Dynamics.js, a JavaScript library to create physics-based animations - <AUTHOR> http://dynamicsjs.com <comment><USER2> Very cool. There is one thing that I didn't see here which was either a bug or a clever tuning of the numeric parameters: overdamping. When solving the equation:

        x''(t) = -2a * x'(t) - k * x(t)

(spring force k, linear friction a), the solution is generally a sum of solutions x = C exp(w t) for some arbitrary constant C and w = w(a, k). Plugging this in produces:

        w^2 + 2 a w + k = 0
        (w + a)^2 + k - a^2 = 0
        w = -a ± sqrt(a^2 - k)

For `k > a^2`, the system is "underdamped" and you see sinusoidal oscillations, and increasing `a` will make the system relax to equilibrium faster. But for `k < a^2`, the system is "overdamped" and increasing `a` will make the system relax _slower_. (If you find this hard to imagine, think about what happens as `a` tends to infinity: there is so much friction that the spring just barely _crawls_ to its final destination. Comparisons involving molasses and other high-viscosity substances might be apt.

When turning the frequency all the way down, I couldn't find a point where the friction started to make the relaxation to equilibrium _slower_ rather than _faster_.

<comment><USER3> I think that given the 'duration' setting, the author made sure that the event would take place in a given time, constraining the problem.

Edit: that being said, it looks like in the heavily damped case it takes much less than the full duration to finish. That is probably a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If this library is too much muscle & you just need a serviceable animation library, check out Daniel Eden's animate.css: [https://github.com/daneden/animate.css](https://github.com/daneden/animate.css)

Demo: [http://daneden.github.io/animate.css/](http://daneden.github.io/animate.css/)

Of course there's always a the danger of "overdoing it" w/ ridiculous animations but if you can avoid that temptation it's a very handy tool.

<comment><USER5> I'm actually working on adding more subtle, and understated animations to compliment his library at the moment: [http://gabrielmtn.github.io/reanimate/](http://gabrielmtn.github.io/reanimate/)

It's a definite WIP so any thoughts / ideas / opinions are welcome: email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat. Couldn't this be implemented as a generator of easing functions, allowing the animation code to be handled by another project?

[http://easings.net/](http://easings.net/)

<comment><USER7> Many of these effects are impossible with CSS3[1], so Dynamics.js just seems to animate `transform` CSS properties with regular javascript. Definitely nice, but it would be great to have a tool like this spit out real css animations which don't rely on javascript every frame.

[1]: [http://easings.net/#easeOutElastic](http://easings.net/#easeOutElastic)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anybody feeling this kind of animations aren't bringing a lot to the table ? I was thrilled to watch lollipop material design (and even kitkat project butter), but it quickly faded (sic). Instant, simple interfaces are needed in many tasks where I don't enjoy or even have the luxury to waste time on distracting animations.

<comment><USER9> Yes. I agree. I too feel this kind of animation library should not be used where animation libraries make little or no sense to use them. In fact, I'd go a step further and agree that no animation libraries should be used when animation libraries are not needed, not even this one, which looks pretty neat.

Where should animation libraries be used? I'd think they should be used where a user would appreciate an animation. Such places could be while waiting for something to load, or maybe on a website dedicated to animation libraries. I think that would be an appropriate place for animations. It'd be weird if a website dedicated to animations didn't have animations on it.

<comment><USER10> websites for Kids is one of the places where animated UI can be used.

<comment><USER9> yes, I agree. kids love animations. adults don't like animations, except for creepy adults who watch cartoons and college kids that still watch The Simpsons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a hacker on Hacker News I'd have to agree with the others that animations are a Very Bad Thing. They are distracting to me, an easily distracted person, who is currently avoiding work by reading Hacker News this afternoon.

<comment><USER11> How do you feel about the animations used in material design?

Animations for the sake of having animation is really distracting. But if used subtly and with purpose, they could help enhance the user experience.

<comment><USER12> Since I'm aware of material design, I find myself constantly looking for the animations and trying to evaluate how they work on me, which kind of defeats the purpose. I keep seeing those circles everywhere!

I think it's the right direction, though; animating to subtly direct user attention to the right place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please don't show this to anyone at Apple... I don't want the buttons on my next iPod to do a little giggly dance every time I press them.

(BTW- This is great work, I just hope UI devs don't overdo it...)

<comment><USER14> Too late. You can already do simple spring animations on UI elements in iOS:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIView_Class/index.html#//apple_ref/occ/clm/UIView/animateWithDuration:delay:usingSpringWithDamping:initialSpringVelocity:options:animations:completion):

As well as a full-on physics with collisions, etc:

[http://www.raywenderlich.com/50197/uikit-dynamics- tutorial](http://www.raywenderlich.com/50197/uikit-dynamics-tutorial)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a nice library but I'm failing to understand the "physics-based" part.

I'm not seeing anything "physics" in the traditional sense; just manipulating the matrix3d in a transform property of an element in real-time to provide difficult or impossible effects with CSS alone.

<comment><USER3> You don't consider motion based on gravitational and spring-mass models to be an application of physics?

<comment><USER15> Is they code actually performing physics calculations, or is it a good fake? I can fake much of that behavior with animation keyframes and that doesn't make it physics in my mind.

If it is, then I suppose I'll agree it's physics based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amazing library! I question it being targeted towards UI elements. I guess I'm thinking about the "condescending UI" arguments. On phones at least we can mostly turn it down, at least for system-level animations.

<comment><USER8> That article ? [http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/9/2616204/the- condescending-...](http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/9/2616204/the- condescending-ui)

very nice read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that the npm is accessed with _npm install dynamics.js_. Looks like _npm install dynamics_ is a different library. I wonder if we are running out of npm namespace.

<comment><USER18> Note that npm now has scopes [http://blog.npmjs.org/post/116936804365/solving- npms-hard-pr...](http://blog.npmjs.org/post/116936804365/solving-npms-hard- problem-naming-packages)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, I don't really see the point compared to GreenSock's GSAP which is really performant and has some cool plugins.

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome, thanks for creating this!

</comment><comment><USER21> For anyone wanting to do graphics in web pages I would recommend looking into the canvas tag. Example code:

      with (context) {
        beginPath();
        moveTo(100, 100);
        lineTo(100, 300);
        lineTo(300, 300);
        closePath();
        stroke();
      }

<comment><USER22> Since ES5, you can't use `with` in strict mode.

Well, you shouldn't use it anyways since it's confusing/ambiguous and it's also terrible for performance.

<comment><USER21> I wanted to make a point about all the confusing new features of ES6 that are just there to save a few key strokes, and will haunt you forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> OK so how do I make this control an LFO in my music? ;)

<comment><USER24> Well, I suppose you could use the Web MIDI API: [http://webaudio.github.io/web-midi-api/](http://webaudio.github.io/web-midi- api/)

Although if you need to route it to an external (non-browser) output, you might consider using OSC. There appear to be multiple implementations, but here's one: [https://github.com/marmorkuchen-net/osc- js](https://github.com/marmorkuchen-net/osc-js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> excited to play with this, cheeers

</comment><comment><USER26> For everyone who loves the infinite possibilities of client-site JavaScript, and who at the same time does not love the blink-taggy smell that this kind of library evokes, I present to you the world's first distributed, web-based operating system: see [https://www.urdesk.net/desk](https://www.urdesk.net/desk)

This has been under very active development for going on 3 years now, and it is just starting to get to the point where it can stop being called a prototype or experiment.

<comment><USER27> > web-based operating system

"Chrome-based" would be more accurate because it doesn't even work in the latest Firefox.

Also, it contains a full page rant on why Firefox is bad (because of something about Netscape and AOL -- apparently it's still 1995).

If you're going to call it "web-based" try targeting more than 1 browser regardless of your personal beliefs.</comment></comment>


My create-your-own-social-news-site startup is live. Feedback appreciated.  - <AUTHOR> http://slinkset.com/

<comment><USER2> I Like, I love the design, the colors works well for me. The layout also pleases me:) KISS ( Keep It Stupid Simple) I feel like a mix between Jottit and Digg Create your little Digg site with the ease of creation like Jottit.

I recommend.

<comment><USER3> Very nice, well done, I have to agree. Reminds me of Basecamp.

Was very easy to get started that is for sure

<comment><USER4> I agree. The design is very nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great work Brett. Very polished for getting started. You need to figure out how you can beat Reddit's new "build your own reddit" system. Maybe focusing on certain niches like families that like to share links (mine!), pet lovers, sports fans, etc. I think you could make fast inroads by figuring out how you can target folks like that rather than going after reddit.com head on.

<comment><USER6> Im curious as to why you think reddit can't serve those niches right now? You can create a private reddit just for you and your family, you can create a pet lover reddit, a reddit for you favorite sports team, etc. Is this perhaps a marketing problem of reddit's?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Design thing that irks me: Seems like a number of mouse hovers trigger an object to get duller rather than brighter. That seems like the opposite of what you want to happen.

</comment><comment><USER6> How is this different than user created reddits on reddit? The only difference I see is that you can change the colors here.

However, I will say that the colors are nice. :)

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily a minor difference. People have added blogs and message boards provided by 3rd parties and themed them so that they appear integrated with the main site. Does it follow that there might be a demand for an "integrated" niche social news equivalent? Kind of reminds me of ning too.

