Ask HN: Any examples of successfully applying Pareto principle in life? - <AUTHOR> Personal or professional. That is also known as the 80/20 rule by the way. <comment><USER2> When I was taking a Construction Engineering Tech degree (fancy name for quantity surveyor) this was a guiding principle of many of my teachers.

Estimating as a General Contractor is quite intricate. You're soliciting quotes from surveyors, excavation crews, concrete crews, forming crews, electricians, plumbers, masonry, flooring, structural, etc. There is a _lot_ of things that go into a building to make it functional.

So, given that you have X amount of time to produce a comprehensive, profitable quote - you really have to manage your time. If you spend all your time counting the nuts and bolts on a project but forget about the 3rd floor framing, you're going to go bust pretty quickly.

The solution is to apply this principle. Focus on the 20% which will give you 80% of the cost. The big ticket items. If you have time, fill in the rest of what you can.

</comment><comment><USER3> A firm selling paper to (commercial) printers ensured the sales force (internal and external) used Pareto in this way. Customers that were listed in the top 20% of revenue providers were designated as KEY accounts and vital to the existence of the company.</comment>


How This Freelancer Hacked His Hourly Rate - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3021904/open-company/how-this-freelancer-hacked-his-hourly-rate <comment><USER2> Ah, the seldom used 3rd definition of "Hacked": "To abruptly remove large portions of".

This freelancer seems to have contrived a way to work the equivilant of two billable weeks (spread out over a presumably longer amount of calendar time) at a tiny fraction of his market rate.

Hopefully the marketing effect of articles like this one will result in a significant uptick in his workload. If not, he's not only put in a bunch of work at a terrible bill rate. But he's signaled to the world that the correct price for his work going forward is $76/hour.

Not the best place to be. Here's hoping another hundred-odd people buy time from him so at least the final number looks respectable.

<comment><USER3> The point of this isn't to pay his bills, I suspect - it's marketing, and apparently effective: he's made over 100 new business contacts at this point.

<comment><USER4> Exactly the point. Chances are, these people have long term projects for him and now he has become a trusted consultant. I absolutely love everything about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How This Freelancer Hacked His Hourly Rate _with one weird trick_

<comment><USER6> Top Freelancers hate him.

<comment><USER7> Next up, how this young entrepreneur hacked his breakfast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like this idea. I'm planning on starting to freelance in a few months, and one of the things that really worried me was setting rates. I know how much runway I have to make it a success, and I'm confident I can get work pricing myself below market rates (anyone can sell $5 for $4 forever). But I've heard a lot of people say you shouldn't try to be the lowest-priced option, because then you end up with clients who don't respect your time. I was worried that I might have to choose between market rates and be outcompeted by people with better portfolios, and low rates and clients I didn't like. This seems like a great third way. Start out below market, and raise my hourly rate by $1 for every 100 hours. I'll have plenty of time for portfolio building, even if I have to hustle for people who aren't my ideal clients (which actually sounds like a necessary experience anyway). Then when my rate goes up, if those customers don't think my time is that valuable, we can just part ways.

<comment> a-priori Instead of aiming for a 'market rate', aim for a target utilization rate (# of billable hours / # of working hours) of something like 70%. The remaining time should be spent pursuing new work. If your utilization rate is higher than that, raise your rates.

 _Edit:_ If it's less than your target, you'll automatically be spending more time finding new work. Use the extra time to figure out how to make yourself more valuable to your customers to bring in more work. As a last resort, lower your rates (maybe the market has changed?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The key insight here is that it's complelety acceptable for freelancers to charge different rates for different clients. Many new freelancers, even if they accept that premise in theory, are uncomfortable asking one client to pay 300/hr if another is paying 100/hr.

That's only possible if you can infer a client's ability to pay and match your quote to their expectations. You can earn much more if you're able to adjust your rates on the fly, which is one of the reasons most freelancers do not list a rate on their public website.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am thinking of stealing this idea to offer finance advise (mainly advise on: cash flow planning/forecasting, financial planning, how to read statements, setting up controls and reports). I like it because I would start cheap with little experience in consulting (while I do work in controlling in a multi co) and get more expensive the more experience I gain. Also, 1 to 3 hours buckets might actually work very well for this type of freelancing.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is the freelancer's site mentioned in the article [https://onehour.me/](https://onehour.me/)

The hourly rate is $91 at time of writing.

<comment><USER12> It's certainly a fun experiment, and could be a great way to introduce yourself to 91 potential long-term clients.

However, it's still too early to call it "hourly rate hacking" as the original blog post does.

There's no evidence that the method will work after the rate increases above the standard market rates. A few hourly slots per day, plus travel is very inefficient use of his time. He seems to be a competent developer with good business & design skills, and could probably book projects at $100-200/hour for full weeks at a time, instead of a few hours now and then for an average of $45.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this would be a great pricing model if applied to tutoring for students. If you find a tutor useful, you'll go back to them. Conversely if you find they weren't helpful, you leave early. So it's up to the tutor to entice you to come back by providing value up-front.

However, the primary difference is that you do this logarithmic scaling per student rather than as a set price for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER14> Won't a linear increase function prevent anyone from hiring him in the future?

<comment><USER15> Right, but by the time he makes $3000/hr he can retire.

<comment><USER10> Which means USD 4.5M

(sorry, I OCD on numbers)

<comment><USER16> Hey - I'm not a huge math guy, but I remember there is a formula for this and was curious. Can you refresh my memory on what it is? Thanks!

<comment><USER17> You are looking for the sum of all numbers in a linear function. The sum is equivalent to the area under the curve which you normally use calculus and integrate for. However, in the case of a linear function, it's just a triangle. So, you can take a short cut if you just "know" f(x)=x^2 / 2.

<comment><USER18> What does _" know"_ mean? suspect? :)

<comment><USER19> imo, "can visualize". In my experience, those strong in math easily visualize math problems geometrically. This is opposed to, for example, having to grind through the quadratic formula.

Try to mentally (or on paper) graph the freelancer's pay. The x-axis represents "hours" and the y-axis represents "pay per hour". The function we get is the linear function "f(x) = x". I.e. for the first hour, he's paid $1; for the 300th hour, he's paid $300. A very straightforward graph. If we cut off our x-axis at $300, the graph looks like a right triangle.

If you want to find the total amount of money he's accumulated, all you have to do is find the area under the triangle (which is a special case of integration). For a triangle, geometry class taught us "Area = (1/2)(base)(height)". Calculus courses prefer that we integrate, which has broader application. Integration of "f(x) = x" gives us "f'(x) = (1/2)(x^2)". Our "integral" is equivalent to the "geometry-class equation" because for our particular triangle, _the base is the same as the height_. For comparison:

Area = (1/2)(base)(height)

f'(x) = (1/2)(x^2)

DoubleMalt is saying kjay's visualized "shortcut" (intuitively faster approximation) is slightly off. This is because the triangle in our _actual_ problem looks like a staircase, and not a smooth slope. But kjay's shortcut has a margin of error of only about "-0.033%" which is a good enough approximation by most people's standards.

Also, DoubleMalt's equation should look like

x * (x + 1) / 2

instead of

x * (x - 1) / 2

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I had an idea to do something _frustratingly similar_ to this. Not the $wage++ aspect, but to offer discounted rates for 1-2 hours in order to build up interesting business contacts. "Micro-consulting".

Well done. 10% of these business contacts will likely want to hire this guy back at some three-figure number, and he will be able to choose the ones he wants to work with in the future.

</comment><comment><USER21> It strikes me that an hourly rate that increases over the life of a project might be a way for a freelancer to skew his billable hours toward new development and away from maintenance. It also reflects the fact that the freelancer's knowledge of a particular client becomes more valuable over time. On the other hand, an increasing hourly rate is a tougher sell to potential clients.

<comment><USER22> He should just couple it to his backlog.

