Ask HN: What is your self teaching process? - <AUTHOR> I'm an avid autodidact, I've just recently learned Vue and node, and was thinking about building a crowdsourced, curated learning application where users can up vote learning guides, so you can see what learning resources are worth putting the time into. <comment><USER2> I have a process I've developed over a few years:

A. Find out whether it's worth learning.

1\. Find out the big picture as fast as possible, about 15-30 mins.

2\. Skim through all the major parts.

3\. Figure out how I can use this. If the intention of it is to be practical (i.e. not philosophical, scientific, historical knowledge) it needs to be immediately applicable. Something that I may use years later, like how to make mantraps or phrases in Russian, is usually not worth learning right now.

B. Find a way to apply it

1\. I figure out the bare smallest thing I can build with this. Building things is possibly the fastest way to have an intuitive understanding.

2\. Copy what someone else is doing. Don't bother trying to be creative in the earliest phase. People usually adopt some habits for good reason.

3\. After it's in muscle memory, then I start experimenting.

4\. Allow lots of "dead time" while learning. Meaning unconscious/subconscious periods like sleep, meditation, or just daydreaming. This is needed for it to go into long term. You'll know when if you get stuck on something.

<comment><USER3> Most of it is self-explanatory but still, could you give some examples of things you recently learning while applying these points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've came to realize how important it is to teach what you learn, in order to better internalize that knowledge.

It does not mean, you must have students - writing a blog post or even just imagining you are preparing for a talk about the subject is good enough.

I've recently written a blog post about the way I learn, which I improved gradually over years: [http://nywkap.com/learning/effective- learning.html](http://nywkap.com/learning/effective-learning.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Build a prototype. Aim low. Get some basic functionality sorta-working with shitty, hacky code. Throw it away. Rinse and repeat, learning on each cycle.

<comment><USER6> Me too. maybe less rinse and repeat, but I've found tht after I got something to work it's easier for me to go deeper

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm old fashioned. Pen and paper. Take notes, recall from memory and review with decreasing regularity until it becomes base knowledge. If my brain feels like it's hurting that's good :)

</comment><comment><USER8> My process:

1\. First figure out what are the foundational concepts/terminology in the area.

Skim articles, books, papers, blog posts in the area. Take note when you are confused.

2\. Understand the foundations properly. Build mental models.

3\. Identify the skills you need to have. Tools, processes, mindset/thinking. this i key and is often missed. How do you think in this field? I. thinking computationally for programming

4\. Practice key skills, process, tools, thinking

Rinse and repeat. The process is not linear

3.

</comment><comment><USER9> If something is a complete new subject to me, then I'm trying to develop an anxiety about failing to learn it. I try to tackle the upcoming problems at any time and thinking about it especially before sleeping, at the morning and while meditating. This forces me to make process but often results in days where I'm very frustrated and depressed, but sometimes ends up in learning new things which I didn't ever expect to be able to understand. Probably not the healthiest way but it works for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really resonates with this, I've never thought of my own approach in words, but this would be it. Stressful but rewarding. Just don't crack amirite

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not much of a process, more like:

1\. Learn about thing

2\. Read about thing

3\. Play with thing

4\. Create something else using thing

5\. Steps 2-4 in any order, any amount of times.

The hardest thing for me is to apply my knowledge. Sure I can read all I want about a database tech, but if I don't have any _data_ to put in it, it's hard to feel like that is real knowledge, or to even keep that knowledge around.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like to look for the big picture of the subject, first understanding the boundaries of the new knowledge that I'm trying to grasp.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a visual learner, so I like to see things visually - but also do my own research by reading about abstract concepts.

There also needs to be a level of discussion with other learners to keep motivation. Can't wait until AR does all the stuff I want.

</comment><comment><USER13> Learning by doing! [https://www.crowdcast.io/e/learning](https://www.crowdcast.io/e/learning)</comment>


Ask HN: Any legal issues if a competitor copies your website design? - <AUTHOR> I have been used to the GitHub UI for a long time and GitLab just feels weird (where the menus are, how I have to always scroll down, choice of colors, etc).
If GitLab were to copy Gitlab's UI, would it face any legal issues? Is there a thing like "patented" UI?
What prevents someone from completely copying your design? <comment><USER2> Fonts, colors, shapes, phrases/words can be trademarked. copyright might apply if you verbatim copy something.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting. I'm completely ignorant of these things, thank you.

So it seems GitLab in this case has a strong deterrent to just copy their competitors' UI. Kind of gives me more sympathy towards GitLab because it's really hard to deviate from something that has been kind of a standard look for a code collaboration website.</comment></comment>


GM EV1 – The First Consumer Ready Electric Vehicle vs. The Real World (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.motortrend.com/news/1997-gm-ev1/ <comment><USER2> Obligatory plug for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F) \-- a really fantastic documentary that dives into many of the factors that led GM to kill the EV1 program. Warning: may cause diminished faith in humanity.

