A Beginner's Guide to Integrated Development Environments - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/10/06/ide-guide/

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia contains a fully documented and referenced table of IDE's with links to reviews and comparisons:

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

This page on text editors is also excellent:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors#Prog...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors#Programming_features)

Wikipedia is weird in that way, there is little information on some topics but an overload of non-encyclopedic information on niche topics. For more depth there are articles that are also language specific, for eg. PHP:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PHP_editors>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP_Development_Tools>

and Javascript-based editors:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Javascript- based_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Javascript- based_source_code_editors)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what their rationale is for listing visual studio as costing $549, when you can get the excellent express versions for free. They do have some limitations, but if all you are looking to do is get what works, then they are perfectly viable.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Inform 7 IDE is pretty sweet, albeit specifically for the development of text adventures in Inform 7.

<http://inform7.com/learn/movies/>

Click 'build', and it compiles the game, produces a map of the locations in the game, indexes all the items in the game, and the rules and behaviors you've specified, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great list. I'm missing QtCreator.

<comment><USER6> I agree, I can't believe they missed out on QtCreator. With its Vim mode and excellent autocomplete support it's my current IDE of choice.

<comment><USER7> Sorry I missed it -- no one in my network (or on HN, when I asked) mentioned QtCreator to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Others missed but useful for beginners:

BlueJ (Java), Arachnophilia (HTML/C/Java)

</comment><comment><USER9> Excellent post. I'm in the process of bringing some early developers into the fold and this list gives me a great way to encourage them to discover their coding preferences on their own.</comment>


Lehigh research team to investigate a "Google for research data" - <AUTHOR> https://www.lehigh.edu/engineering/news/faculty/2018/20180820-davison-heflin-jia-dataset-search-engine-nsf-award.html <comment><USER2> Yikes, talk about poor timing [0]!

Of course, the proposal [1] was submitted at the beginning of August before this was available, but it must still be a bit of a gut check for the research team.

Hopefully they can figure out a way to inject additional novelty in the project.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919297)

[1]: [https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1816325](https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1816325)

<comment><USER3> Not poor timing at all! A non-Google alternative is necessary for when Google (inevitably) decides to shelve their version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been curious about how to pay people for their datasets.. I feel like research into that is really interesting.. what would be great would be if you could essentially pay known trustworthy sources for vetted data, and those sources would essentially crowdsource the data by literally pounding the pavement or parsing through difficult to parse datasets.. I mean entire businesses are based upon that, so I could see how this gets out of hand quickly where somebody wants access to a dataset but does not want others to have access to it. But anyway, I wonder if people have studied the "how to pay people for datasets" problem where you get good quality data that is not gamed to just be maximizing profit, but at the same time people have an incentive to collect the data.

<comment><USER5> There are already several established organizations that hold and manage billing for data sets within specific domains. An example is the LDC ([https://www.ldc.upenn.edu/](https://www.ldc.upenn.edu/)) which hosts huge amounts of natural language + voice data in many languages, submitted by universities around the world.

Personally, I think there is a big downside to attaching it to billing. The process is quite difficult to obtain (financially and logistically), especially if you are outside a university. Even within a university, procuring data could take months of bureaucracy. Also as an independent student or developer, this data becomes largely inaccessible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like a dataset which maps (zip code, age, single) to a distribution of incomes. E.g. (60642, 18, single) is likely <$20k income. Ideally it would return a big list of (age, zip code, income, year, single) entries.

Is it possible to find this data using Google's dataset search? If not, making an easier frontend for it might be one way to add novelty.

It's also hard to figure out whether the data exists or whether your search terms are poor.

<comment><USER7> This already exists.. look at claritas: [https://claritas360.claritas.com/mybestsegments/#zipLookup](https://claritas360.claritas.com/mybestsegments/#zipLookup)

<comment><USER6> This is magical. How'd you find out about this?

<comment><USER8> The dataset you are looking for is a pretty common marketing research dataset which may help your Google queries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google may not be the best model to aid researchers, or the most useful and profitable. An AWS meets Coursera meets helpful tech and engineering consulting/support shop seems like a better, full-service model to help bio people accomplish their work while having the support of a top-notch IT/engineering organization. Professional services without the delay, cost or extractive tendencies... more like kick-ass support that gets things done right now.

</comment><comment><USER10> Suprised no one has mentioned google scholar, the solution already exists. Not to mention google by itself is already a pretty great research tool if you know what you're looking for. You can even search by file type e.g. "cure for cancer filetype: pdf"

[https://scholar.google.com/](https://scholar.google.com/)

<comment><USER11> This isn't for finding papers. It's for finding the data the papers were written about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's already quite a few sites like this, including the one I work on for Canadian research data: [https://www.frdr.ca](https://www.frdr.ca)

We have a search engine that covers every Canadian data set we can find (both academic and governmental) and the ability to upload your own data set directly to the site.

</comment><comment><USER13> Incorrect title, or misleading at least, The NSF awared $500K for a "Lehigh research team to investigate a 'Google for research data'". You're likely not going to make a "google for x" on $500K.

<comment><USER14> I'm thinking the better question is: What would it take for Google to be "Google for research data"? I have to presume the answer is: not much.

<comment><USER15> I don't know what it took but they did it recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919297)</comment></comment></comment>


Testing Your Uber for X Idea Without Spending a Dime - <AUTHOR> Since Uber was introduced to the universe, there has been countless attempts at creating the next Uber for X.
Some blew up to be unicorns, some fell flat.  DoorDash, Instacart are a few that become unicorn Uber for X ideas. The market determines if the Uber for X idea adds value and votes with their dollars.
Testing an Uber for X idea doesn't have to cost a lot.  Before you write one line of code, you need to see if there is a demand for your service.
Can you get customers that are willing to pay you for the service? On demand cannabis delivery, furniture delivery, dog walking are some examples that come to mind for Uber for X ideas.
Put ads online, social media, try to sell to friends and family.  Create a simple Google/WuFoo form where people can sign up for your service and pay.
If you can't get customers, get better at marketing or test another Uber for X idea.
When you do get your first customers, provide the service without having an elaborate software setup and routing algorithm, it's not needed at this point.
When you are getting overwhelmed with with paying customers requesting your service, now is the time to think about implementing technology to help you scale the idea.
Now you could develop software and try to raise money, but this may take a while.  There is an easier way.  Rather than develop software, use an off the shelf solution that can optimize driver routes and send appointments to drivers on their mobile device.
The software may not be custom to your specific use case, but it will allow you to service customers more efficiently, NOW.
In the background, you can start adding features to the existing out of the box solution.  The market doesn't care what is happening in the background, they want the service, and they want it now. <comment><USER2> This is not good advice, and I hope that inexperienced entrepreneurs reading it will not follow it. There's a reason "Uber for X" has gone from something on a lot of slide shows to something of a joke.

Here's why:

1) There's always going to be demand for "Uber for X" as long as the price is low enough. Your experiments will almost always show a demand of hundreds or thousands of people.

The problem that 100% of these companies have is that they can't become profitable at a price customers are willing to pay. Uber, the original, isn't even close to profitable.

2) You shouldn't enter a business where you have zero competitive advantage. If you can use open-source software and ad networks, so can anyone else. Any business you enter with as low barriers to entry as this is going to become a race to the bottom.

3) There is no way to bootstrap something like this. It's capital-intensive by its nature, which requires massive economies of scale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool video on how Door Dash started.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQOC-qy- GDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQOC-qy-GDY)

Uber is worth 55B today.

<comment><USER2> Uber's valuation has more to do with the Ponzi scheme of VC -> IPO, the irrationality of investors, and breaking the law than to a solid business.

Also, startup advice based on once-in-a-generation outliers is not good advice.</comment></comment></comment>


The ultra-lethal drones of the future - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2014/05/17/evolution-of-the-drone/ <comment><USER2>
      Whatever happens, we have got
      The Maxim gun, and they have not.
      -- Hilaire Belloc

A basic assumption with drones is they are great because the US has them, but that's not always going to be the case. What worries me is what will happen when drones become widespread. Sooner or later someone will make the AK-47 of drones, and there will be millions of lethal drones around. I don't know what that will do for warfare, but it can't be good. World War I showed the difficulty of adapting to widespread machine guns, and the adjustment to widespread drones could be just as bad.

<comment><USER3> Drones are already widespread, which I discussed in a previous comment.[0] Like all technology, Pandora's Box has been opened and there's really nothing that can be done to stop people from developing ever more sophisticated drones. America did not invent drones and it has never been the only source for the technology. Countries like Israel and South Africa were using modern tactical drones in combat long before the first Predator took to the skies.

But drones aren't the real issue, they're still relatively unsophisticated aircraft that, even when armed, are not any more deadly than manned combat aircraft and the array of sophisticated weaponry that most countries have access to.

The real issue is the rapid development of robotics, of which UAVs (aka drones) are a subset, that promises to dramatically change warfare. The first robots equipped with AI software to automatically identify and shoot at targets will probably be ground robots like the Talon or SWORDS, not UAVs flying 20 000 ft above the battlefield. Russia is already experimenting with such autonomous AIs on their Taifun-M robot, as are others.