Set a Reserve ($A), and for every reserved hour, ad $B.

So, with a reserve of $50, and 40 backlogged hours (at $1 each), the rate gets $90. Once you have less work on the roster, the price drops. When more gets booked in advance, the price rises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Letting others tell you your price is the weakest negotiation position to be in. No wonder it's been holding steady at 76.

Does this guy show up to a job interview and when they ask for salary does he respond "you tell me?"

Your worth is a constant projection. Learn how to convince people of it, and he'll increase his rate three fold.

</comment><comment><USER24> " _started selling his time for $1 per hour, increasing the price by another dollar each time an hour was sold._ "

So I'm very confused by the methodology. That description (which seems to be taken from onehour.me) seems to indicate that the price is unbounded and monotonic.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thats a great PR move, I'm jealous.

I had unofficially been doing "startup therapy" for years, but I always treated it as a loss-leader for new business. Probably should have been charging for those meetings, oh well.

</comment><comment><USER26> (and made $120 in total)

This clever PR stunt might cost him a month of free work, or bring him a load of clients. I'd be curious to read a follow-up a couple months from now.

</comment><comment><USER27> but will it work for anything other than startups?

I do like the idea though - there is a lot of value in getting an audience to a critical mass

</comment><comment><USER28> Does everything have to be "hacked" these days? Pardon me while I go "hack" my bathroom break.

<comment><USER29> I just read it as "smurf" and think of whoever is writing it as Brainy Smurf.

Yeah, I have small kids.

<comment><USER30> Remember the cloud to butt chrome extension? Sounds like we need a new one for hack</comment></comment></comment>


Build your own Command Line with ANSI escape codes - <AUTHOR> http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/BuildyourownCommandLinewithANSIescapecodes.html <comment><USER2> I am shocked to find this not on the front page.</comment>


Elon Musk Planning to Open-Source Tesla Vehicle Security Software - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1028351047478042624 <comment><USER2> It'd be nice if they actually abided by the GPL as well. Last I heard, the SFC only managed to get them to release some of the code they're legally obligated to.

</comment><comment><USER3> Watch out everyone. The linked tweet has comments that point to what seems like a scam.</comment>


The Slide Rule - <AUTHOR> https://tryretool.com/blog/the-slide-rule/?4 <comment><USER2> I've noticed that my daughter, despite being an engineering student, isn't nearly as comfortable with the properties of logarithms as I am. Of course, she studied them in Calculus classes, but they were just abstract functions to her since she always had computers or calculators to perform calculations. For me, they were a part of the standard education for technical or science related fields. Even in high school we were expected to use slide rules or tables of logarithms to perform calculations.

I bought my first slide rule around 1964 (with money I made delivering the Detroit Free Press newspaper every morning before school). It was a bright yellow Pickett like those available on EBay[1]. It was possible to do multiplication, division, roots, trig, exponentials, etc. to just less than 3 significant digits of accuracy. If this wasn't enough accuracy, I had to recast the computation as addition or subtraction of logs from log tables, which could with some interpolation yield around 6 significant digits of accuracy.

I just recently pulled out my old slide rule to show my accountant how they worked.

At MIT I saw circular slide rules, and some of my fellow students used them (more accuracy on the outer scales, less on the inner most scales). The most interesting slide rules I've seen are cylindrical. The scales wrap around the cylinder in a helix and are much longer giving an extra digit or two of accuracy (but requiring more mental work on the user to figure out which reading of the cursor to use because the cursor was parallel to the axis of the cylinder). See [2]

By the time I was finished using my slide rule, I'd started working with computers. Even today, I have a fancy overpriced TI calculator that just sits in a drawer. I'd much rather fire up a Python REPL to do most calculations.

[1] [https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-1959-PICKETT-DUAL-BASE- SLID...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-1959-PICKETT-DUAL-BASE-SLIDE-RULE- MODEL-N4-ES-WITH-LEATHER- CASE/113321672651?hash=item1a627f7fcb:g:tCMAAOSwWotbwn12:rk:10:pf:0)

[2] [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/edgerton- center/ec-050-recreate-...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/edgerton- center/ec-050-recreate-experiments-from-history-inform-the-future-from-the- past-galileo-january-iap-2010/image-galleries/slide-rule/)

<comment><USER3> I bring out the slide rule pretty much these days to give history lessons to young folks. Last time I showed how it worked to a pair of GenZ kids they looked at me with a healthy bit of skepticism. Like somehow this was some sort of fake contraption. I felt a bit like my late father explaining what it was like to crank a car to start it.

<comment><USER2> I know what you mean. I borrowed a car from a fraternity brother to pick up a date once. Before departing he explained that if it didn't start I might have to use the crank! It was a Citroën if I remember correctly. I'm sure it really impressed my date.

<comment><USER4> Extra battery (the one you take inside where it's warm over night) and starter cables in the footwell :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I grew up long after slide rules went out of fashion, but I really like them. And not only for their signaling value; I genuinely think they make working with specifically ratios easier.

For example if you have a recipe calling for 150 g of butter, but you want to use all of your 250 g, you can just align 150 and 250 on the slide rule, and then read off the correct amounts of the other ingredients, without ever touching the slide rule again. No multiplication performed.

I understand people don't use slide rules for more things, but I'm baffled they aren't considered standard kitchen equipment, in one shape or another.

<comment><USER6> >>For example if you have a recipe calling for 150 g of butter, but you want to use all of your 250 g,

What a strange way of cooking. I'm not saying it's bad, just that typically people cook for a result (I want to make X servings) not a reason (I want to eliminate all of the butter in my house).

<comment><USER7> Would you understand it better the other way around? A recipe calling for 250 g of butter, but alas, you only have 150 g left.

<comment><USER6> Not really? If I have a dinner party involving 6 guests, and my recipe calls for (<ingredients per portion>*6) then scaling down that ratio may give me 4.5 portions.

I don't cook things without purpose/specific goals. I'm cooking to make enough for the people I'm expecting.

That's not to say it doesn't make sense, just not how I've tended to see things cooked.

<comment><USER8> OK. What if you have a dinner party for 6 guests, but your recipe is written to give 8 portions?

<comment><USER9> What I'd do in this case (and this is true for most everyone I know) depends on what "portion" means:

\- If it's something that can be reasonably divided among guests (such as a soup or something similar), then I eyeball the portions so they're all approximately even. Optionally, if there's an ample amount, you can simply let people decide how much they want through self-service.

\- If it's something that's demarcated by physical objects (e.g. dinner rolls, cupcakes, etc), then you have a few other options: Leftovers to save for later, split them among people who want extra, or give them away to whomever wants them.

I don't know about the OP you're replying to, but I rarely divide a recipe up based on expected portions since portion size is highly variable. Should I have extra left over, then I deal with that accordingly. If I'm cooking to get rid of an ingredient, I don't particularly care if I miss the mark by a few portions provided I have enough in the first place for the objective.

(The other problem is that portioning in this question seems to me to assume that all guests are equally hungry.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "A movable pointer called a 'cursor' was developed to make it easier to read numbers off more precisely. (This is likely the origin of the computer cursor!)" Etymonline corroborates this, [https://www.etymonline.com/word/cursor#etymonline_v_494](https://www.etymonline.com/word/cursor#etymonline_v_494). So its cursor was the precursor to our cursor.

<comment><USER11> I concur, sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got familiar with a slide rule when I studied for my pilot's license, through the "E6B flight computer"[1]. This is essentially a slide rule for specialised calculations (knots-km/h, gallons-litres, density altitude, etc). The E6B is still a mandatory piece of equipment for student pilots but generally regarded as outdated, even by instructors.

As an early millennial I'd never ran into this 17th century marvel called slide rule. When I asked the instructor how it works (rather than how to use it) he answered along the lines of "don't ask, it just does".