</comment><comment><USER3> 20 years gone, to get back to a $30,000 electric car (vastly more capable to be sure).</comment>


The greatest hacker in the world - <AUTHOR> http://nathanmarz.com/blog/delancey-street/

<comment><USER2> Having lived across the street from the Delancey St. Foundation for a while, I've had the privilege of enjoying their many services. Deeply impressive organization. If you ever find yourself in the SoMa area, go eat at Crossroads Cafe or the Delancey St. Restaurant. Great food, and by far some of the best service in SF.

Great writeup!</comment>


Waitrose criticised for stocking magazine with 'autism cure' cover - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/waitrose-get-well-magazine-autism-criticism-a9253071.html <comment><USER2> The cover doesn't say 'cure'. It says 'get well'.

Below it says 'Reversing Autism'

A google search for 'reversing autism' gave me this first result: [https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322274.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322274.php)

Further: [...] She cites famous people with autism including climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has Asperger syndrome (a form of autism), as proof that autism is not a barrier to success. [..]

Is Greta considered a 'success' by this woman because Greta has autism?

To me, this quote was the one that stood out. Greta is morphing into a snake oil salesman of ideas. She has made statements that imply that her autism makes her different. And that it's her 'superpower'.

1\. I wonder if people would be less tolerant of her if she didn't proclaim her autism diagnosis?

2\. How many people who support Greta Thunberg have children or relatives or people they know who are or are connected to someone with autism diagnosis?

<comment><USER3> > _Greta is morphing into a snake oil salesman of ideas._

Thunberg doesn't offer firsthand conclusions or research. She repeatedly says she is an advocate for science-based policy and can't make specific policy recommendations.

As for her ASD superpower, she makes those claims because her detractors attack her for her differences and because she feels it helps her cope with being a target.

She isn't selling snake oil because she is commenting about _herself_ , not others. She isn't generalizing about all people with ASD diagnoses, nor is she saying whether people should try to eliminate it or not.</comment></comment>


Rapportive just turned Gmail into a really useful Twitter client - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/06/10/rapportive-just-turned-gmail-into-a-really-useful-twitter-client/

<comment><USER3> Here's a Venn diagram showing the relationship I want my Gmail and twitter to have:

O O

<comment><USER4> Could you explain why? Do you use them for completely different purposes? Don't trust the system at some point or another? Don't want to bloat either service?

<comment><USER3> Way too much sensitive data in my gmail account that I don't want broadcast to the world via twitter. It doesn't matter what kind of controls are in place, I'm not taking the risk that all of my online shopping, password resets, private email, etc. gets accidentally tweeted.

<comment><USER5> I can understand your concern, but the only time we tweet anything is when you click a button asking us to do so; it's very hard to imagine how we might introduce a bug which would accidentally tweet the contents of your emails.

<comment><USER4> I think his concern is not about a bug tweeting private contents, but any kind of exploitable bug that might give access to his account in any way, form or duration.

There's probably no way around this, since any addition is a possible attack vector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using rapportive for a few months and love it. It provides additional context about the person you're corresponding with - <USER2> profiles, crunchbase info, etc. It occasionally displays completely innacurate info, though. Somebody else using it recently congratulated me on a recent multimillion dollar investment... unfortunately that wasn't me, but a VC with the same name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for that! Our data is now extremely accurate, apart from our CrunchBase Raplet — which is in great need of tender loving care. We'll get on it.

In the meantime, hit me up at email@example.com and I'll sort out the error for you :)

<comment><USER7> It would be nice to be able to mark in the CrunchBase Raplet that the person the email is from doesn't match the CrunchBase profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's the plan — we can then crowdsource that data and increase accuracy for everybody.

<comment><USER8> BTW- I might prefer Angel List data over CrunchBase, fwiw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Rapportive is useful. I've found that I've written more personalized emails since I can see a pic of person I'm writing too.

It's also handy for small talk. "I saw your Tweet about Conference X, how was it?"

</comment><comment><USER10> I used rapportive for a while months ago, but in my experience it slowed down gmail. I like the idea, but it needs to be lightening fast, or just load leisurely once gmail is up and running.

<comment><USER5> Improving performance is our number one priority at the moment. We aim not to slow down Gmail at all. Hope you'll give us a try again soon!

<comment><USER10> Great! I will!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've tried rapportive around a month ago. Couldn't figure out what it does. All I see is a Rapportive menu item at the very top of my Gmail.

I tried it again now, same thing. I connected to Twitter and Facebook, that didn't do anything. I don't see any widgets or new features. I'm on Win7 + Chrome.

Seems useless.

Uninstalling...

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you see the Rapportive sidebar to the right of a conversation? It should show you useful context about the people you're communicating with.