<comment><USER9> Ditto. Providing the ability to integrate such a link sharing/voting app into an existing website would make slinkset stand out! May I ask why the name slinkset? I don't get the name.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's not really anything to get. I'm more worried about you being able to remember and spell it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://slinkset.com/signup_and_create>

The vertical divider in the page made me think I only had to fill out one side or the other. "Setup your account" __or __"Setup your site" I thought. So I figured I could create my network just by entering title/URL/privacy option. Only after a little confusion did I realize it's not "or", but actually "and".

</comment><comment><USER11> I find the star with an inverted star below it for up/downvoting a little off.

</comment><comment><USER12> Like the design simplicity. A possible idea on how to differentiate it from reddit. Consider having an option that makes it almost like a media producer.

What I mean is, while the post link is interesting, when it comes to something like Hacker News I always click through for the comments, because they're usually great. What about combining this idea with almost a kind of private access and putting the point system to more use?

For example: You have the link (or topic) that is submitted as they are now, and then the discussion that occurs from the link (or topic). As people like it, they vote it up or down (giving it points). However, all this discussion is taking place not in public view (recalling the invite only). But each day a submission goes public (also opening up comments) based on which one has the most points. This essentially creates 1 piece of interesting material a day (similar to that of a blog) based on dynamic discussion.

Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER13> You should pre-fetch the rollover images in the "Featured Slinkset Sites" on the front page. Currently when the page first loads, there is a split second when you mouse-over the screenshots where the image completely disappears as it's loading the hover image. Otherwise the design looks very nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. We've been meaning to go the css sprite route on those, but haven't gotten to it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice job man. The whole process from the user's end is about as simple and painless as it can get - something that, if done poorly, will kill a site quicker then anything. Nice concept and seemingly small/few bugs/issues for a just launched site. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER15> Add comments (or use disqus) and allow people to use their own domains.

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually have comments. Clearly that's not obvious if you are not logged in (and no one has yet commented on a link on the page). Something we should look at.

<comment><USER15> You should make the comment link visible, but require registration to actually post a comment. You should not hide any features from unregistered users, just require registration before they are used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Neat! I was just thinking that we need something like this for our family, instead of emailing each other news articles all the time.

Since this is RoR-based, I assume it's RESTful?

<comment><USER16> Ok, so I created an account; it was a great experience. There are several requests I have:

1\. Let users add custom CSS to it, so they can customize it the way they want. 2\. Let users add a custom subdomain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Both of those are on our todo list. Using an arbitrary domain works, but we haven't put it in the ui because it requires some work from the user and we want to make sure there is appropriate help so that it does not confuse anyone.

<comment><USER16> Awesome! As mentioned in the grandparent post, we're using it for family news, and we have a suggestion: give users the ability to hide certain links from certain users for a temporary period of time. For example, if my dad has a birthday coming up and we want to throw him a surprise birthday party, we can start a discussion link about organizing it, and have him not be able to see it. That news item would be hidden from him until 1 day after his birthday, or something like that; same thing for anniversaries.

<comment><USER17> and to think '' there are thousands of people paying for a service like this at myfamily.com ( a few more features, but barely)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good idea, good execution. High five.

<comment><USER19> high five back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I created one <http://justnews.slinkset.com/> For anyone who is tired of all the stupid news commentary, and just wants new.

It would be nice to be able to increase the font size on the Hacker News ripoff design.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why did you name it SlinkSet?

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?

</comment><comment><USER22> If I set my site to "private", the "Users" link gives me a 500 error ("We have a piper down"). If I change it to Public it works fine. I would still expect to be able to invite users to a private site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that was a bug; I just deployed a fix. We weren't ready for people putting periods in their usernames. My guess is that you changed it to public right after the fix. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What technologies did you use to create the site? Is this Rails based?

<comment><USER24> seems like rails: "Server Mongrel 1.1.4" in response headers, application.js with prototype.js in the scripts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. It's rails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Pretty awesome. Slinkset looks like a great idea, good execution.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice job. Have you thought about how you'll monetize it?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're still nailing that down, but I think we've got some decent ideas...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cool. Simple design. Very easy to get started. <http://ghost.slinkset.com>

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be nice to have some kind of preview feature, either in the form of a demo, or existing pages.

</comment><comment><USER29> very cool - i've been waiting for something like this for ages. can i please echo the request for a webpage plug-in? it'd be nice to drag and drop this into something else rather than have the visitor leave my space.

</comment><comment><USER30> Great job, the design is nice. Just curious - about how long did it take to do?

</comment><comment><USER31> holy shit, you nailed the signup experience. I'm wondering though, by not verifying emails or even having a captcha, are you worried about undesirables turning your site into a spam/link farm?

</comment><comment><USER32> Add a username/password captions to the login form on your homepage.

</comment><comment><USER33> Little tip: On the sign-up page, there's a big line between the "Set Up Your Account" and "Set Up Your Site" form. It looks as if it are two separate forms and you should choose one. Maybe you can tinker with it a little bit to make it look more as one whole.</comment>


The Man Who Knew Infinity Official Trailer #1 (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXGm9Vlfx4w <comment><USER2> I've been trying to find this to rent/watch for months. Any idea when we'll be able to watch the movie in the US?

<comment><AUTHOR> Release Date: USA 29 April 2016

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0787524/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_dt_d...](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0787524/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_dt_dt)</comment></comment>


U.S. pushes for more scientists, but the jobs aren't there - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-pushes-for-more-scientists-but-the-jobs-arent-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_story.html?hpid=z1 <comment><USER3> I've posted this before and will post it again: any discussion like this should include a link to Philip Greenspun's "Women in Science": <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science> . Ignore the borderline sexist stuff about women and pay attention to the institutional structure of science and the opportunity costs of potential scientists.

Stuff like this: "Although the overall unemployment rate of chemists and other scientists is much lower than the national average, those figures mask an open secret: Many scientists work outside their chosen field" should demonstrate why the smartest or most economically aware people who are interested in science might want to think about ancillary fields (like hacking).

I've also co-written a longish guide for undergrads interested in science: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think- about-...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/how-to-think-about- science-and-becoming-a-scientist) , since many of them don't fully understand how science really works in an institutional setting.

<comment><USER4> Vague platitudes like "we need more scientists!" or "a college degree will get you a good job" are misleading and dangerous.

Data scientists are in huge demand, anthropologists not so much. Although there are few jobs in physics, physicists are some of the most brilliant general problem solvers that I have met.

Students with a specific and informed plan can ignore articles like this. But few students have such a plan. The biggest problem within the education bubble is the complete absence of guidance about what any given degree program really can do for you.

China tracks the employment success rate of each degree program. Successful degree programs get more funding, and failing degree programs get less.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps my sample is a bit off, but I haven't seen economic evidence for a demand for data scientists. The wages just aren't competitive with writing code at big corporations. Academic labs in particular seem to harbor a bizarre belief that they can hire and retain good people at enormous pay cuts.

<comment><USER4> Data scientists have big opportunities in tech startups. Data scientists create that magic spark to give a fragile startup a strong competitive advantage, and share in the upside. Many many startups are trying to learn how to build a data science team.

Trevor Hastie at Stanford told me that Google revolutionized the outlook for stats PhDs. Prior to Google, statistics was an important field but jobs were scarce, and at places like research labs. But since Google taught the world where the magic lies, Stanford stats grads are inundated with offers from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo - and most importantly - <USER2> startups.

Many of the best data scientists I have met studied physics. After the dry complex problems they have faced, commercial applications are human, exciting, straightforward, and a way to make an impact. (yes all our basic advances came from physicists doing physics. Im just saying Data Science could be a great alternative for some people).

I know that I'm biased, so take this with a grain of salt, but tech startups can be an exciting place for a data scientist, where you can make a major impact on the financial success of the business and share in that success.

Happy to give anyone specific suggestions via email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a global Great Recession, and the arguments that its due to a mismatch between available jobs and worker skills are just smoke to rationalize the growing inequality. Peter Thiel argues that its due to the cost of energy.[1] A recent article about the price to import coal to India supports his argument.[2] The Superbubble has popped, and every sector is cutting back for private equity to make inroads.

1\. The Prospects for Technology and Econimic Growth <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRrLyckg8Nc>

2\. Grinding Energy Shortage Takes Toll on India's Growth [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230433120457735...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304331204577352232515290226.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I am really curious about how the biotech industry might be restructured to actually pay scientists.

I know people in both academic and corporate lab jobs making minimum wage or nearly minimum wage. These are really smart, hard working people. And the best we can do is employ them as cheapo alternatives to purchasing lab robotics?

On the other hand: this is really cheap, low cost, excellent labor. Are you paying >$xx,000/mo on drugs? Just hire some scientist to make the drugs for you, you'll give someone a job and probably save a bunch of money in the process. (This is particularly relevant for individuals with rare blood diseases; their medicines cost many 10's of thousands of dollars a month in some cases.)

If I can get a postdoc for $39,000/year, what can I get for $100,000/year? How much is a novelty Soviet scientist? And what about a mad scientist (preferably one with a couple postdocs completed)?

edit: also, why is there no postdoc labor union?