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B)

<comment><USER13> I think the E6B contradicts the article's assertion that the last slide rule in the US was made in 1976; when I was taking flying lessons a few years ago, I was required to buy a new E6B, and I doubt that was from some massive overstock in the 70's.

<comment><USER12> True. ASA still makes them but I suppose the only reason they're still made is that it's been considered standard classroom equipment for the past 70 years, combined with the well known universal dislike for change in the aviation world. I don't know anyone who kept using the E6B after getting licensed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The transition was nearly instantaneous. We all used slide rules in high school chemistry and physics. Two years before I entered freshman engineering, "engineering computation" was taught with slide rules. The next year, you could optionally take the traditional course or the new version based around calculators. My freshman year, the calculator-based course was required. As a senior, I bought the most high-end Post slide rule at the campus bookstore at the clearance sale for $3.00.

<comment><USER15> >The transition was nearly instantaneous.

The first pocket scientific calculator was the HP-35 in 1972 (costing about $2,500 in today's dollars). Within 3 years, at least for most university engineering programs in the US, slide rules were completely gone. [That's incredibly fast.]

<comment><USER16> In my freshman physics class (1972-73) that price was a brief ethical issue. The professor said that for a midterm we could use one page of written notes and a slide rule. One student asked if he could use a calculator instead of a slide rule. "Are you going to buy calculators for everyone else in the class, too?" the professor asked. He felt it would be unfair to give such a big advantage to those few who could afford an HP-35 at that time.

<comment><USER15> I'm now a bit curious when the switch flipped at the school I attended. There was no question when I started in 1975 that you needed a calculator. I suspect that those in the class ahead did as well. But that must have been very new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That IBM ad at the end is priceless on so many levels. (What did that massive computer do? How many female engineers do you count... etc,)

Thanks for the article. My grandfather was an accountant who preferred the slide rule to a calculator. I grew up with slide rules around me, and never could understand the logic.

Another tool lost in the past generation is the Abacus (here is a great story with Feynman[1]) and I would love more info as to how those compared in logic or use, if anyone can shed insight.

[1]: [https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/feynman.html](https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/feynman.html)

<comment><USER18> > My grandfather was an accountant who preferred the slide rule to a > calculator.

This is hard for me to understand. Slide rules are inherently imprecise, in the same way floating point calculations are imprecise but much moreso. I'd expect an accountant to prefer integer (fixed point) math for the same reason banks do now.

<comment><USER19> Yes, they are imprecise. In general, you're limited to just three, maybe four digits regardless of the actual magnitude of the numbers and you have to keep the powers of ten in your head. Honestly, though, once you've used it enough, it isn't that hard to do. Besides, in most calculations, you don't need precision out to the 12th digit. After all, skyscrapers, bridges, and ocean liners have been built using slide rules for a long time and they, mostly, have worked just fine.

<comment><USER18> Imprecision is fine for engineering and can be compensated for. But this is not true for managing money, which is why floating point has historically not been used in accounting applications.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, bean counters do like to know their amounts out to the penny. That would require a pretty big slide rule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Growing up at a time B.C. (before calculators), we learned to use the slide rule in high school trig. I also used it during my freshman year in college. My dad bought me a Pickett trig slide rule that I still have in a drawer at home. I've taken it out occasionally to play with and I am always impressed by how simple and yet powerful it is. Very elegant. Very dated.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is a fairly good writeup on various slide rule types and scales, on [http://www.quadibloc.com/math/slrint.htm](http://www.quadibloc.com/math/slrint.htm) (the rest of this guy's site is worth exploring on its own too, there seems to be a huge dump of various bits of knowledge on it).

</comment><comment><USER21> A nice reference is Clifford Stoll's (author of A Cuckoo's Egg) article in Scientific American 2006:

[http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/2006/stoll2006...](http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/2006/stoll2006a.pdf)

And a way to make your own sliderule:

[https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/media/pdf...](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/media/pdf/Slide_rule.pdf)

The article has the same IBM ad and says it's from 1953.

</comment><comment><USER22> People on eBay are selling these Soviet pocket-watch style rotary slide rules:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuzdjy3HpWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuzdjy3HpWg)

I think they were made into the 80s.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another precursor to logarithms was prosthaphaeresis[1], based on trigonometric functions. Of course, like the quarter-square method, this required lookup tables, not a nifty device. But even with logarithms, log tables were pretty commonly used as well.

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

<comment><USER24> Angle measure is just the bivector ('imaginary') part of the complex logarithm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Recently someone posted about a paper-based calculating tool where you had two or three scales and used a ruler to combine the numbers. There was even a Python package for producing them.

What was the name?

<comment><USER26> Possibly this?

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

A Python package for it:

[http://pynomo.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page](http://pynomo.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

<comment><USER27> This example is one of the coolest things I've seen

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Risk_Based_Sa...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Risk_Based_Sampling_Nomogram_%283yr%29.png)

I had some fun drawing lines and seeing how each factor influenced the chain of isopleths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have my grandfather's slide rule. I don't often handle it because it has a patina on it from the thousands of calculations he must have carried out on it. It has several rulings on it and a sliding cursor.

Studying it, I realized that, once set, it shows the multiplication of the whole continuum. In other words, a given setting of the rule to some _n_ shows _nm_ for all _m_. (Actually all _mnEk_ for all _m_ and _k_.)

Some slide rules are circular or tubular.

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomogram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomogram)

</comment><comment><USER29> The intro about Kepler is inaccurate, so I distrusted the claim about Newton too. It seems he did use a kind of slide rule: [http://www.oughtred.org/history.shtml](http://www.oughtred.org/history.shtml)

> In 1675 Sir Isaac Newton solves cubic equations using three parallel > logarithmic scales and makes the first suggestion toward the use of the > cursor.

> In 1677, two years after Newton invents the cursor, Henry Coggeshall > perfects the timber and carpenter's rule. Newton's cursor fails to catch on > at the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for raising this — what part of the intro was inaccurate? This was the source we used for the Kepler info: [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27838992?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27838992?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

<comment><USER29> > Kepler first formulated his hypothesis: planets had elliptical orbits with > two foci, and then set out to prove it mathematically.

He didn't start with that hypothesis, he came to it after multiple tries at fitting other models like an equant (an offset circle with angular speed controlled from the opposite offset, which is actually a good first-order approximation to the Kepler-law motion at small eccentricity).

> Only after repeating his procedures 70 times did he offset his computational > errors. With a little less patience, he wouldn't have proved his theory, and > elliptical orbits would have eluded us for longer.

I skimmed the paper, and it seems to be about Kepler fitting an equant instead of an ellipse. Apparently he used an iterative method, stopping after 70 iterations? And his numerical errors seem to be responsible for it not converging faster. That makes more sense to me than my misunderstanding that you were saying he ran through the whole calculation from the start 70 times. I jumped to a conclusion about that part, and I'm sorry.

Julian Barbour's _The Discovery of Dynamics_ explains what Kepler did in detail (it's not the whole topic of the book, but a big chunk of it). A great book -- I didn't really appreciate Kepler before reading it. Both brilliant and very human.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > The last slide rule manufactured in the US was produced on July 11, 1976

Actually, ThinkGeek made a production run a couple years back (though I guess I don't know that they were US-made). Doesn't seem to still be on their website, but I have one so it definitely existed. [https://www.amazon.com/ThinkGeek-Slide- Rule/dp/B003M5B84C](https://www.amazon.com/ThinkGeek-Slide-Rule/dp/B003M5B84C) still shows a listing.

<comment><USER31> I have a couple, too. They were not very good though.

I'd be interested if someone made a new good slide rule. And not just slide rules--there are at least a couple of other older computing devices I'd like a good quality working replica or reproduction of.