If not, do you perhaps have any conflicting Gmail extensions? (e.g. Better Gmail can conflict.)</comment></comment>


Digital Video Game Firsts – Michigan Pool (1954) - <AUTHOR> https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2019/michigan-pool <comment><USER2> Very interesting. The question of "first" is often tricky because definitions are often only made after something has become established and then retroactively applied to earlier creations.

This predates 1958's Tennis for Two which is often said to be the fist videogame.

Earlier candidates are 1951's Nimrod and 1950's Bertie the Brain which are both often excluded because their display consisted of lights rather than generating graphics.

<comment><AUTHOR> As pointed out in the article, I'd opt for a definition about a visual, interactive feedback loop running in real-time and wouldn't care about the method used to display the visuals. E.g., if you were displaying Space Invaders on a neon matrix on your mainframe's control console, I'm fine with that. (This is also, why I didn't dig into the claims or the verdict of the court case.)

However, things worked out a bit different in the Magnavox lawsuits. Notably, Ralph Baer didn't understand, why lawyers would concentrate on the analog vs video side of things. To him, it was all about a principal claim about detecting object collisions between a human controlled screen object and one controlled by the machine. (Compare his view on these legal matters as in "VIDEOGAME HISTORY: A little matter of record keeping" [1].)

From this angle, there is no intersection with Michigan Pool, since the positioning of the cue stick isn't of any relevance to the program, only the angle as chosen by the knob, regardless of the on-screen position of the cue stick. So there's no collision detection involved for cuing, and when collisions are subsequently detected, these are all between machine controlled objects.

[1] [http://www.ipmall.info/sites/default/files/hosted_resources/...](http://www.ipmall.info/sites/default/files/hosted_resources/Activision_Readings/VIDEOGAME_HISTORY_Aittlematter_record_keeping.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Definitions are always tough. Are text adventure games "video games?" How about games with no visuals at all like A Blind Lengend [http://www.ablindlegend.com/en/home-2/](http://www.ablindlegend.com/en/home-2/) What about things like Mattel Football? When I've taught videogame courses I ask my students these questions and they often fall back on the old "I know it when I see it" rational.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are text adventures video games? With a focus on the kind of interaction, probably not. However, it may be interesting to observe, how computer games tend to reflect the mode of HCI in general. In the days of X-Y displays and console switches (and light pens as well) – wherever those had been available –, video games may have been a more obvious option. On the other hand, exploring the parsers of text adventures and the world hidden behind them reflects perfectly the principal mode of interaction in the age of terminals and time sharing (or text consoles in general).

P.S.: Compare [https://www.masswerk.at/pmd/](https://www.masswerk.at/pmd/) – ist this a video game? If so, close the map window (enter "hide map"), is it still a video game?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So, is it correct to say that Bertie the Brain (1950) was the very first video game?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently, it depends on the definition. Personally (as pointed out at the beginning of this write-up), it's more about a visual feedback loop and fluid user interaction, which would exclude turn-based games or any presentation that runs autonomously while triggered on some user input, which is evaluated at the start of the program (compare Bouncing Ball or Mouse in a Maze). I guess, what makes a video game a video game is the kind of interaction – and typically a user may choose to interact or to not interact at any given iteration of the principal main loop – and this required real-time computing. There's a distinction of a "mere" computer game (whatever the output medium) and a video game. We may even add some cultural notion, like that a true video game had to introduce some "magical" world of its own (by invention or abstraction) as opposed to just recreating an existing game in faithful on- screen simulation. But, again, this is subject to debate.

For me, when it comes to _digital video games_ (i.e. a visual real-time game running on a digital computer), the first one we do know of is still "Spacewar!" (1962).

\--

Edit: The cultural argument is rather similar to the question of rejecting "doing things on a computer" in tech patents.</comment></comment>


DHS Ditches Legacy Systems and Goes Puts Biometrics on Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/10/legacy-systems-held-dhs-biometrics-programs-back-not-anymore/160347/ <comment><USER2> > The cloud-based HART system, which will house data on hundreds of millions > of people...

Oh. No. Oh God, no.

> It will also allow the agency to look beyond the three types of biometric > data it uses today—face, iris and fingerprint—to identify people through a > variety of other characteristics, like palm prints, scars, tattoos, physical > markings and even their voices

I'm not entirely sure about their general use of this data; if this is opt-in employee data, fair enough. Seems like a pretty big invasion of privacy to me though.

> But as the agency rolls out facial recognition technology across U.S. > airports and increases the use of biometrics at the border, officials are > finding themselves constrained by their legacy tech.

Oh. This is _that_ data. We are storing __private __civilian data on-line.

> HART will be housed in Amazon Web Services' GovCloud

This is somehow worse than I could have imagined.

> The phase-two solicitation also surveillists DNA-matching as a potential > application of the HART system.

