How to Pay Remote Workers - <AUTHOR> https://npf.io/2019/07/how-to-pay-remote-workers/ <comment><USER2> Salaries based on cost of living are always a mistery to me. If the company wants to have an honest relationship with the worker, the salary should be based on the value the employee is bringing, and that does not depend on where they live. Tying the salary to the cost of living looks like a way to cheat a worker out of the value they generate.

<comment><USER3> >Tying the salary to the cost of living looks like a way to cheat a worker out of the value they generate.

Where do you think profits come from? Profit is the difference between what you pay your workers and the value of their work.

<comment><USER4> That's not the point though. Having an honest relationship with your employees and treating everybody fairly doesn't prevent you from profiting.

It think this point is explained really well in the article: why should someone who lives in a city with a high cost of living be paid more than someone who lives in a low cost of living one? Effectively, what you are doing is giving the person in, say, SF, more money to be able to afford a better lifestyle than the person in rural Ohio (to use the same example of the article). Why is that fair? And also, if that is fair, then is me moving to live on a yacht in Montecarlo a reason for the company to pay me 500k a year to afford that lifestyle?

Workers should be paid fairly. And to do that you have to pay everybody the highest salary you are paying for that position. I think Stackoverflow does that now, I remember reading an article on their blog about it.

<comment><USER5> But as an employer, why I should strive for honestness? Does it bring me more profit? To me it sounds like paying too much. I pay market rates which doesnt consider cost of living or value produced, but the the average salary for the skillset/experience.

<comment><USER4> > But as an employer, why I should strive for honestness?

In an ideal world, you would because you would care for people. If not _everybody_ , at least the people around you. As an employer, you are hiring people who will spend the majority of their waking hours working for you, with you, at your company. In theory, you would care if they are happy or not, motivated or not, paid fairly or not. You would care if they can afford that visit to the doctor they need, if they are taking enough breaks, enough time off. Ideally, you would keep an eye on your employees to make sure nobody is overdoing, to watch out for for employees whose performance is going down and figure out if they are getting burnt out or what's actually going on. All those things would pay back in the end. Happy employees do better works. Burnt out employees don't. Recovering from that is hard, and even though you can say "who cares, I'll fire them and hire someone else", there's still the fact that the hiring process is expensive.

In an idea world though. But I guess I do understand that for many people the only thing that matters is squeezing as much money for their business out of society as they can get away with. Though, this becomes a somewhat philosophical discussion at this point, and I think that's beside the point.

<comment><USER3> If people were driven because they care about other/all people rather than about their own material benefit, we wouldn't have designed a system based on the profit motive in the first place. Because it wouldn't have motivated people.

<comment><USER2> Profits and caring about employees are not exclusive.

<comment><USER3> My point is that the entire reason why people say we need the profit motive to motivate people, is because caring for other people is not enough to motivate their behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a remote worker, I think there is an assumption of 'necessary common suffering' which continues to make remote work a 'privilege' rather than a simple logistical alternative. So long as there are on-location cubicle- dwellers who might get disgruntled to know that other employees are living some kind of fantasy high life from home (working in PJs, etc., all the tropes), then providing any remote working options becomes a potentially destabilizing force for a company.

Making a remote worker's income less attractive is one way to redress that balance of perception.

I'm not sure how much progress we are ever going to make towards remote working as core practice, since the last decade has re-built a collapsed economy on the basis of hyper-inflated urban property values in 19thC-style urban conurbations such as NYC, SF, Tokyo, London, etc (and, increasingly, smaller satellite cities that had not benefited in this way until recent years, but have now become super-distant commuter communities).

The net-enabled, 'dispersed' society is probably further away than it has ever been because of these factors.

<comment><USER7> First: It's just horrible to build a company culture around assuming pettiness. I'm not saying that it isn't true that human beings are often petty. But you shouldn't optimize around being a great place for petty people to work at.

Second: Being forced into an onsite job in a city with high rents and bad traffic is bad. Being taken advantage of on salary for living in a low cost- of-living area is also bad. One badness doesn't cancel out the other. There are just so many instances I can think of of going to a manager and making some argument that's a variation on the theme "Can you please stop treating me badly?" and the response being "We treat all these other people badly, so if we stop treating you badly, that would be unfair to them!" Well, that's just not a valid argument! I don't want to be treated badly, and if not treating me badly implies not being able to treat these other people badly, then maybe that's the route you should be taking, goddammit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that one of the greatest structural deficiencies of our economy is that high salaries are tied to onsite jobs in a few cities and that, therefore, real estate owners in those cities get to participate in that wealth creation that they are not actually a part of. So they reap where they didn't sow, and that's just unfair.

By working remotely, companies and workers are working together in cutting those landlords out of the equation, and that leaves a huge pile of money on the table that landlords are now not taking away from companies or workers (depending on how you look at it).

The question is: Should it be the worker or the company getting that pile of money?

My feeling is: It should be shared as companies and workers have to work together to make it happen.

If the whole pile of money goes to the workers, then companies are not incentivized to do anything to drive forward the remote work revolution.

If the whole pile of money goes to the companies, then workers will have an incentive to continue to play the old game whereby, if they want to earn more, they have to move to the valley and take an onsite job.

If the pile of money is shared somehow, then both sides have the right incentives to drive forward a real change for the better, and it's a win-win situation for everybody involved (except the landlords).

I'm not saying the split has to be 50/50\. Realistically, the split will be determined by market forces like supply and demand around the particular job role. We're already seeing this play out: For job roles that have low barriers of entry and for highly commoditized types of work, a greater proportion will go to the company, like what we are seeing on Upwork where everybody gets paid what an Indonesian freelancer gets paid. For jobs where it really matters to get the best people and where these people are hard to get, a greater proportion will go to the worker and you will see everybody around the world doing that kind of work earning as much as they would earn if they were doing that job onsite in the valley.

</comment><comment><USER8> Used to work in Nicaragua for a US company with a local office. We were definitely being paid a lot less than our peers working directly in the US locations, at the same time we were being paid what was at the moment a lot more than the standard for other devs in the country.

There would have been no incentive for that company to open an office in Nicaragua if they would have had to pay similar salaries than what they were paying in USA, i mean, we have a lot more employee benefits and protections. Of course i would have loved to get more money out of it, and i feel we were delivering equal value than our peers, but if i think about it, the economics wouldn't have made sense.

</comment><comment><USER9> If anything remote workers should be paid _more_ for being environmentally friendly

<comment><USER10> Where will the extra money come from ?

<comment><USER11> There are costs associated with working in an office - consider rent, cleaning, furniture, power, a receptionist, maybe an entire facilities management department, security and so on. These costs are split amongst the revenue earned per worker in that office. But homeworkers provide all those things for the company "for free". And even more the homeworker might even provide the PC, the phone line, any tech support they need, all "for free" from the perspective of the company beancounters. In a fair world homeworkers would be paid this differential.

<comment><USER10> Yes that is true. Except for the cases when workers already _start_ the job as remote. In such cases these costs are never created and therefore never avoided.

You should also consider that the costs you've outlined are not paid "per headcount" but rather collectively for the company / per company site. This means that often the company would need to completely disimss the office location or move to a smaller location.

I do not disagree with you, I'm just showing that money are not some magical points that you allocate with everything else falling into place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been a fully remote worker for almost a decade. I appreciate the fact that my compensation is on a scale implicitly tied to a higher cost of living than where I am. Nonetheless...

Companies don't set pay to be fair. They set pay to attract and retain the talent they need. Otherwise, companies that employ people in India wouldn't have a 3x pay spread for people doing the same work (hi Red Hat). Software developers in general wouldn't make more than, say, plumbers. The potential employees' perception of fairness does come into the picture a bit, but that takes a _distant_ back seat to good old supply and demand. If a company needs to pay more to attract and retain talent in area X, they pay more. If they need to pay less to attract and retain talent in area Y, they pay less. This is just basic business. Companies pay local prices for real estate or electricity, and they pay local prices for personnel.

The only thing different about remote workers is that there's no single local standard to measure against. So you have to tailor things more specifically to the individual. But if you think that you should pay remote workers more or less because they're more or less productive, or because you're saving money by not having to provide them an office, you're forgetting the purpose of pay. Attract and retain. Supply and demand. That's _it_.