<comment><USER7> looks like there's a "National Postdoctoral Associaton": <http://www.nationalpostdoc.org/>

ok then, why aren't all lab researchers unionized? I don't even know if a labor union is the right fix to these problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always found the whole "Get a STEM degree if you want ample employment" argument to be a bit specious. It implies that all degrees that fall under this rather large umbrella are of equal worth, but the reality is that prospects are better for those under the "TE" portion of this umbrella.

Even within that smaller subsection, those working on, say, Aerospace Engineering degrees are likely envious of the prospects of Computer Science guys, and the Computer Science guys are looking at their upper-division coursework wondering if they shouldn't just bail out and test the waters of whatever startup hotspot is on their minds.

It's better than worrying about what you could possibly do with your Theater degree, but it's still stressful for the people under this giant umbrella of promise.

At the end of the day, I guess everyone feels like the grass is greener somewhere.

<comment><USER9> I have yet to meet someone with decent software development skills and a degree in a scientific/engineering field that had any trouble finding good work. I have seen a lot of unfilled postdoc and higher positions due to inability to find competent people.

<comment><USER10> At the risk of whining...

I'm now three years out of college, still trying to get a tech job (during the middle year, I was otherwise employed and not trying). My degree is a double major in CS / math; I obviously can't provide an objective evaluation of "decent software development skills", but I worked at CreateSpace for six months during college with no complaints in that regard, and I got that position by winning the contests they'd hold at my school. It's getting to the point where I wonder if I should go back to college so I can be eligible for internships...

Certainly, I'll take a portion of blame here for being totally incompetent at seeking and landing jobs. But I'm so, so sick of the memes that "tech hiring is super hot right now / it's a seller's market in tech labor / look how easy it is to get work".

Is it, in your opinion, possible to have decent software development skills without years of experience under your belt? Do you meet many such people?

<comment><USER11> So, those memes are true descriptions of the market right now. You have presented persuasive evidence that you have sufficient programming skill to be marketable at present. How about spending the next six weeks in a self- directed boot camp for learning how to be better at seeking and landing jobs? Treat it like you're learning a new language: wake up in the morning, go to it, pound on it until evening, stop.

There's a billion things you can do to start here. In general, read Ramit Sethi on the topic. Specifically, who do you know that has hiring authority? (Buddies at CreateSpace? Have any moved on?) Who can they introduce you to?

Do you like coffee? I actually don't, but they often sell chai tea at the same places, and you could drink pretty much infinite chai tea right now just by saying "I can FizzBuzz, interested in getting coffee or something?" Hiring directors at most companies needing engineers are desperate and they'd love to hear you out, if for no other reason than you maybe be Starcraft buddies with their next hire.

<comment><USER12> I don't see anything that mentions where he is...it's entirely possible that he's in the middle of nowhere tech-job-wise. If that's the case, the first move should be "go somewhere with a tech job market".

<comment><USER13> One reason why patio11 suggests the whole "coffee" angle is that a coffee meeting is a better way to provide personalized advice. Otherwise we're reduced to playing HN Twenty Questions. ("Startup or not a startup? Bay Area or not Bay Area? Is your CV bigger than a breadbox?")

Having said that, "are you looking for your dream job in Zanesville, Ohio, or in SoMA?" is a fine entry in the Twenty Questions game. My own contributions would be:

A) "Could you put some contact information in your HN profile?"

B) "Can you describe something you've actually built? And if you haven't built anything yet, could you build something this week and send us the link to its Github page?"

But, of course, this is Twenty Questions, so either of these could turn out to be silly questions once we know the context.

<comment><USER10> (A) yes, I was bitten by the "your 'email' setting doesn't show" feature. It got me even though I'd been warned in the past. :(

(B) (1) This past week, as part of an interview, I've built a django project that provides text and video chat to logged-in users. This is, I would say, small-scale. (2) Some years ago, I wrote a quick scraper to download Peanuts archives from comics.com. The main thing I learned from that was that, years afterwards, I encountered the web page for Beautiful Soup and immediately understood what problem it was dealing with. I'd call the scraper tiny in scale. I'm not too sure what qualifies as a "project", but, as you guess, I haven't done much. (3) If you have hiring authority, or even if you just know someone who does, I'm happy to build something for you. I'm less happy to think of something to build myself. :/

As to the pre-questions, I don't have much of an opinion on startup vs non- startup, I'd prefer to be in the Bay Area, and my CV is, unfortunately, smaller than a breadbox. I'm apprehensive about moving somewhere just on spec; as a cousin post illustrates, that seems like a great way to exhaust all your cash and still not have a job. I'm only too happy to move _for_ a job, since Santa Cruz could be charitably described as a "dead end".

Please, anyone, email me: username at gmail

<comment><USER13> _I'm apprehensive about moving somewhere just on spec;_

One can do this by couchsurfing. That was my technique, back when I was in your position. It needn't be expensive. Just don't wear out your welcome by staying on any particular couch for more than a week or so.

The fact that you're in Santa Cruz, though, makes me wonder if even the couch is strictly necessary.

Your projects sound just fine. (If that word sounds too highfalutin, call them "hacks" or "scripts". Whatever.) Put one or more of them on Github if you can. I have interviewed CS majors with good GPAs who had literally never built anything that they weren't assigned to build for a class, who had (e.g.) never deployed a page live on the web. The skills and disciplines required to build and ship things are largely orthogonal to what they teach in undergraduate school - it's like the difference between being an art historian and painting a portrait, or between having a Ph.D. in linguistics and delivering a lecture in Hungarian - so any chance you have to demonstrate them, even at small scale, adds depth to your qualifications.

I have no hiring authority at the moment (and am on the wrong coast, alas for both of us) but I'll give you this link to my colleagues:

<http://www.acquia.com/careers/acquia-u>

There's still plenty of work for Drupal developers, and PHP programmers in general, if you have (or can develop) the personality to deal with it. You will probably need a sense of humor. ;) It's not a great job for perfectionists. But it is a job where a little knowledge can go a long way. If you learn how to analyze queries and create strategic indices in MySQL, for example, people will think you're some species of wizard. The wizard bar is low.

Think of something to build yourself. It's a good thing to practice doing. Start small and develop the habit. Heed the words of Ira Glass:

<http://youtu.be/BI23U7U2aUY>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's all very well crying out for this and that but without defining the path and in this case the jobs, there sentiment is nothing more than a soundbite.

Anybody can say: (1) More Scientists. (2) ??????????????? (3) Profit.

Its the number two aspect the goverment needs to focus upon as well as allowing others to focus.

How can they do that. Well they could offer TAX incentives for R&D. Tax incentives for recruiting new people into the feild. Many many ways, though all of those involve the carrot approach without any sticks.

Sadly there is no golden answear/solution for this and soundbiting "we need more scientists" is not a solution unless you want to soundbite and then read other peoples comments in the hop[e of finding that magic solution you need to inact. good luck too them.

<comment><USER15> It's not that we need more scientists in the traditional Phd -> academic track sense necessarily, but rather more technically trained individuals. Folks with science degrees can find lot's of interesting work that others from humanities backgrounds have trouble competing for and can open up new business spaces by being part of innovative fields.

It's certainly a mistake to think most science-trained folks work as stereotypical lab-suit-wearing scientists. Science-trained individuals have fruitful careers across the map, and we benefit from more of that, that's all!

<comment><USER14> I totaly agree but there again I grew up with computer studies being about learning how computers work and writing code. As apposed to this is how we do mail-merge type of computer studies they have today in schools.

I also suspect Wallmart have more scientific degree's working for them than NASA does employee wise, but thats just a sign of our times.

Maybe the standards need to be raised more so that a degree means something, though that is another issue, although related. Another related issue would be World-wide standards. You can get a fully trained brain surgeon from say russia who could be the best in the World and have all the top end Russian qualifications. Though in say the UK or USA etc he would not even be allowed to change a IV drip or a bandage and would have to redo all those exams again to the local standard.

Education needs to be unified more perhaps world-wide so a degree from china is the same standard as a degree from America or from France or Africa. Then perhaps the true quality and abilities are allowed to shine thru. Again a seperate issue though something that is relavent.

I also think that TV has over the past decade or so done wonders in removing that sterotypical image of lab-coated scientists, though maybe they have dumbed that image down a little too much when your cleaner calls herself a dirt abstraction scientist!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "She's very good at everything, very smart," Haas said of her daughter. "She > loves chemistry, loves math. I tell her, 'Don't go into science.' I've made > that very clear to her."

I've made this clear to my kids also. The cynical side of me says that the push for more scientists is mostly about lowering wages for companies lobbying the gov't for that.

<comment><USER17> So what are you suggesting they go into? Math, physics, science train the mind, and I would argue, open opportunities like no other disciplines do. If you can do these, you can do anything, CS and programming included. The push for more scientists, misdirected or not, is a realization that the future of our country (speaking about the US here) will be built on science and technology.

<comment><USER16> A science _career_ is what I'm referring to. Science and math _learning_ , and a technology career, are fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes I look at other people's resumes and I see their finished PhD, their publications, their prestigious postdoc positions - and I feel a pang of jealousy. I feel like I have little to show for my unfulfilled years of toil in a doctoral program. Then I wonder why they are working outside of academia, and I begin to ponder the possibility that they may be jealous of me for understanding the system and leaving when I did.

I don't know. I'm going to keep on coding in any case.