1\. A Curta calculator. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta)

2\. The Antikythera mechanism. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism)

<comment><USER32> > 1\. A Curta calculator. > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta)

The article notes that Marcus Wu has published a printable 3D model of a curta (at 3:1 size due to printer precision issues, though there are comments about people attempting 2:1 builds). You can also find actual curtas on ebay, though they're not cheap ($500~$1500 depending on condition and the like).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A practical implementation of a slide rule can be found on watches such as the Breitling Navitimer. I like to use it for quick currency conversions when traveling.

<comment><USER34> And most are helpfully marked for unit conversions as well! I have mine set for restaurant tipping by default (North America).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've got a slide rule to thank for my precocious early math studies. I was always interested in math as a young kid, and my parents got me a Post slide rule for Christmas 1970, when I was in 5th grade/10 years old. I didn't know what the S and T scales on the back side of the main slide were for, so went looking up info in the local library. Turns out they were sine/tangent scales, which led to reading about trigonometry, which led to me realizing I needed to know algebra first. Over the next couple years, those library trips led to teaching myself algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, thanks mostly to TutorText books. For a nerdy little kid in the early 70s, that was heaven.

</comment><comment><USER36> Reading about the usefulness of logs reminded me of another spatial math tool: The Triangle of Power!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULa9Lc4pck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULa9Lc4pck)

<comment><USER37> This one was seriously awesome! Thanks. Most times when people say Math is hard they are actually talking about this. All the different ways to memorize stuff which doesn't help them get intuitive in Math.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Some of the last people using them for work may have been graphic artists, who called them "proportion wheels". I don't know how many of the folks sizing photos knew that they were using circular slide rules.

<comment><USER15> At one time there were a lot of industry specific tools to calculate various things (usually made out of cardboard) that were effectively slide rules or slide rules combined with lookup tables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > The last slide rule manufactured in the US was produced on July 11, 1976

This is bit surprising to me. Does it imply that slide rule production had shifted to other countries, or did it really fall out of fashion so very rapidly? For reference, HP-35 calculator was released only in 1972 (for launch price of $395), and TIs competing SR-50 ("slide rule calculator") in 1974 (at $170). I would expect slide rules to be significantly cheaper and fairly entrenched (especially in colleges etc), so being killed in only few years is remarkable if true.

<comment><USER40> I'm guessing that's a bit of hyperbole, since new sliderules are still available for purchase today. Obviously manufacture of sliderules dropped precipitously, but there's still a niche market for them.

<comment><USER41> "manufactured in the US"

I wouldn't be surprised if the quote is accurate.

<comment><USER15> Missed that. Yes, that makes it plausible as Post and K&E had both ceased production by then and, presumably, most of the cheaper plastic ones were either made in Japan or in places like the Soviet Union for domestic use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> First, the positive note: This is an awesome, accessible article.

Now the error: In the paragraph beginning "By converting numbers into their logarithm", log(4)=2 should be log2(4)=2 - it's been a while since I was in mathematics academically, but isn't it a necessity to show the base of the log if it's not 10?

<comment><USER43> I think it's convention, but it would have been good to explain this a bit more. The previous sentence seems to say "from now on we mean base 2" ("In the world of 2s, log(x) tells you how many times you have to multiply 2 by itself to get x.")

Which base gets to be special depends. Log on its own often means base e; sometimes base 10; and sometimes base 2 (and sometimes 'base whatever, it's not important')

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This reminds of my uncle who had them in his university and later at work (studying in the 70s in the communist Poland). I remember him mentioning that when first calculators came, skilled slide rule users were much much fasters, than anyone using a calculator.</comment>


I wanted a touch friendly hn client so I made one - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adam7/Ainomma

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a demo of the latest build at [http://ainomma.azurewebsites.net/](http://ainomma.azurewebsites.net/)

Feedback would be welcome, pull requests would be awesome :)</comment>


UX Designers: Join us on freenode - <AUTHOR>

I'm betting I'm not the only hacker who finds himself constantly on freenode for various reasons such as troubleshooting in #css, learning about #django, #jquery or just idling in whatever open source project they're dabbling in today.
There is some obvious overlap here, but no real channel (that i'm aware of) where one can share a question or design and get feedback simply related to experience.
If you're on freenode and you could benefit from being a part of an open discussion of things related to user experience, please join us over at #ux. <comment><USER2> what's UX mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> User Experience</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley Elite Flock To Y Combinator Demo Day  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/19/silicon-valley-elite-flock-to-y-combinator-demo-day/ <comment><USER2> MixPanel is amazing. I'm using it for a client; and the info and stats generated are extremely useful. It's a great compliment to Google Analytics; and something I would pay for.

<comment><USER3> How do you think it compares to, say, <http://www.haveamint.com/> ?

<comment><USER2> The usefulness of MixPanel (for me) is in the ability to track custom javascript events. Things like changing an advertisement iris (no page refresh) can get tracked without me having to write the tracking code. As far as I can tell, haveamint doesn't do that (in fact, I don't see haveamint doing anything that google analytics doesn't already do).

<comment><USER4> I wonder if it could also track events inside a flash movie (perhaps even just by making JS calls via AS). That would be huge for us.

<comment><USER2> If you can make JS calls from AS, then yes I think MixPanel will totally work for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > HighlightCam, which we covered last month, is a service that can look > through hours of video footage and identify when something happens. The > company's first product involves security cameras — it can take many hours > of security footage and then identify the few moments when things out of the > ordinary are happening, cutting down the footage to only a few minutes of > important content. Soon the company will be releasing its API, which will > allow developers to tap into the software to shorten a variety of different > kinds of content (including things like wedding videos). The software can > produce 20-30 second trailers automatically for any kind of video.

This is actually an interesting one, I think: one of the knocks against [lifelogging](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelog>) is that it will be too hard to search all the hours of video, but condensed videos would be much easier to search.

</comment><comment><USER6> This batch of YC is impressive. Most are targeting a niche. My favorite is Listia.com.

<comment><USER7> The group is very substantial this time around. Developing things like a database optimized for solid-state drives involves non-trivial technology. I'm impressed.

I wonder what kind of background these guys had to convince YCombinator that they could pull it off? Many of them aimed quite a bit higher than yet another web app.

<comment><USER8> It wasn't their background that convinced us. It was just talking to them. They clearly knew what they were talking about.

You can't let yourself care too much about "background" when you're investing in startups, because some of the best startups are done by outsiders.

<comment><USER7> I guess a person sounding as if he knows what he is talking about is a good indicator that he actually knows what he is talking about.

<comment><USER9> It certainly depends on who's listening. The catch-22 is the Dunning and Kruger effect. If a person sounds like they know what they're talking about, it's either because (1) they know what they're talking about or (2) you're an idiot. But there's a range of ignorance in which the more confident you are in (1), the more likely (2) is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there other companies operating in stealth mode?

<comment><USER11> Yes, 11 of the 24 (according to Dave McClure) <http://twitter.com/davemcclure/status/3411897983>

TechCrunch only covered the 13 which have launched.

<comment><USER12> Does anyone know how this number (11/24 companies not yet launched by demo day) compares to past years? I was surprised to see that it was so high.

<comment><USER13> I think only a few in our batch were not launched by demo day. This seems high to me too, tho only PG and JL know for sure. Paul pushed REALLY hard to get people launched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm working hard so that I can present at the next one :)

Besides the obvious networking and investment potential, I just think it would be a lot of fun to go and talk with everyone there!

<comment><USER15> A year is too long to wait for funding, specially for a tech startup. If you have something working, don't hesitate to unleash it into the wild, you might be surprised at what you find.

Good luck.

<comment><USER14> I thought that Demo Day was held at the end of each YC cycle (i.e. there would be another one around March)?

I've applied to Springboard as well though, as it starts much sooner (in about a month), and I'm pretty close to a working alpha of my software. I hope that I can get into Springboard or YC so that I can share my project with all of you!