P.S. I'm not trying to make a moral argument here. I'm certainly no laissez- fair "markets uber alles" greed funnel. Quite the contrary. Companies are free to make their decisions on some different basis and more power to them, but there's no escaping the fact that most will cut costs wherever they can. Of the places they might cut corners, geographic salary differences are far from the worst option. If and when salary fairness gets to the top of the list, I'd start with not paying _women_ less.

</comment><comment><USER13> One way that in-office workers can be more valuable is more accessible and a higher quality of communication.

Being able to discuss things face-to-face gives us more and higher quality (diagramming, eye contact) communication channels, in addition to avoiding things like bad audio, bad video, etc.

There is also lower friction in haphazard discussions; someone can overhear things and chime in a thought that could turn out to be useful. Sometimes, the effort of messaging or calling someone will cause us to not bother to include someone in the conversation for a chance that they could contribute.

If different timezones are involved, then a remote worker's value is lowered due to the higher friction in addition to the round trip time for communication.

</comment><comment><USER14> As a remote contractor, I'm strongly against this idea.

Living in a country with the cost of living lower than in the US allows me to take a job of an equally qualified American programmer by working for a smaller salary which is still twice as big as the highest offer from a local company.

The downside is that an equally qualified programmer from Egypt or Bangladesh can easily take that job from me, but I can find solace in the fact that this reduces the global poverty :)

</comment><comment><USER15> You might not _need_ to compete with Google, but I see an opportunity there.

Pay average Bay Area salaries to full remote workers in low CoL areas. Most likely top tech companies have no offices there, and even if they do, chances are you pay more.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Why on earth would it matter where your desk is?

It matters to product managers. Managing remote team is more difficult therefore PMs will always push against this.

<comment><USER4> Why is it more difficult? Do you have some data or anecdotes to back up your claim? I'm really interested.

I've been working remotely for years now, and my relationships with the various PMs I've had has always been: talk about what needs to be done, and then be left alone to actually do it, check back when I have progress or if I have outstanding questions that arose from better understanding the problem domain. Plus the daily stand up meetings that have always been optional to attend. Done, nothing else, nothing complicated.

Is this uncommon across the industry?

<comment><USER17> I've been working for a company where people optionally do remote work from home; the difference in communication and team cohesiveness is stark to me.

When people are colocated in an office (and I guess this is a generalization), there are more incidental chats, knowledge-sharing, status-updates, stress/challenge-sharing etc.

I do better work and get more done at home though, and from an environmental perspective it seems like an obvious choice.

<comment><USER4> There's a lot that can be written about the differences between remove vs on site work. Sure, remote does tend to feel more lonely. Sure, you are missing the whole water cooler effect (as I've seen it called) of running into a coworker at the office and just having a chat, and so forth. But I don't really see how that makes the job of a product manager any harder or how it makes managing remote workers harder.

Companies with offices still use work methodologies. They still use SCRUM, kanban boards, retrospectives, meetings, wikis/documentation, and above all tickets/issues/stories or whatever is the term your company prefers. And I'm sure they aren't writing their stories on pieces of paper, or their documentation in binders. Everything is done through a tool that saves everything online to make it available to everyone.

Your PM running into you at the office while you are taking a break and asking how the work is proceeding doesn't really add any value to neither the work you are doing nor the information they already have about it. Scheduling a weekly catch up meeting to discuss progress (depending on the size of the story of course and yadda yadda, just making an example here) makes more sense. And you can easily do that with a video call.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you learn programming? How long did getting good take? - <AUTHOR>

Go. <comment><USER2> I learned programming from a book Make Your Own Video Games which was in the library of my (not so well off) Chicago public school. We didn't have a computer, but I found out you can simulate a BASIC program with graph paper. That was twenty-something years ago.

My trajectory as a programmer has gone from sucking lots to sucking less. I might get good someday.

</comment><comment><USER3> I first played around with DOS on an 8088 back at school. I'd edit batch files and make it print out amusing things. Made a text adventure, self-replicating files etc. I then tried editing an exe file to change it, and realized it wasn't quite that simple. Later on, I found QBASIC and used it to write "real" programs, such as little animations and an alarm clock using the PC speaker. I learned some Pascal at school, which is where I found out about flow control structures and functions. Later on, as a teen, I played around a lot with Delphi, finally getting over the disappointment of not being able to edit .exe files that I had as a child. I made a lot of one-off programs I'd put on CDs with autorun as greeting cards and personal messages to friends. I later did a couple of months of VB at school, but didn't learn anything new compared to what I could already di with Delphi. I sneaked into the high school Java classes when I was in 8th grade, and thanks to a particularly tolerant teacher got to unofficially participate. I learned Java and C basics at university classes I took as part of a cooperation agreement between my high school and the local university. Later, officially in university, I took more Java classes and learned what I could of C++ on my own. I was fairly comfortable with C, but C++ was frustrating, because a lot of the complexity felt unnecessary. I stuck with Java for the most part. I wrote C++ and Java at a number of research assistant jobs, and learned bash script and awk on the side for one-off tasks. my first exposure to Python was when a student at a course I was TAing asked if they could submit work in Python. I accepted that, and learned a fair bit from dissecting that program. I didn't touch Python for a while after that. Later, at another job, I did C# one-off programs for psychological experiments. On the side, I was playing around with virtual reality and used Vizard, which is a 3d visualization package built on Python. I started playing around with Python seriously at that point. I now write mostly in Python, except for C and C++ bits for performance-dependent stuff and hardware interfacing (which I use from Python with ctypes.)

How long did getting good take? It's hard to say. I feel I've learned something from each of those experiences, and gotten better in the process. I'd say I've gotten to the level where I'm confident in my skills as a programmer within the last couple years, as I've seen meaningful things done with my code.

</comment><comment><USER4> '77-78 school year: Punched card FORTRAN IV (really more like a II) on the IBM 1130. Prompted me to start and never stop studying software engineering ("structured programming" et. al. was the rage back then).

Summer '78: most everything but C and the like on a rich UNIX V6 system. Focus then besides exploration was still writing the best quality systems, started learning how to work on other people's code bases helping others with their final class projects.

After some time off for first year of college, starting in the summer of '80 heavy duty C (Lions' notes best reference then) on UNIX V7 and BSD 2.x. Plus playing around with Lisp Machines.

'82-83 Lisp at LMI, although wasn't able to get a whole lot of time in (Lisp Machines were scarce back then). First serious work with SICP and Scheme.

'84: C on a variety of 68000 BSD UNIX workstations. Learned how to grok and port code between these subtlety different systems. Also some Common Lisp on PCs, followed by the T Lisp dialect.

'85 on, moved from working on ersatz versions of EMACS to the real thing (mostly Gosling, which was what Gnu EMACS started from), some heavy duty debugging required to find wild pointers (e.g. ATRON on 8088). More work on other people's code and first client-server project.

Long break for more school and aftermath in a period when Route 128 was dying.

'90 or so, MS-DOS and Sun OS C (WORM filesystem and system interfaces), followed by C on Windows 3/3.1 and Sun OS 4.x. Starting transition from journeyman to master.

After various C and Oracle consulting work, transition complete in mid-90s with a serious greenfield C++ client server system using OOSE methodology (The Unified Process nowadays). That's when I considered myself to have become "good".

With all the interruptions and distractions (was trying to become a scientist in this period, but finances got in the way), took perhaps 10 years of concentrated effort in 20 calendar years.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was a MAD Magazine fan and in a Super Special issue in the early 90's they included BASIC program source code printed in the magazine. I sat down and typed the whole thing in line by line and printed a full-screen pic of Alfred. E. Neuman. That was why I started going through the BASIC manual at the age of 9 or 10. It took getting a job writing JSP/Servlets to get 'better', but still not 'good' 20 years on.