At the current rate of development it's difficult to even imagine how far this technology will go and what robots will be capable of, but suffice to say we're already seeing levels of capability most believed were science fiction just a decade ago.

Point is, arguing about armed drones like the Reaper and Predator is not going to solve anything and it's a distraction from the real ethical debates that need to be happening around weaponised robotics.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709420)

<comment><USER4>
      Drones are already widespread

Oh man, I just do not agree with you on that one.

They are not widespread like cell phones are widespread. They are not widespread like automobiles are widespread. They are not widespread like television is widespread. They are not widespread like six shooter revolvers are widespread. They are not widespread like clock radios are widespread. They are not widespread like cameras are widespread. They are not widespread like hand grenades are widespread.

Maybe they're widespread like bi-planes at the end of world war I. Maybe they're widespread like torpedos at the beginning of world war II. But that still counts as uncommon technology in my book.

<comment><USER3> The drones under discussion are not a consumer technology, how can you expect them to be as widespread as consumer items like automobiles or cellphones, unless you're looking at toy RC 'drones' like the Parrot AR Drone?

The proper way to map drone proliferation is to count how many countries have them as part of their security forces and what type are being used. Last I counted over 80 countries possess at least one model of drone in their security forces and another 23 at least have active armed drone programs underway. How is that not widespread?

That's without even discussing the dozens of countries building their own military drones, armed and unarmed. There's a tendency to believe that this technology is contained for the moment within US companies, but that has never been the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No mention of the super secret space drone???

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37)

</comment><comment><USER6> So ultra lethal is dead 2.0 kills you even deader than the pervious shooty /stabity technology.

<comment><USER7> Or you know, it's ultra-leathal in that it kills a larger percentage of targets more efficiently (e.g they are not talking about it being "more lethal" for a single person).

<comment><USER6> or I could have been being _sarcastic_

<comment><USER7> Sure, but sarcasm requires a specific target, and from your phrasing it was their (perceived by you) misuse of the term lethal.

Being sarcastic is not a free pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How about those drones on Star Gate Universe? Relentless enough to drive you from the galaxy.</comment>


Ask HN: Abandon my efforts of creating spreadsheets instead of using QB? - <AUTHOR>

I like the idea of having all my financial statements accessible from anywhere and by people who have permission to view them. So I started replicating much of Quickbooks' functionality using Google Docs.
However, I'm coming to learn that although it is possible to include much of Quickbooks' features, it's becoming a little cumbersome to do so.
Should I just use Quickbooks?
(I'm also considering just throwing up a web app and slowly adding to it as necessary). <comment><USER2> Quickbooks offers an affordable "online" version. We use it and are quite happy with it so far.

EDIT: [http://quickbooksonline.intuit.com/finance-accounting- soluti...](http://quickbooksonline.intuit.com/finance-accounting-solutions/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Use Quickbooks, it ties everything together for you in a way that spreadsheets cannot.</comment>


Google Wave: There Will Be Backlash - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/30/google-wave-there-will-be-backlash/ <comment><USER2> Wave is complex and ambitious, some like it, some don't and we don't really know whether it will succeed.

Now that's what I call great insight. I would never ever have thought of that.

<comment><USER3> It's a risky position for TC to take, though; now they can't make link-bait claims tomorrow about how Wave is an utter failure and a sinking ship that will eventually bring down all of Google.

<comment><USER4> Sure they can, so long as they keep saying, "On the one hand, Google Wave is ambitious and could be amazing; on the other hand, it is currently an utter failure."

Well, I don't know about the bringing down all of Google bit, but my point is that they could certainly keep going with their balanced, insightless (should be a word), "on the one hand" approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm pleasantly surprised by this article. TC generally doesn't write nice things about dreamers.

Because we all know that the first public release of Wave is going to be fraught with problems. Come on, we all know that. Even Google has acknowledged it with their myriad disclaimers on disclosing it early.

But we also know that it has the potential to be really, really cool. Using XMPP (an existing standard) to add federation (which is very hard) and promising to open source their own implementation (not just the specs) shows me that Google is serious about making a better open ecosystem.

Wave has the potential to change things like SMTP, FTP, IRC, HTTP/HTML did. Useful, decentralized and open.

I'll cut them some slack while they're working the kinks out.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you get an invite, make sure you check out the AccuWeather weather app. I made it, so please give me any feedback you may have.

<comment><USER7> Is it in the sandbox? I'd like to play with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand how wave will replace email. How will it ever get so popular and overcome the chicken and egg problem? Anyone carry to enlighten me?

CampFire solves many of emails problems for particular types of communications. Google docs solves email problems for collaborative document editing. I don't see wave solving the biggest email problems: inbox overload and organization. I don't want yet another communication channel.

</comment><comment><USER9> The most useful piece of information in the article:

<http://twitter.com/twephanie/status/4497929072>

It's 7:43am in Sydney right now. Shouldn't be long.

</comment><comment><USER7> What is this post trying to say? He just kind of babbles on and then ends. Hrm.

<comment><USER10> It's a metaphor for how most Waves will look? (edit: done, andrew)

<comment><USER7> Are you in the sandbox right now? Add me tumult ~at~ wavesandbox on the dotcom. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> and the MG/Google love fest continues...

</comment><comment><USER12> Yawn... Where's my article downvote?</comment>


Those boats in Texas paraded at the wrong speed - <AUTHOR> https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/09/07/1599488382000/Those-boats-in-Texas-paraded-at-the-wrong-speed-/ <comment><USER2> [https://archive.is/CY1x5](https://archive.is/CY1x5)</comment>


Ask HN: ElasticSearch as a database, why or why not? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> No, anything other than finding by id is eventually consistent by default. Also, modifying the schema generally means reindexing. Those 2 points should be enough to keep you away from trying to use it as a standard db. Use it for data that needs rich searching like it was designed for.</comment>


Upwork banned my account for 'being dishonest' - <AUTHOR> https://www.ribice.ba/upwork-suspended/ <comment><USER3> As a person who "buys time" on upwork quite frequently, I regularly get sent links to 3rd party sites housing example work and portfolios. And almost all of my developers will send me private repos on github. My writers will submit work on Google Docs so we can collaborate. Rarely do I get any worker who doesn't "violate" the TOS, because the TOS is a POS that hinders mine and the freelancer's business.

<comment><USER4> The great thing about a TOS which everyone violates, is that it can be arbitrarily enforced, for any unspoken actual reason.

<comment><USER5> Sort of, if you have the $$$ and the damages are worth chasing in reality you would take them to court. Demonstrating that everyone else is routinely breaking the TOS, and that the company knew about it, would be a very strong piece of evidence in your case

<comment><USER6> It really wouldn't, at least with the laws as they exist now. Upwork just says "private company, at-will service, voluntary association", and they win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Upwork is pretty much the worst type of business, very shortsighted, focused only on extracting immediate value at seemingly any cost.

Last year's 1175 point post "Why you should never use Upwork"[0] is still as relevant as ever and I don't expect it to change.

You should avoid Upwork like the plague.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282)

<comment><USER8> So what are the alternatives for people who want to find contracting work without networking?

<comment><USER9> toptal.com seems like one of the better ones, but the best option is probably to join a collective.

<comment><USER10> What is "a collective" in this context?

<comment><USER9> A worker-owned consulting firm, basically. Also called a co-op. You get the benefit of shared clients and administration support, without working for "somebody else".

I don't know of any large ones, but I have seen quite a few around.

<comment><USER11> My experience is that 'collectives' aren't a lot easier for the socially impaired than traditional body shops, and they usually have less work.

they do usually charge a much smaller cut, though, which is pretty good, so if you get along with the people, and they do have work, they can be pretty great.

I don't think I'd advise anyone to rely on a collective as their primary income any more than I'd advise anyone to rely on a body shop as their primary income. Treat the job as a job, be open to jobs that don't go through your collective or body shop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had my Venmo account temporarily terminated a few weeks ago. I didn't do anything other than be the recipient of a $139.99 payment from a stranger "for laundry". My account was unfrozen, but I think it was out of sheer luck more than anything. A less savvy person would have likely taken the notification at face value and left it at that.

I searched around for what to do in this situation and came across many reports of this type of scam, where an unknown sender "accidentally" sends payment, request a payment from me for the money back, and simultaneously cancels the transaction. I did nothing and hoped the issue would resolve itself.

Two days later, I get an email saying my Venmo account has been frozen "due to recent activity that appears to be a violation of our User Agreement." After reaching out to Venmo via chat, I had a similar interaction as the article. They told me my account was frozen, that my case was being handled by an Account Specialist, and that would be in touch via email.

The next day I got an email from the Account Specialist saying my actions and activity were in violation of the ToS and that my account was permanently deactivated.

I reached out to support again and played dumb, saying I received payment from a stranger but can't send the money back because my balance didn't go up. Support again said they couldn't do anything, that my account was frozen by an Account Specialist, and that they would be in touch via email.

The Account Specialist sent me an email saying the payment was refunded and that I should reach out to the sender directly, to which I responded that I didn't know who the sender was and I assumed the payments were made in error and asking them to confirm that I had to take no further action. They responded with a form email saying my account had been unfrozen. "However, please keep in mind that the state of your account can be revised if your transaction history raises flags on our system in the future."