</comment><comment><USER19> Funny story? Back in the mid-1960s the Feds said there'd be a shortage of scientists. Then in the early 1970s the Apollo program ended, and 40K+ people with years of hard experience were dumped on the market.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

</comment><comment><USER20> There really needs to be a YC-style company for scientists. Costs have come down - e.g. DNA sequencers are a lot more affordable today. What is needed is mentorship and some kind of exit that leads to employment.

</comment><comment><USER21> Unless the jobs appear quickly then presumably the US might see a lot of the scientists move abroad. According to the Royal Society in London, China is set to spend more than the US on scientific research by the year 2020 and already publishes nearly as many scientific papers. - [http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/...](http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2011/4294976134.pdf)

<comment><USER22> They may spend more and write more eventually, but until they fix the quantity vs. quality problem, the numbers mean very little. According the Reuters, the money Beijing is pouring into research is incentivizing low quality science articles.

"According to data gathered by the OECD, China produced 285,000 papers in 2009. That's about 0.2 papers per 1,000 head of the population. Just 0.05 percent were published in top journals.

By comparison, the United States published 473,000 papers, or 1.6 for every 1,000 people. More than half made it into top journals."

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/28/us-science- china-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/28/us-science-china- idUSBRE84R06G20120528)

Will China eventually surpass the US? Probably. They're modernizing quickly and they have 5 times our population. If they can't one day surpass us, something is deeply wrong. Of course, with their government the way it is today, there could be major hurdles along the way.

<comment><USER23> I recently did some copyediting for a chinese econ PhD student in the US. She isn't a student at my university, or even a research assistant. She's just a guest, who is being partially supervised by professors in our econ department.

Why is she here? In order to graduate from china with a PhD, you have to publish a paper in a specific list of journals. If you're unable to do so in a certain time period, you either aren't awarded a PhD, or you have to find a university in the US which will take you for 2 years. After those two years, you have to have your dissertation completed, and the US professors have to vouch for you in lieu of publication.

This is just an example of some of the problems you're talking about. Each PhD student (as far as she's described to me) who gets their degree without going abroad MUST have their dissertation published. This is totally contrary to how it occurs in the US where you simply have to come up with a thesis and defend it--there are rarely requirements about publishing.

Whats more is, if you asked a US professor to talk about the problems with academic publishing in the US, or with tenure, or whatever, its that all these incentives line up for people to publish publish publish. Its not about substance--its publish publish publish. Throw enough papers at the wall and you hope to god one sticks long enough for you to get tenure.

If this is a major complaint in the US, you can just imagine how bad it must be in Asia, where theres an (at least this is my understanding) real problem with 'faking it until you make it', with the hope that you'll learn enough to keep up with the Jones', while doing the bare minimum of substance or risk taking to meet expectations.

<comment><USER24> "there are rarely requirements about publishing."

Ha. [Hollow Laugh] If only that were actually true. Even in departments were there is no "official" requirement, in practice there is. Your advisor will tell you baldly publish well or don't find a good job afterwards. Most students who are not on track drop out instead of getting a pity degree.

"Its not about substance--its publish publish publish."

Sometimes true, in practice grants are far more important than quantity of publications. To get grants you have to be respected and known in your field. That means not dumping a bunch of bad publications out, it means making meaningful contributions. It also helps to be a persuasive writer.

"Throw enough papers at the wall and you hope to god one sticks long enough for you to get tenure."

I know specific people who were denied tenure even though they had great publication records. Once again it is about grants, not publications.

<comment><USER23> I don't mean to try to sum up the entirety of academia in my post, just some issues relevant to the topic at hand. Your experience, much like my post, isn't exhaustive. Have I said something wrong that should be debunked?

<comment><USER25> I think he answered that question already in his comment, in extenso.

<comment><USER23> i couldn't tell if he was trying to assert something as truth and contribute, or if he was just venting his graduate student frustrations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> excuse-me Surprisingly enough not every one of your prof's dozen grad students gets to be a prof. Fortunately there is a use for STEM PhDs outside the lecture hall.

It's like saying nobody should do math in school because there aren't enough math teacher jobs for every student

<comment><USER26> The difference is that these people have spent large fractions of their lives preparing for careers that they can't get into. And they are generally very smart people, so it is to nobody's benefit for them to waste their time.

You might also say, that they are very smart people, so they should know what they are getting into. That's valid, but it takes articles like this to spread the word. Many very respected people are not being fully honest about the situation, including Obama and everyone else at the top. Professors have every incentive to lie to prospective students; they need multiple grants to get tenure and every grant agency wants to be funding multiple students. It is certainly a pyramid scheme.

In the short term, it is very efficient, because we get good science done for very little money. But in the long run, it might backfire; I honestly don't know.

<comment><USER27> Universities are still extremely expensive, just with the people (grad students and post docs) who do most of the actual science getting very little of the money. It's just extremely unfair and calling it a "pyramid scheme" is charitable.

Overall universities are just extremely inefficient. Where does all the money go to?

The person in the article who went into an administrative job may have been onto something.

Part of the problem is also the biology/chemistry bubble. In the 90ies these areas expanded extremely and now they are downsizing to more reasonable levels again.

With CS degrees they would be better off.

<comment><USER28> "Where does all the money go to?"

Pensions: [http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-19/university-of- cali...](http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-19/university-of-calif-dot- faces-mounting-pension-costs) (That's one article about one university system, but most others face similar issues.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: College has become the most effective means of wealth transfer from Generation Y kids to the Baby Boomers...financed by the government, of course.

<comment><USER29> The University of California system has actually _decreased_ its per-student spending in real terms by around 25% over the past 20 years, so there isn't really a case of where the money has gone there (they never got it!). It's true that there are likely to be future problems with pensions, but they don't at all explain the current increases in tuition. Those are due to state funding cuts.

More specifically, if you take the total UC system budget and divide by the total student population, the result for 1990 (inflation-adjusted) was $21,000 spent per student. The result today is $16,500 spent per student.

Tuition has gone up anyway, because taxpayers stopped funding it faster than that rate of per-student cost decline. In 1990, state funding amounted to $16,000 per student (inflation-adjusted) out of the $21,000 total cost, leaving $5000 to be made up by tuition, donations, and other sources of income. Today the state contributes only $9,500 per student, and is in the process of cutting that to $8,500. So even with a more frugal $16,500-per- student cost, that now leaves $8000 to be funded out of non-state funds. So it's not surprising that tuition has gone up significantly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Samuel L Jackson is going to record a 300 word monologue on Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1f9x5y/im_samuel_l_jackson_and_ill_record_a_video_of_me/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty awesome!!!

<comment><USER3> And it all aims towards a good cause!</comment></comment>


Facebook Buys TBH App Loved by Teens for Anonymous Quizzes - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-buys-tbh-app-popular-with-teens-for-anonymous-messaging <comment><AUTHOR> launched on Aug 3 and already has more than 5 million users who have sent more than a billion messages</comment>


Why Every Enterprise Startup Needs a 'Wolf' - <AUTHOR> http://ganeshtoday.com/2013/04/why-every-enterprise-startup-needs-a-wolf/

<comment><USER2> >That's a relatively new concept in the enterprise world, where traditionally software had been built for the buyers, most often IT. That has resulted in years of overly-complex software built with many widgets and checkboxes that IT admins love but that leave regular users scratching their heads.

There's more to this, but I generally agree.

I've worked in "the enterprise" or something akin to it for my entire career. During this time I've fought an endless battle against IT departments who fail to understand or outright reject their role as providing a service to the rest of organization.

Simply put, the role is not about _us_ , making our jobs easier or enabling us to implement to most interesting and advanced systems.

It's about enabling the rest of the organization to work more efficiently. Ideally, we're all but invisible.

I believe that failing to understand and embrace this is the root of much internal strife, siloing between and within departments, failed undertakings and all around waste in many organizations.</comment>


Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop service is now generally available - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/30/microsofts-windows-virtual-desktop-service-is-now-generally-available/ <comment><USER2> I came across FSLogix a few months before MS bought them and have been entirely impressed by how fantastic the product is. If you have ever dealt with roaming profiles and huge amount of junk in C:\Users\username folder, FSLogix is a blessing. In simplest terms, once installed on Windows (physical or VM, doesn't matter), the entire user folder lives as a single VHD file on a network drive but appears to the local machine as a regular user folder. This means browser temp files do not need to be synced upon log off. In fact there is no syncing. Everything is accessible using just one network file stream. As someone who manages 200 users on Citrix, it is beautiful. Their Office plugin does the same with user's Office profile, including Outlook. I haven't played with the integrated FSLogix/MS offering but the pre-MS stuff is nothing short of a relief for sysadmins.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's still large areas just 35 miles from DC that don't have high speed internet. The cloud is STILL just for people who never leave the range of high speed internet.

<comment><USER4> First of all, offices virtually always do have high speed internet, which is the primary use case here.

But even if you're working from somewhere else, remote desktop doesn't need "high speed" anyways. It sends intercepted OS-level draw commands rather than bitmaps, so as long as you're not doing Photoshop it's closer to terminal bandwidth than YouTube bandwidth.

For the vast majority of business apps over remote desktop, whether your internet is high speed or not is a complete non-issue.

And the basic latency (e.g. for typing text or clicking a menu) is the same as terminal latency too.