</comment><comment><USER6> I learned programming in BASIC at age 10 when a computer-science-teacher uncle of mine explained how Super Mario worked. It was all a bit over my head but after about a week I was drawing some Mario-inspired shapes on the screen. The next big push came when I taught myself to do early CGI-based stuff: it was just so exciting to be able to share something with dozens (!) of people. If you define being good as "being able to pick up a new language in a few days" then yeah, I guess I'm good & I think that's a goal well worth pursuing. Picking up a new language will expose yourself to new constructs & practises, it trains your programming muscle. If you define good as "expert at programming task X" then, sadly, I am not very good. The best part about programming is that you never stop learning. That uncle of mine is now well into retirement and he's still programming microcontrollers for fun.

</comment><comment><USER7> Learned Sinclair BASIC when I was 10ish. Graduated to the C64 and a BBC Micro through school, ended up doing C and a load of ARM assembler by 16. Picked up PHP, Delphi and Java at college, got PHP and Java work after then. Got into Python 5 years ago, then Ruby 4 years ago, and dabbled in C# in the interim. In the last year I've picked up Common Lisp and Clojure after trying (and generally failing) to make headway in Haskell.

I've only started to think of myself as a "good" programmer in the last couple of years, but I'm not so sure it's a healthy perspective - it's mainly in response to increasingly interacting with other peoples' code and realising how shoddy a lot of it actually is.

And I'm still learning :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> I started programming BASIC when I was 9 after finding some code in my school math text book. I had a VTech PreComputer1000 [1] which had a button labeled "BASIC" - so I put two and two together a figured out that I could type in the code from my math book into the computer and make it run.

From there I was hooked.

How long did getting good take? Well, that was 16 years ago, and I think I'm still working on improving everyday. But, how long before I felt proficient at it? Probably a few years or so...

[1] <http://rasterweb.net/raster/computers/images/vtech.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER9> I learned just before leaving the military. A contractor said, "Learn Perl and you'll have no problem finding a job". So, I grabbed the "Learning Perl" book and forced my way through it. I was horrible (a Linux 'man' page wrapper; or basically system()). I do remember the day, while working on a project, that it all "clicked". All the concepts suddenly made sense. I'm good now, but not great. I can solve problems in just about any programming language. This is 10+ years later.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why did you need to create a new account to ask a question?

Anyway, it depends on how much you practise (in both senses of the word) and/or challenge yourself. If you're learning to build web sites, say, maybe by the 5th or so project you're beginning to feel like you know what you're doing. Maybe by the 10th you are confident enough of your skills that you feel like you can apply for a job, if that's what you want.

The key is to just start work on something ASAP.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you say are the most common website "categories"? - <AUTHOR>

I'm adding website categories to launchly so my users can try to focus on sites that have a better chance of being interesting to them.  I've got it all coded up but I'm having trouble coming up with a list of like 8 (for space reasons) that are both broad enough to encompass most sites but specific enough to be useful.<p>What would you guys use for a list of 8 general website categories? <comment><USER2> 1\. World News

2\. Social Network News

3\. Banking

4\. Acquiring Things

5\. Fixing Things

6\. Entertainment

7\. Learning

8\. Tools

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting list and doesn't have much overlap with mine. What sites would you categorize as "Acquiring Things" and "Fixing Things"?

<comment><USER2> I was tempted to think in terms of purchases, but really anything that you'd download (e.g. free stuff) or buy (e.g. Amazon), hence just acquiring things.

And fixing things is mostly for balance; whatever you're not acquiring, you probably have some reason to fix (e.g. looking up tech support for software you already have, trying to find a new mouse driver, figuring out how to solve a problem, looking for a good TV repair service, whatever).</comment></comment></comment>


How I Found the Best Programming Language in the World. Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://kukuruku.co/hub/funcprog/how-i-found-the-best-programming-language-in-the-world-part-1 <comment><USER2> He doesn't say what it is.</comment>


Google acquires AppJet/Etherpad - <AUTHOR> http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/google-acquires-appjet <comment><USER3> Well, that sucks.

I was psyched when I first read the subject, since I figured they'd be lending Google Docs their awesome text editor. Instead they're going to Google Wave, where the interface blows. Etherpad's lightyears more useful, more flexible, and more valuable. Blah.

<comment><USER4> Don't be selfish. Someone just had their hard work payoff; for me it's better to know they have been rewarded for their effort, instead of me just being able to use a nifty web app.

To the Etherpad guys: listen up! it goes like this, tonight, wherever you are, you're buying a round for everyone, capice?

<comment><USER3> It's awesome for them that they're getting a big check from Google, but that has no relevance to me as an etherpad user.

<comment><USER4> I think the benefits of having a successful peer far outweigh your ability to use a free online text editor. Whatever loss in productivity is caused by the absence of Etherpad (or god forbid, having to use a G-branded version, or another service) can be made up for with the rush and motivation you _should_ get from seeing one of your own get off the Ramen diet at last (or at least not have to worry if their effort will ever pay off; stuff like Etherpad will get built into browsers and OSes RSN)

Any big fish could have taken their client base without paying a dime; everyone from Skype to Computer Associates could have obsoleted them without even trying. Heck, Open Source IM packages like Pidgin could easily add a service like Etherpad and those boys would have labored for nothing.

If you don't like what I am saying, the next time you cash out, just know that I am just as happy for you :-)

<comment><USER5> You do know that probably most of Etherpad's users aren't their peers, yeah? So to them, they've just lost a really great service.

<comment><USER4> Correct, that's one misunderstanding on my part that I have been trying to rectify for the last hour and half: forgetting there was another side to this, the end users'.

I will have to repent and become a consumer activist: I will boycott products A/B tested on humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations to the AppJet/Etherpad team. When I thought about your "exit" options, Google was at the top of the list. This doesn't surprise me given how talented you folks are and the real-time web expertise that Google needs more of these days.

It really _really_ sucks to see Google shutting down Etherpad though. We used it at Poll Everywhere quite a bit for collaborative coding, now we'll have to find something else. Any chance you could convince Google to keep Etherpad around in some form?

 _sigh_ Google kills another innovative product.

<comment><USER7> try Gobby. gnu/linux only, iirc

<comment><USER8> _Gobby is a free collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-like platforms._

<http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/>

<comment><USER9> Runs on OS X is a bit of an exaggeration though. It can supposedly be installed through MacPorts, but the two times I ever tried, MacPorts installed about half of normal Linux distro, before failing on some broken dependency.

If you want to go through several hours of compiling and several hundred megabytes of dependencies, with your fingers crossed that things won't inexplicably break 3 hours in, feel free to try to install Gobby on a Mac. Personally, I'll stick to SubEthaEdit, or whatever web-based editor, if I need collaboration.

* * *

I really think desktop collaborative editors should try to provide a web-based alternative front-end, for just this reason, that it's nice for _everyone_ to be able to contribute, and there's no better way to ensure that than through the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I am happy for the Etherpad team, this is still disappointing. The most useful aspect of Etherpad was its minimalism, so it is a shame to see it absorbed into bloatware.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very upset to hear EtherPad is shutting down. I've used it a bunch (projected on a wall it makes a great collaborative note pad for BarCamp sessions) - <USER2> have to find a good replacement.

<comment><USER12> this feels silly, but is this opening an area for a new startup to clone them? They'd only be down one exit option. Albeit a very big nice exit option, but there are obviously people that would use their product.

<comment><USER13> The obvious way to make it more valuable is to integrate a web version with other editors--be they rich text or not. I'm not sure how easy it is to plug into Word, but seems like that could add lots of value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone have any theories on why appjet never took off as a product?

Everytime I think about it, it seems like the perfect idea; save people the pain of setting up a server, hosting it, etc every time they want to make a web app.

Was it a bad implementation of this idea? Or was the idea just ahead of its time? Or was it something else?

<comment><USER15> I was a heavy appjet user. It was indeed an awesome system.

I think there were two reasons it didn't succeed:

1\. It's niche was razor-thin. It required some skill to use, but was so minimalistic that many programmers would prefer to take the extra time to set up a "real" server.

2\. Too ahead of its time

I suspect tools like appjet will be commonplace in a couple of years. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the "Google Wave" thing is a ruse and that these guys are actually working on an online editor for Google App Engine... This could, in theory, turn Chrome OS into an awesome dev environment, no?