<comment><USER13> And this is why it's so scary that our societies are moving towards using such private companies for basically core infrastructure of society.

If the government fucks up, I have an easy way of appealing, everything is clearly defined.

If venmo or PayPal fucks up, I have to sue over country lines, argue an international case, and still have no recourse.

<comment><USER14> That's why it is so infuriating when people respond to any criticism with "well just stop doing business with them!" That's fine until it isn't.

We have exactly one hospital in town. We have exactly one ambulance company in town. We have two medi-vac helicopter providers but you don't get to pick. We have one garbage company (Waste Management) that you're legally required to use in a residential property. One power/gas utility. One water utility.

All of those are private companies, but I have zero ability to switch. There's no competition. They're completely monopolistic either through regulation or naturally. If this is healthy capitalism I'd hate to see unhealthy.

Garbage pickup is particularly galling. It used to be public, government employees, with no profit motive. You had a complaint process. For ideological or "campaign contribution" reasons politicians gave it away to Waste Management, complaints are now handled by nobody, and fees climb year upon year.

<comment><USER15> > That's why it is so infuriating when people respond to any criticism with > "well just stop doing business with them!"

God, I hate that phrase. There's a grain of truth to it, _in certain contexts_ , but at this point its just an unthinking regurgitation used to protect the utterer from uncomfortable realities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is personally why I'm of the opinion, why we should always try to avoid as much centralization as we can.

Host your own blog, run your own systems, use distributed software. I even keep two payment systems available, just in case. I get gigs often enough (as often as I want) mostly just through people reading my blog[1] (where I can advertise when available)

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

<comment><USER17> But when you're just starting out, how can you get your name out there? Sure, you can write blog posts and craft some good SEO, but who is going to trust someone without reviews from a centralized source?

<comment><USER18> Centralized sources have the same problem though. Almost every job on upwork is posted with a requirement of a job score of 90+. You can only get a job score by completing something on their platform and getting a positive review.

OP said he did a project for $10, which for most freelancers is maybe 5 minutes of work at their standard rate. If you're going to work for free, might as well do it in your own circle and build out from there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had an upwork and closed it down for exactly what this is about, except that the client blatantly lied about the work I handed over.

It was a bad contract, but it was completed despite the various issues involved. I submitted the code and he made a claim that my code did something that is absolutely impossible to do: SQL is not going to affect the browser UI, especially not default settings within the browser. I asked for a screenshot of the "issue" and that never came in. The client also made changes to my code and kept demanding I fix it.

I closed down the contract and opened a case, thinking it would be obvious that I did the work as asked and they were very difficult to work with.

It was interesting to read the responses. They kept saying they needed more and more features before they agreed the work was done. I said that the contract, as specified in both the post and ensuing messages was done. I never heard these new requests.

Throughout the correspondence with upwork, the client kept changing their story, outright contradicting themselves over and over.

Upwork, of course, sided with the client over the new feature request they demanded. Apparently, upwork thinks that a contract is infinite work. I pointed out each lie, asked for a screenshot of the impossible bug, and explained the new features (which changed multiple times during the case) would take too long to complete.

I lost the case and ended up doing the job for half price. Upwork is optimized to client first, which is just wrong to the workers. I had to pay 20% of my earnings at $50/hr and up, so it's not like I had zero value to the company.

I closed down my account over that.

</comment><comment><USER20> In my experience there are two types of jobs on the system. Quick simple projects and almost-full-time-job type work. With simple projects it just isn't worth the contractors time - the amount of time wasted in non billable hours: messages, specs, understanding, setup - just doesn't make anything efficient. Sure, bill for the client meetings - but watch your ratings crash. With the almost-full-time-job type work - it's smarter to just yank the person out of upwork and not pay the crazy upwork fees then develop a real relationship.

Unfortunately, how contractors get really screwed is when they run into a real asshole client. Once this happens they are reported to upwork (for not doing free work usually). Good contractors that worked for us were routinely banned.

[I only have been on the client side.]

<comment><USER21> Is it easy to move outside of upwork for the financial side, and still have some recourse on both sides? If I'm a US client working with a contractor in Russia, I'd be concerned about taxes, currency conversion, etc. I don't really understand all of these challenges, but I assume upwork has them handled. Is there something else I could use that would take a smaller cut, once trust around the actual work has been established?

<comment><USER22> I'm truly failing to understand this. What's a recourse that you have with upwork? Not paying the contractor that did not deliver? You can not pay contractor who does not deliver to you via another method. People in the entire world like to get paid with US dollars. Those who live in the countries that provide bodies for upwork have bank accounts or methods of receiving dollars. They would gladly communicate that to you. Taxes? Upwork clearly does not handle taxes for you. If you are in the US, you are responsible for your taxes. i

<comment><USER23> If you're in Russia, you can't just receive dollars from someone in US. You have to pass currency control, you have to provide documents to your bank that those funds were earned. I guess, there are means to bypass those regulations, especially for small sums of money, but they are risky, so not everyone will use them. That's why worker might prefer something like odesk, those companies usually have established processes to transfer money and get necessary paperwork.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is one of my least favorite innovations of Silicon Valley, the opaque, confusing, no stated reasons practice of banning users.

I _totally_ understand why things developed the way they did. The internet is huge and full of bad actors, and a nascent service is in real existential danger of being overwhelmed and swamped by fraud. If you tell bad actors why you're banning them and spend valuable time communicating with them it can put you out of business early on.

But like in so many other arenas, the Valley mentality hasn't adopted to the fact that they are no longer underdog rebels besieged by barbarians on one side and big scary rich corporations on the other site.

The reality is now that these companies _are_ the ruling class, and the users are the general population. And people rely on these services and base their lives on them. Arbitrary and capriciously depriving people of access to these platforms without any kind of due process rights isn't OK any more.

There's a reason we have consumer protection laws, why someone decided we needed things like the Montreal Convention and the FDCPA and CPSC and so on. It's axiomatic that we can't trust monopolistic corporations to do right by the little guy.

This Silicon Valley mentality is increasingly going to lead to pitchforks, torches, and regulation in the near future, it's an inevitability. Rightly so.

<comment><USER25> I am quite bitter about the state of affairs. If a company decides to screw you over, they pretty much can. Legally, there is not much you can do if you're not filthy rich. The most you can do is make a fuss about it on social media. If you attract a lot of people, the company will issue an apology and give you a stupid surprise.

I _absolutely despise_ this very common pattern. In the end, the company gets free publicity for screwing you over, and the 100s or 1000s of people in the same situation won't be helped - just because they don't have a massive userbase on social media.

<comment><USER26> The state of affairs, is that Silicon Valley along with companies that are willing to sell out to automation for everything - have become the new ruling class.

Thought experiment:

What happens if Amazon, right now, decided that you are not a good customer and deleted every one of your accounts and deleted all your AWS data? As of right now, you can't buy anything from them goods wise. And if you were using AWS as a webservice platform, now, you can't. No recourse. At all.

Your Google account was hacked, but google saw you as a spammer and hacker trying to penetrate Google's security systems. They blast all accounts away that have logged in with your IP address of the duration of the hack. You're now without a whole slew of services. Dead in the water, again. Who do you call? Nobody. But you can leave a badly worded post in Google forums - <USER2> wait, you can't even do that.

<comment><USER27> Don't mix your AWS account with your personal shopping account.

Don't rely on free services for mission-critical aspects of your life. And don't expect free services to provide support.

And no, "it isn't free, you pay with your data" doesn't make it a paid service, it is still free.

<comment><USER11> So, if you are a business, I think relying solely on AWS is a super bad idea. Amazon is aware of the lock in effect, and if your usage spikes and you don't have a good alternative ready to go? Amazon is setup so that you will pay through the nose. AWS is wonderfully cheap if you only need a little bit, but it is crushingly expensive at any kind of real scale.

Starting on amazon is great, as it really is cheap at small scale, and you can test your shit at large scale for short periods... but it gets expensive fast as you grow, so the more you can do to prepare to move, (or credibly threaten to do same) the better off you are.

<comment><USER27> Exactly, don't put all your eggs in the same basket, especially if you're mixing different types of eggs (personal vs. professional identities).

And don't put any valuable eggs in a free basket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Almost 100% positive upwork somehow magically unsuspends his account after seeing this thread. When will these companies ever learn that it's not okay to misbehave and quietly "fix" things when publicity gets bad?

<comment><USER29> Generally only when it becomes economically or legally impossible to continue doing so.

<comment><USER30> So never ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think google and PayPal have shown every companies in the valley that you can be unreliable and stonewall your users without hindering economic success.

<comment><USER32> While I agree that those companies and many others have become quite successful taking this tact, it was really only successful because of those businesses are nearly monopolies. Obviously this is similar to ISPs. Upwork competes with tons of other boards directly as well as LinkedIn, Indeed/Job Boards, Craigslist, general networking and other preferences (not working an additional part time job).

Also, similar to recruiting these places need to attract top talent consistently not just warm-bodies. Highly skilled workers can afford to exercise other options much better.

<comment><USER21> You're right, but upwork is the dominant marketplace for low-cost contract labor. It is the merger of what was previously a duopoly in the space (elance and odesk) and the network effects are strong.