Getting worse.

> While the department doesn't currently analyze DNA, officials on Wednesday > announced they would start adding DNA collected from hundreds of thousands > of detained migrants to the FBI's criminal database.

Yep, there it is.

The government is changing the way it stores information it should not have, and putting the information on-line. On Amazon. And is using this data to surveil the American public and to profile immigrants. These former incapabilities weren't "holding them back" \- they were keeping the hounds at bay.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Software Development as an engineering discipline unique? - <AUTHOR> I read an Introduction to Formal Methods powerpoint presentation that stated - based on a survey of 400 companies regarding all IT projects in the last 10 years over a budget of £1M - 20% of IT projects are abandoned, 60% are over budget, 90% are late, and 98% have features removed in order to finish the project.
My friends and I reguarly discuss this stuff and we have different views. I think that if we're going to class software development as an engineering discipline these statistics are terrifying and we as an industry are doing something wrong. My friends say software development is unique to all other fields of engineering because it is more complex than a bridge which is 'large but simple' and two software projects differ more than say two new cars might differ.
I'd love to know what you think? <comment><USER2> One way it is different is that there is no licensing for software engineers and there never will be since the practice developed in a time when the society was dead set against labor unions and similar institutions.

(Not only is there no licensing, but there is not even a real professional society for practicing software engineers. Unfortunately the ACM doesn't count because it represents CS professors and big employers who want to use H-1B to drive down wages and professional standards.)

As for other kinds of engineering it seems like screwing up is also widespread. Some examples:

\-- the nuclear power plant that is supposed to take 4 years to build and cost $3 billion that takes 14 years and $20 billion (but the people working on it are not excited, they've got the best job they've ever had)

\-- the 737 MAX

\-- Dieselgate (software played a role in these two but it was not the initiator of the accident)

\-- The Space Shuttle (e.g. not just that it blew up 2 times out of 100, but that they knew it was going to blow up 2 times out of 100 and flew it anyway -- and it was such an ill-conceived boondoggle that the USSR could never believe that it was what we said it was)

\-- any infrastructure project in the U.S. when you see the price tag (e.g. the bus stop that costs so much the local green party people are shocked)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think part of the answer is in your summary : a lot of software development happens with no engineering at all. For it to be called engineering, there must be some purposeful design going into it (and preservation of the corresponding records of the design and design decisions), not mere accretion of a bunch of things into a Rube Goldberg contraption.

For it to be engineering, you need to have explicit design, explicit statement of the constraints and explicit statement of the flight domain. This in turn is a lot more expensive than a few lines of code, often very expensive, to the point that we allow shortcuts..

Engineering is having a discipline, and a lot of those projects that are abandoned, over budget or time, have no discipline. I'm taking about discipline along many dimensions (budget, schedules, features, design, documentation, testing, QA), and a lot of these add to the cost, but if you don't do them, then the cost is the highest (this is where you end up cancelling the project...).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm more on your side of this than your friends.

I don't think that software engineering is "special" in the way they state. It sounds to me like they're confusing engineering with mass production.

In my view, software engineering is not fundamentally different from other forms of engineering, except that it's still rather new and is devoid of a strong set of best practices.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe someone should do an analysis on bridge construction -- how often it's delayed, over-budget, or has features removed. My intuitive guess is, "all of them".</comment>


How to Quit a Top Tier Tech Job - <AUTHOR> http://oliverzheng.com/2018/how-to-quit-a-top-tier-tech-job/ <comment><USER2> About a year ago, I quit my job at Apple because I wasn't able to apply my technical skills in my role and I was not successful in transferring to another department (full blog post: [http://minimaxir.com/2017/05/leaving- apple/](http://minimaxir.com/2017/05/leaving-apple/) | HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14270897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14270897))

Despite the loss of a salary and _frustration_ in getting another job (Tweetstorm about data science job hunting: [https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/951117788835278848](https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/951117788835278848)), quitting was 100% the correct move in retrospect.

<comment><USER3> I'm currently about to quit Microsoft and am going through the exact same set of questions in my head. I joined the company a few months ago and am blown away by how bad the culture is - or how badly I fit into the culture, take your pick.

If you don't fit the culture, it's time to leave.

<comment><USER4> A massive issue with Microsoft's college recruiting pipeline (this may not apply to you) is that college hires are placed pretty much arbitrarily without input from the hire themselves.

People interested in backend work get placed on frontend, people interested in frontend work get placed on backend. As a result, retention for Microsoft college hires is rather poor. Contrast this with Google where once you're selected you're often given a choice of a few teams and you can indicate your preference.

<comment><USER5> That's a really interesting comparison. I've worked at Microsoft and got an offer from Google and found the opposite to be true. I was first offered by the team I interned with, whom I liked, and accepted, so I knew where I was going.