<comment><USER16> I'd love to chat with you for a bit about what you liked about AJ, but your email isn't public. If you have some time, I'd love to discuss. email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congratulations to the Etherpad team. It's too bad that AppJet never took off more as a product; It seemed like it had a lot of potential. Etherpad was a lot of fun- I used it internally on a few projects, after seeing PG's demo with playback.

Hopefully you can add that feature to Google Wave while you're there; It was by far my favorite aspect of Etherpad. Even thought I can copy and paste my Etherpads into G:Wave, I can't keep the history, so that'll be gone forever in March, it seems.

<comment><USER17> Playback is an essential element of Wave; it's in there from the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now you have an idea for your startup. A cool application was just killed and you can replace it.

<comment><USER19> This actually is the idea I've been working towards for the last couple of months. The backend is mostly sorted, but it would take another month or so to get a working product out the door.

Does HN think this is still a viable idea if the Big G has entered the game as well?

<comment><USER18> Sure, the Big G didn't entered the game, forced the exit of the best player instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's no better tool for text collaboration right now.

I've been using it for my interview transcripts. With Etherpad, I can let 12 people on Mechanical Turk each transcribe a 5-minute section of my interview. And they can all be on at once and none of them needs and account.

I can even hit the play button and see how they work: <http://mixergy.etherpad.com/ep/pad/view/23/latest>

<comment><USER21> Does anyone know of a similar tool that provides the "replay" feature for text editing? I don't actually need collaboration, just screencast-like replay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand all the negativity about etherpad being killed in this thread. Sounds like an opportunity to me...if you reckon it's so useful, and google are going to kill it, then go build etherpadv2 and charge for it. :)

</comment><comment><USER23> As it happens, anyone knew an Etherpad replacement or alternative?

<comment><USER24> Squad, <https://squadedit.com/>

<comment><USER25> Squad is one of my passion projects. And while I love it, I've never really thought of it as a competitor/replacement for EtherPad.

Squad serves a great purpose for developers working together on code, but it isn't embedable, and doesn't do wysiwyg text formating. It's focused on syntax highlighting and opening and saving local files. So for some it may be an alternative, but not for everybody.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This seems to me like a classic case of a company buying another company just for it's patents. I'd be willing to bet that the main reason Google is buying Etherpad is their synchronization patent and any other patents Etherpad owns that cover the functionality of Google Wave. Google probably won't use any of the Etherpad code in Wave.

</comment><comment><USER23> > A number of ex-Googlers are AppJet executives, including CEO Aaron Iba, CTO > J.D. Zamfirescu, and COO Daniel Clemens

Goodbye Google, hello Google again.

<comment><USER27> So, they had to leave Google to be able to create something Google wants enough to buy?

What does that say about Google going the way of Microsoft or $any-other-big- company?

<comment><USER28> They're shutting down etherpad. They can't have wanted it that much, surely :/ Maybe they just wanted the employees back, or wanted to kill potential competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anyone hearing anything on their valuation? Have the details of the deal been disclosed?

</comment><comment><USER27> The only thing that doesn't suck about this is that appjet consider it a good thing. I hope they get piles of cash from it.

I kind of wish I'd got the private network edition and a handful of perpetual licenses before they pulled the plug though.

I also wish Microsoft had licensed Etherpad technology for use in Sharepoint - goodness knows, it could use the improvement. Google Wave must already have piles of web/ajax developers.

</comment><comment><USER28> Congrats to the team, but it's a shame Etherpad didn't survive on its own IMHO. I thought premium accounts etc were coming?

<comment><USER30> TechCrunch is claiming 8 figures, which would be a bit high for a simple talent acquisition. Seems like a talent+tech acquisition, more along the lines of FriendFeed than Parakey or Pownce.

Edit: Parent formerly read: "...Seems like PR spin. Instead of shutting down a startup and going to work for big.co and risk being called out as a failure, work out a deal with big.co to 'aquire' the startup then shut it down. Maybe we need a new word for a talent acquisition, where the startup is shut down and just acquired as a more optimized way of hiring. ..."

<comment><USER28> Sorry for the edit, I decided I don't know enough about why Google would buy it to comment. I would think they have a good amount of talent/tech already working on wave.

Perhaps more a 'buy to kill potential competitor'?

Still sad to see Etherpad die :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I am somewhat interested in their comet container which is based on JVM + Rhino. I am guessing they've rolled their own (using their raw NIO or Netty), rather than go with Jetty's "Continuations". I wonder if there's any chance Google will open source it, much like Facebook outsourced FriendFeed's Tornado?

I am also curious about their distribution model (how do you provider a consistent experience if this is to run on multiple machines?) -- or lack thereof (do they use load balancer "magic" to ensure that all collaborating on a single specific session go to a single machine, potentially creating hot spots)?

</comment><comment><USER32> Ugh. I use etherpad. I want my etherpads to keep working! Argg

(end of selfish rant, congrats btw)

</comment><comment><USER33> We've been working on a solution with Operational Transform as well... but looking at the kind of demand you guys have for it, sounds like we (and other startups) should rush to fill the void left by Etherpad.

</comment><comment><USER34> Great for the team, but this sucks as a user. I've come to frequently use Etherpad for ad-hoc chat rooms, and now its impossible to make new pads.

I really hope EtherPad doesn't go the way of Jaiku. I really liked the product.

</comment><comment><USER35> As a startup founder I'm happy to see financially successful exits. But as a user I have to wonder whether the software I like is a mere byproduct of an elaborate job application process.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have never used Etherpad, and from the comments I'm a little saddened to find that now I can't check it out.

Does anyone have an old Etherpad that I can play with, or even just a video of how it's used?

<comment><USER37> Here's a test pad: <http://etherpad.com/FQMBcRK9x2>

<comment><USER36> Thank you! This is actually quite interesting since it's a meta-conversation about Etherpad, and Aaron of Etherpad includes this:

"Edits to the document are represented as mathematical functions that can be applied in any order, and have other special properties that make this realtime."

Unfortunately I don't have the math background to really connect what that means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Congratulations Etherpad!!

\--

Why does everyone assume google will destroy the clean interface of Etherpad? Why, instead do people think the Wave interface won't be customizable, since it is an open api?

<http://code.google.com/apis/wave/guide.html>

"""The Google Wave API is an open platform allowing developers to extend the functionality of Google Wave itself . . ."""

</comment><comment><USER39> Hopefully one of their former customers with a copy of the "Private Network Edition" will leak it for posterity.

</comment><comment><USER40> Well deserved. Etherpad is one of those products that really impresses you. You guys have earned it. Cheers,

</comment><comment><USER41> It seems like most of these guys came from Google in the first place, must be an interesting experience to leave a company, found a new company, and then have that company bought back. (I know it happens quite a bit)

</comment><comment><USER42> What's the point in shutting it down? Will Google buy every company that creates an editor like that? That can't work well forever.

</comment><comment><USER43> I was wondering what the competition between those two would be...I guess there won't be any!

</comment><comment><USER44> Anyone know if more information will be released on the algorithms they use(d)?

<comment><USER4> If they tell us the $ figures, I am sure you will be motivated enough to discover the algorithms all on your own in an instant, or at least I would :-) High rewards have a tendency to induce epiphanies.

[Edit: Here is how I think it works, from my brief 2-day usage of it.

Comet: persistent connection between client and server.

First client connects to the server and creats a session. Server creates a "channel" with a file-handle/chan-id. Subsequent clients follow a URL to join the channel.

Without the live editing, you can see how any write in one client's textarea can be sent to the server and broadcast to all the channel members.

To allow for live editing, server keeps a "buffer" for the channel, initially empty.

All clients have onKeyPress or similar keylogging javascript event handler. A client might do internal buffering, say up to N characters or up to an X terminator (space maybe)

At the start, the server sends a test packet to each client and sees how long it takes, for timing purposes, call the time it takes to get a PONG response L for lag. So in the future, when a client sends a text snippet, it's timestamped, and the server subtracts the lag to get the actual sending time.

On the client side, display is refreshed after server response. When you type something, it's being rendered by the browser, but once your buffered input is sent, and the server responds, the display is refreshed by client-side javascript, which also keep an internal "document text model".