So maybe it's not quite as monopolistic as the others you mentioned but it has clearly (and rationally) chosen to compromise fairness to its users to a degree that it likely could not in a more competitive market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I believe software is a market for lemons (1). You don't know what quality you will get so on places like Upwork people are not prepared to pay much. Even though there's a shortage of developers, it's almost impossible to find freelance work, and there's plenty of people exploiting those who work basically for free just to get a good rep. And at the same time there's people paying outrageous prices eg $100,000 for a simple web site.

</comment><comment><USER34> >How is it possible to propagate a session id in PHP

What the hell does that even mean? I write PHP for a living and this makes no sense to me.

Do they mean retrieve the ID via session_id() and pass it onto a page, like in a GET parameter?

<comment><USER35> I think using cookies?

<comment><USER14> There's no real answer since the term "propagate" can mean one of several things. For example are we propagating the session ID from the server to client or client to server? And in both cases there are several answers which apply.

PHP Dev or not, that question is too vague to be answerable. You'd have to ask additional questions just to understand the question itself.

<comment><USER35> As you would expect, Upwork doesn't have the resources for people that really know PHP to be doing these verifications. While we all agree that the question was poorly-worded, anyone with decent communication skills (a much-needed skill for people doing the kinds of client-facing software engineering jobs that are on Upwork) can easily recognize this and work with the non-technical person conducting the interview to arrive at the "right" answer even though it "DOES NOT COMPUTE" to the overly-pedantic "language lawyer" in some.

I remember someone angrily posting on HN about failing an HR phone screening because they tried arguing with the interviewer that Linux was not Unix, but was Unix-like (a sign that the interviewee clearly knew the one-word _expected_ answer that was on the interviewer's answer key). Just answer the very simple question and move on, instead of trying to show off or whatever. Part of functioning in the workplace means communicating effectively and professionally (by not being condescending, for example) with other people that may have different skill sets. The best engineers are very cognizant of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've had nothing but bad experiences with Upwork.

<comment><USER37> I've never heard anything but bad experiences. Why do people even bother with it?

<comment><USER38> Because it's a way to make money while you're between jobs while still using the skills you're good at. Not everyone is great at networking, nor are they necessarily in a place where they could pull good clients even if they were.

It's a shit sandwich, but in tough times, that's all you can find to eat.

<comment><USER39> > Because it's a way to make money

You're not making money if they're refunding the client. This article and people in this thread suggest it's a terrible way to make money and to AVOID at all costs.

Or, you can use this company and I look forward to reading more of these articles.

<comment><USER38> Yes, it's worked out terribly for some people, but everyone I know who have done upwork jobs on the side have had next to zero problems.

I don't use them anymore, as I've gotten out of the tech industry and became a professional baker instead, but I get the feeling that we on HN tend to hear a few horror stories, and ignore the thousands of success stories.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be changes made, but anecdotal evidence does not instantly justify a witchhunt and boycott.

<comment><USER40> As a professional baker, what do you do differently from traditional bakers?

<comment><USER38> I get paid for it.

Edit: For a slightly less sardonic answer, I prep an innumerable number of different items every day, and they all have to look near perfect. I decided that while programming was a passion of mine, I wanted to do it on my own terms. I wanted to create projects that _I_ found interesting.

Baking though? If I want to make something at work that I find interesting, I can experiment and do that, and my boss encourages me.

So I still code, but I stopped doing it for money and started doing it to contribute to society. Baking I do for fun and money. It was a later in life career change, but I'm much happier for it.

<comment><USER41> So is there, like, a Baker News out there somewhere?

<comment><USER38> There isn't enough dough for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've used and spent plenty on Upwork, and when they were called oDesk. Is there an alternative out there that (1) I can post a price for a job, (2) interview/critique candidates,(3) easily go back and forth as the job is in progress, (4) approve, "complete", possibly rate, and pay the person doing the work....all without Upwork's bullshit?

<comment><USER43> Looks like a good side project. I want to build a platform that charges only for arbitration and escrow. I want to build a video interview system where you can select the questions you are interested and it will compile a 2X compact video with the answers for speeding up screening. Than the system uses AI to find and recommend candidates like the ones you rank better. I want to fix remote work and freelancing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Overall I get value out of Upwork as a buyer, but a full 60% of the applicants I get are scam bait-and-switch accounts. I've figured out how to navigate it but it doesn't surprise me that they'd be strict on their TOS.

<comment><USER45> This has been my experience as a client as well. Fell prey to a couple of "say we're doing the work but we ain't" devs that thankfully UpWork refunded so I'm glad to hear they're cracking down on scam accounts. Sad to hear that legit accounts are getting caught up in the process though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Upwork is horrible. They take on average 25% of your pay, on top of taxes. Bad customer support and its flooded with low-cost labor.

<comment><USER47> Ya, I end up declining 99% of all offers on up work. I'd say very few are actually good projects with good people behind them. Most are assholes who treat freelancers like garbage.

<comment><USER48> Honestly it literally sounds like that is the business model.

"Let's build a platform that exploits desperate developers..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Actually, the only thing surprising about the article is how little this poor fellow is getting paid for the work.

<comment><USER50> No crap. $15? I have to imagine he spent at least a couple hours on it. Even $50 seems like it's not worth the time. I really doubt he's spending less than 2 hours on any of this. Not to mention just finding and applying...

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct. I did it more for the reviews, so that I can charge appropriate rates later on.

I spent probably 2-3 hours for that $15 (and 3 hours more for additional $30) and then about 2 hours for that $100 (expected $50). These are all excluding messaging, just actual work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I wish there was something better than Upwork.

The platform is pretty buggy, I don't enjoy using it. The only reason I stick to it is the "pool" of freelancers is pretty big so you can likely find someone qualified and decent to work with. You get _tons_ of junk though. You can limit this by setting to only in US, only those that have worked x hours and have already made x. Setting strict requirements at least can remove the bait and switch or fresh spam accounts.

Fun story time. I was looking for a developer and found a guy that seemed to have a nice profile, clear picture, etc. When I messaged him the responses felt very foreign and quick. Didn't really make sense so I reverse image searched the photo and found the photo belonged to a developer but not the guy I was talking to (different names). I emailed the real guy (he had a portfolio site and some nice programming articles) and asked if this was really him on Upwork. Nope. He said he's never had a profile on there and thanked me as he went to report it.

</comment><comment><USER52> Upwork can be a stepping stone for talented developers who don't necessarily have the exposure, community or connections and may not have the accessibility to compete in other market places like Toptal.

In my experience Upwork support has always been slow and cut-rate. I realize the irony as Upwork most likely employs contractors from its platform who aren't necessarily invested in building a product or community. It's unfortunate but this is a huge shortcoming both from a support and policy (ToS) standpoint. Support needs to be invested in the product.

FWIW no freelancer (or gig economy worker for that manner) should be dependent on a single platform for income. There are so many job platforms to invest time and energy on - Upwork, Toptal, Gun.io, RemoteOk, etc. And the plethora of developer focused Q&A sites. Leverage those to augment your personal profile (site).

<comment><USER53> Thanks for mentioning Gun.io.

I'd also add a recommendation to spend at least a third of the time you spend doing billable work in building up your own pipeline — regardless of whether you're using a freelance service like us or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It is foolish to fully rely on UpWork on any other similar websites without strong legal representation in place.

Threatening legal action against UpWork gets you far in these situations.

These SV companies think they can do whatever they want and sometimes need a harsh reality check that they must obey laws, especially as more and more people depend on them.

I can't wait for GDPR and alike to start regulating these atrocities against privacy, security and fraud like behaviour.

If anyone from UpWork is reading this, know that not I only I have personally closed my account, I will do everything in my power to keep hard working, honest engineers from your platform.

And help them in any shape or form should they seek litigation against you.

</comment><comment><USER55> List of alternatives to upwork here:

[https://theremotefreelancer.com](https://theremotefreelancer.com)

[https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer](https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer)

Remote jobs here:

[https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#job- board...](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#job-boards)

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow. This has to be some of the worst customer support I've ever seen. The only thing I experienced that was worse was American Express cancelling my account, telling the credit bureaus I was dead, not allowing me to pay them, and hanging up on me when I called them. Eventually I managed to find out that they sold the account and got ahold of who had it now, but they wouldn't accept my payment because I wasn't really dead, and had to transfer my account back to American Express. After finally resolving this and paying them in full, they report to the bureaus that I was late several months on my payments, and any attempt to appeal this has just been ignored. So I just have to wait for it to fall off my report. Until then, I'm paying over 12% interest on a fucking auto loan.

<comment><USER57> > This has to be some of the worst customer support I've ever seen.

Actually, the OP is not a customer. A customer is someone who delivers money. Upwork treated their actual customer quite well: they refunded him and talked to him like human beings - even told him the reason why the OP was suspended.

<comment><USER58> Actually OP IS a customer. Upwork gets 20% out of his pay for being a glorified invoice generator.

<comment><USER57> I'm pretty sure Upwork doesn't seem it that way, as their actions clearly show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Upwork is bad. Their fraud prevention has been a problem for a long time. They have had major basic system stability problems, and even data privacy issues. It is like the lumbering giant of craigslist except far less benevolent.