On the Google case, even being an industry hire, it was like pulling teeth to figure out where the offer actually was, and who I would be working for, and being able to actually speak with them (as your manager is key to success). I was also told during the interview that they just interview you in general at Google, not for a particular team, which was also unsettling.

<comment><USER4> What you say is completely true. If you were an intern at Microsoft you can be pretty sure you're returning to that team (unless there's a reorganization). With Google you have no idea what team you'll end up on when you're evaluating an offer.

However, once you accept a Google offer you're given more choice as to what team you'll be on. With Microsoft (if you weren't a returning intern) you're given very little to no choice and it can be quite arbitrary where you end up.

Certainly both of these systems have massive flaws, but I think the Microsoft system would lead to far lower retention for non-intern college hires.

<comment><USER6> Sort of true. You get accepted to a division at Microsoft (as a new grad) and if there's headcount on multiple teams for someone of your level you can choose between them. A lot of the time there's only one team that is willing to take on a junior engineer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeesh, the mindwash is strong. I had a hard time continuing to read this post after the Prestige by Association section. Working at a respected company known for cutting edge work is generally a good sign but it does not make you an Internet God or widen my eyes.

It is like saying you went to Harvard or MIT. That's neat. You are probably reasonably intelligent. However, even that isn't an automatic and I'll reserve judgement until I've made my own assessment.

<comment><USER8> Two fucking years of savings? What world is this guy living in?

<comment><USER9> I don't understand how you couldn't save 50% of your income per year while working at facebook.

<comment><USER10> Assuming a $200k income, a modest 2bd Bay area house, 2 preschool aged children, between mortgage/rent (4k/mo), childcare (20+k/child/year), car, food, taxes, and other basic life expenses, it's totally possible not to save 50%.

Unless you meant as a childless single person making 200k/yr. Then yes, it's easy.

<comment><USER11> > Assuming a $200k income... 2 preschool aged children... childcare > (20+k/child/year)

Does $200k not seem low for a two-income family? Does paying for childcare not seem strange for a one-income family?

<comment><USER10> The previous comment's scenario was "A Facebook employee", with no mention of another income. Also, many people's spouses are students, or non-highly remunerated.

<comment><USER11> Hence the other question, "Does paying for childcare not seem strange for a one-income family?"

<comment><USER10> Not if there is only one parent, or the other parent is a full time student.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The OP has joined Facebook in June 2013. Assuming he has 3+ years of experience in Microsoft he must have been hired at Facebook at L4 which puts his salary as 135k + 250K (stock, may be more when Seattle office was just getting started).

Facebook stock was ~$25 in June 2013 which means he has got 10000 RSUs of Facebook while joining. Value of this stock today is around $1.5M. He is in Seattle and his taxes are way low compared to CA.

OP must have been scoring refreshers ($40k (Jan 2014), $100k(Jan 2015), $150k(Jan 2016). Let's assume has around $300K of vested stocks.

OP has made $1.8M in stocks at Facebook and may be some good bonuses and quitting Facebook after has vested his initial grant.

You shouldn't quit Top Tier tech jobs period unless you're this author who has made >2M.

At the growing pace of FB, Google and Amzn, anyone quitting at L5 levels will learn that they could have ended up as Director in 6-8 years if they work hard in these firms.

<comment><USER13> That assumes he held his stock. Everyone I know seems to sell as soon as it vests. If so he didn't get all the return you quoted.

<comment><USER14> There are so many ultra-optimistic assumptions in that post it's hard to pick out just one. If all of those numbers were true it would represent the career/salary growth of an outlier employee. Although I'm sure it does happen every so often, no way the _median_ "rank and file" software engineer at any of these top companies has that kind of outcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let me bring a non SV perspective. A lot of people seem to forget that most developers live outside of SV where the salary vs cost of living makes just as much sense.

1\. For a software Engineer who has kept their skills up and lives in a major metropolitan area, it doesn't take 2 years to get a job. It usually takes me about two weeks.

2\. Who defines themselves by their job? A job is just a way for me to pay my bills. I go to work, come home and twice a month money appears in my account - no more no less. But see #1 about keeping your skills marketable.

The framework I use for leaving a job is simple. There are three reasons to leave a job - technology, environment, and money.

Technology - if you're learning marketable technology, I can deal with a not so great environment and a below market salary for awhile. Once I build my resume, I can leave for more money. On the other hand, don't stay at a company no matter how good the money is if it will cause your skills to atrophy. You leave yourself vulnerable and you cut off optionslity.

Environment - if I can find another job with a better environment, make the same amount of money and move forward technologically. I'll leave. Life is too short to stick with an environment that you hate.

Money - All other things being equal, why not make as much money as you can? I don't want to be in management but if I can make a significant amount more money doing what I enjoy, why not?