The server sends updates to your client's text model, and the view is rendered from this model. This allows the server to do all text-rearrangement on it side, so javascript isn't tasked with sorting time-stamped strings.

Along with timestamps, each text segment is also ID'ed by user, this allows the rendering engine to assign colors to the text.

Just wild speculation after giving this no more than 5 minutes of thought and another 10 to type it.

]

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Sadest thing I have heard in a while. I guess I'll give squadedit a try now.

</comment><comment><USER46> Anyone know if these guys will be moving to Sydney to join the Wave team?

</comment><comment><USER47> Congrats guys! Make cool stuff, and people have to pay attention.

</comment><comment><USER48> They should pull a foursquare ;-)

</comment><comment><USER49> Congrats to J.D. and Aaron.

</comment><comment><USER50> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER51> Congrats guys!

</comment><comment><USER52> Price?

</comment><comment><USER53> Fuck this. Part of starting new things is to disrupt the status quo. At this point google is the status quo and they are not disrupting anything so the EtherPad guys are just douchebag sellouts.</comment>


Total Annihilation Graphics Engine (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://mavorsrants.blogspot.com/2012/04/total-annihilation-graphics-engine.html <comment><USER2> Interesting read. TA is still to this day my favorite RTS ever made. I think I have it from good old games on my mac.</comment>


Angular.js Cliffnotes - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/nodesocket/dff73af04789ec5e32fc

<comment><AUTHOR> Please feel free to correct any typos, errors, or non best practices.</comment>


CAPTCHAs work—for digitizing old, damaged texts, manuscripts - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080814-captchas-workfor-digitizing-old-damaged-texts-manuscripts.html <comment><USER2> I'm imagining this film about the progress of human knowledge. Somehow we need to express this continuity across the ages -- from the Monks who transcribed classical texts on parchment, to centuries later when junkies are fooled into deciphering fragments of those same parchments for access to porn.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, but I would think that scanning to a PDF file would better preserve the work for future readers and researchers. That way you're looking at the original, not a text copy of it. Or have the text copy available. Seems it would be a lot less work. And for me, digital is too transient, too fragile. For photography, I still feel that a piece of film can last longer than a digital file. We have film from more than a hundred years ago but I highly doubt in one hundred years that any digital files created today will still exist. I work for Corbis, and we bought the Otto Bettmann archive, which at the time of purchase, was the most significant archive of images in the world. We began something called "The Keystone Project" which would have digitized the bulk of the archive. Soon though the need to move the archive from the building in Manhattan (which was not air conditioned and had a leaky roof, among other problems) became a very high priority, and the archive now rests deep underground at Iron Mountain in Virginia. The originals are stored at below zero and the original card catalogs are still there for research purposes (though there are numerous portable versions for researchers around the world). Hopefully this preservation will last hundreds of years.

<comment><USER4> Once it is scanned, the work is preserved as an image, and you still can not search it. OCR often fails because it is so old and worn. Interestingly enough, in order to actually do this, you need to scan, photograph, or otherwise digitize it to begin with, so the output of this is both what you seek (a scanned image) AND the actual content. Everyone wins.</comment></comment>


What is the Right Amount of Money to Raise at a Startup? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/03/11/what-is-the-right-amount-of-money-to-raise-at-a-startup/

<comment><USER2> As a die-hard boot-strapper I am bothered by those who think seed capital is big a component of a technology business. If you can afford your hosting bill and can build the app what else is there? If you need help paying for hosting then your business is going well enough that you should really think hard about taking money for equity.

<comment><USER3> build it and they will come?

\- you do need money to advertise, unless your app is really viral, and a lot of apps aren't.

\- you need money to pay people that have skills that you do not, such as design, or tech, or marketing.

<comment><USER4> Patrick McKenzie advertises his business and hasn't taken a dime from an outside investor.

<comment><USER3> Great, let's use anecdotal evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about for startups that are not building the typical web app? What if you do need capital for manufacturing and prototyping and regulatory approval?

What's a decent 'runway' for that kind of deal? I can't see pushing our product out within 3 years, due to the above, and it will definitely take substantial capital investment.

Is taking as much as possible such a bad thing in that case?

<comment><USER6> > Is taking as much as possible such a bad thing in that case?

Yes.

The right amount is "the minimum that will let you achieve your goals". That amount depends on the biz and goals but it is never "as much as possible".

In other words, the fact that certain biz require $1M to get to viability while others can get there with $10 does not imply that the former should take $100M.

Too much money, like too little money, causes problems. Does your startup need more problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too much money in very early stages is definitly a problem. I am experiencing this at my current job. The company grows very fast and you soon have a lot of people with a lot of different ideas. Problems are solved by getting more employees.

</comment><comment><USER8> Less than you want and more than you think.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wildly variable. For biotech, a common deal is to raise $40+ million in exchange for 95% equity. This leaves the founders with 5%. On the other hand, 5% of a $40M company, with huge growth potential, is still substantial.

On the other hand, web apps often don't need VC until late in the game.</comment>


Ask HN: Possible for Non-hacker to learn iPhone dev? - <AUTHOR>

Long time reader, first time submitter.
Some background: I'm not a hacker. I have no real programming experience, other than a bit of html and css. And I've fiddled with already-written RoR apps.
I have a bunch of (what I think are) simple iPhone apps rolling around in my head. So I'm attempting to teach myself objective-c and iPhone development.
The first step I'm taking is working through the book "Beginning iPhone Development" (http://bit.ly/bWz0ID). There are a few other books in the same series that I plan on working through, should I feel the first one to be helpful. There are a ton of other books available, but I've decided to pick just one for now. Better, I think, to focus first on one "instructor" and style as I figure out the basics. I've also scoured the web for a bunch of video tutorials which I'll dig into later.
Will I be successful? Anyone have any words of wisdom as I set out on my journey? Suggestions/tips/other resources I'm missing? Thank you for reading. <comment><USER2> I suggest you start here:

[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Objective-C-2-0-Stephen- Ko...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Objective-C-2-0-Stephen- Kochan/dp/0321566157)

Perhaps you can move to the book you have after you are reasonably comfortable with objective-c (and a little bit of cocoa).

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's as good a place as any to start. All real programming is complex, and at least the iPhone has good development tools and documentation. Having a goal in mind is the most important part, and you've got that.</comment>


Visual Studio's most useful (and underused) tips - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VisualStudiosMostUsefulAndUnderusedTips.aspx <comment><USER2> I always move lines with the keyboard, is there a way to avoid the empty row when hitting return between bracing stuff like {} or html-tags?

It's not needed if I'm just nesting further and move some lines in and I don't want to strip empty lines automatically either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Visual Studio's most useful tip : Use Resharper :)

</comment><comment><USER4> In earlier versions of VS some of these (like source map or middle click scrolling) are available via Productivity Tools addon.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is great! These are the ones I literally use everyday...</comment>


I come from Java and want to know what monads are in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://intoverflow.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/i-come-from-java-and-want-to-know-what-monads-are-in-haskell/

<comment><USER2> A nice tutorial. By the way, Monads are an interesting pattern. But far from the only type class that useful in Haskell. The Typeclassopidea (in <http://www.haskell.org/sitewiki/images/8/85/TMR-Issue13.pdf>) gives a nice overview. I find Arrows especially interesting at the moment, but that probably because I already know Monads, Functors and pointed Functors quite well.

Conal Elliott has an interesting blog post talking showing how to use Arrows as semantic editor combinators (<http://conal.net/blog/posts/semantic-editor- combinators/>). It's enough to get you started on arrows with a useful application. (Of course, as with Monads, arrows are much more than this one application. But seeing one concrete application is a good start for your imagination.)

<comment><USER3> Monads are a special case of Arrows.

You can think of Arrows as generalised functions: the type of a function is X -> Y, whilst the type of an arrow is A X Y, where A takes the place of the infix type ->. So another way you can write the type of a function is (->) X Y, from this (+ technicalities) we see that functions are Arrows.

Monads are a special case of arrows where A X Y becomes X -> M Y or (without the infix syntactic sugar) (->) X (M Y); Monads can take control of the outputs from operations, whilst Arrows can take control of both the input and output to operations.