<comment><USER5> RDP quit forwarding rendering commands some time ago,[1] it turns out to be faster to just send a compressed image. On very low bandwidth links effects are turned off and a limited color pallet is used.

You're still right -- the performance is good, and using normal UI controls you will typically not notice even a very poor connection. But this is because UI changes are an "eventually consistent" deal, and although the Windows terminal services implementation _does_ send bitmaps it optimizes drawing for sending the resulting bitmap. Contrast to scrolling text on a terminal that may not update in a manner that allows you to react to it.

[1]: Somewhere on the FreeRDP mailing list. Sorry :(

<comment><USER6> Not to mention the fact that just about no program uses the old Win32 rendering commands anymore for anything relevant. They are just far too limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can see the security benefit of a virtualized desktop, and in some industries I understand that that's enough to justify this kind of solution.

Aside from that, I don't see so many benefits. The company still needs to provide to each employee a device, and training. I don't see many savings on this side. Companies going for cheap devices will still go for cheap devices, while those looking for higher end devices won't settle for cheap alternatives. Besides, SSD and CPU are now very cheap, so you can get very good configurations for cheap. On the other hand, batteries are still expensive, and virtualization might drain them more than using the local CPU depending on the use case.

If the added value is the easier configuration phase and maintenance for IT (software side, as devices still need maintenance), then ChromeOS seems like a much better approach. Instead of delegating to a third party the whole OS (virtualized), the customer only transfers the management of the services. And to be fair, if security here is the main concern, then ChromeOS seems still better positioned, both because data is on the cloud, and because of how the OS is "restricted".

At the end of the day, WVD seems like a way to sell (also) azure services on top of windows. So I wouldn't be surprised if companies evaluating this option will see an increment in costs.

At this point I wonder if it's really worth, especially considering that if for any reason the company cannot keep paying Microsoft for the service, or it's cut off from the service (e.g. non us company -> sanctions), basically the whole company is back to paper in a matter of minutes, while with non- virtualized solutions there's a much bigger safety net.

<comment><USER8> As someone who spends significant amounts of time on the road, a setup like this can be a godsend.

You mention more CPU, more SSD, more memory, just keeps getting cheaper and you're right. You can get a pretty amazing laptop for not much more than an iPad Pro and it will handle nearly any workload. The problem is now you have to carry that and all of the batteries and accessories around. It's so much easier for me to bring my iPad Pro 11" with a keyboard case and remote into a desktop environment for those workflows that either require a high end machine or Windows. I imagine a Surface would be even better.

Personally, I just don't want to carry a massive laptop to get compute if I can access it remotely just fine. So that's what I do. I have multiple VMs running Windows or Ubuntu on a high end Ryzen machine with multiple Nvidia GPUs. That's significant more power than I could ever hope to bring with me on the road. For me the only major setback is screen real estate. Hoping one day some of these HMDs can fix that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If Stadia and xCloud really do solve the latency issues inherent in client/server computing - and show that it's economical - one could almost imagine Microsoft launching a consumer version of this with a "terminal" that was little more than a screen, keyboard and network connection... Like Sun Microsystems reborn.

The whole concept would, of course, enrage certain sections of the populace including most of HN's readership, but I can see it happening.

<comment><USER10> How do you beat the speed of light? That's ultimately what we're up against here. High-frequency traders lay down special fiber lines between the exchanges to get the absolute fastest possible ping times, at enormous expense[1]. That gets a 13 ms ping time from NYC to Chicago.

My experience with a Steam Link, hardwired on a local ethernet makes me skeptical that any of these cloud gaming platforms will really be practical.

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfin...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10736960/High- frequency-trading-when-milliseconds-mean-millions.html)

<comment><USER11> A lot of traders are actually switching to wireless links since RF travels faster than light in a fiber. But some fun stuff happens then [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-03/this- heat...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-03/this-heat-wave-s- so-bad-it-s-even-slowing-down-u-s-stock-trades)

<comment><USER12> It travels faster because it travels "as the crow flies" instead of snaking through all the conduit for a fiber connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I must be missing something. It's not immediately clear to me, even after reading the article, how this is different from just procuring a Windows OS VM in Azure. Pricing?

<comment><USER14> Was wondering the same thing. Is this Azures version of AWS Workspaces?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And the cycle restarts as we head back towards thin clients...

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a friend who works at a big Corporation (100k employees) where everyone has a thin dumb client and windows desktop running on a server. It works great, except video stutters if not small sized. Way of the future? Its an efficient way to pool resources, and prevents people physically stealing data.

<comment><USER17> Been running a setup like that for over 6 years. It's great. Support is ridiculously easy. Desktop refreshes aren't bad either and that's one of the most difficult projects for an IT department to pull off. We've done a couple of them now - once to add RAM, disk and CPU and another to change the desktop image. Deployments and big jobs like opening new offices or big moves are simple.

The video is easy to fix with a fast network or Apex PCOIP accelerator cards, although those are being replaced by expensive server-side GPU's these days. We have some google earth users and a few others with gpu tasks. A couple Apex cards in a couple of the servers took care of that.

The only thing that completely sucks is USB storage devices. They are painfully slow. Most people accept it because they are rarely used in our environment and everything else is faster than any other system they've had.

<comment><USER18> Printing with terminal services still kind of sucks and for large print jobs there's still third party print services, but otherwise I'd agree.

<comment><USER17> It's not terminal services. We are using VMware horizon. Printing is fine. USB scanning is a little slow but most people don't seem to notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I pretty much live inside Remote Desktop, and the only fault I can find with this is that it starts at 100 users (in the Azure pricing calculator). Having something like this for SoHo (1-5 users) would be a killer app in my neck of the woods.

</comment><comment><USER20> So... this is Terminal Services as a Service?

<comment><USER21> I wonder how it compares to AWS Systems Manager Session Manager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does app installation work? ie. If I have a license for some software, can I rent a virtual desktop to run it on?

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this Azures version of AWS Workspaces?

</comment><comment><USER23> Did anyone even test the process. It has failed a dozen times in different way.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Generally " available? So does that mean it's available sometimes, but not to everyone or not always?

<comment><USER25> "General" availability means available to the general public, basically. as opposed to beta/insiders etc.

<comment><USER24> Thanks, was wondering about that</comment></comment></comment>


Google warns that ADB backup, restore may be removed in a future Android release - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/adb-backup-and-restore-depreciated/ <comment><USER2> This would mean that google intends to make it fundamentally impossible to backup an android phone, complete with app settings.

Why, I'm unsure, but I figure it part of the increasing lock-in and removal of openness in Android that Google has been trending toward for a few years now.

<comment><USER3> > fundamentally impossible to backup an android phone

... to anything other than Google services, I'd wager.

It's been tough backing up Android phones as-is. I have yet to figure out a way to get codes out of the Google Authenticator app other than via sqlite on a rooted phone.

<comment><USER4> Google disabled backups for their Authenticator app so I don't think they will ever let you export the secrets.

I wrote an application to automate OTP secret extraction for just about every app out there after trying to migrate a few dozen tokens from Google Authenticator to AndOTP. You might find it useful: [https://github.com/puddly/android-otp- extractor](https://github.com/puddly/android-otp-extractor)

<comment><USER5> Dont you need root access to get the app private data?

I switched from Microsoft to Google because they advertised as having backup and now I am stuck with Google authenticator without any backup.

The only saving grace for Android was adb backup and restore but Google is shutting that down

<comment><USER4> You do need root access, unfortunately. Even backing up the filesystem with `tar` is troublesome: [https://github.com/dlenski/tetherback](https://github.com/dlenski/tetherback)

I really hoped Google would have allowed some way to locally make full Android backups by now but I guess that's not compatible with their business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They need to step up their backup game. It's the only thing I truly miss about switching to android. With iOS you could always restore your device to what it was before. But with android, even with the Google backup service there are so many gaps left. Homescreen icons organisation, app settings, even android settings themselves or not always properly saved or restored.

<comment><USER7> The hard part with Android, especially in regards to icons organization, is that this is entirely Launcher dependent, so it would more be the job of your launcher's developers to allow those data to be properly backed up.

<comment><USER6> I've been only using stock android phones, first nexus now Nokia, no custom launcher or anything. If even the Android core developers don't do it right what can you expect from 3rd party?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like the idea of using adb to manage a phone from a terminal. Please don't do this!

</comment><comment><USER9> Of course, Google's backup service still works. How nice of them!

</comment><comment><USER10> Most apps I tried to backup using adb has already disabled backup themself..

<comment><USER11> Indeed, this is a huge pain. ADB is, as far as I know, the only generic backup method that does not require root. The fact that it doesn't work with a lot of apps is highly frustrating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has adb backup/restore actually worked for you? Not for me. Backup, sure. Restore, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER13> And _that_ , is why I root my phones.

<comment><USER14> That statement makes literally no sense. ADB still works just fine, so either you meant "and that is why I will be rooting my phones in the future", or this is absolutely not why you root your phones.

<comment><USER15> I think it's fairly obvious the poster meant _that_ as in _that kind of behavior, that takes power away from the user_ as opposed to _exactly that particular reason_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This will be because you can't backup DRM keys and other hardware secrets, and that makes life hard for app developers.

</comment><comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL So i'm supposed to waste a day setting up my phone now... Amazing

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool. I recently used adb to backup a phone that's screen broke.