<comment><USER60> I had a decently good account on Upwork. I had a few jobs on there that developed into great long-term contracts.

One time, me and a client logged into Upwork to close a contract out on the same network. We both got banned :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I had freelanced using Odesk before it became Upwork, And I do hold some balance in the account even now. I am inactive(not bidding anymore) on it since 2014.

Six months ago from nowhere I got a sudden email about my account suspension. I appealed and try to prove my identity with Government Issued ID card, Academic details even My name in the list of the post-graduates(with no result). They keep on denying to re-activate my account and suggest me to withdraw my money, that I have not yet.

I can still browse Upwork, It is becoming more toxic with agressive bidding and way lower quality jobs now a days.

</comment><comment><USER62> i'm up voting specifically because it seems that companies that see stories like this on hacker news tend to comment on them. We had such a case about 2 weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261136)

I hope you get this resolved, but let this be a warning that these "gig" companies are nothing but a scam.

</comment><comment><USER63> It's hard to see how they can justify reversing the payments on jobs he's already done. That said I do have a couple of issues with his decisions here:

> Before starting the verification process, I completed the second gig

That seems ... optimistic!

> She talked a bit more, but I could barely understand her anything due to > connection issues.

> ...

> "That went far easier and quicker than I expected. Lovely."

Seriously?

Other than that his experience does seem extremely frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'll try to find some remote work soon and I'm interested in upwork alternatives. I've heard a lot of bad things about them and it's risky to depend on that service. But I didn't hear about any big competitors. I'm talking specifically about some small pieces of work, not just remote work, without automatic screenshots and all that nonsense.

<comment><USER64> Pilot have contacted me last month and I really like their policy. They only do long-term full-time contracts with reliable companies, and have a flat fee of 30% - you can set whatever rate you like. I am happily employed but I feel it's a far cry from services like Toptal who have opaque, allegedly much larger commissions.

[https://pilot.co/](https://pilot.co/)

Some more alternatives:

[https://github.com/andreis/interview/issues/23](https://github.com/andreis/interview/issues/23)

[https://github.com/wfhio/awesome-job- boards](https://github.com/wfhio/awesome-job-boards)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Upwork banned me too. _some offensive words_

</comment><comment><USER66> their entire business model is making sure that their users never get a fair deal by communicating directly with the people they find via upwork.

is it really so surprising that they are fucking abysmal at customer service?

my experiences with them are 100% bad, but nowhere near as bad as what the OP article discusses.

<comment><USER57> I never used Upwork and and wondering - how on Earth can they make sure that I deliver the code to the client, and that there is no information in the code that could be used to identify me. Apart from that, the identity of the person is their unique brand, it guarantees integrity (or a lack of it), it allows to check one's portfolio and verify the skills of the developer - for example by looking at their public contributions. When you take all this away, what are you left with?

<comment><USER13> > When you take all this away, what are you left with?

A "mechanical Turk", as amazon would call it, a "Code Monkey" as Jonathan Coulton sang in his song.

A completely exchangeable person, an employee as a service. How the code is written, who does it, is entirely irrelevant. Entirely replaceable, with no recourse for the "contractor".

The main component of the gig economy is exactly this, completely disenfranchising the worker by commoditizing work. You try to negotiate higher pay, you simply get replaced.

<comment><USER26> > The main component of the gig economy is exactly this, completely > disenfranchising the worker.

It's even more insidious than that. Previously, it's workers came together to create unions, to prevent abuses by the company owners. Go back far enough, and companies hired hit squads in part of the US government to kill union leaders and bust strikes.

Then, unions were demonized. They "enabled lazy and bad workers, and punishing good workers" \- I thing I got the root of the arguments used.

Then comes the gig economy. We have a company, who "hires" employees, but then pits each employee against each other. Doing so then puts each employee in the position of "I'm against employee #2, and #3, and #4". This poisons the pot for any chances of coming together, and fixing wrongs. And it also easily allows what we would have called "scabs" to immediately enter if there is a union forming.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, that's a major issue – it's interesting how this gig economy is going to play out, because in Germany a lot of foodora drivers actually unionized, and of course foodora simply blacklisted them, which employment law forbids. So now it's playing out in the courts.

<comment><USER57> > So now it's playing out in the courts.

It's because it's in Germany, in the USA they would be laughed at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Another option in case of upwork is to tell them you don't have webcam, then they will ask you to upload few government ids. Nonetheless i had bad experience with upwork as a client as well as a contractor.

</comment><comment> pi-rat Funny they're so quick on the block button now!

Someone once created an account on upwork in my name (based on my github probably), took me ages to get that one shut down..

</comment><comment><USER68> This reminds me of Google and their atrocious customer account systems. These companies are just not impacted enough in a negative for them to change.

</comment><comment><USER69> What are some good alternatives from your experience?

</comment><comment><USER70> just visit their twitter help acct and you'll see how grate their customer service is [https://twitter.com/UpworkHelp/status/963348399213834240](https://twitter.com/UpworkHelp/status/963348399213834240)

</comment><comment><USER26> And, the user is playing "HN Customer Roulette" by hoping they will get enough traction here to garner a fair response.

When you're a serf on another's platform, you're subject to their rules. What rules are they? "Does their automated system and people like you?"

Is it unfair? Yes. Is it bad all around? Yes. Is there anything you can do about it? Yes - posting to social media and naming and shaming. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER71> Sorry to hear about your experience with upwork. Sounds like you might have still had PHP in your profile from years ago and when you said you don't do PHP development in the video chat that was enough to trigger a suspension.

Honestly you're probably better off you ended your upwork journey after only a couple gigs.

I did a few projects on elance years ago but it was always a hassle and tough to find good projects/clients.

It sounds like you are providing good value/quality work to clients. Look to your network to find Go projects instead. Become more active in the community. Keep blogging.

Connect with other Go developers, ask around if anyone knows anyone needing a Go developer. Lots of times developers don't have time to handle all the projects/clients they run in to and will hand them off to someone else they respect in the community.

You're going to find better projects/clients and higher paying side work that way than using upwork. And not have to deal with their hassle, fees and issues like this.

This might be a little bit of a gray area since it violates their ToS but since your account is suspended anyway if you have the emails of the two clients you worked with you could contact them and contract with them on new projects directly. (Don't mention here that you are doing this in case your usernames are the same on HN/upwork)

Especially the last one where you completed the gig, he paid you a higher amount than agreed on and then upwork refunded your fee for work completed. He should be open to moving forward contracting directly.

Good luck finding side work.

<comment><USER72> Oh, common on, every time freelancing topics comes up on HN there are at least few comments: "just do networking, it's so easy, and gigs just starts falling from the sky". No, this advice doesn't work well outside of tech hubs or good existing network (from university etc.) In some places developers are few and far between, especially if you are into more specialized, niche areas. Of course, you can try participate in online communities, but it's hard (i.e. good luck getting your first patch into Linux kernel mainline) and time consuming, especially if English is not your first language. Typical Upwork and similar services user is someone from rural Bangladesh, not well-connected MIT graduate working in sexy startup in Silicon Valley.</comment></comment>


The Hypocrisy of Elon Musk - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@drbrian3000/the-hypocrisy-of-elon-musk-c101cf5df85b#.xftvieqev <comment><USER2> This article doesn't seem like it has a point. The main punch of the article:

> He does not want to save humanity but mainly cares about his very own > success and ambitions no matter at what price and how many people will > suffer as a result.

Little to no evidence supports this. Ambitious founders (ex: Steve Jobs) often push their employees hard to make equally ambitious goals happen. It is part of the job.

<comment><USER3> This is a poorly made, ideologically driven hit piece on Elon Musk. Either support popular politics or get shit flung at you.</comment></comment>


4 terminal applications with great command-line UIs - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/17/5/4-terminal-apps <comment><USER2> These are incredibly useful. I had never heard of bpython or mycli before, but I will definitely be using them.

This also gives me a lot to think about in terms of the UX for CLI applications that I write.</comment>


San Francisco Hangout Becomes Casualty of Tech Boom - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/san-francisco-hangout-becomes-casualty-of-tech-boom/?ref=technology&gwh=8336CA84CEECB7B8C6EC12948B38BF00 <comment><USER3> San Francisco's high rents are more due to the fact that the city has refused to build more housing stock (particularly, high density housing).

When the supply (almost) stays the same and the demand increases, the equilibrium point for rents is bound to increase as well.

<comment><USER4> How does lack of housing cause high rents for restaurants?

<comment><USER5> Real estate is at a premium, and it's reflected in both high apartment rents and high commercial rents.

It's largely driven by the city's height limits-- there are only so many square feet of usable housing you can fit within a given volume of space.

<comment><USER6> At some point city planners should ask themselves how many billions of dollars of higher rents per year the benefits of a flat city skyline are worth to its residents (and how to fairly balance the interests of property owners and renters).

<comment><USER7> _Gasp_ You mean you want a bunch of NIMBY idiots to quantify their issue? If they did that, there would be a big problem, because it would plainly illustrate how absurdly greedy they are being.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm incapable of reading any reporting on "these damn young square techies snapping up all the desirable places in our hip urban areas" without hearing "... when those areas were clearly designed to be affordable for successful members of society, like brilliant young journalists at this publication."