I found Monads made a lot more sense after I learnt about Arrows because Arrows are what I wanted Monads to be.

btw, the "killer app" for monads, imho, is parsec: <http://legacy.cs.uu.nl/daan/parsec.html>

whilst the "killer app" for arrows is probably FRP: [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Functional_Reactive_Progr...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Functional_Reactive_Programming)

<comment><USER2> Yes. And Monads are also a special case of Functors (and of Pointed Functors). Interestingly, Functors and Arrows are different generalizations of Monads, and neither is a generalization of the other.

I also agree with Parsec being the killer application of Monads. In a purely functional setting Input/Output and similar things suffice as a motivation for monads, but that won't excite any Java programmer. But using Monads for a parser, like Parsec does, would also be a good idea in Java.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A PSA for those who explain monads:

I've read several monad tutorials and read countless comments describing their uses, and I have not understood their advantages until reading this article. I'll fess up to my part of the problem: I never wrote any after reading these tutorials, but I wouldn't have known what to try. I knew they are an abstraction for computation (what isn't?), and they let you do things like safe division and LINQ, and they're like a burrito (what isn't?), but I could never look at code and say, "Obviously this needs a monad!" Demonstrating how monads introduce context, after showing what you mean by context and why it's useful, is a very helpful approach. Pronouns were a nice analogy. I don't fully grok monads yet, but now I'll look at code and decide that it might be nicer if I introduce a context

</comment><comment><USER5> "We will be treating monads as a design pattern instead of monoids in the category of endofunctors. The latter perspective is interesting to the people who like to design languages; the former perspective is interesting to people who like to write code." That kind of perspective is really important but I have to say that one rarely hears it from the academic community. To my knowledge providing perspective is supposed to be part of their job description.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the kind of rage that overexposure to Monads can lead to and I quote:

 _"If you like this style, that's cool, but if you want to tell me that I should like it as well, be prepared to get punched in the face."_

;-)

Edit: on a serious note, this is a really good post.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one who liked the immutable Java class the best?

<comment><USER8> No, and so far from what I see monads seem to be a way to make your functional code imperative again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Monads are the result of adult mumps.</comment>


Future of Coding Is Here, and It Threatens to Wipe Out Everything in Its Path - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/27/the-future-of-coding-is-here-and-threatens-to-wipe-out-everything-in-its-path/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook <comment><USER2> Can someone please eli5 how fundamentally different it is as compared to traditional software engineering?</comment>


Could Bing Overtake Google in 2012? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/04/11/bing-search-growth/

<comment><USER2> <http://xkcd.com/605/></comment>


Wallets Management for Crypto Exchanges - <AUTHOR> https://cryptoapis.io/blog/wallets-management-webhooks/ <comment><USER2> The word "exchange" has become a swearword and fraudulent concept after all the millions of scams in the crypto currencies world.</comment>


An app every programmer must use - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mohammedlakkadshaw.com/An_app_every_programmer_must_use.html

<comment><USER2> 1\. Unable connecting server 2\. Too long loading time 3\. Ad at startup

<comment><AUTHOR> Well sorry about that, the ad don't usually come at the startup, it's bug I will fix it in the next update. Also I am working on better ads, which don't get in the way.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made an example landing page you can use to improve your copywriting - <AUTHOR> https://uselander.xyz <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

I made a landing page based on high-conversion copywriting best practices: [https://uselander.xyz](https://uselander.xyz)

It's a proven SaaS website blueprint you can clone on Webflow or download as a .zip to edit for your own projects.

It outlines the the considerations and points your page should address in order to sell your value & turn visitors into customers.

These topics are covered: \- Headlines \- Social proof \- Objection handling \- Customer language \- Benefits instead of features \- Addressing pain points \- Differentiation \- Call to Actions

You'll also find some links to awesome free tools, guides, and resources

I'm really excited to share it with you. I put a lot of work in to it. The findings are based on research and my personal experiences creating high- converting landing pages for clients as a freelancer.</comment>


Dean Kamen's robotic "Luke" arm - How long before this can perform martial arts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0_mLumx-6Y

<comment><USER2> I'm missing a foot (don't BASE jump kids!), but I can't imagine how difficult it would be to be without an arm, much less two. I have to wonder if they'll ever be able to get the reliability of this arm design sufficiently high that it won't be a constant maintenance burden for the user. I break some aspect of my prosthesis every few months, and it's a pretty simple design. This arm has perhaps perhaps three orders of magnitude more components.

Furthermore, the market for these will be quite limited as insurance companies are unlikely to provide one for an amputee, especially one who has an arm remaining. I'm told it's very hard to get the Otto Bock C-Leg ([http://www.ottobockus.com/PRODUCTS/LOWER_LIMB_PROSTHETICS/c-...](http://www.ottobockus.com/PRODUCTS/LOWER_LIMB_PROSTHETICS/c-leg2.asp)) paid for now, and it's "only" $40K for a complete system. The likely segments are those who have military injuries or workman's compensation claims (the same thing, I guess) where the burden to restore one to "normal" is much greater.

For me, I'm much more interested in schemes to attach lower limb prosthetics to existing bones (a tibia in my case) as most maintenance issues are related to the socket rather than the foot or other parts.

<comment><USER3> That's really a sad fact. Insurance companies are in it for the profit sadly.

<comment><USER2> One part of the problem is that prosthetists are paid a flat rate for providing a leg/arm/whatever based on a set of standardized product encodings for the parts/labor.

This leads to two incentives:

1\. Pick the cheapest components that meet the category requirements. So, in each reimbursement category (micro-controller knee, etc.), its a race to the bottom as there's a financial incentive to choose the least expensive knee rather than the best one. Component providers race to reduce costs once a new category is assigned a reimbursement code (another problem altogether).

2\. Pick the cheapest patients. An active person like me is much more demanding than a demented old guy in a nursing home. I make appointments to get things fixed if there's something wrong and demand a functional, comfortable leg. The old guy gets a leg because Medicare pays for it even though he may never actually walk more than a few feet on it! This is actually a common scenario. So, the old guy accepts whatever leg he's given and doesn't complain. Furthermore, since the amount reimbursed for labor increases with the complexity of the system (term used for bundle of parts that make up leg/arm), there's an incentive to provide too good of a system for a patient's needs (people in wheelchair don't need a $40K leg).

Luckily, my prosthetist doesn't optimize for short-term financial gain. However, I'm told that practices like this are common. So, the insurance companies protect themselves in coarse-grained ways, often at the detriment of patients with real needs.

I don't know what to do about this problem. I think it's part of a broader issue with healthcare in the US -- we are unwilling to accept the notion that human happiness might not be maximized by providing everyone with the "best" possible medical care. We provide life support to 90 year-old people who are unlikely to live much longer no matter what we do. We buy new wheelchairs when refurbished ones would be sufficient. Insurance companies spend money one people even when they might themselves choose to forgo the spending in lieu of the cash. We expect our insurance companies to pay for everything that's "medically necessary" and (I think) mandate such care by law. So, because market forces aren't allowed to throttle demand down to rational levels, the insurance company implements bad proxies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, so the segway didn't change the world, but I completely believe that Dean Kamen can, in fact, change the world. This plus the water purifier, plus the thousands of kids brought into robotics and science via the FIRST program... I kind of feel like he's a modern Edison, despite being a dropout from a second tier technical school. I guess someone forgot to tell him that pleasing your professor is more important than pursuing your dreams.

What's important about this, too, is that we, as software folk, often forget that there are many, many different kinds of technical "start-ups," that have nothing to do with the web or personal computers. It's nice to be reminded that the technical world has room for small, lion-y robotics and biotechnology start-ups, as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> How long before it can perform martial arts? Give it a configuration like this one:

[http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/trailer/100130...](http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/movie/trailer/10013014/trailer_35.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> Seeing technology used to do things like this just makes me very happy.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Crushes goblet full of wine_

Groovy.</comment>


AMD Could Add ARM Faster Than Intel - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/rogerkay/2011/04/04/amd-could-add-arm-faster-than-intel/

<comment><USER2> A classic case of Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton M. Christensen) where ARM's low power chips are slowly attacking x86 from below. Intel/AMD tried to move upstream (Itanium) but found there were less customers who were looking for high power silicon, instead the rest of the industry is pivoting towards power per watt. Huge disruptions for the incumbents.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not really sure the premise of the article, that Intel and AMD would actually want to add an ARM side to their business, is actually that true.

