5€/kg in Europe. Most cars need 1kg of hydrogen for a 100km trip.

That's expensive as fuck.

Just did the math on my EV, the cost for a 100km trip is around 2.5€, and that's me using public chargers, because I can't charge at home. With home charging, that number would be about 1/3 lower.

PS. Hydrogen cars use the hydrogen to generate electricity, which is again stored in batteries and used to run electric motors.

<comment><USER23> The current cost of hydrogen is not indicative of its cost under a scale market. What do you think the sustained cost per kg of hydrogen will be?

<comment><USER21> It is forecasted to be about the same as existing gas prices. It is law that all gas/petrol cars have to be removed by 2050 so all existing gas infrastructure will be replaced with hydrogen by then. Most likely earlier</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tailorstore - custom clothes shop done the right way - <AUTHOR> http://www.tailorstore.co.uk/

<comment><AUTHOR> First - I did not intend to spam and I'm not related to the company in any way (apart from being a customer now). Let me explain:

I thought it's worth sharing this site for a couple of reasons. Mainly, because it's an online company which has done everything right (as far as I can see). Their items are displayed in a great way, they're clear about every detail, they update the price on every step (instead of surprising you at the end), they show every detail separately and allow you to read about it even more (fabric weights, characteristics, colours used, ...) They are fun to use (subjective, I know). They have great presence on the internet - couldn't find a single bad opinion about them, people are happy to show off pictures of their products on flickr, twitter, facebook - they say how excited they are about the products.

Their website is helpful in every possible way: for people new to tailored clothes it's got simple explanations on every step; for people caring about environment/world, it's got information about the manufacturing place, organic fabrics, short paragraph about work conditions; all newsletters are opt-in; all scripts are there because they're helpful (for example they'll tell you if your measured size doesn't fit in the expected range and let you ignore or correct it) - no silly stuff. They pretty much nailed it in every way I can think of. And on top of that they can really compete with prices - I can't find any local service in a similar price range. When they don't offer something, they say it without trying to hide the fact (for example they explain why they don't do phone contact and what is their policy instead). What they do offer is still pretty unique (completely custom clothes). They even try to upsell in a nice way, if you buy a shirt, it seems that other items / accessories start appearing on the front page instead.

Even though I just came back from shopping, I ordered a shirt from them (an hour after seeing the page for the first time) and couldn't be more excited about it, even though I normally hate shopping for clothes. I hope that people who try to sell anything on the internet will see this example and learn something from them.</comment>


Small Stores Find New Ways to Drum Up Traffic - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/business/smallbusiness/04sbiz.html?ref=smallbusiness&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> This reminds me of how some Web sites / Web apps use ancillary sites or articles / Flash games as linkbait to get their brand known - just in the offline world.</comment>


The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/214.html <comment><USER2> posted 4 times today ( _no irony there!_ )

most comments on this one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10823735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10823735)</comment>


Tiny transformer inside: Decapping an isolated power transfer chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2020/05/tiny-transformer-inside-decapping.html <comment><USER2> Author here: I'm sure there are people on HN who have experience with modern chip layout, and I'd be thrilled if you can explain more about the transistor structures and so forth. I mostly look at chips from the 1970s and 80s, and a lot has changed since then :-)

<comment><USER3> That tiny little heatsink is very cool. (Pun not intended.)

Do you happen to have a post about the setup you use to photograph these die, Ken? I'd love to get my hands on something similar.

<comment><USER2> I have a post about my setup [1]. The main secret is a metallurgical microscope: unlike most microscopes, this shines light from above, through the lens, so you get good illumination of the die. (A ring light is easier, but it doesn't help at high magnification. Also, light from the side doesn't work as well.) I use a low-end metallurgical microscope that I found on eBay. You can see interesting stuff with a regular microscope, so take a look at chips if you have one, but a metallurgical microscope makes a huge difference.

For the die photos, I stitch together multiple photos using the "Hugin" software package. I might use a dozen to 50 individual photos to produce a high-resolution image. Hugin has a learning curve, though.