<comment><USER9> young bloggers, please.

<comment><USER8> Without agreeing that journalists are more credible than bloggers, I think the discursive intent of that correction seems to be jibing at her social status. That's adding insult to injury, if the injury is the real difference in purchasing power between young techies and young journalists. The jibe isn't even accurate, as she has articles in the print edition, as well.

<comment><USER9> I have no problem with her socioeconomic status. I think a lot of journalists are just very upset with the notion that other people can write equally well, and thus it is a communal act instead of a career option. I mean, I am sorry, but you know that she most likely wants the 'golden days' of newsprint back (whether or not she experienced it) simply because of the career stability. And she would probably be happy with the other regressions in society that would imply.

That's what happens with technological progress, it ebbs at lifestyles and sects before they are even acknowledged to exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I propose a more accurate headline: San Francisco Hangout Becomes Casualty of Real Estate Policy.

<comment><USER11> How about: San Francisco restaurant becomes casualty of America's obsession with private property rights.

The sane way to handle renters vs owners is to restrict the amount rent can increase per year. It might slow gentrification and decrease profit of landowners but it would solve this restaurant's problem.

I own property in The Netherlands and rent it out to tenants. There are increased risks for me because tenants have a lot more rights in The Netherlands than in the USA. But having been a tenant in the past I can appreciate the stability that comes with restricting rental increases.

Does it mean I probably make less money? Yes.

But I like being able to walk around my city and not see homeless people everywhere.

<comment><USER12> Actually, the exact opposite of what you said is the solution. Allow stronger property rights. Allow developers to build up using simple real estate economics - for residential and commercial projects. Rent control is the quickest way to turn one of America's best cities into vast slum.

I'm a commercial real estate appraiser. Real estate already has very low margins (10% - 20% for strong operations) - how do you expect the property owner to maintain the property (expenses, taxes, mortgage) and make enough of a profit to consider holding onto said property? Let's turn that around - <USER2> presumably like your job. Now, take a 40% pay cut - can you still afford to keep your job?

<comment><USER13> > Rent control is the quickest way to turn one of America's best cities into > vast slum.

NYC has rent control, and it's hardly a vast slum.

And as a counter-dynamic, overbuilding and its associated crime rate increase is another way to turn a city into a slum. Few things breed crime like abandoned housing.

<comment><USER14> NYC _was_ a vast slum during a time when rent control, public housing, and social policy were a much bigger deal than they are now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _The Grove_ prices are already astronomical, and it's always busy when I stop by, so if they can't cover rent there, I wonder what business could.

<comment><USER16> An Apple store? You could do much better per sqm of retail space than a restaurant (you can do much worse also).

<comment><USER15> There's already an Apple store about 3 blocks from Chestnut's _Grove_. But perhaps eventually San Francisco can become one giant Apple store!

<comment><USER16> Totally. Obviously, San Francisco can't just become one huge apple store, but the fact remains that some high-end retail can do much better with real estate so that a high SQM price doesn't really affect them. The only question is: how much high-end retail does the market really need? And people have to eat also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I dunno... how many techies are there in the Marina? I thought the techies dominated SOMA and chunks of the Mission. Marina feels like the playground of the trustafarians, not nerdy techies.

</comment><comment><USER18> Lots of SF residents and business got squeezed during the mid-2000s real estate boom too, however there seemed to be far fewer of these sorts hand- wringing articles back then. There is something about tech in particular that triggers a lot more consternation than other types of booms.

<comment><USER19> I think there's a not-so-subtle distain for "outsiders" moving to these areas and out-pricing locals. It also often happens in gentrifying areas of lower socioeconomic level, but those stories don't make it to the NYT...

I bet there's a nearly identical story from the gold rush era.

<comment><USER20> You cannot even begin to understand the degree of disdain these folks have for techies without reading Rebecca Solnit's diatribe on Silicon Valley's employee shuttles ruining the city.

Source:

<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary>

<comment><USER21> Thanks so much for sharing.

Great article from a fantastic writer. She, apparently, hates me, and I disagree with a lot of what she's said here, but still, great article.

<comment><USER20> We cannot continue to condone this kind of antagonism.

This cannot be good.

<comment><USER21> Everybody is entitled to their opinion, spit. I appreciate that hers was well written and cogent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This place is apparently close to the center of SF:

<http://goo.gl/maps/zwBes>

It's really amazing how underdeveloped the area is. It looks like a 50-year- old farm town.

<comment><USER23> Apparently you haven't been to many 50-year-old farm towns in the US lately. (All these businesses would be closed and a Wal Mart Supercenter would be off a highway somewhere close).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Commercial real estate often operates with longterm leases and sometimes pre- defined renewal options. It is quite possible this restaurant signed a ten year lease in the shambles of the last tech bubble and now needs to renew the lease.

</comment><comment><USER25> I lived in the Marina in 1999 and don't remember the Grove either. Spent many weekend mornings eating breakfast at other trendy cafes on Chestnut Street.

The article mentions an annual rent of $246k. Assuming the place is open 360 days per year and 10 hours per day, that amounts to $68 per hour. If there are 20 tables in the restaurant, the rental cost is around $3.40 per table-hour at full utilization. This seems achievable for a popular restaurant.

<comment><USER26> You're confusing income with profit. Restaurant utilization is also highly variable through the day, and cafes often have long loiter times on tables. Paying rent out of $3.40 left over after materials, labor, and other non-rent expenses, even on an upscale café's inflated prices, is fairly challenging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Disable JavaScript to view this article.

<comment><USER28> Or if on Chrome, view it in incognito.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anyone remember Ristorante Ecco in South Park? Its rent double around 2000.

The space was vacant for a long time, and I don't think the landlord ever got the new rent - something happened to the local economy around 2001, but I can't quiet remember what.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yet places in Chinatown selling cheap tourist kitsch don't seem to have the same rent struggles.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think Durga's comment on the NYT site puts it best:

      While the above story describes a real problem in SF, it
      ignores two much more significant contributors to the
      issue that interlock with the effects of tech money.

      First, SF residents are extremely anti-development and
      NIMBYism runs rampant. It is ridiculously costly, time
      consuming, and difficult to renovate or build anything in
      SF. Add in a corrupt city planning process that was
      deliberately designed to allow just one person to hold up
      any project, large or small, and the result is a extremely
      restricted supply of both residential and commercial real
      estate.

      Second, the most influential opinion-leaders and elected
      officials are virulently anti-business. This has led to an
      oppressive level of mandates, fees, permits, taxes,
      licenses, and neighborhood activist oversight to be
      imposed on all businesses, from the local mom-and-pop dry
      cleaner to the few remaining large companies based in SF.

      So, the combination of the influx of highly paid (or
      already affluent) residents, an essentially fixed and
      unchanging real estate stock, and a deeply ingrained
      hatred of private economic activity by both politicians
      and active voters result in places like the Grove being
      penalized for their success. The problem cannot be reduced
      to a simplistic case of rich tech workers throwing down on
      starving artists.

Source:

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/san-francisco- hango...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/san-francisco-hangout- becomes-casualty-of-tech-boom/?comments#permid=2)

<comment><USER31> "This has led to an oppressive level of mandates, fees, permits, taxes, licenses, and neighborhood activist oversight to be imposed on all businesses"

If you follow <http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/> you get a pretty good view of some of the regulatory obstacles.

<comment><USER32> Some particularly good ones:

* <http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2012/09/28.html>

* <http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2012/10/09.html>

* <http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2012/09/11.html>

* <http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2012/06/13.html>

* <http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2012/06/01.html></comment></comment></comment>


Why I'm Done With Jailbreaking - <AUTHOR> http://tenmiles.com/blog/2013/02/why-im-done-with-jailbreaking/

<comment><USER2> Link won't load for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's working fine for me!</comment></comment>


The link between autism and extraordinary ability - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13489714 <comment><USER2> Also posted 14 hours ago here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565600>

Perhaps discussion might be better directed there.

Mods - feel free to delete this comment.</comment>


Why 'gallons per mile' is better than 'miles per gallon' - <AUTHOR> http://datagenetics.com/blog/april12014/index.html <comment><USER2> I was hoping that an article about careful use of measurement units wouldn't contain a blatant mathematical error.

The article calculates, presumably correctly, that driving 70mph costs $3.66/hr more than driving 55mph in some reference car. It concludes that driving 70mph is worthwhile if getting to your destination an hour early is worth more than $3.66.

This is completely wrong. Driving 70mph for an hour gets you 15 miles farther than driving 55mph for an hour. Doing that costs you less than $3.66, since you're driving for less time. It also doesn't save you anywhere near an hour.

<comment><USER3> I think that's as good of an example as any provided by the author as why the US should do away with the mpg measurement. If even the careful author can make a mistake like that, then think about the average person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> MPG is useful for range estimates: if you've got n gallons, you can travel m miles.

GPM is useful for budget estimates: if you have a trip of m miles, you'll need n gallons of fuel, with some given cost.

Or you can use a tool such as GNU units which handles reciprocal conversions with ease and aplomb.

<comment><USER5> Never used GNU units, but Wolfram Alpha will also do this trivially [0].