</comment><comment><USER18> Good. Backup and restore has always been clumsy and broken.

<comment><USER19> I would personaly much rather they fix backup and restore rather than removing the feature. I do not understand why an application can opt-out from an encrypted backup. The lack of good backup/restore for Android sucks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for this? - <AUTHOR>

Me and a friend are having a debate on which is more likely to make money?
Option 1:  Build a site that gives people the ability to create a landing page and about us page in under 5 minutes where they can get people to sign up for an idea.  All you need to provide is the URL and the site does the rest.
Option 2: Build a site that gives people the ability to create a landing page and about us page in 1 day where they can get people to sign up for an idea.  Then the site creates social media accounts, ads and pr articles and communicates the idea out for 30 days. <comment><USER2> 2\. Putting in a day is a long commitment (so as byoung says, you should offer #1 for free and no signup, and make a convincing case for using #2. The benefit is having a centralized control panel for multiple different social media sites with different interfaces and tedious junk.

Make sure to generate an email address so that all the resulting welcome/membership/spam emails go through your clean and professional tool rather than cluttering up the user's inbox. And don't let them use it to spam HN, of course :-)

I would do graduated pricing. $25-$50 for a week of promo, which should be long enough to get some analytics traffic (did I mention it auto-signs-up for analytics?). $100-250 for a month, $1000+ for a longer campaign. Lower prices limit you to 5, 10 or 20 outlets and 3-4 updates over a week, higher let you do more frequent or structured updates.

I can see some definite potential for this. Lots of businesses want to do internet PR but don't want to devote major amounts of time to it. The multiple different interfaces and signups are the biggest time killer - if you can perform essentially similar or related functions in many different contexts and give a clean top-level action/report interface, it'll be a winner. Just make sure the starting price is cheap enough for people to get their feet wet, ie no bigger than a petty cash expense and a few hours of work. Once they see that pay off in terms of gaining eyeballs, they'll be hooked.

</comment><comment><USER3> i don't see why they have to be conflicting points. why can't a site do both things?

(i wouldn't pay for either one though, but this isn't really something targeting the average HN reader)

<comment><USER4> Maybe option 1 can be a free option, and option 2 the paid option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Neither of them sounds appealing to me, but if I must choose, the first option sounds a tiny bit more attractive.</comment>


Notes from adding in-app billing to my Android app - <AUTHOR> http://crazyviraj.blogspot.com/2011/06/some-notes-on-implementing-in-app.html

<comment><USER2> Google's lack of responsiveness to bug reports in general is really perplexing. I can understand it might take them time to address things, that they are busy and have other priorities, etc. But the manner in which they deal with bug reports is so terse and dismissive I find it insulting. Bugs with a huge number of people following and explaining in detail the problem will get ignored, closed with zero comments, closed with 4 words of meaningless comment, etc. Just to give an example -

<http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8488>

It seems to me that they created the bug reporting system and then put nobody in charge of monitoring it or maintaining it and most likely no one has authority to even respond to half these bugs, except top people like Romain Guy who consider it beneath them. This is really burning a lot of good will in some of Google and Android's most enthusiastic supporters.

<comment><USER3> It's really odd. I'm following critical Android bugs from 2008 that haven't been touched by a developer. And minor bugs that a developer's commented on/scolded the "me too!"s on. And a bunch of bugs that are duped all over the place.

They really could use a good, thorough, old fashioned bug scrub with QA and maintenance teams heavily involved/leading the charge. Cleaning up the bug database is a daunting no-fun task, for sure, but it looks terrible to outsiders and bug triage is a perfect place for new employees (junior developers, QA, and support staff) to get their feet wet while they still lack the emotional attachment...it's the perfect bootcamp.

The stats on this would be fascinating, too - for instance, I'd love to know the percentage of dupes. :)

Conversely, making senior developers responsible for triaging bugs straight from the public (and doing first line support for some of these, which does appear to happen from time to time) can lead to some serious burnout.

<comment><USER2> The worst problem here is one of PR. Google should at least pay some nice friendly intern to sit down and go through each bug and write a "Thanks for reporting this, we appreciate your time and I'll try and get the right person to look at it" type comment, with periodic, "Sorry there's been no progress on this, we're really busy as you can understand" - totally meaningless, but costs almost nothing and completely changes the feel of the discussion. Obviously they should do much better, but a token PR effort would be a nice minimum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, one question I have is how much does in-app billing improve the bottom line of your app? Does in-app purchase really make a free app more profitable than a straight up paid app or how does it compare?

I haven't seen much data myself on these kind of comparisons, so I'm quite curious.

<comment><USER3> I can't provide a comparison between paid vs. in-app, as our app is free, but here's our experience so far:

We've had in-app billing in place since mid-April. The income is helpful as any income is, but so far income from in-app purchases does not outstrip customer support and server costs (we do our own support, so factor in that for a small startup, you could be actually developing new features and improving the product vs. answering questions, handling refunds, having to dance like a marionette to get someone at Google to look at a critical billing bug).

Luckily, we do have an iOS app as well to subsidize the Android side of the house...but money doesn't buy time in this market, unfortunately.

Our cancellation rate is 20%. That is, for every 100 purchases, there are 20 cancellations for various reasons.

We suspected this outcome going into it, so this was not really a big deal to us - any offset to the support and maintenance costs is a boon, in our opinion, and keeping our users happy is important - Android users were bummed about missing the extra features, so we made it so.

We had a few hitches right out of the box with purchases getting lost (<https://code.google.com/p/marketbilling/issues/detail?id=14>), but we're able to help users around that if we're lucky enough that they contact us about it.

For the past week, however (right before the June 15th maintenance), Android Market isn't sending purchase status back to a subset of users, resulting in users paying multiple times for products that never get delivered (<https://code.google.com/p/marketbilling/issues/detail?id=32>).

So our revenues are going up! Except they're not, and I'm spending two hours a day dealing with angry customers who think we're thieves and ferreting through the Merchant Center trying to pre-emptively catch these broken transactions before a customer sees they were charged $20 bucks for a $1.99 feature because they didn't think the purchase took. Some of them I won't be able to catch unless they contact us, as it's not uncommon for people to use multiple credit cards with different names on them.

The fact that it's nearly impossible to get Google's attention on this is incredibly distressing. I've commented on bugs, reported it multiple times to the Merchant Center (our case has been forwarded "to a specialist"), reported it via the Market Publisher site form, posted a forum message...why is it so hard to get Google's attention on something like this? Don't their fancy algorithms pick up on the fact that in-app revenue has jumped up across the board? It's one thing that users aren't able to purchase (that sucks), but an entirely different thing if users are able to purchase 20 times, but never get what they paid for.

To be honest, in-apps really aren't seeming very worth the risk. I am hoping they work to change this, but it seems pretty bleak right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great feedback - your sentiment regarding Google's apathy seems to be evident in all the bug reports, as was a big red flag to me like I mentioned in my post.

Are you losing users, or do users understand after they contact you? Just curious if you're bleeding customers because of Google's problems. At some point, if Google doesn't fix this, I assume this is going to make you rollback your in-app purchases.

<comment><USER3> Not currently, our users are pretty awesome, on the whole, we're really lucky in that respect. I actually haven't gotten much feedback from those who've contacted us (I've been following up to get more detail about their OS, Market version, etc - in case there's a common thread that I could post along with the issue reports), but I think once they get their refund, they go on their way...

The real problem are the users that never contact us about it and just leave negative reviews...it's super common for users to leave angry reviews, but never contact you to give you a chance to fix it and there's no way to tie a review to a customer, I guess I could contact every "Ashley" that attempted a purchase in the last week...

What's also really odd is that I'm not hearing back from anyone that I pre- emptively refunded. We do have to pay transaction fees for refunds, not sure how/if/whether Google will do anything about this. Likely the large number of refunds will bot-flag us as a "bad app." Oy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote @timbray to get attention on those bugs - maybe you can too?

<comment><USER3> Will try it, but he hasn't responded to other queries from folks on Twitter about very important things re:Android developers, but I guess it's worth a try. Just had to refund a bunch more today. Thanks for the tip!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I have a hack that'll save you commission on refund. Follow/DM me on Twitter and I can share.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Buffett would not buy Google, Apple; prefers IBM - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/05/berkshire-techstocks-idUSWEN499820120505

<comment><USER2> Buffet likes to invest in companies that last for a century rather than latest hot thing (in the past decade).

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny to see this perspective; lately Robert X. Cringely devoted several posts on his site[1] to just how messed-up IBM seems to be.

[1] <http://www.cringely.com/>

<comment><USER4> I'll take Buffet's investment advice over anyone else's though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Then again, Buffett has always said he doesn't understand tech.

<comment><USER6> And one of his golden rules was (is ?) never to invest in something you don't understand. Which makes me wonder whether I should bother reading the article.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, did not read it either. It's just in line with what Buffet's advocated from the beginning. My response to the headline was "so?"</comment></comment></comment>


Their Passion Is Windows XP - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news127319067.html <comment><USER2> Well, it is the only operating system that "just works" on a wide range of PC hardware. Pop an XP disk in any system made in the last 5 years and you're up and running in no time. People don't appreciate how big of a feat that is.

If you don't want to shell out for a Mac, are wary of Vista's compatibility and resource issues, and don't want to spend the next three months installing Linux in your free time, XP is the only option.