The final thing is how to decap the chip. Usually, I stick to ceramic or metal packages that I can open with a chisel or hacksaw. For epoxy packages, I don't want to mess around with boiling acids, but I have friends who can do this.

[1] [http://www.righto.com/2015/12/creating-high-resolution- integ...](http://www.righto.com/2015/12/creating-high-resolution- integrated.html)

<comment><USER3> Awesome! I'll check that out.

Can't blame you for not wanting to handle boiling acid. Ain't nobody got time for that. (Except for your friends, and ZeptoBars.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's always worth it to read through the footnotes. I got a kick out of imagining this. If it were me, there would have been loud profantiy.

"6. I accidentally dropped the primary die down the drain while trying to clean it, so I don't have many pictures of the primary die."

</comment><comment><USER5> I love this sort of stuff on HN: seems pretty complicated at first, but the author dived deep into the meat of how it works while making each step extremely easy to understand.

</comment><comment><USER6> These tiny isolated DC to DC converters are amazing.

When you think that they can withstand kV, some for minutes at a time, it's pretty impressive engineering, all in a tiny form-factor that still manages to be highly efficient and avoid over-heating.

I'm amazed by the knowledge that goes into making these, all the various disciplines that need to work together to make these tiny devices...

</comment><comment><USER7> What does the logic implemented using standard cell circuitry do in this design? I thought this is a "dumb" component, no calculations inside?

<comment><USER2> My guess is it's a mixture of analog and digital stuff. On the analog side, there's probably a bandgap voltage reference, temperature and current sensing, soft-start circuitry. It needs to detect the primary's clock and lock on it (probably with a PLL), and adjust the phase as necessary. Then there will be drivers for the power transistors.

The digital side is probably fairly simple logic to stop the chip if there's a fault and restart it if the fault goes away. From the datasheet, there are various different overload states it can go into, limiting power, changing to passive rectification, and then shutting down entirely. So the logic would need to manage these states.

There's always the possibility that they threw a microcontroller in to handle this, but it seems like overkill. Also, I didn't see anything that looked like ROM. So I think the control is hard-wired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Best "hacky" article on Hacker News in the recent history.</comment>


"Home-made" Submarine - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26drugs-t.html

<comment><USER2> This a good article about hacking a mostly submerged boats in difficult jungle conditions: 'When I asked Nimmich if he was impressed by their craftsmanship, he arched a brow and said: "You ever try to build something in your backyard? They're building these in the jungles.'

While I'm not pro-drug-trade, some of the legal tactics seem problematic: 'The Drug Trafficking Vessel Interdiction Assistance Act, which became law in October, now allows the United States to prosecute someone for merely being on board a semisub. ... Such a law does not exist in Colombia. But Colombia's defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, told me that one is in the works and could be enacted as early as June. He said the country is also looking to ban certain plastics used in semisub production.'

Illegal to be on board a boat because of its design? Banning plastics because the might be used for submarine manufacture? This seems clumsy and parallel to laws regarding technology issues such as deCSS and file sharing.

<comment><USER3> Here is the actual law regarding semisubs: <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/z?c110:S.3351>:

The text is a bit more specific and reasonable, I think. "Whoever knowingly or intentionally operates by any means or embarks in any submersible or semi- submersible vessel that is without nationality and that is navigating or has navigated into, through, or from waters beyond the outer limit of the territorial sea of a single country or a lateral limit of that country's territorial sea with an adjacent country, with the intent to evade detection, shall be punished as prescribed in subsection (h)."

I can think of very few legitimate activities that would fall under that bill.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for finding that! Yes, the law as written seems quite reasonable. It's encouraging to find anti-drug laws that limit themselves to addressing a particular angle of particular problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised that they scuttle these boats after a single trip. I realise that they cost a small percentage of the cargo but it still seems wasteful.

<comment><USER2> The illegal drugs are the ballast, so once they have been unloaded either the vessel with be radar visible or a substitute ballast would be needed. Since the ballast is basically in the crew quarters, you can't just use sea water. I'm sure they've run the cost/benefits here, and presumably judged the extra risks not worth the cost savings.