I've been hopping jobs for 10 years after staying at one company 9 years when I should have left after 2. But now, I'm starting to get the job hopping stench about my resume and I'm near the top for my local market. It would be counter productive for me to leave by choice in less than 3 years.

<comment><USER16> Nice breakdown.

I would add that money comes with responsibility and it's the money/responsibilities ratio that really matters.

I was at a top-tier tech company (the one that's getting all the heat lately) for 2 years in a senior eng role, breaking my neck and struggling to maintain healthy work/life balance. Leaving it felt devastating but in retrospect, it was the right decision. Now I'm at a non-tech company, making almost the same money, having twice fewer expectations. All while working on just as exciting tech and problems.

I can likely get a tech position in finance and make even more, but at what cost to my work hours and expectations? Not worth it.

<comment><USER15> I would put that under "environment". An environment that is always expecting you to make heroic efforts and take away from your work life balance isn't worth it. That seques well into my personal priority breakdown. The three most important things personally to me are:

Health - if I'm not healthy mentally and physically nothing else matters. I'm no good to my family and my finances are going to suffer.

Family/Friends - at the end of the day I would rather get a new job than be forced to get a new wife because I'm spending too much time working.

Career/Finances - I've got to work to live but I can't live to work. Your company will never be loyal to you - you are just resource and so are they.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This may be the only 2 word "How To" I've ever written:

Just quit.

      1. It's a job, not your life.
      2. It's a company, not a person.
      3. "Top Tier" means neither.
      4. If you were hit by a bus, they'd cry for 7 minutes and never think about you again.
      5. "My work is my reference." is my standard response to that request. It works. To those who matter.
      6. Moving on can skyrocket your growth when done properly. Listen to your gut.
      7. "I stagnate easily." is my standard response to "Why so many jobs?"
      8. You'll probably be surprised how underwhelmed they are.
      9. You'll probably be surprised how much energy you wasted over this.
      10. You'll definitely be glad it's over.

I've quit 80 times (including contracts and customers). No regrets about how I've done it (except for agonizing over it early in my career). I've grown almost every time.

No one from work cares about you nearly as much as you care about your work. Don't make this so complicated.

You have personal relationships you'll miss and don't want to hurt. If that bothers you, quit over beer.

<comment><USER18> > 7\. "I stagnate easily." is my standard response to "Why so many jobs?"

Why would someone hire you for a non-short-term project in that case?

<comment><USER19> A better response is, "It's the quickest way to get a pay raise."

I've only quit a handful of jobs but every time it has been for a sizable salary increase. Stagnation comes off as frustration with the work when it should highlight the stagnation of salaries and the zero fucks the labor market has about a promotion cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So much salt in this thread. I for one, enjoyed the article. Walking away from a high-paying, generally respected job is not a easy decision for a lot of people and there are a lot of consequences to consider.

I think this writeup addresses them (to varying degrees of success), even if they don't apply to everyone and some folks may think they're arrogant.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's amazing that there is a widespread tendency in Googlers to think Google is "the best place" and moving is a downgrade (i.e. _fear of missing out, where do I go after this_ ), while at the same time many Facebook employees feel exactly the same towards their employer and think moving is likely a downgrade (my friend who left FB to Snap told me that he had that feeling but now that he has moved he sees Snap as clearly better). These feelings cannot simultaneously be true, which shows the Kool-Aid is powerful indeed, and I think systematic and intentional in nature. At least for Facebook, they have an explicit propaganda ministry, _ehem..._ , _Analog Research Lab_ , actively working toward instating this feeling with posters and stuff.

<comment><USER22> This article is about quitting from the FAANGs entirely. Moving from one FAANG to another does not entail a financial or reputational hit.

<comment><USER21> Correct. This was not an objection to the article's point at all. I was reinforcing another dimension of the notion described in the article under "prestige" that when you are at any one of them, there's a pressure that makes you think this is the best, but that cannot simultaneously be true at all of them, therefore it is probably a false feeling and you should try to suppress it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How about just quitting because you don't get good work (whatever that definition might be)?

I find it hard to believe that most people in so called "top tier" tech companies do compelling work. Not everyone gets to work on de jour areas, most people work on maintenance and improving old code bases (BTW, there is nothing wrong with this)

<comment><USER24> These self-congratulatory articles are always a bit off-putting. I'm not sure if they're meant as a humblebrag, or what. Yes, we get that all jobs can suck. Great, you've got savings. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back for doing what countless billions of people have done in their lives: quit a job. But don't consider yourself a daredevil for jumping with "only" a 2 year savings 'net'.

<comment><USER25> Look, it's not an article. It's a personal blog post on his personal website, that details his _personal_ experience and thought process. He probably figured it would be useful to other people that might be thinking about similar things.

It was certainly useful to me.

That's it. We don't need to project out his intentions any further than that. You're allowed to share your experience and your thought process without it always being some altruistic "save the starving kids in Africa" type message.