<comment><USER3> 3 months to install Linux?

You can't be serious.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps he's doing a stage 1 of Gentoo and wants to configure and compile everything himself.

<comment><USER5> On a 386.

<comment><USER4> With only his nose to type.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's one way for people to like your product, release a successor that sucks;-)

</comment><comment><USER7> I vote they open-source it!</comment>


Let's Encrypt Team – Reddit AMA - <AUTHOR> https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c9ku9/lets_encrypt_team_a_nonprofit_working_to_secure/ <comment><USER2> There was one interesting question and answer:

Q: _" I find that the reasons given in this thread[0] regarding a particular certificate revocation are highly unsatisfactory. Can you justify how this revocation aligns with the views expressed in "The CA's Role in Fighting Phishing and Malware" without resorting to "Microsoft asked us to and therefore we had to?"_

A: _" If we want to be a trusted CA we need to comply with the MS root program rules (and Mozilla/Google/Apple/etc... rules). If they want us to revoke a cert we have to do it, we don't really have a choice._"

So do I get it right, that if MS or any other big company doesn't like my URL, site content etc. they can _ask_ to revoke my certificate just like that? Wow..

0\. [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/reason-for-revokation- of...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/reason-for-revokation- of-1076742682-rsc-cdn77-org/13807/14)

<comment><USER3> That's a serious flaw in their program. Wonder what it would take to resolve this

<comment><USER4> Well, the onus is on the wider tech community to hold each of the vendors to account for what they do and don't do.

There's a delicate balance of trust and cooperation between site owners, vendors, and CAs, where each can make demands and has to serve to a degree each of the others. In situations where this trust is broken by one party, the other two will often move to reject them.

An example of this is a CA being rejected by a vendor after they issue invalid certificates, but on the flip side, a vendor simply throwing a tantrum over a bad domain and pulling trust will leave them as the only browser that "doesn't work" with some number of sites, and that reflects badly on them and they will see fewer people use their products (imagine if only Mozilla ended up rejecting LE certs!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's a serious flaw in their program. Wonder what it would take to resolve this.</comment>


Show HN: Rime.co – Never miss an update - <AUTHOR> https://rime.co/@taylorswift13 <comment><AUTHOR> I am co-founder of Rime. Rime is a social content aggregator, it pull together users social contents shared on multiple platforms to one place. Here is an example of user profile [https://rime.co/@girish](https://rime.co/@girish) We believe that everyone is an artist and internet is a platform which allows users (brands/individuals) to showcase their creation through various apps. Rime helps users to sync all of their content in one unified timeline. Which will help their friends and followers to get every singel update. It's also an initiative towards supporting openweb and content sharing networks to give utmost reach to the contents, creators (authors) and providers (platforms).

You can also use rime as a tool to create profiles of others. Rime users can create anybody's guest profile (If they are not in Rime), by connecting social media accounts of people whom they want to follow. For example [https://rime.co/@google](https://rime.co/@google) . It is like Wikipedia for social networks which will be moderated by the community.

Currently, people are not actively using platforms like vine, Flickr, tumblr etc, since they don't get proper visibility for contents. Every time they need to share content explicitly to facebook to get the visibility that's a cumbersome process and time consuming. Rime is a disruptive Idea which can encourage people to use various content creation platform since we can bring those content under one profile and enhance the visibility.

We are trying to make true open web platform to the internet. Where content reach can not be controlled by anyone. Whatever people are sharing will reach to the followers.

<comment><USER2> Most of this site is extremely disingenuous.

eg: [https://rime.co/@WarrenBuffett](https://rime.co/@WarrenBuffett)

"Created October 2015"

He's listed under "Featured Users"

You're apparently taking his profile image from Twitter, while also making it seem like he's a user of the site.

You're direct linking to his profile image here:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3599636117/8468a03db84e...](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3599636117/8468a03db84ec4211c3efeba18ac3925.png)

And then manipulating the look of it. That's most likely against Twitter's terms of service.

I get what you're trying to fake in doing all of that, including how careful you were to frame it in terms of wording and appearance. It comes across as slimy.

<comment><USER3> I left with the same feelings. I clicked on "This is a guest user" expecting some sort of explanation about guest users, but instead I get redirected to some strange page with different branding. [http://imgur.com/fiLeSBk](http://imgur.com/fiLeSBk)

Very unclear as to what I'm supposed to do here so I left the page.

<comment><USER4> Actually their is an explanation but I have accidentally kept it for the loggedin users. I will fix this soon.

But here is the preview:

> What is a guest account?

> When a brand/person we like is not in a platform we miss their update. But > its not the case here, you can create your beloved brand/personality and > follow their updates. And when anyone like or comment on them we send them a > tweet through our twitter bot > ([https://twitter.com/rimebot](https://twitter.com/rimebot)) to let them > know :)

> I want to be a moderator

> It's still in development stage so if you are interested to be a moderator > drop us a mail firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Co-incidently we are making something similar and going to launch soon.

What are all platform you are aggregating content from as of now?

Website is not loading so couldnt not check anything.

<comment><USER5> One more query. Is it paid tool or free?

<comment><USER4> Its a free tool, the sync server is little jammed for now. But it will notify you when its synced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its really great to got more than 300 signups in a day with couple of request for verified account. Thanks to Betalist and hackernews!

</comment><comment><USER6> Wait. Is this WUPHF from The Office

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL1z1ZHD0K4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL1z1ZHD0K4)

</comment><comment><USER4> Boom Shakalaka.. Rime just got featured in betalist. We are invite only if you don't want to be in queue, join through betalist link

[http://betalist.com/startups/rime](http://betalist.com/startups/rime)</comment>


The Hilarious Twitter Bot You Should Be Following  - <AUTHOR> http://thefastertimes.com/photolists/2011/06/04/the-best-twitter-bot-you-should-be-following/

<comment><USER2> I was already following it, I'm not sure why, and this context really helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is something I do not want to follow.</comment>


A Study Said Covid Wasn't That Deadly. The Right Seized It - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/opinion/coronavirus-research-misinformation.html <comment><USER2> Uhm, lately, I have a hard time finding any news outlet that puts titles on their articles that have any actual relation to the text itself.

As such, information is being manipulated left and right.

I basically only go into actual studies to determine their protocols and raw data, and then draw my own conclusions from that.

But I understand that the general public does not have the time or desire to do that, and I am not sure what the solution is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I don't think the headline is misleading in this case but i generally agree with you. It's easy to cherry-pick studies that support your position, and maybe even interpret them in dishonest ways. Perhaps a more accurate title here would say something about preprints being weaponized by conspiracy theorists, and why journalists shouldn't report on them — but the general public would likely not be familiar with preprints, and this title gets at the heart of it.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I wasn't complaining about this particular article — I was describing how I avoid running into the problem the article complains about (i.e. someone else interpreting the results of the study for me, thus influencing my opinion and behaviour) by going directly into the study (when available) myself :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Overwhelmed with new job. Feeling totally stuck. - <AUTHOR> I graduated college a few months ago and recently started working as an entry-level software developer at a big company in the silicon valley.
I once worked as an intern back-end web application developer, and it wasn't too challenging because most of the frameworks I worked with had an immense amount of online resources to learn from. And the code base wasn't too big so it was easy to pick up on.
But at my new job I'm working with a 20+ year old enterprise code base that relies on internal tools with ambiguous documentation. I don't have a mentor assigned to me, but I do work closely with the lead engineer to ramp up. A good portion of what he says goes over my head, so I either ask for clarifying questions or take notes and do research on my own.
There's a lot I don't know. I made an effort to keep notes of everything my coworkers and lead engineer say, as well as documenting my progress in learning all the technologies. In some ways I'm expanding my knowledge daily, but I don't think it's quickly as I'd like, and sometimes when my coworkers ask if I understand how x or y works and I don't, it seems like I've made no progress on learning at all.
This is my 2nd month here. The first month I spent setting up my dev environment and waiting to be granted permissions to various services. Now that I have a real assignment, I slog through this massive code base and have no idea what I'm doing. I ask for help but have a lot of stupid questions and feel like I'm wasting everybody's time because I can't resolve things on my own. I generally have a good idea of what I don't know and how to learn it, but in a lot of cases I don't know what I don't know and thus don't know what to ask, or how to ask a good question.
Maybe I'm being too hard on myself since I've only just started working and it's my 2nd month, but a part of me feels like I should be getting better at figuring things out a lot faster. <comment><USER2> Been there... It's a terrible feeling.

A couple of vectors to approach the situation:

\- Start top down. Understand what the entire system or product is supposed to do at the macro level. Understand the main architectural components, what the role of each is and how they interact with each other and users or the outside world. Once you can understand the big picture, the individual lines of code have a context that helps understand their purpose and how they perform it.

\- Discuss with your lead engineer what his expectations are for your progress. Very senior people I have talked to will claim that it takes 6 months - 1 year before a new hire can really start to contribute. Longer if it is a legacy system as you are facing. Something like, 'Once I am up to speed, what kind of tasks or projects will you expect me to take on? Can you give a few specific examples (maybe things that actually are on the list today) and give a time line for how long you'd expect it to take me to get them done? This can be a bit dicey depending on the style of the manager, but it's good to learn their style in addition to their expectations of your performance.