<comment><USER4> I'm not convinced by that. Sea water would be the logical ballast and I realise you can't have it sloshing about around the crews' feet but I don't think it would be too difficult to have a system of bags along to hull of the boat connected to a water inlet. When the boat is full of cocaine they would be stowed out of the way and then when the cocaine is taken off they're flooded compensating for the lost mass. Manufacturing plastic bladders with sufficient strength in the jungle might not be possible but I doubt they're all that difficult to purchase. Worst case scenario they're purchased in the US and only installed when the semi-sub collects them from the fast boats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Autonomous, buoyancy-powered subs: <http://spray.ucsd.edu/>

A fleet of them - the future of drug trafficking?

<comment><USER3> Judging from the statements in the article, it's the future of the drug war as well. That's an interesting vision of the future -- increasingly sophisticated autonomous smugglers and coast guards battling it out. It's better than putting human lives at risk, I suppose. Most of the people on these boats are probably low-level flunkies anyway.

<comment><USER6> Those looking to evade and pass through have a much easier job than subs looking to detect others.

Drug smuggling is astoundingly successful. When there is a "big" bust, it is on the news. That's not very often. They miss 90%+ of the shipments.

The transport is only one part of the equation. Millions are in prison for drug related crimes. The risk to human life from prohibition is far greater than the potential cost of increased addiction (though evidence points towards decreased addiction with programs focused on treatment rather than prison)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: my first app - Is there a Giants game today? - <AUTHOR> http://isthereagiantsgametoday.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Today's the first home game of the season for the Giants, so we created this simple page. What do you think?

Background info: [http://forrestthroughthetrees.blogspot.com/2012/04/introduci...](http://forrestthroughthetrees.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing- isthereagiantsgametodaycom.html)

How we made it: [http://dailycavalier.com/2012/04/my-first-app-is-there-a- gia...](http://dailycavalier.com/2012/04/my-first-app-is-there-a-giants-game- today/)

Code: <https://github.com/lforrest/isthereagiantsgametoday/>

<comment><USER2> Can you make one for the As? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this would be pretty easy to do. Stay tuned!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why did this get voted up on HN?

<comment><USER4> Because it's a simple, fun idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Simple and fun, but why would someone use something like this vs visiting mlb.com?

<comment><USER6> I actually wonder if MLB would have issues (Giants trademark, etc) with a site like this and try to shut it down.

<comment><USER7> I can say without a doubt that they would.

I've had run ins with MLB for using commercially using my own photos from games that had team logos visible in them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Simple, but still pretty cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome.</comment>


Ask HN: search and relational database integration as a service? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any hosted services which integrate a full-text search server (Solr, ElasticSearch, etc) with a relational database (PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc)? <comment><USER2> Microsoft has their SQL Azure service but, as of right now, they do not support FT (although SQL Server has robust support for FT). My assumption is that this will be supported in the coming few years though - FT is becoming a must for many BI situations and BI has been driving the MSFT SQL Server team for almost a decade.

<comment><AUTHOR> How does SQL Server's full-text search support compare to Solr or ElasticSearch? I have used full-text search in MySQL and PostgreSQL and have not been impressed.

<comment><USER2> I wish I knew - I'm mostly a SQL Server only guy! Just posting b/c, at some point, I suspect they will entire this market in in a big way.

Also, since a lot of companies host SQL Server (Amazon, Rackspace, etc), it's possible that they support SQL Server's FT service.

[http://aws.amazon.com/rds/sqlserver/#features](http://aws.amazon.com/rds/sqlserver/#features)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate it. I am sure you are right so the question is when?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not that I'm aware of, but I have considered that there could be a market for them before too :)

What kind of approach are you thinking of? Using the database as the primary store, and reflecting any row changes in the corresponding search indices?