The beautiful thing about the internet and the distribution it provides is that you can write content for your niche and actually reach those people fairly easily.

As an extreme example: do you go into Ferrari owner forums and criticize everyone there for being self-congratulatory and living in too much excess? I hope not. Leave them alone and let them have fun with their cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Being told something like "you are intrinsically amazing and working here > proves it" flatters in a deep existential way but also insidiously creates a > dependence on that validation.

Well that hit home.

<comment><USER27> Some big consulting firms are also notorious for this kind of flattery. It comes through in their meetings with clients. Some clients get wide-eyed and pay them because they're "experts". The smart ones laugh and walk out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I also quit fb in 2017. A large part was the arrogant attitude shared by many of my young peers like OP. Another factor was the over-sweetened coolaid. Fb is not the end-all, be all. It's a great place, sure, but there are smart teams and people everywhere. I couldn't finish the article.

<comment><USER29> This is exactly how I imagine how FB's culture would be, towards the arrogant side, I would like to be wrong on this though. Would like to see if anyone else had this experience.

<comment><USER28> There are still many a+ employees who just want to build and learn. Follow the c++.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Your legal status in the country does not depend on your continued employment. If it does, stay away from this train of thought. The destination is a depressing and harsh realization."

Its sad - but most of us are out at this point..nothing more to add.

<comment><USER31> Most? No. There's a lot of workers in our field that are here as non-natives but they are not the majority group. The majority group are fully fledged citizens who do not have this issue to deal with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I quit my job around two weeks ago (post: [https://danshumway.com/blog/leaving- oracle/](https://danshumway.com/blog/leaving-oracle/)). I'm mostly working on Open Source now, might expand to contracting in the future.

It was not an easy decision to make; I don't know if that's because of the culture I was in or just because of me. What eventually pushed me was realizing that it wasn't an all or nothing venture; the most realistic worst case scenario is that I flesh out my portfolio, learn a bunch of skills, and then join another company via a better resume.

I disagree about a lot here though. 2 years of income is unnecessarily lavish for most people. If you've worked at a reputable company for a few years, the "prestige" will follow you. No one will care if you worked there for 3 years or 4.

</comment><comment><USER33> "I will be resigning effective two weeks from now. Let me know what I can do in the meantime totrain my replacement or otherwise smooth the transition."

Done.

<comment><USER19> IKR, save the bridge burning for the last day so you can all enjoy the blaze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > _you have enough savings to last at least two years._

I've always heard it as being 6 months. Especially with his next point assuming you can certainly find employment.

Or maybe that's what I chose to remember, because I'm lucky enough to work in a high-employment sector in a region that can't fill enough positions: i.e. my profile is in high demand.

(... for now. I know)

<comment><USER35> Almost no one has enough savings to last two years. It's an absurd metric and enforces how out of touch the author is. It reads as nothing more than a brag.

Anyone good enough to get hired by Facebook in the first place is going to have no problem finding a job in two weeks, nevermind two years. Quit, shop around and burn some savings until you find something good enough. If it's not your dream job, stick with good enough while you shop around some more.

No one worth working for actually cares about some amount of job-hopping. More employers care about long gaps than about minor job hopping. Neither is a showstopper if you find a good destination.

<comment><USER36> > Almost no one has enough savings to last two years. It's an absurd metric > and enforces how out of touch the author is.

You should check out r/financialindependence sometime. A whole community of people (358k subscribers at present) who would consider that amount table stakes. I'll admit not all 358k of those subscribers would actually have that much money but it's still hardly "almost no one".

<comment><USER37> It really is almost no one.

57% of Americans with less than $1000 dollars in their savings account. Only 25% with more than $10,000. What fraction of those with more than $10,000 do you think have enough to live for two years on it?

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/how-much-americans-at- have-i...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/how-much-americans-at-have-in- their-savings-accounts.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> You know, in this day in age you really need to give more then a two weeks notice. Maybe 6 weeks or more. I've had to fire clients before by giving notice and I always try to work out the best possible scenario where the least amount of damage is done. I even had to deal with yelling, screaming, threats of lawsuits. I always keep my cool and do everything I can to de-escalate the situation, stay professional, etc and try to minimize damage. Every single time this has happened I get some kind of contact or letter of appreciation thanking me for keeping things professional no matter how bad things got. It just makes me feel better as a person to know that I did everything I could to minimize potential damages and to seek the best possible scenario.

<comment><USER39> Why would you give companies this kind of consideration? Most will not certainly hesitate to walk you out the door when times are bad.

I have some friends who have told bosses they and leaving. By the end of the day they are told to pack their personal belongings and leave.

Two weeks is the law for an employee giving notice. There aren't many laws protecting employees especially in Work at will states.

<comment><USER40> Where are you located where two weeks' notice is law?