ARM chips have to be sold at very low cost - no one pays a premium for a particular brand ARM chip, but because of the recent market changes the R&D costs of ARM have gone through the roof and people like Apple and Nvidia are spending a small fortune in pushing the technology forward.

I think both Intel and AMD will be waiting for the market to develop further, then they can choose to enter the market if they need to.

<comment><USER4> _> I'm not really sure the premise of the article, that Intel and AMD would actually want to add an ARM side to their business, is actually that true._

To me the article was saying that although there may be pressure to develop ARM chips, they _don't_ want to:

 _"It's not that Intel can't switch to ARM; it's that it most likely won't."_

 _"Intel has ... a philosophical predisposition not to back an alternative."_

I thought it was a pretty good analysis.

<comment><USER5> Intel actually got _out_ of the ARM business in 2006, pretty much exactly 1 year before release of the first iPhone: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale#Sale_of_PXA_processor_li...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XScale#Sale_of_PXA_processor_line)

They apparently still hold an ARM license, but that may well just be so they can keep an eye on the competition.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that Intel and AMD _could_ probably produce an x86 chip that's comparable in efficiency to the ARM offerings by taking out some of the legacy cruft and substantially reducing clock speeds. After all, the Atom (and Llano) only consume around 10 watts and are still a few times faster than the current tablet CPUs. They may well enter the market at some point, but right now it's probably more profitable to carry on with their existing business.</comment></comment></comment>


Man with jet-pack to cross Grand Canyon on Saturday - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/travel/holiday-ideas/swiss-jetman-yves-rossy-to-fly-over-grand-canyon/story-e6frfqer-1226051167998

<comment><USER2> The article quite explicitly says he is NOT going to cross it. He is going to do aerobatics over it and then land in it.</comment>


FBI Mysteriously Closes New Mexico Observatory - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/telescopes/a23107258/fbi-new-mexico-observatory/ <comment><USER2> Apparently it has "excellent views of Holloman AFB and White Sands Missile Range" ([https://reddit.com/r/SpecialAccess/comments/9f91sm/_/e5uy1fd...](https://reddit.com/r/SpecialAccess/comments/9f91sm/_/e5uy1fd/?context=1)) . Further down, someone says that someone claims that the Chinese were using the antenna array at the observatory to spy on missile tests at WSMR.

If the place was truly low on staff then this theory may not be so far fetched.

<comment><USER3> I'm skeptical of that theory. Sunspot is up in the Lincoln National Forest. There are multiple trails and locations that have a great view of White Sands and Holloman AFB, which are located in the basin below. There isn't anything special about the view from Sunspot that I can recall.

<comment><USER4> Other than a big telescope great for looking at things far away?

I used to work in astrophysics. Telescope operators are expected not to look in certain places. Those were fun conversations.

My guess is they found a spy.

<comment><USER5> What kinds of places were you told not to look? (I'm guessing you couldn't physically point it at targets on the ground, so I assume certain sections of the sky.) Who was it that was commanding you not to look?

<comment> evil-olive I work adjacent to some satellites that do visual-spectrum imaging of the earth, and even we fall under these regulations.

In addition to all the NOAA licensing for imaging the ground, you need extra licenses for taking pictures of space. (it's useful, for example, to image the moon as a way of calibrating cameras & telescopes without atmospheric interference, and tracking stars is one of the most reliable ways to determine spacecraft attitude)

One of the requirements is that if we take a picture of space and there's anything moving in the picture (presumably a near-earth satellite), we delete all copies of the picture and forget we ever took it, but only after offering it for sale to the Air Force at a commercially reasonable price.

I'm sure there are additional layers on top of it, that's just the facets of it that I've been exposed to in the mandatory company-wide regulatory training.

<comment><USER6> > but only after offering it for sale to the Air Force at a commercially > reasonable price.

That sounds like a business model - what is a commercially reasonable price, and where do I sign up?

<comment><USER7> > That sounds like a business model

Does it? You have _one_ potential customer, and you have to create product on spec, offer it to them at a price you don't control, and destroy the unsold material whether or not the one customer pays for a copy.

Building a viable business model around that without corrupt influence over the single buyer seems impractical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been following this since the tenth, and it's weird for sure.

One thing that stands out to me - based on comments from people who live in the area (and who I am confident actually _do_ ), the observatory is transitioning from being owned by the federal government to a university. They've gone through a significant staff reduction, and there was basically no one there to tell to leave. Further, while it's been reported that it's "closed to the public", I've seen cellphone video from people who have driven there and walked around. There are no roadblocks, no visible police or security presence... nothing. It's just abandoned.

In short, I'm not convinced this is being accurately reported.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure what you're implying. Because there's not a visible security presence, the Alamogordo Daily News is making this up? After law enforcement gets what they need, there's no reason to patrol the property.

<comment><USER8> > Because there's not a visible security presence, the Alamogordo Daily News > is making this up?

Nope.

At this point, I believe that this was a fairly orderly shutdown (temporary or permanent) that wasn't communicated very well. The "FBI" and "Blackhawk helicopter" were probably federal employees removing federal property from the observatory's antenna arrays before handing it over to the university. I suppose it's possible that some of that could have been classified, since it's situated within line of sight of a military base where project testing occurs and it's conceivable that they might have used that site to received telemetry, but I don't see any reason to think that it's anything more than a case of poor communication between agencies and a pile-on by people who aren't familiar with the details and who want to see something that isn't there.

Note that I was one of those people at first - I gave significant thought to the idea that this was some sort of coverup associated with the coronal mass ejection and the ensuing solar storm that happened right at the same time. As time went on, other solar observatories starting going down and I got much more intensely interested. I took a step back though, and did some more looking around. The other observatory that went down first was in Hawaii, where they were experiencing a tropical storm.

I'll keep watching this, but at this point I think it'll just fade away into nothing, as there really is nothing happening there.

I will give a nod to one theorist on another forum who suggested that the cryptic communication, lack of a press conference, and the local sheriff denying knowledge of everything is all intended as an opportunity to study how conspiracy theories are formed, investigated, and disseminated in online forums. I hope that's the case, because I want to read that paper.

<comment><USER10> >At this point, I believe that this was a fairly orderly shutdown (temporary or permanent) that wasn't communicated very well. The "FBI" and "Blackhawk helicopter" were probably federal employees removing federal property from the observatory's antenna arrays before handing it over to the university. I suppose it's possible that some of that could have been classified, since it's situated within line of sight of a military base where project testing occurs and it's conceivable that they might have used that site to received telemetry, but I don't see any reason to think that it's anything more than a case of poor communication between agencies and a pile-on by people who aren't familiar with the details and who want to see something that isn't there.

Also, it's really common to go overkill for training purposes.

For example, sending two F15s to go sit on the ground at an air show includes them refueling mid-air and intercepting a B52 that's also headed to the same air show so they can check those training boxes.

Sending the Navy seals to fast-rope in to an observatory and recover the federally owned gigabit switches from the telecom closet is the kind of overkill you get in the name of training.

<comment><USER11> Your post sounds like a diversion story to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the late 1990s I used imagery (taken on films and later digitized) from the solar observatory at that site ("Sac Peak"). I later visited it for a conference. It's highly remote, and the handful of astronomers there lived in very basic conditions. I seem to remember a house trailer (i.e., a "manufactured home").

Note, Sac Peak is nowhere near the other solar observatory in Kitt Peak, AZ, and it is a daytime observatory as opposed to the much better-provisioned nighttime observatory at nearby Apache Point, NM - where the relatively-new Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) telescope is.

It was a monastic lifestyle on the mountain there, and as the NSF has been backing out of some of its older ground-based observatories in pursuit of newer observing programs like DKIST (the big solar telescope in Hawaii) and LSST, I imagine it has become even more uncomfortable.

<comment><USER13> > Sac Peak [...] is a daytime observatory [...]