<comment><AUTHOR> How did you guess? Interested in beta testing? :)

Yes to the database as the primary store and syncing to the search server then adding a "search clause" to SELECT essentially for seamless integration.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely, drop me a line - my mail is jay at jp hyphen hosting dot net

Glad to provide feedback!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Rails 3 hosting? - <AUTHOR>

Hello.  Im trying to find some decent rails 3 shared hosting.  Ive tried 2 hosts over the past week one which was running a 6 months old version and one that simply didnt work at all.  Is Rails 3 and Ruby 1.9.2 too new to run via shared?  Is getting a vps the only option?  If so are there any that are recommended?
I know about heroku and engine yard but im new to git and have been having difficulties understanding it plus im concerned about the cost of each.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> A shared host isn't going to give you very good performance. You could try looking into <http://heroku.com> to see if that would serve you better.

Otherwise a VPS from Linode should serve you well and it's not too much money this way either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the quick reply. Im not looking for quick response time although the last host i just tried had horrible response time. This would only be a development account. As i said ive looked at heroku but the git aspect of it just confuses me.

Also i wanted something cheap which i guess for rails 3 isnt going to fly. Ill look at linode though.

<comment><USER3> You're going to have to become more knowledgable about git anyway when you start serious development. Basic commits and pushes aren't too difficult at the beginning. I use Linode, but it requires a little more technical knowledge, as you're actually just. Given the raw virtual server space and it's up to you to set up your development stack for the pieces you need on top of a Linux distribution. They simplify that process a little bit by community provided StackScripts to get you started though. If you're still new to Rails and sysadmin, I'd recommend to stick with Heroku and gain some experience locally in setting up Rails and a web/DB server (works great in a VM or just using Mac OS)</comment></comment></comment>


The Law of Leaky Abstractions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws#the-law-of-leaky-abstractions <comment><USER2> I see this fact used pretty often to dismiss the idea that we should use abstractions at all, and I think that's pretty wrongheaded. As an example, it's pretty common to hear that people should prefer writing raw SQL to using an ORM or query builder because those are both "leaky abstractions"

Abstractions aren't necessarily only there so that you don't need to understand anything about what's being abstracted. They are there so that your code can get away from nitty-gritty implementation details, and be more focused on the problem domain.

What would you rather see when you're coming into a new codebase:

        const formData = new FormData();
        formData.append('name', 'Widget');
        fetch(`/api/widgets/${id}`, {
           method: 'POST',
           body: formData
        })

or:

        Widget.save({ name: 'Widget' });

<comment><USER3> The argument against ORMs aren't that they are a leaky abstraction (although they most definitely are).

The argument is although they appear to offer you value up front, they cost you much more down the road. The moment you have a hot path query that needs optimizing, you are dropping down to your ORM's "raw sql" mode. Then you do it again. Then again. Then you are ripping out the ORM and spending cycles refactoring it out of your code and replacing it with simpler abstractions.

I always find the people who don't believe writing raw SQL is preferable to using an ORM is usually down to a lack of experience or because they have been coerced to use ORMs by their "enterprise grade" language (usually your C# developers of the world, no offense to you all but if every time you look up examples of data operations it's dealing with EntityFramework you are probably going to wind up with a lot of devs using EntityFramework). The ORMers, as I call them, don't have confidence in their own SQL ability, and they haven't experienced the aforementioned situation enough times to realize you are better off starting with SQL to begin with.

The realization is, if I could summarize it: yes all abstractions are at least somewhat leaky, so you are better to use simpler ones than complex ones (and if you need something more complex, compose it from simpler ones)

<comment><USER4> I'd not mind writing raw SQL if it was anything other than a big, non-typed blob of crap as far as my language is concerned. I want compile time safety in my SQL. Tbh, I'm surprised that raw SQL folks don't promote some type of non- ORM but also compile-time type safe SQL implementation. The runtime-ness of SQL strings have always blown me away.

I imagine it would be pretty easy too. Move SQL out of the program language _(ie, into files)_. Verify the syntax. Compare the SQL to the db to ensure validity. Bam, compile time verified SQL. Though, I've never used a setup like that, as that is what my ORM does, just in-language.