<comment><USER15> Go for it then! I didn't know about the March one.

FWIW, my project was a demo when I sold the first license and now I work on it full time, hired by the client to customize it and maintain it for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like a lot of the startups I've read about in this batch. So many address clear needs that people have, and almost all of them have at least one obvious business model (with presumably some good non-obvious ones too.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow the Techcrunch comments aren't very Techcrunch-like (this is a good thing).

I'm excited to see the 13 startups that were off the record.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there a video of demo day online? I'd love to watch it--previous ones too if possible.

<comment><USER19> I think boston.com had short snippets of a previous demo day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> seems like every single one of the companies listed already launched and had coverage...wasn't demo day in the past the time for that first look?

<comment><USER21> Demo day was never about first look or press. It has always been about investors.

It is unlike TC50 and DEMO in that respect. Though it does give some marginal press.

Edit: I half think press should be banned from the event. I always found it annoying giving details that only investors should hear with press present.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is hiring new grads for Fall? (Spring 2013) - <AUTHOR>

Similar to 'Who is Hiring'. Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords COOP, INTERN, REMOTE, or H1B if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Please include any uncommon specialty courses that would be of interest. Algorithms and Data Structures are common for any CS major; Machine Learning and Distributed Algorithms are not. <comment><USER2> I see what you are going for with this post, but the idea seems to be too close to the already popular "Who is Hiring" posts. I know that the difference is that you want to target recent graduates, but they are technically in the same job market as the (generally) more experienced people.

With all of that aside, I appreciate what you are aiming to do - get more job offers and opportunities in the hands of recent graduates. There are a few great programs that exist to do just this already. One that I found to be quite interesting:

<http://www.university.firstround.com/>

They are accepting applications until March 5th!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thankyou for the appreciation and the link but I already applied in January. Please list what other programs you found.

Besides, targeting new grads exclusively is sometimes advantageous for a growing startup. Like being more willing to learn a new system (since they don't know an old system-easier to mentor). Also, more willing to move to lessor known tech hubs after graduation (Portland, Raleigh, Austin, etc).

The last part is what I think is important for a startup. New grad salaries can be around 50-80,000 a year from what I hear while rent is approaching 3,000 a month in SF. Speciality and experience alone may not make a great programmer. Alot of great programmers I know often have side projects they do in college (or in my case, being in both CS research and in a graduate class hopefully includes me in that category).

<comment><USER3> Thanks for creating the post. Even though I agree it is the same job market, still some companies offer positions directly targeted at new grads. It seems to me that larger companies tend to open more specific positions, e.g. new grad/junior, than smaller companies/startups. I think these jobs are underrepresented in the who's hiring thread as much as larger companies are underrepresented (ok it's more of a startup community here so it might be obvious), therefore testing whether there is a more specific new grad demand here on HN seems reasonable to me.

Actually, I'm also a new grad and looking for opportunities, so I'm excited to see what shows up here.

Edit: csdreamer, you could also try <https://trypitchbox.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome.

Have you tried pitchbox? I tried to make an account for Developer Auction and they required a previous employer. I didn't bother with pitchbox after that.

<comment><USER3> I registered at pitchbox 6 weeks ago but have only received the general welcome mail and no pitches so far. I'd also love to register at Developer Auction but can't b/c I'm not based in the US.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Type A blood converted to universal donor blood with help from bacterial enzymes - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/type-blood-converted-universal-donor-blood-help-bacterial-enzymes <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20174308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20174308)</comment>


Kodi 18.0 - <AUTHOR> https://kodi.tv/article/kodi-180 <comment><USER2> I'm excited to try the RetroPlayer feature. Currently I have a hook inside Kodi to launch RetroArch so that I can play all my ROMs from the livingroom. If that can all be moved within Kodi itself, all the better!</comment>


Work at a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.workatastartup.org/

<comment><USER2> This comment will sound a little confrontational, but here it goes.

Why would anyone competent enough to work at one of these companies choose that path instead of being a founder?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually a good question. There are several answers. One is that being a founder is not merely a matter of competence. It's also financially risky, and very stressful. So someone who was just as competent as the founders but wanted less risk or stress might prefer to be an early employee.

You can titrate the amount of startupness you get in your job by the size of the company you join. If you're the first person hired by a startup with one or two founders, you'll probably be a _de facto_ cofounder. Whereas if you get hired by a startup with 30 people you'll have a lot less risk and stress, but it will probably still be more interesting than going to work for a big company.

Another reason is that luck (usually in the form of timing) is a big component of startup outcomes, so in some cases it can be a better bet, measured both financially and by how much effect you can have on the world, to join a startup that is obviously taking off than to start your own. All the first several hundred employees at Google, to take an extreme example, probably made more money and had more effect on the world than they would have on average by starting their own companies.

Plus you need more than ability to start a startup. You also need an idea and probably a cofounder. Joining an existing startup can be the easiest way to get both.

<comment><USER3> Okay, what's the appeal of "changing the world" for its own sake? I often hear things like "entrepreneurs endure the stress because they want to change the world."

<comment><USER4> People who want to change the world think their change will be an improvement, they aren't doing it "for it's own sake".

<comment><USER3> Yeah they're improving it to be more in line with some set of values (which will vary depending on their ethics). When they don't say which values are important and just say "changing the world" I am not inspired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will all the people needed to make a hiring decision be present at this event?

I postulate that running a hiring event would attract some very talented people if the one of the stated goals of the event was for people to leave with signed offer letters.

I helped run the "Reverse Job Fair" at the Hacker Dojo several months ago - some job seekers flew in from the East Coast and LA just to attend. From what I've heard about 5 people were hired on the spot.

This is one area where startups can really differentiate themselves: The last startup I worked for made me a job offer in about 48 hours - I was unemployed for a total of 100 hours. It took about 3 months for me to go through the hiring process with Microsoft.

<comment><USER6> I can only speak for our company, but I run technical hiring at JTV and will be there presenting. On the other hand, to say that we will hire you "on the spot" is probably disingenuous: I think both candidates and our company are better served when we make people go through the full interview process of doing a technical problem, coming into the office for technical interviews and to see what the culture is like, and then giving both the candidate and our company a day or two to think about it. That being said, of course it is our full intention to move as quickly as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm really interested in attending something like this but am on the East Coast. Will there be any audio/video available from this event?

<comment><USER8> Yes, we'll broadcast the event on Justin.tv.

<comment><USER9> Do we know when? It says invitations will be issued June 1, but not (that I saw) when the event actually occurs.

<comment><USER10> From underneath the big bold "Work at a Startup" text: June 17 2010, 6:00-7:30 pm | Y Combinator, 320 Pioneer Way, Mountain View

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like a great event!

If anyone ever wants to talk about what it's like to work at a startup from the perspective of someone who has worked at Justin.TV for the past three years, I'd be happy to answer some questions - feel free to email me at doctorbill [at] gmail [dot] com

</comment><comment><USER12> This event looks like it's geared towards programmers, but aren't at least a few of these companies looking for non-programming positions? Wouldn't the information shared at this event be just as relevant to business-minded folks interested in working at a startup?

I personally have been trying to teach myself programming for the past year and getting to work for a startup in some sort of business development role alongside of top-notch programmers seems very appealing to me because I could provide value while supplementing my learning experience. I understand the need to narrow the scope of this event so that it's easier to manage applicants, but is there any opportunity for non-programmers?

<comment><AUTHOR> It will depend on whose resumes the presenting companies like. I know they're most interested in programmers, so I described the event as being for programmers. But there's no coding test to apply or anything like that. Ultimately you get invited if the presenting companies like your resume, whatever it says.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have never worked for anything but early stage startups and wonder what it is like on the other side where pay is (almost) always certain, you can't drop into the CEOs office at a moments notice and everyone just works 9-5. It is like a foreign country to me, but one that is on my list of places to visit eventually.