[0] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16+mpg+in+barrels%2Ffur...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16+mpg+in+barrels%2Ffurlong)

<comment><USER6> As will google: [https://www.google.com/search?q=16+mpg+in+barrels%2Ffurlong](https://www.google.com/search?q=16+mpg+in+barrels%2Ffurlong)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The United Nations creating a uniform system of regulations, WP.29 was established on June 1952, for vehicle design to facilitate international trade.

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

As of 2012, the participants to the 1958 Agreement include 52 countries including all of Europe, China, Russia, Japan, Australia.

Part of the regulations is a common specification for fuel use - litres per 100km.

There is one significant non-signatory to the agreement.

<comment><USER8> Could even use gallons per 250 miles as a fair approximation in US-style units, and I think it's a more practical measure than gallons per mile since it indicates perhaps a week of moderately heavy driving.

<comment><USER9> Gallons per 280 miles is even closer. And since there are seven days in a week, you can weakly justify that as 40 miles a day every day of the week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Canada pretty much uses X litres/100km nowadays recently replacing mpg. The lower the litres, the more efficient the vehicle. It actually was fairly easy to become accustomed to these new metrics.

<comment><USER11> It's an extremely convenient metric.

L/100km is roughly equivalent to L/h at highway speeds, and you can figure Litres to destination when you see a road sign by multiplying L/100km by the hundreds place.

With gas stations being upwards of a hundred kilometres apart in the prairies and northern ontario, especially at night, it's nice that this is so easy.

<comment><USER12> Ah, good point: so that means we should be using Gallons per 60 miles! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Next: Why liters per 100 kilometers is better than gallons per mile.

<comment><USER14> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4020885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4020885) :P

<comment><USER15> Well played, sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Fuel consumption is a better measure of a vehicles performance because it is > a linear relationship with the fuel used, as opposed to fuel economy which > has an inherent reciprocal distortion.

Fuel economy is a better measure of travel potential because it is a linear relationship with the distance you can go, as opposed to fuel consumption, which has an inherent reciprocal distortion.

<comment><USER17> An interesting switch, but who cares? There are gas stations everywhere.

<comment><USER18> Everywhere? Try driving across Nevada or southern Utah.

<comment><USER19> On the main roads, it looks like there are a decent number of fuel options, within a 50 mile radius.

[https://www.google.com/maps/search/gas+stations+near+souther...](https://email@example.com,-111.6872373,7z)

<comment><USER20> I recently drove from Raton, New Mexico eastbound along US 87. There were a lot of abandoned gas stations along that stretch. The first operational one was 40 miles away in Des Moines; the next one was another 40 miles away in Clayton.

Sometimes that sort of spacing makes the difference between one stop and two, or two stops and three, on a longish drive. Or, put another way, another 20 miles of range makes the difference between filling up in this town or filling up 40 miles down the road.

<comment><USER19> Once during a cross country trip, I decided to not fill up until I came across the next station.

This was before GasBuddy and other smart apps that can help alleviate some of these situations.

The result was rolling into a station on a Native Reservation which only accepted cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'll settle for reciprocal distortion if more people would switch to the metric system.

<comment><USER4> Most metric countries report liters/100km, solving both problems at the same time.

<comment><USER22> An useless but fun observation: you can do the litres/100km division and arrive at _units of area_. A family car might have a fuel consumption of 0.05 mm^2.

This is the cross-section of the imaginary pipe of fuel along the highway that a car with no fuel tank would have to pick up as it travels.

<comment><USER23> [https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _This topic came up on HN a couple of years ago [0], and I posted a comment that was well received. So here it is again, edited for the present context and updated with my recent thoughts:_

People do seem to misinterpret MPG ratings. A study published in _Science_ in 2008 [1] found that participants consistently overvalued vehicles with high MPG ratings. They assigned values linear in MPG rather than linear in its inverse.

The study's authors told participants to "assume you drive 10,000 miles per year for work, and this total amount cannot be changed." The participants were then asked to come up with values for vehicles of varying fuel-efficiencies. That is just the sort of optimization problem people face when choosing which car to buy, and apparently a fuel-efficiency metric that puts the amount of fuel in the numerator makes the problem easier to solve because expenditure is proportional to the amount of fuel burned, at least when distance driven is taken as given.

But in reading many of the words expended on this topic over the last couple of years, my lasting impression is that this a lot of hullabaloo about the wrong problem. It's the lack of attention paid to the "miles" part of the equation that most needs fixing. If the goal is to reduce carbon emissions (or any of the other negative externalities of driving), then taking distance driven as fixed frames the problem in a way that obscures the real solution: we should be encouraging people to drive less.

Yes, reordering your daily life to drive fewer miles is more disruptive than simply buying a car that goes farther on a gallon of gas. And, granted, once you've chosen your style of life, minimizing the amount of gas you burn as you go about your daily routine is the thing to do (even if your optimization problem is a purely financial one). All the same, it's ludicrous to ignore the basic inefficiency of the suburban lifestyle that predominates in America while we wait for automotive engineers to come up with clever solutions to pricey gas and to carbon emissions that are twice as high per capita as in similarly wealthy countries.

Elon Musk isn't going to save us all by himself. Surely living closer to where you work, using mass transit, cycling, and walking more must be part of the solution as well. ... So maybe houses and apartments should come with a "miles per day" rating suggesting how far you'd travel getting to and from shops, restaurants, entertainment venues, and your place of work every day you live there. ...

0\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4020885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4020885)

1\. [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5883/1593.summary](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5883/1593.summary) (paywalled); [http://nsmn1.uh.edu/dgraur/niv/theMPGIllusion.pdf](http://nsmn1.uh.edu/dgraur/niv/theMPGIllusion.pdf) [PDF]

<comment><USER24> Great comment. I'll add an observation:

 _we should be encouraging people to drive fewer miles_

To do this we basically need denser neighborhoods, as Edward Glaeser points out in _The Triumph of the City_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City- Greatest-Invention-Health...](http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest- Invention- Healthier/dp/159420277X?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957\)—but) he points out, as does Matt Yglesias in _The Rent is Too Damn High_ , that the big problems are with local zoning requirements, which by and large forbid density increases.

There are lots of local battles going on regarding density, and I agree that these are good things: "living closer to where you work, using mass transit, biking, and walking more," but they can all be encourage or discouraged by zoning. In most of America they're discouraged.

In the meantime better mileage is at least an improvement.

<comment><USER25> A lot of people simply don't want to live in a crowded city in an apartment crowded on every side with other apartments. I'd prefer a location in a low- density suburban area (with a lot of forest around me) where I could get to the city in a few minutes.

<comment><USER26> That's a false dichotomy. There are ways to create suburban areas with forests and local gardens that are much higher density than our current suburban outlay while still being enjoyable to live in. However, it requires giving up the McMansion style of building. The only way for this to happen though, in my opinion, is to incentivize developers into planning these types of neighborhoods vs. McMansion lands (and I say this from an experienced standpoint with a family of real-estate developers).

<comment><USER25> You misunderstood. I meant literally around me. House surrounded by at least a mile or a few miles of woods. If the houses were lined up in front of the forest you could increase the density, though. But the way I posed it originally, not so much.

What's your threshold for where a house becomes a "McMansion?" What would you think of ~1200sqft, two stories with a basement, with a good yard?

<comment><USER27> i think it's the quantity. it's not one house, it's that there's a neighborhood with a thousand of very similar houses.

<comment><USER28> How is that alone a density issue?

<comment><USER29> The lower the neighborhood density the less incentive there is for local retail. Without local retail everyone is forced to drive and in some cases drive fairly long distances when the area is full of low density houses.

Still, the internet can significantly reduce peoples need to drive because package delivery can be much more efficient than driving to a shopping mall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> From a European point of view it seem obvious that the gallons per mile trick is a small but effective cog in the larger US automobile conspiracy going on for decades. From the destruction of public transportation[1] to the many billions of dollars bailouts and current tesla battle this conspiracy is quite an obvious and documented one.

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

</comment><comment><USER31> I think there are other examples of this, such as price-to-earnings ratio, and focal length of lenses. In those cases, since a denominator can go through zero, the ratio goes through a big discontinuity. And I've seen p/e ratios reported as "n/a" when they should really be represented by a big negative number.

</comment><comment><USER32> Either I did not understand the post or it is totally uncompelling. MPG makes much more sense to me. Gallons per 100 miles (or whatever) sounds very clumsy.

<comment><USER33> A typical person drives a fixed number of miles per month, rather than using a fixed number of gallons of gas. So one advantage of "Gallons / 100 miles" is that it requires one fewer steps of arithmetic to figure out how much gas you need every month.

<comment><USER20> On the other hand, a typical person driving between Denver and New Orleans knows they just put 14 gallons in the tank and would probably like to figure out how far until their next required fuel stop.

Different use cases mean different natural measurements.

<comment><USER34> It's not that bad then either.

If you have 3 gallons per 100 miles, then 3 fits into 14 a bit less than 5 times so you will get like 470 miles.

I mean it's not going to be exact anyway depending on the conditions.

<comment><USER20> right, I'm not saying one measurement is "bad" and the other is "good". Just that one is more _natural_ for specific conditions.