<comment><USER5> Your compiler doesn't — and _can't_ — know what's in your database.

To the extent you create a system that requires this constraint, you've created a brittle (and soon to be broken) system.

(I suppose there may be some case where all the data is all known up-front and will always be updated in lock-step with the consuming code/services but that's rare in my experience.)

<comment><USER6> > Your compiler doesn't — and can't — know what's in your database.

There's no reason you couldn't compile code against a schema, at least the portions that would be exposed to the application anyway (independent of the data content and non-exposed backing parts of the schema) just as you do against header files (independent of the implementation). It is a form of coupling, but its coupling that exists _anyway_ in DB-consuming code, its just not typically statically verified and so is prone to unnecessary run-time breakage.

Unfortunately, you need tooling to statically analyze SQL schemas in whatever flavor of SQL you are using (and vendor differences will matter here), including inferring types through view definitions, etc., and then you need to tooling to map that to the type system of your implementation language, and potentially you need extension points so that you can do custom mapping for custom types from the database side.

Unless your DB and application platform share tight common control or are near ubiquitous, getting someone to make the investment to do this and keep it current is hard. Its not too hard to imagine Microsoft doing if for the SQL Server / .NET combo or Oracle doing it for Oracle DB / Java, but a general and maintained enough to be usable solution is harder to see getting the kind of support it would need.

<comment><USER5> Sure, you can validate your databases schema against types in your code. Nothing wrong with that either, as far as it goes.

But that isn't a guarantee of anything at runtime.

You could make a runtime requirement that the schema and code match, but you're going to pay a price for that tight coupling. E.g. you'll need to put in place a mechanism to be able to update all your database clients and all your database schemas atomically. Once you get a decent amount of data in your database or scale horizontally, this could become infeasible (e.g., due to the downtime to update the schema) or impossible (e.g., because you don't have complete control of all databases, data, and database clients).

If you are going to go in this direction, you're usually going to be better off targeting a mapping layer/API, not the base tables. The coupling is not so rigid (e.g. there's room for simultaneous support for multiple versions of the data access API/schema. This all exists, of course. Of course, ORMs and other higher level data access libraries generally do this kind of thing to a greater or lessor degree. Importantly, the mapping layer/data access API should _live with the database_. That is, be developed and deployed with the database (directly or in controlled parallel).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A fun example from SQL Server that bit me the other day. Observe this simple proc:

      create procedure SearchJackets
        @buttonCount int
      as
      select *
      from   jackets
      where  @buttonCount is null or buttonCount = @buttonCount

It's a common pattern you use for multi-param search queries that lets you avoid building your query as a string. Normally there are lots of little filter params in there, but we'll just show one for now. "Computer: List me the jackets, and maybe just show the ones with a certain number of buttons."

That version takes 60 seconds to run, whereas this version takes less than a second:

      create procedure SearchJackets
        @buttonCount int
      as
      declare @buttonCountCopy int
      set @buttonCountCopy = @buttonCount
      select *
      from   jackets
      where  @buttonCountCopy is null or buttonCount = @buttonCountCopy

... because it kicks the optimizer upside the head and convinces it to reconfigure the query plan in an efficient way. There are hints you can use at CREATE time that are supposed to do the same thing, but they don't actually work in this particular case. So now one of my codebases has this hack sprinkled about in a couple "Advanced Search" pages.

Fun stuff.

<comment><USER8> >There are hints you can use at CREATE time that are supposed to do the same thing, but they don't actually work in this particular case.

Are you saying that "option(recompile)" doesn't work for you in this case? It works just fine for me when using that 'X is null or' pattern for optional filters.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, that's the option I was testing that had no effect. From what I've read, it does seem to work in some cases. But not mine, sadly.

<comment><USER8> Well that's interesting. I'll have to keep your little hack in the back of my mind. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "for a magnetic drive, reading data sequentially will be significantly faster than random access (due to increased overhead of page faults),"

...err... no.

Magnetic drives have slow random access due to seek-time, i.e the time taken for the head and disk to physically change position.