<comment><USER11> I have some experience with almost every part of this spectrum. I worked for a few years for a startup in London that grew from 3 people when I started, to 7 people, and then we got acquired and shipped over to Silicon Valley.

Enter the Golden Handcuff phase - definitely my favorite in many ways! We were treated like royalty for a while - given lots of nice benefits and some very interesting and challenging problems to work on, with resources to match (we purchased more than 1000 powerful servers and put them in a huge cage in a colo!). We had nice offices with windows. I had a nice apartment in Palo Alto and a rental car paid for by the company for about a year.

After about a year things started to tail off. Our project became less strategically important to the company that had acquired us. We were gradually starved of resources and attention. The perks went away one by one.

The transformation was slow, but sure. Eventually even the offices with windows went away, and we were moved to crappy cubes where you couldn't see windows even if you stood on your desk.

In the end, the daily routine for _everyone_ on the team was something like a 10am-4pm work day, filled with browsing reddit and playing ping-pong or air hockey. Nobody noticed, or if they did, they no longer cared.

Finally my Green Card arrived (after three years). As soon as it did, I quit and joined my next startup (Justin.TV).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds interesting.

One comment: in the application form, it's not really clear how we would be contacted by whoever we decide to (any YC company, any HN user, anyone). Basically, where are the email and resume going and how would "anyone" have access to them?

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I built the resume feature as something more general. Those options were in case I eventually do something where anyone can keep a resume on HN, and people can do searches on them, as has sometimes been proposed. For now I'm only using it for workatastartup, so I just took the other options out, in case they alarm people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A question I'm surprised isn't on here: what's the motivation to do this? Is it becoming harder for YC companies to hire, or a way to share resources, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hiring tends to be issue number 1 for all startups that get over the initial threshold of raising significant funding. Now that so many of the startups we've funded are over that threshold, we were hearing more and more about it. So we started to think whether there was anything we could do to help them, and it seemed like the best thing we could do would be to make the idea of working for a startup more real to more programmers.

I think most programmers apply to work at big companies largely by default. They know what to expect when they do that. They know that startups exist, of course, but if they haven't met many in person, the idea of going to work for one doesn't seem like a real possibility. So we thought that if we could make the idea seem real, by (a) explaining all about it and (b) introducing people to a lot of actual startups, at least they wouldn't simply go to big companies by default. They'd actually weigh the two alternatives, and that would probably cause more to work for startups.

<comment><USER6> Using YC's influence and reputation to bring talented candidates in the door at the investee companies is always something I'd hoped for, so I'm super happy to see this. Quality deal flow has always been our bottleneck for hiring (like all technical companies, I suppose we like to think we're super picky :D).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I admire so many of those companies listed that I'd highly consider applying.

Problem is, I'm in Toronto and only through a NAFTA VISA I can work there. I highly doubt many of the jobs are open to this Visa. That's frustrating.

<comment><USER17> I'm in the same boat in Ottawa. Many Canadians have gone on to work for startups in the US. What I've always seen, from friends and family who've been down this road, is that US companies (big or small) wanting to hire Canadians have always been very helpful in the visa process. Of course, your mileage may vary.

I think your best bet is to throw your resume in, clearly indicating your current location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> FYI: Zumodrive's link at the bottom of the page is broken (zumodrive.om)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed; thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any chance of something like this in London?!

<comment><USER20> I'd also be interested in an event like this if it was held in the UK. If it's on Justin.tv, will the stream be made available as a video later?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You could post this on the jobs page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea; yes, I should add a link there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> this might be a little off topic, but what sort of programming languages, and other skill requirements are most popular at these sort of events?

As a programmer who wants to work for (and perhaps start) a startup in the future, I'm interested in what technologies, skills etc are most common. I do ASP.NET at the moment, but this is more enterprise than startup I believe.

If this is totally the wrong spot let me know, but I'd imagine if I rocked up to this event, and everyone was doing Rails I'd be useless to most?

</comment><comment><USER23> This is definitely interesting. I'm currently working at a startup, but it's always good to see how others work too. Is this specific to developers, or can business side folks attend too?

<comment><AUTHOR> This particular event is mainly for programmers. We're hosting this at YC itself, and we can't fit as many people as you could in an auditorium. But ultimately it depends on the presenting companies:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346178>

<comment><USER24> This is an interesting filtering process. Presumably, there will be some who attend this event already identified (based on their resumes) as desirable candidates for one or more companies.

Will this be asynchronous knowledge or will the attendees and companies have contact and/or show interest in advance?

<comment><AUTHOR> The companies reading the resumes will be able to contact the people submitting them if the people submitting them say they can. There's a field for specifying that on the resume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Could we get one of these in Chicago and New York?

<comment><USER7> ++ for New York

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any chance a non-YC company can attend?

</comment><comment><USER27> I like how they have a Techstars company in the mix. Very nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're all YC companies.

<comment><USER27> Misread Fabricly for Graphicly.</comment></comment></comment>


Should startups focus on profitability or not? [2011] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/12/27/should-startups-focus-on-profitability-or-not/

<comment><USER2> This is a perfect example of how the interests of VCs and the interests of entrepreneurs can be (and often are) misaligned.

 _Because of the circles I run in I tend to meet many people who eventually do want to build large companies and therefore do want to eventually raise VC and "go big." But they want to do it with leverage._

This ignores the scenario of "We plan to 'go big' and build an immensely scalable company, but we aren't worried about doing it super fast". And that, of course, is because that scenario doesn't work for VCs, where their funds are almost always time-boxed.

As an aside, I understand that this is one reason that it's a good idea to raise from brand new funds when possible - they have the maximum portion of their lifespan still in front of them, so you get less "time pressure" from the VCs. If you raise in year 7 of a 10 year fund, you'll be under a tremendous amount of pressure to have an exit in 3 years.</comment>


Lenovo pursued BlackBerry bid, but Ottawa rejected idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/lenovo-considered-a-bid-for-blackberry-but-ottawa-wouldnt-accept-chinese-takeover/article15256976/

<comment><USER2> If only they'd have such concerns about a US company acquiring them . . .

Blocking any potential Chinese purchase out of hand is a fantastic way to devalue the company given the way the hardware industry has been moving. There must be smarter ways to handle this.

<comment><USER3> Actually blocking _any_ potential purchase, not just Chinese ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why aren't Google, Microsoft or Apple interested in Buying BlackBerry? Blackberry should have quite some patents in the mobile space, no? It is sad if companies are bought just for that, but I'm wondering why the big players are not interested in it.

<comment><USER5> Because if they wait 18 months the price will be much lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> National security is better served by it going bust?

</comment><comment><USER7> Because American companies can trust the NSA

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe Lenovo could buy BlackBerry and make ThinkPad type phones. how sick would that be?

<comment><USER9> I don't understand what you are trying to say here? Because Lenovo already makes phones? Endorsed by Kobe Bryant and Ashton Kutcher.</comment></comment>


Omnisio - The Interview - Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.technation.com.au/2008/06/18/omnisio-the-interview-part-1/ <comment><USER2> Part one is a bit short. I'm looking forward to part two. Good stuff!!</comment>


NLRB rules graduate students are employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/23/are-they-students-or-are-they-employees-nlrb-rules-that-graduate-students-are-employees/ <comment><USER2> This has always made sense to me looking at it from a 1099 vs W2 point of view. (Those are the independent contractor vs employee tax forms in the US.

Grad students who teach can't determine their own schedule, they can't accept/reject individual tasks, they don't have multiple customers, and they are receiving training throughout.

Ref: [https://www.learnvest.com/knowledge-center/the-difference- be...](https://www.learnvest.com/knowledge-center/the-difference- between-a-1099-and-a-w-2/2/)

My only surprise is how long it took this to happen.