</comment><comment><USER3> You're doing great! Many of the commenters here are saying this is normal and you shouldn't be worried. They're right. Relax. You're asking questions and learning... don't worry about not learning fast enough. No matter how quickly you learn, it will never be "fast enough"!

Here's some advice which may help. Focus on smaller problems. If you need to solve a problem with an internal tool with poor docs, tell yourself you're not going to solve the problem right now. Right now, you're just going to improve the docs. So dive into the tool and focus on one method at a time. Read the source, the tests (if they exist), and update the docs with the knowledge you gain. Stay focused on each individual aspect of the tool until you're an expert on it before moving on.

This way you'll be in a position of ever-expanding authority, you'll inevitably arrive in a position where you can solve the original problem easily using the internal tool, and you'll have created some docs which will be useful to other people on the team!

<comment><USER4> Many times I've relied on new hires, and even specifically asked them to, for improving the documentation and/or onboarding guides. Once someone has been in the team for a few months, they'll picked up "tribal knowledge" and they'll mentally fill in the blanks in any documentation (or obscure code). Those few initial weeks of someone with fresh eyes are precious for that.

<comment><USER5> This is absolutely the way to go. Another great feature of getting a new hire on your time is that the goals of your team were already allocated with the old bucket of developer hours. Because the new hire was not planned for, they are relatively free to work on any of the nice to have but not critical parts of the codebase.

We always have new developers start by writing unit tests and documentation for the most used components of our codebase as determined by profiling. This way we are always improving our most important code, and at the same time teaching the largest percentage of our code to the new dev at the same time. With core components that are used everywhere, the new dev can literally ask anyone else on the team for help. This can help the new dev by allowing him/her to spread out what he/she thinks are dumb questions without feeling as embarrassed. Then by the time the next planning session has accounted for the larger bucket of dev capability, we have some great bugfixes, and the new dev is more confident and ready to specialize more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is all normal. Any big company that's been around for a while has a lot of internal infrastructure that's poorly documented. Often, in the first few months of a new job, when I go to a meeting, not only can't I contribute anything, I don't even know what the words mean.

Perhaps you can befriend someone else who started around the same time and talk to them, I bet they're feeling something similar.

Anyway, I do think what you're being too hard on yourself. You're probably developing meta-knowledge: you may not know the details of the code & tools, but you're learning the underlying concepts and who to talk to about what.

You should also be able to ask your manager for feedback on how you've been coming up to speed, or ask what's typical for people new to the job.

Three to 6 months is often stated as a ramp up time, so I wouldn't be too worried about your 2nd month.

Also, there will be a lot of code & tools you never learn well. That's ok, its not about the stuff you don't know, it's about the stuff you do know.

</comment><comment><USER7> Solving bugs is not glamorous, but it does help with learning a code base and it gives you goals to hit and will make you feel like you are contributing.

I find that the more that you plan to do with knowledge, the easier it is to learn it (and then be able to do something with it). The simplest thing is taking notes to help pay attention in class (which you are doing). But you can work from that basic principle in other ways. For instance, you can say "let me see if I understand this right" and explain back the information. You could also make it a point to always make some kind of guess, even if it is obviously a wrong one. Finally, you may want to find people who like to talk and ask them various questions. Some engineers are impatient and do not like explaining things a second time, but others are not like that. You may be able to find what you need to know in indirect ways.

There is a lot you can do and you sound like a conscientious person, so if you make a healthy and consistent effort, then you should be fine in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER8> You are just in the second month, this is totally normal. Till the 4rth month I couldn't understand when my colleagues asked me things and felt pretty stupid. Tree months and a few projects later the dust settles and the pieces bond together. Just stay hungry to learn. Nobody expects you to do anything that fast especially as an entry level, so take advantage of this time to learn as much as possible. Monitor others and teach yourself on being clear when asking questions or directions. Master this art, trust me, helps like hell. Also try to understand even the basic office politics, where your responsibilities start and end. It's an exciting world and getting started from a big firm is considered a "blessing". Try to think of it as "being paid to learn". Won't get much chances for that, believe me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Having just gone through what you're feeling, I can tell you that it's totally fine. It takes time to ramp up in any company. Working with a code base with the sort of complexities you're going to encounter just adds to the time/effort it'll take (and to the stress). Just keep slogging through and getting to know how everything is connected.

Also, do you have any regular feedback loop with your immediate supervisor/manager? Having a regular one-on-one can be a great way to get some perspective on how they think you're doing. You're probably being sort of impatient with yourself and are doing fine :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Get used to using 'grep' or 'ack' to dig through a codebase to find things. For example, if your task is, "Add a new button 'Find Vendors' next to the 'Find Clients' button on the Company Search report", I would:

1\. grep for the string 'Find Clients' to find the UI

2\. Note the URL that it hits when you click it

3\. grep for a unique fragment of that URL to find where the routes are stored. Make sure you grep for something 'static', so if the url is '/search/query.html?action=search_clients' you could grep for 'query.html'.

4\. The route should map to some code that implements it. grep for the controller or whatever else you find in the routes.

5\. Once you've found the controller, something there should retrieve a list of clients. Find out how it's hitting the database.

Then you should know enough to tack on a new button in the UI and modify the controller to hit the database in a different way. Something as simple as 'grep' I never used in college or high school, but use all the time having needed it on the job for the past couple years.

<comment><USER5> IDEs really are much better at this than grep or ack. My experience has always need something that can perform symbol resolution, and something more powerful than grep or ack wins here. You may be ack-guru and and do that on the fly, but the rest of us mortals are not willing to put in the effort when some other dev has given us a command line tool, an editor plugin, or an IDE to do that for us. Its all about how much time you want to spend feeling cool and how much time you want to spend getting things done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is more or less how I felt when I started my first job out of school. I assure you it does get better with time: 3-6 months is probably a conservative estimate for when you will feel "up to speed".

What really helped me at first was having another engineer I could latch onto and do a lot of pair programming (sometimes just watching over his shoulder). If you are on a project all by yourself where nobody else knows the system either, that's a lot tougher to do.

</comment><comment><USER12> > I don't have a mentor assigned to me, but I do work closely with the lead > engineer to ramp up.

Congratulations, you've just found your virtual mentors here on HN!

Now-- go find your own local, real-life mentors. Seek out senior engineers, grab some coffee, share a meal together, ask for their specific advice. Pro- Tip: make a friend, don't ask 'will you be my mentor'.

Ideally, you'll want 3-5 go-to-guys with whom you can share ideas, compare notes, and get solid feedback. Think of it as building your own personal brain trust. The onus is on you to make this happen.

</comment><comment><USER13> It usually takes from 3 to 6 months to know where are the parts of the system that you are using, and also if this is an old codebase maybe longer, your boss knows this, relax, keep learning!

</comment><comment><USER14> I think your questioning if that's the type of direction you want to take in your career. Anything can be learnt in time but ask yourself this before you do. Will you be happy working on a 20 year old codebase likely using old tech and processes? If you commit years of time like this and choose to leave, will your experience gained be of benefit? If not consider walking away.

</comment><comment><USER15> That's basically standard. Give it 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's usually a bad sign when teams pawn off their maintenance work on new people. It means that they have no intention of actually fixing the system (or replacing it) because it's easier to just keep rolling the shit downhill.

If it doesn't feel better in a couple months, definitely consider quitting. You'd probably be happier on almost any other team.

Edit: downvoted by people who pawn off their crapwork on the newbies :P

<comment><USER4> I usually assign simple, low priority maintenance task to new team members so they can start to learn the codebase, the tools and the process.

Once they get those first few simple issues done, they're quickly assigned increasingly more complex issues.

<comment><USER16> Whatever helps them get acclimated is fine. The problem is taking projects no one wants to do and forcing the new person to do it without help.</comment></comment></comment>


New Windows hack warning: Patch Intel systems now to block SWAPGSAttack exploits - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-windows-hack-warning-patch-intel-systems-now-to-block-swapgsattack-exploits/ <comment><USER2> Another one? At this point I'm starting to suspect these are intentional backdoors. Hard to find, no traces from exploiting, plausible deniability (incompetence).</comment>


Electromagnetic harvester gathers free electricity from thin air - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/148247-german-student-creates-electromagnetic-harvester-that-gathers-free-electricity-from-thin-air

<comment><USER2> This article is a well-meaning summary of a project the author doesn't understand, and that cannot live up to its hype. Consider the following:

1\. There are any number of electromagnetic fields present in the atmosphere, caused by power lines, radio transmitters, lightning, and many other sources.

2\. Notwithstanding the above, in a typical location, "harvesting" the sum of all the fields cannot produce any useful power.

3\. There's an exception -- being located close to a commercial radio broadcasting station or beneath power lines.

4\. In such locations, one might be able to harvest a small amount of power, but one doesn't want to live in such a place because of the possibility of long-term adverse effects of strong electromagnetic fields.

5\. The above risk is well-established enough that many governments require warning signs near radio transmitters:

[http://www.satcoms.org.uk/satellite/forum/uploads/1/RadHazDo...](http://www.satcoms.org.uk/satellite/forum/uploads/1/RadHazDowload.jpg)

6\. The originator of this idea either does understand these issues, in which case he's misleading people, or he doesn't, in which case he's misleading himself.</comment>