In comparison to that, SSDs are _effectively_ zero latency but they still have read-ahead/buffering/caching latencys to deal with.

<comment><USER10> The quoted text appears to be comparing the sequential and random-access speeds of magnetic disks, so the differences with respect to SSDs does not come into it. On the other hand, I do not understand what the author means in the following clause, where the slower random access is attributed to the overhead of page faults, unless the author has in mind a specific (and unmentioned) scenario involving memory-mapped access (and if page faults are the issue in that scenario when using magnetic disks, why would one not have the same issue when using SSDs? I would have thought the causality goes the other way: the overhead of page faults is higher when using magnetic disks because of their relatively slow random access.)

<comment><USER9> Possibly... All I can surmise is that the OP may think disks are addressed in a memory-mapped fashion and hence may be subject to page-faults for some reason.

(Obviously, they're not).

<comment><USER11> Reading that generously and since we're talking about abstractions... reading from disk via mmap does work via page faults! Except... it's a layer up. Doing random reads on an mmap'd file will likely have terrible performance until those pages have been cached, but one layer down there's no guarantee that sequential reads from an mmap'd file are going to be sequential reads from disk! (Because the file isn't guaranteed to be laid out sequentially on disk)

Others in this discussion have talked about some abstractions being perfect and a consumer not needing to understand the layer beneath; I strongly disagree. Ultimately, the physical reality of the machine will come into play (disk, RAM, caches, network, CPU etc), and I am generally uncomfortable if I don't have a solid feel for how the high-level operations in an abstraction are going to use those resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel "abstraction" (as a term) is thrown around a lot, but should only apply to the _conceptual_ system (aka, while in the computer science realm).

Once you're dealing w/ the implementation and it turns into something _concrete_ (aka the engineering realm), it's just a layer of indirection (and it serves its purpose by reducing coupling), but you still have to consider that underneath all you're talking to some machine, over the network, there's latency, it can timeout, there could be a load balance in between, the cache may not be coherent for consecutive requests, you assume some operation is both atomic and produces instantaneous side-effects, and so on... if you ignore these details you end up w/ a system that looks great at a conceptual level but is full of problems and race conditions because you ignored physics.

TL;DR "Leaky abstraction" is pretty much a tautology if you look up the meaning of "abstraction"?

</comment><comment><USER13> Re: _Modern practices like 'Microservice Architecture' can be thought of as an application of this law (The Unix Philosophy), where services are small, focused and do one specific thing, allowing complex behaviour to be composed from simple building blocks._

An oop class or API can do the same thing. Microservices are overkill unless multiple applications will be sharing the service, and even then may have unnecessary overhead compared to say stored procedures.

</comment><comment><USER14>
       However, for a magnetic drive, reading data sequentially will be significantly faster than random access (due to increased overhead of page faults), but for an SSD drive, this overhead will not be present.

Even SSDs have overhead for random access although not as much as spinning disks (~3 times IIRC)

<comment><USER15> I never understood how the myth that SSDs have no random access overhead became so prevalent and oft-repeated. Did nobody ever measure?

<comment><USER16> SSDs have effectively zero random read access overhead when compared to traditional drives, because the overhead is a couple of orders of magnitude smaller. Also for SATA connected SSDs the effect of this read latency is reduced by bottlenecks elsewhere.

For the common home/office/other user the difference between zero and effectively zero is, well, effectively zero, so the two easily conflate. It isn't so much a myth as a convenient simplification.

(The fact that there is still latency is very easy to show though - just throw something like crystaldiskmark at an SSD and show the measured throughput difference between the sequential and random tests.)

For NVMe drives where the bottlenecks of SATA are removed the difference starts to become more noticeable, and on any SSD random write latency is more significant than random read latency, but NVMe has only recently become common for the general user and the tests that people usually look at are random read not random write as for those common users this is the most significant measure in terms of how it will affect their day-to-day use patterns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the key is to make sure all leaks happen in the sphere of performance, not correctness. So you can use the abstraction on its own without fragility, and then you can learn more about it if you want to tighten up performance.