<comment><USER3> I'd agree that IRS rules could be relevant, though the 1099/W2 distinction isn't the one I'd look to. The question there is "how focused is the service provider on providing services to just this one recipient (i.e., the putative employer)?"

That question is orthogonal to the question of whether one is primarily a student or primarily a worker (either employee or IC—it doesn't matter), which is more relevant to the recent NLRB ruling.

The Supreme Court addressed this issue in 2011 in the Mayo Clinic case [1]. They held that medical residents do not qualify for the "student exemption" to FICA (a certain type of payroll withholding). At first glance, this seems to support the NLRB ruling regarding grad students, insofar as it indicates that people who work and learn can be classified as primarily workers.

However, I think it might ultimately undermine the NLRB decision. In the Mayo Clinic case, the Supreme Court basically said: there are people who are students who get paid, and there's a FICA exemption for them, but medical residents are a different kind of beast—they're more like workers.

This line of reasoning implies that students who do qualify for the FICA exemption—presumably including grad students who receive stipends—are more like students than workers in the view of the Supreme Court. That would mean that they would be less likely to be owed the right to unionize, which is a protection granted to workers, not students.

Caveats: The Mayo Clinic case was decided under a specific provision of tax law (not labor law), though it did involve the general question of "what is a student?". Also, I am now a "recovering lawyer", no longer in practice.

1: [http://www.clhe.org/marketplaceofideas/uncategorized/supreme...](http://www.clhe.org/marketplaceofideas/uncategorized/supreme- court-upholds-irs-regulation-saying-medical-residents-are-students-and- subject-to-fica-tax/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many of the comments so far revolve around whether graduate students are students or not, as if being a student and an employee are somehow mutually exclusive or the fact that graduate students also take classes mean they must be equivalent to undergrads and ought to be given the same treatment. Clearly this is not the case. Acquiring the specialized knowledge that a PhD entails requires tremendous sacrifice (and, in the case of PhDs hoping to become professors, it often ends in tremendous disappointment). Universities have two primary functions - conducting research and teaching. This is the job of the university. Undergraduates don't have the specialized knowledge required to teach or to contribute substantially to research. Graduate students, however, do both of these jobs. Indeed, they are absolutely essential to the functioning of the university. And while the average time to completion for science and engineering doctorates hovers around 5 years, it's not uncommon to find humanities PhDs who take 8 years or more to complete their dissertations. This isn't because they're lazy. This is because the competition for academic posts is brutal, the expertise expected of them is vast, and, more to the point, because they're busy working. Universities are subjecting students to increasingly unjustifiable tuitions and pocketing massive profits couched as expanded endowments. Pretending like graduate students are just really smart, really old, really slow-to-catch-on interns and not a part of their extremely lucrative business operations just adds insult to injury.

<comment><USER5> >Undergraduates don't have the specialized knowledge required to teach or to contribute substantially to research. Graduate students, however, do both of these jobs.

I don't think grad/undergrad is the right distinction here. I was employed by my undergrad-only liberal arts alma-mater as a teaching assistant and research assistant. And the college employed many of my classmates in other positions. We weren't exploited like many graduated students are, but another institution could have treated us worse.

<comment><USER6> > college employed many of my classmates in other positions

And how many classmates were not employed? Far more. So yes, the grad/undergrad distinction is valid. Undergrads are often assigned boring research jobs and are paid less.

<comment><USER7> > Undergrads are often assigned boring research jobs and are paid less.

I agree paid less, but disagree about "boring" research jobs. It probably depends on your school and your major. Nuclear Engineering at NC State got me to research molecular dynamics GPU techniques (this was around 2010) to simulate rare events (such as radiation-resistant material interactions) in order to get real-world simulation times to the order of milliseconds, which is a whopping 1000x speedup from the usual microseconds. I got access to the school's supercomputers just like any other physics grad.

My work later moved to the CASL (Consortium for Advanced Simulation of LWRs[0]) umbrella, and I was not the only one. None of the topics were boring, and the general impression I got from the department head was that undergrads were as capable but just requiring slightly more guidance.

It was a great funnel for getting undergrads to continue their research to grad school and ultimately to a PhD. I did not continue, but still have several friends that are pursuing their PhDs.

[0] [http://www.casl.gov/](http://www.casl.gov/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> About time! Now we just need to get rid of the rules, that the work done by the students is owned by the university..

Which for most students doesn't matter, but I know that in computer engineering a number of my friends intentionally avoided things that might have commercial significance because they wanted to keep the ideas for themselves. Getting a MS/PhD is enough of a financial ding (probably on the order of $200-$400k) that the insult of both paying the school _AND_ giving them the resulting work is just to much.

<comment><USER9> In practice people I know who've built startups on top of tech they built at universities haven't run into problems. A common strategy is to open-source any code you might want to later use commercially, as a way of throwing it over the fence. Your startup can then use it on whatever terms you open- sourced it under (probably BSD/MIT, if you want to give your later self maximum flexibility). Granted, so can anyone else. But usually the research- prototype code itself isn't enough to build a competitor, and the common case for research code open-sourced by a grad student in some random .tar.gz code dump on their website (or worse, included as a file appendix to their thesis), is that nobody else will even so much as look at it.

The university may have to approve this, but at major CS departments approving students to open-source the code that goes with their thesis is pretty rubber- stamp, at least if it's self-contained.

<comment><AUTHOR> Intellectual property generated in other fields does not benefit from this kind of liberal license loop-hole, unfortunately. We cannot open-source all applied science according to the current rules.

<comment><USER9> Areas where universities are aggressive about patenting definitely have other problems, yeah. Fortunately in CS academia, software patents are relatively uncommon. Not unheard of, but only a small percentage of non-hardware theses end up involved in a patent filing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sets up for the (in my opinion) far more interesting debate: are college sports players employees?

<comment><USER11> I thought the Northwestern University Football Team[1] case was in part addressing that or making thing more complicated? Not saying it's settled or whatnot, just that maybe it's at play too.

[1] [http://www.si.com/college- football/2015/08/17/northwestern-f...](http://www.si.com/college- football/2015/08/17/northwestern-football-players-union-nlrb-ruling-analysis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does this similarly apply to medical fellowships?

There's a weirdness that residents are considered employees, but if you want to go into a specialty requiring a fellowship, you're back in the "student" category.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am sure that this will be an unpopular opinion but I think this is wrong. Graduate students are students. They are paying to be in school. They may be paying for it with money gained from the University but they are still students. Should an undergrad that is on a university scholarship be considered an employee too? How are the economic realities of grad school any different from undergrad? If you can't afford to go to school, you have a few choices: debt, poverty, or don't go to school. If you have a family, you have to factor them into your choice too.

All this being said, I went to graduate school and received a master's degree in Civil Engineering. I was able to be fully funded through the research that I performed and did not have to pay a dime in tuition. I also received a stipend that, if I was very frugal, was enough to pay my bills and feed myself. During this time I lived with four roommates and road my bike as much as I could to save money.

Another item of note is that in Montana, where I got my degree, engineers registered with the State are bared from joining unions of any kind. Even as a grad student, I was registered as an EI, therefore I would not be eligible to join the grad student union.

<comment><USER14> In the humanities, 75% of courses are taught by grad students and adjuncts. I think the split between them is about half and half.

An overwhelming percentage of the actual work of higher education is done by grad students and contingent faculty.

<comment> nommm-nommm This varies by school. In my school, from what I saw, 0% of humanities courses were taught by grad students. I only had an adjunct professor once and it was for a CS class. He wasn't a grad student either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting that nobody has commented on what this will likely result in - fewer grad students. If this is a good or a bad thing depends on your point of view.

Edit. Stupid typo :)

<comment><USER16> Wouldn't fewer grad students lead to fewer professors and less income for universities? Why would administrators accept that?

<comment><USER15> Yes :)

I did day it depended on your point of view. As a grad student less competition is good - if you are part of those exploiting grad students then not so good.