Something I learned in grad school (applied mathematics): a lot of people care about metric because the conversions are easy. But a lot of systems are better measured in units that come from the system itself. Traffic flow may be best measured, not in feet or meters, but in multiples of the average car length. If you get too caught up in trying to force everything into metric just because it's usually better, you can end up creating extra work for yourself in circumstances where the system is better measured using itself. Likewise, if you insist on gpm because it's "better" than mpg, you make some calculations a little easier and others a little harder.

<comment><USER35> > Traffic flow may be best measured, not in feet or meters, but in multiples > of the average car length.

And you've just thrown out the other advantage of metric: universality. The average car length is different in USA than in Europe. If you use "the USA average" to count flow in there, and "the EU average" to count flow in Europe, then you cannot compare those measurements afterwards. If you force EU to use "the USA average car length", then the measure is extra counter-intuitive for EU people. If you just use the "world average car length" then the figure is subtly counter-intuitive for most people.

That's why it is better to stick with a universal measure, _and_ let that measure be easy to operate with. The metric system provides both features. Then just let people do what they're good at: figuring out what the "normal" ranges of values are and work from there.

<comment><USER20> > _" you've just thrown out the other advantage of metric: universality"_

Nope. I've done the opposite.

Let me explain: when you set up a traffic flow equation (or many other complex equations), you don't write it in terms of meters or feet or any other supposedly universal unit. You write it in terms of whatever the natural scale is -- whatever makes the math simplest. (You might define the average car length as "1", for example.) Then once you've finished solving your equations, you can rescale everything in whatever units are most familiar to the audience you're presenting to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Also time-per-frame instead of frames-per-second.

<comment><USER37> Frames per seconds is better in almost every way. When you use it to watch movies it is better since a normal human understands seconds but not what a frame is. In gaming, frame times usually vary quite a lot, and the average, which is fps, is the important part.

<comment><USER38> When doing real-time graphics and looking at a profiler, it _does_ help to know that you want to have less than 16 ms of calculations per frame. But agreed, in most other respects fps is nicer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Well, "liters per kilometer" would be even better.

<comment><USER30> I disagree. First, the human mind is not that good at dealing with decimal and numbers between 0 and 1. My car is rated 4.5l / 100 km, which is easier to deal with than 0.045l / km.

For a simple calculation, say 5km, what the easiest 0.045 * 5 or (4.5/10)/2 ?

Secondly, a car is designed to be driven over distance, so making measurement on only one kilometer wouldn't be representative of real world usage.

<comment><USER39> agree, anything but gallons or miles. L/Km is the standard in europe anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> How about switching to the metric system altogether?

</comment><comment><USER41> I guess this is why l / 100km is used in the EU instead of km / l.

<comment><USER42> Actually in Italy I've always seen _km per liter_ for years and years, let's say all the 80s and 90s ("my car runs 14 km per liter, and yours?" "mine is crap, I can't do more than 10km with a liter of gasoline" and same for auto magazines). I think only recently (new century?) they started using more the "liters per 100km" approach

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Citations, or you are just promoting your opinion.

I'm also curious about the numbers showing that 55mph is the most efficient. I do not particularly dispute that this is the case for the majority of vehicles. I am curious as to whether or not this is as it has to be, or because that is the way vehicles are built in the US. That is, could you do better with different high speed gearing?

<comment><USER44> > Citations, or you are just promoting your opinion.

This is an inherently flawed statement. If you follow the citations in a scientific paper at some point, the citations are going to end. A scientific article that consist only of citated information doesn't bring anything new to the table, it only summarises.

<comment><USER45> I think most people, when requesting a citation in this context, would also be fine with a description of an experiment (preferably a repeatable one) and a record of the empirical result of that experiment. That's the "base case" you're talking about in the otherwise infinite regression of citations.</comment></comment></comment>


Bloggers outdo analysts predicting Apple earnings  - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/11/wall-street-still-doesnt-understand-apple/ <comment><AUTHOR> What I really like about this article is that after the graphs, he gives a full data table with the actual data he used to generate the graphs. I would love to see that in more articles. As it is, it's very unusual to see actual raw data even in peer reviewed science articles, which is something that has always amazed me there isn't more complaints about.

</comment><comment><USER2> Can the title change APPL to either Apple or AAPL? I honestly didn't know what company the article was talking about until I clicked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, fixed.</comment></comment>


Quinism Foundation Warns of Dangers from Use of Antimalarial Drugs Against Covid - <AUTHOR> https://www.finanzen.ch/nachrichten/aktien/the-quinism-foundation-warns-of-dangers-from-use-of-antimalarial-quinolines-against-covid-19-1029017948 <comment><USER2> [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/20/ch...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/20/chloroquine- past-and-present)</comment>


Ask HN: What is bad about Haskell? - <AUTHOR> There's a post almost every other day on the front page praising Haskell. I've currently been learning it myself for a few months now, and was just wondering what do people (who are proficient at it) not like about it? <comment><USER2> I don't have a lot of experience with it myself, but I don't like the package/dependency management. I'm used to the JVM way where you bundle your third party libraries per project as opposed to installing them on your system.

Other than that, there is really not much that I don't like. I think it's one of the best languages I've tried and I wish it was more widely used in the industry.

<comment><USER3> I was recently working with a university department (I'm a business). They developed this interesting software in Haskell. Their developer quit job for something better, it took months looking for a replacement but still nobody wanted to pick up this code. That project just ended up being rewritten in Java so we could get on with development.

That's life folks. Some people just need to build products and get them to market for paying salaries and supporting their family. If you ask me what is bad about Haskell, it is the difficulty in finding developers and difficulty on making other developers to work with apps written in Haskell.

I don't program in Haskell, I have people doing the programming side (don't get me wrong, I wrote 100k LOC in Java over the 12 months) and if I ask other developers around here to learn Haskell, it is difficult to get any enthusiasm.

<comment><AUTHOR> "If you ask me what is bad about Haskell, it is the difficulty in finding developers and difficulty on making other developers to work with apps written in Haskell."

This makes me wonder even more what's wrong with it! I doubt the learning curve is scaring THAT many people away, since employable programmers already demonstrated a willingness to learn hard things. It seems to me that there must be something bad I don't know about the language.

<comment><USER4> > there must be something bad I don't know about the language.

No, there isn't. People are just scared because of what they hear from others who failed at learning it, and who now say negative things about the language to feel better about themselves. People who fail to learn it are too entrenched in another paradigm or aren't able to think abstractly enough. It's not the language's fault. It might be partly because they read the wrong learning materials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It has a pretty high learning curve. Not entirely fault of Haskell, but more that people find functional programming to be difficult, to say the least.

Then there is the "Chicken & Egg problem" behind libraries and adoption rate.

      1. High Learning Curve = Lower adoption rate
      2. Low adoption rate = Less people making libraries
      3. Less Libraries = Less People want to use Haskell - Goto 2

<comment><USER2> [https://hackage.haskell.org/packages/](https://hackage.haskell.org/packages/)

I think there are plenty of libraries.

I also think what people call "high learning curve" is more "this is so different from the good ol' OOP that I've been doing for the past decade".

Functional programming is not hard, it is actually very easy to learn as a first paradigm. It becomes more complicated when one has experience with a different paradigm and has to un-learn their habits to learn new ones.

<comment> vezzy-fnord In fairness, Haskell is still complicated compared to other functional languages, such as the ML family (F# and OCaml included) and Erlang. Might be because of its purity.

<comment><USER6> complicated is a very overloaded term, you'll have to communicate what complicated is to you before we can meaningfully compare Haskell vs other ML family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nitpick, but ran into this again today: I wish "Ord k => Monoid (Map k v)" was "(Ord k, Semigroup v) => Monoid (Map k v)", and would combine values (on key collision) using whatever semigroup instance was available for v rather than an implicit Last.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't like the Prelude. It has a lot of cruft - partial functions, weird names for things. At some point that needs a rewrite, but I don't think the community is sure how we get there from here (at least I'm certainly not).

<comment><USER8> > I don't like the Prelude. It has a lot of cruft - partial functions, weird > names for things.

For the partial problem, you could rely on `safe` ([https://hackage.haskell.org/package/safe](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/safe)). But I am sure you could take any other function on `Prelude` that you don't like and do a Hayoo/Hoogle (e.g. [http://hayoo.fh- wedel.de/?query=[a]+-%3E+Maybe+a](http://hayoo.fh- wedel.de/?query=\[a\]+-%3E+Maybe+a) )search and find the one more appropriate. :)

<comment><USER7> At this point, I'm mostly well aware of the alternatives. I just wish the right thing was also the easiest thing.</comment></comment></comment>


Modern Antiques That Today's Kids Probably Have Never Used - <AUTHOR> https://spydersden.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/modern-antiques-that-todays-kids-probably-have-never-used/ <comment><USER2> I'd add to that list the Sony Walkman, the manual typewriter, a telephone modem with the acoustic coupler, and the VCR</comment>


Show HN: Headcache, a note program featuring markdown, search, external editing - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/s9w/headcache <comment><USER2> Page not found. Maybe it's a private repo?

<comment><AUTHOR> wow.. way to sabotage my own submission :D. thanks for letting me know</comment></comment>


Sci-fi guru Arthur Clarke dies at 90 - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23697230/

<comment><USER2> Why are there two articles about this on the front page?</comment>