</comment><comment><USER18> A better formulation: Abstractions do not adequately describe the full working of a system. So higher-level approaches will always require a knowledge of lower-level operations.

However, the opposing and terribly named "Dependency Inversion Principle" is true much more often: "High level [approaches] should not be dependent on low- level implementations."

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe [https://github.com/denysdovhan/wtfjs](https://github.com/denysdovhan/wtfjs) counts as leaky abstractions.

It's definitely something that's difficult with building a language. Abstracting and generalizing your language parser can lead to amigious behavior.

</comment><comment><USER20> Article could use a few more examples.

<comment><USER21> Joel's article ( [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of- leaky-a...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky- abstractions/) ) has tons.

A classic trap for new players is that in most modern compiled languages you can add strings and get a string, but strings are in fact immutable and can't be added without making an entirely new string and disposing of the original two. This means "a" \+ "b" is actually a horrible way to build up a string if you have to do lots of little additions, so most languages have some other method of making a string of strings/chars (StringBuilder in Java and C#, strings.Builder in Go, etc).

<comment><USER22> Why are strings made immutable by default in some langs (I have seen this mainly in java and python)? Nothing fundamentally requires strings to be so. Has some analysis been done indicating most string operations in software would benefit by immutable form rather than non-immutable form?

<comment><USER23> At least in Python, string objects are widely used as keys to dictionaries or as options in functions. For speed and efficiency these small strings are "interned" so that there is only ever one instance of the same string.

Also for mutable strings you either have to allocate enough memory to fit the final result or have some kind of rope data structure. Or else you end up copying it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great list of programmer laws, ideas, and understandings, not just "The Law Of Leaky Abstractions" (which of course is a classic in its own right...)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's like the 2nd law of thermodynamics. A surjective epimorphism. Information is lost as you go higher and higher into the abstractions.</comment>


The Violin Thief (2016) - one-possibility http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2016/03/17/the-violin-thief/ <comment><AUTHOR> Must have been devastating for Maestro Totenberg.

Phil Johnson's crime was so pointless. He couldn't sell it or use it in a big enough gig. It probably was counter-productive for his career, since he had to cut ties with people in order to conceal the past, while connection is a huge part in world of classical music.

In the end, he died a mediocre player, known not for his playing but his crime.

A more concise version of the story: [https://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/20158/16968/](https://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/20158/16968/)

<comment><USER2> I knew Philip in the 80s as he and I traveled in overlapping circles. I heard him play several times. He was far, far more than a mediocre player. He absolutely could have been a professional orchestra player had he wanted to-- and if he had been able to control the abrasive bits of his personality. But nobody who heard him in those days would ever have called him 'mediocre.'

In a certain way, that adds to the tragedy of the whole sordid affair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For those not wanting to subsidize Bezos: [http://archive.is/TDOkH](http://archive.is/TDOkH)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's frustrating how the authors of this article drop bits and pieces of the story only to interrupt themselves. I get they're trying to provide "the bigger picture" or broader context or asking those "big questions" but it would work a lot better if they just told the damn story first.</comment>


Writing portable code OpenGL 2.x/OpenGL ES 2.0 using Android NDK - <AUTHOR> http://blog.beuc.net/posts/OpenGL_ES_2.0_using_Android_NDK/

<comment><USER2> I started the exact same thing last night however instead of using the NDK(c/c++) I am using a GLSurfaceView in the SDK(java). I'm sure that he will get better performance with the NDK however I have very little c experience and the documentation for the sdk is great. [http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/graphics/opengl.ht...](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/graphics/opengl.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there anyone trying to bring a python framework like pyglet to android?</comment>


The surprisingly realistic path to eliminating the Electoral College by 2020 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/09/1594792/-The-surprisingly-realistic-path-to-eliminating-the-Electoral-College-by-2020 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a awesome compatible "patch" to fix the bugs the much disliked Electoral College voting system that frequently does not elect the popular winner.</comment>