<comment><USER17> I hope you realize that in addition to being bad for those who exploit grad students, it is also bad for the marginal grad student who is no longer going to be able to go to grad school. For a lot of us foreigners, grad school in the US is essentially our only ticket to a life in the first world. So I implore you to consider the impact of a policy that results in fewer grad students on the marginal ones - typically foreigners or minorities or females in male heavy fields.

<comment><USER18> Does grad school qualify you for a different visa? As far as I know, a bachelor's is sufficient for a TN or H1-B.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess I thought this was common. Maybe this development is private universities only? Where I went to school (Michigan) many (most IIRC) of the grad students were in the union: [http://www.geo3550.org/](http://www.geo3550.org/)

</comment><comment><USER20> College football players, however, are not. The NLRB decided that one last year.

<comment><USER21> Right, because for the schools with the biggest sports programs, those programs are _serious_ cash cows. Sharing that with the students would be way bad! In some states, the head coach is the _highest paid public employee_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I haven't seen this in the comments so far, and admittedly I'm not so familiar with the issues at stake in the university context.... still I'll mention it...

I suspect that opposition to this is the increase of cost and employment related regulatory burden for universities. Much of the discussion I'm seeing is whether or not certain students qualify for employment status (and presumably the benefits that come with that status). However, will not treating grad students as employees reduce the opportunities available for grad students? Usually when labor costs increased like this marginal positions are eliminated. Seems like if research positions are more expensive, research opportunities correspondingly have to be reduce.

Sure, the next shoe to drop is spend more tax money on research (given the dependency of many universities on the public treasury), and the one after that is tax more/borrow more... but even if that happens over time, the cost increase seems much more immediate. (Yes, you could raise fees and tuition, but in today's environment that would also lead to demands for greater tax expenditure.)

Anyway, curious if anyone is thinking about the other side of the equation.

<comment><USER23> The same argument can be made of any employee of any company. If we did away with some employee rights, the company would save money.

Here in the UK this problem is clearly solved -- if you teach, you are an employee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A very similar issue is just now coming up for discussion in the Country-wide Labor Court in Israel:

The question is whether Graduate Students, who get a monthtly stipend and have the obligations of an employee essentially (and who used to be recognized as employees) are indeed employees, despite the university's refusal to recognize them as such.

Here is some background material in English: [https://app.box.com/s/osnf6xfqgqgvmnat6ldq](https://app.box.com/s/osnf6xfqgqgvmnat6ldq)

I'm involved in the proceedings, having been the vice-chairperson of the Graduate Union at the university in question (the Technion). Whoever is interested in more details (including the official court rulings, briefs, affidavits etc.), or in collaboration in writing something on these matters is welcome to write me at eyalroz at technion dot ac dot il .

</comment><comment><USER25> In some states and university systems, grad students have been unionized and treated as employees for decades. So while this is a big change for some universities, it won't have a significant effect on others. I wouldn't expect this ruling to have a seismic effect on academia as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER26> Do most graduate students receive a W-2 or a 1099 at tax time?

<comment><USER27> I didn't while working on my PhD at Brown. They were actively hands-off about the tax implications of a stipend, telling new students nothing, and if asked, saying that it was the students' responsibility to figure it out. Difficult enough for me as a US citizen, probably hell for a foreign student on a visa.

It's not clear that this ruling would force Brown and others to give W-2s or 1099s, but I hope it does because fuck them for ignoring students' legal needs.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I did my PhD in Norway, where PhD students are considered employees. However, the university is foot-deep in have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too land.

We had department heads, even heads of faculty, tell us in front of a hundred students that yes, you are expected to work more than the amount specified by law and your official contract. And no, you will not be paid overtime. And yes, you have to fill out a form saying when you will take your legally- mandated five weeks of holidays. But oh, no, we don't want you to actually _take_ all those weeks as holidays, and no, you can't get a student bus card either, you're employees!

Only good that came out of it for me was a bag full of ammo whenever someone in admin complained that I hadn't filled out some stupid paperwork or whatever. A short crass email pointing out their blatantly illegal public statements, together with the words "or I'll contact my union's free lawyer service" shut them up quicker than contact cement.

<comment><USER28> I think in France it is more on the "best of both-side" in the sense that you're employee _and_ student (you get a student card, with the associated benefit). I can have changed in the recent years though.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I'm sure details vary between countries and even universities. But for me, and I think essentially everyone, a fundamental part of being a PhD student is having to work long hours outside the applicable working time regulations. What is the point of promoting a group to employee status when everyone knows this group will be regularly violating the employee rights law (whether US, UK, EU etc.)?

<comment><USER28> For one, in France (as I remember...) it implies that the PhD is considered as "professional experience" (i.e. if you work for the government later you start as if you have 3y experience in the field), you contribute for you retirement, and you have a legal right to 5 weeks paid vacation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I suspect that this will lead to students paying taxes on scholarships (and other graduate student funding) at some point in the future. It was a "feel good" win in the short run, but it will be harmful for students in the long run.

<comment><USER30> What? All of my fellowships/assistantships as a PhD student have always been considered taxable income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> For comparison, PhD students in other universities such as ETHZ have salaries of >$60000 per year and includes benefits such as >20 days of vacation and a pension.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is this retroactive? My wife would love to go back and get 7 years of FICA paid for.

</comment><comment><USER33> FINALLY!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER34> Higher education is ironically one of the least regulated industries in the US. Classifying employees as contractors (adjuncts and grad students), importing cheap labor from overseas, sky-high compensation for administrators who add little value, easy loans to barely adult students without any collateral - the list goes on and on.

<comment><USER35> Maybe that's a good thing that it's self-governing and less regulated then. Research universities contribute a ton of research and teaching to society. Can't say the same about other industries.

<comment><USER36> You're kidding right? "Other industries" have literally built pretty much everything you see around you, generated the knowledge to do it, and train millions of workers in it.

<comment><USER35> You mean after being educated at research universities for years, learning from the academic literature and textbooks, and meeting collaborators in classes? Like Google, right? Or Facebook? Or do you mean Wall Street? Or Boeing?

Or did some self-taught teenager "generate knowledge" in his spare time from scratch?

<comment><USER36> In the tech industry alone, Google and Microsoft run top-tier research arms. And before them, Bell Labs and others did at least as much as universities to advance the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My wife, who is an admin at an academic lab, will, however, be looking forward to informing the students in her group that this means that they really do only get two weeks vacation time, and actually need to show up at the office.

<comment><USER37> Most graduate students I know get no vacation time.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get involved with HARC? - <AUTHOR> I've always been interested in computing as a medium and the idea that computers change the way we think. When I see the kinds of projects that come out of HARC, I think: this is the most important kind of work that I could be doing — exploring how we can deepen our understanding of the world through technology.
But I'm just not sure how to get started doing that. I'm a software engineer who has started a company in the near past. I have a breadth of experience (technical, product, management) from starting a company, but I've never done the kind of research that is done at HARC.
How do I become involved with HARC or work like it?
Should I start looking at HCI grad programs, which seem like the HARC's academic counterpart?
Are there other companies or opportunities for someone who is interested in this kind of work? <comment><USER2> I don't think there's a way to become involved with HARC directly, unfortunately, but it's really not important to work with them.

An analogous question for music would be something like a musician asking how to work with the Velvet Underground because they want to innovate musically. The answer is right in front of you: start researching. You don't need a degree; you don't need a company. Just look at the pain points, explore previous research, try to find some insight (was something not tried or missed?) and develop it. Just because you haven't done anything like it before doesn't hurt you and could, in fact, let you bring a fresh viewpoint in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is HARC the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Advanced_Research_Cent...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Advanced_Research_Center) ?

<comment><USER2> No, it's this: [http://harc.ycr.org](http://harc.ycr.org)</comment></comment>