A nighttime solar observatory would have certain... observational challenges.

<comment><USER14> Could always study the reflection of solar light: the gegenschein

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >"Nobody would give us any information on what was going on," House [the sheriff] said, before the phone call cut out and repeated attempts to reach him again were unsuccessful.

Seriously? Is this an ARG?

<comment><USER16> It's difficult to express just how remote these areas are. I've not been to Sunspot, though I've travelled nearby. Cellphone coverage is at best extraordinarily sparse, towns infrequent, and not all those marked on maps have much by way of services.

Gorgeous vistas, though. And staggering brushfires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was raised in Alamogordo (a satellite town to HAFB and directly 'down the hill' from Sunspot) and, while I don't have any information other than what other posters have offered, I can tell you that my entire family is farrr too excited that our tiny little hometown is national news for once

Edit: for clarification, HAFB and all of White Sands Missile Range sits on flatlands surrounded by two mountains; the Organ Mountains on the west (close to Las Cruces) and Sunspot Observatory sits on the very edge of the mountain ranges to the east. Spying on HAFB and WSMR from Sunspot is certainly plausible.

<comment><USER18> Isn't New Mexico State U there? The Aggies?

<comment><USER19> No, NMSU main campus is over the Organ mountains to the west in Las Cruces. (I graduated from there...) Alamogordo has a small branch-college-sized piece of NMSU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That observatory is near a couple of bases. They likely want to fly some experimental aircraft and minimize the amount of specialized recording equipment in the area.

<comment><USER21> Why would they shut down the Post Office for that?

Most plausible theory I've seen so far is that the spying one. Maybe they were posting hard-drives or USB sticks from there with footage of the base testing some new equipment or something.

<comment><USER8> Why wouldn't they?

As best I can tell, the housing up there only serves employees at the observatory, which is closed. What point would there be to keeping the post office open?

<comment><USER21> Oh OK, I didn't know that (I'm not in the US, just going off comments online because it's an interesting story).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wouldn't surprise me if some meth manufactures found the place to be fairly empty and was operating out of one of the buildings. Only to get caught shipping product somewhere and the FBI backtracked it to the observatory.

<comment><USER23> Heh, this is the most probable explanation yet, and it is being downed? This is a real problem in the US for anyone that hasn't had a meth lab bust in thier local hood, gated community or national/state/muni park.

<comment><USER24> This seems like a stupidly conspicuous location to setup a meth lab unless you assume that not a single person visits the facility for months at a time and no one would notice large plumes of smoke rising from it.

<comment><USER25> True, and I don't think it's a meth lab, but using abandoned military buildings does have precedent on drug manufacturing: [https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wamego-lsd-missile- silo](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wamego-lsd-missile-silo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Longer article at [https://www.alamogordonews.com/story/news/local/2018/09/07/s...](https://www.alamogordonews.com/story/news/local/2018/09/07/sunspot- observatory-south-cloudcroft-closed-due-security-issue/1227788002/)

Anyone have speculations on what this could be?

<comment><USER26> Apparently the post office was shut down too [1]. Maybe something dangerous/destructive/sensitive was mailed to/from the observatory? Would explain the feds (since post office is federal) and the seemingly thorough search of the property (crews on towers, etc.).

[1] [https://www.abqjournal.com/1219922/nm-solar-observatory- clos...](https://www.abqjournal.com/1219922/nm-solar-observatory-closed- authorities-mum.html)

<comment><USER15> When I look at that article, it's just a bunch of thick gray lines, as if it's been completely redacted! Just a bug? Are we being trolled? It's hilarious, anyway.

(Edit: Ah, there's a survey form that you have to click "skip" on to see the story. Still hilarious.)

<comment><USER4> Complete our marketing survey and be rewarded with a free FOIA!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My guess is someone's ex-boyfriend/ex-husband had some OChem background and decided to go a bit ted kaczynski. The FBI got involved due to threats of explosives, they went into his apartment and found real evidence of bomb making. Would also be consistent with the Post Office having been shut down if he was planning on mailing anything.

Might also be politically motivated, but I'm going to bet on personal since this observatory was specifically targeted, and not APO (an ex-grad student who feels their academic career was destroyed by someone there would work as well for me).

Or something that rhymes with that and is much more mundane than Chinese spies or secret military tests (but of course just exceptional enough to get the FBI involved and not the local cops -- so an actual credible bomb maker and not just someone phoning in a threat).

<comment><USER27> Looks like I was on the right track, it was a "criminal investigation" and:

"During this time, we became concerned that a suspect in the investigation potentially posed a threat to the safety of local staff and residents."

[https://www.space.com/41852-sunspot-solar-observatory- openin...](https://www.space.com/41852-sunspot-solar-observatory-opening- after-criminal-investigation.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks like a small sliver of the observatory is blurred on Google Maps. [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-105.8176836,349a,35...](https://email@example.com,-105.8176836,349a,35y,270h,38.83t/data=!3m1!1e3)

<comment><USER29> looks ok to me, loading error?

<comment><USER30> i'm seeing the same, it certainly looks like the intentional blurring that google maps does for sensitive things: [https://imgur.com/RqjnQTo](https://imgur.com/RqjnQTo)

<comment><USER31> If you rotate around that blur, it appears to have depth, like it's just above the surface. You can see beneath it at the right angle, revealing the top of the dome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Comment on the gizmodo post on this states there's been hazmat suits and possible mercury leakage:

[https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-it-starts-fbi- suspiciously-l...](https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-it-starts-fbi-suspiciously- locks-down-eva-1829012554)

<comment><USER33> From a liquid mirror, maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/new- mexico...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/new-mexico- observatory-child-porn)

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://www.ktsm.com/news/local/el-paso-news/child- pornograp...](https://www.ktsm.com/news/local/el-paso-news/child-pornography- reason-behind-sunspot-observatory-closure-according-to-court- documents/1460386237)

</comment><comment><USER36> The photo in that article is not of the Sunspot Observatory, but of the Apache Point Observatory next door. I wonder if it is just Sunspot or both? I haven't been up there since spring but I usually visit several times a year, so I'm very curious what's going on. I may head up to APO this weekend and see if I can get on premesis.

</comment><comment><USER37> Emergency evacuation drill for a Nuclear/terrorism attack. Theory suggestion.

</comment><comment><USER38> The final scene of "Starman" with Jeff Bridges?

</comment><comment><USER39> Isn't this a Stephen King movie?

<comment><USER40> It's also reminiscent of a plot point from "Anathem" which came out almost exactly 10 years ago

<comment><USER32> The thousanders are up there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> swingline-747 It's closed due to UFOs. ;D

</comment><comment><USER41> ALIENS.

(But seriously, my guess would be some kind of DoD/security thing? Was someone there doing military research and got hacked? Because that would explain why the FBI would lock it down and not let anyone else in law enforcement go near...)</comment>


California's Insurance and Land Use Regulations Make State's Wildfires Deadlier - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/10/30/californias-wonky-insurance-and-land-use-regulations-make-the-states-wildfires-deadlier-and-more-destructive/ <comment><USER2> > California legal doctrine that holds utility companies wholly liable for > fires caused by their equipment, even when they weren't negligent and > followed all state safety regulations.

This is the case that established unlimited liability for PG&E regardless of any determination of negligence on its part or staff.

[https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of- appeal/1223894.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of- appeal/1223894.html)</comment>


Funny ..Funky NoSQL vs SQL - <AUTHOR> http://www.abhishek-tiwari.com/2010/09/funky-nosql-vs-sql.html Enjoy Hacker News, thought i could contribute a little humor, i not good for much else. <comment><USER2> It's funny 'cos it's true - this is a conversation you can even have here on HN.</comment>


Yes, You Should Eliminate Your Vacation Policy - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/yes-you-should-eliminate-your-vacation-policy-2009-12

<comment><USER2> Vacation policies, _de facto_ , are a way of punishing "job hoppers": at most companies, you only get a decent allotment (4+ weeks) if you've been there forever. However, it's a reality of the modern economy that people change jobs more frequently in previous generations, and no one considers this a bad thing, so vacation policies are largely anachronistic.</comment>