If you are in an "at will" state, the law applies in both directions. Two weeks is a _professional courtesy_. An employer that is neither deserves nothing.

<comment><USER41> I've seen contracts that say both "at will" and "14 days notice required". Not sure if those are in conflict.

It doesn't really matter, though. Always give 2 weeks notice, as professional courtesy, but _also_ take any of your fragile or expensive stuff home first. Depending on your employer, you may not even get a chance to revisit your desk, and instead may be escorted to the door and met with a box of your belongings.

(Most employers don't pull that shit, of course, and instead are very happy to have you tie up loose ends and commit any relevant documentation before you go.)

<comment><USER40> If you are under a contract, then you are under the terms of the contract.

The "at will" we are talking about here are typically employees in US states that were not offered an employment contract.

You are free to go when you please, just as the employer is free to fire you at any time (not counting certain protected classes and etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> ......................

<comment><USER41> Unemployable after 2 years? In what world?

People take sabbaticals all the time. They raise kids. They start businesses. They take care of sick family members. They work on personal projects. There are a _shitload_ of reasons people take time off. And then they pick up at a new job.

<comment><USER42> ..

<comment><USER43> I disagree.... I am doing this, and I have friends that did the extended "1 year" \+ holiday/sabbatical, and yes they found jobs fine after it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> "You have enough savings to last at least two years." \- fuck. me.

<comment><USER45> I don't understand why you can't just get a new job before quitting the old one. That's what everyone does.

<comment><USER46> The current style of tech interviews makes it very difficult. A lot of places have a long interview that you end up burning a whole day on it and you only have so many vacation and sick days

<comment><USER45> I agree it's a pain, but I work in the industry and most people I have known don't quit without another job lined up. Facebook gives 21 vacation days; Google (relatively stingy) gives 15 or more. Plus you can call in sick (I don't recommend this but if you're out the door anyway it's an option). I just don't think it's good practical advice to follow the procedure in this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> There is nothing different about quitting a job at a brand name than most other places except in people asking you "You worked for WHO? WHY?????" And issues regarding bonuses and stock award vests.

Unless you came to such a company through a visa. Things get harder when the implication of quitting is "get shipped right back to where you came from."

</comment><comment><USER48> 2 years of savings is a crazy suggestion. 3-6 months should be fine especially if you've got top tier company on your resume.

<comment><USER39> Why would you quit before finding a job? I work on a relatively mundane but desirable platform at a boring megacorp and get hit up by recruiters on LinkedIn weekly.

<comment><USER49> Take some time to work on stuff you find interesting? That's been the reason I've done it so far.

If you are in the financial situation to do it I would recommend. Granted I work in a location where no one cares if you have a two year gap, let alone a two month, on your resume.

The real trick is not just bum around the entire time otherwise then yes it was probably a bad call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Oh good lord. If you want to quit a job, quit it. Top tier tech is no different to anything else. OP should have titled this post "How to not realise you're having an existential crisis and respond to it by massively over-complicating a very simple career decision."

<comment><USER51> Fundamentally this is true, but bringing yourself to the point where you "just quit" is quite difficult.

I think you're ignoring a lot of human things like that a lot developers are quite isolated and working 60+ hours a week. Their social group is quite likely just their co-workers. Especially for new devs who have relocated.

<comment><USER49> That's a good point I didn't think about. Assuming you are most likely burning some midnight oil at a top tech company, you'd be stressed to keep up a social circle besides your coworkers.

I think that plays a bigger part in it than we are thinking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is one of those posts that should really be written in the first person, perhaps titled "How I decided to quit my job at Facebook".

Although I work in the same industry as this person, my point of view couldn't be more different. None of this is useful to me and I don't know what he is talking about.

It's presumptuous to assume others share your viewpoint and values. It feels like he is living in a bubble, which is not an uncommon criticism of Silicon Valley employees.

</comment><comment><USER53> Most people who want to quit, will. It is more a question of when. There are many valid reasons for sticking around a while -- to try to invoke change, waiting on vesting, set up your next move, etc. But I have talked to very few people who, in hindsight, wish they had stayed longer. Most people who quit, when looking back... they wonder why they ever stayed so long in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER54> The article is blocked for me, but writing a blog about why you quit and what you plan to do next seems to be pretty effective. Any insider blog or article about FANG seems to do well, but one's which describe why a person DOES NOT want to work there have increased likelihood of going viral. I'm sure those writers get flooded immediately by recruiters and the like.

<comment><USER41> Does this work for you? [https://archive.fo/4XcXQ](https://archive.fo/4XcXQ)

<comment><USER54> Thank you kindly, sir

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why is it untenable to want to quit a job? If you want to quit a job (or make any other life choice), and you can afford it, go for it.

<comment><USER56> The article isn't talking about someone quiting just any old job, but about the situation in which they believe they already have one of the best possible jobs in the industry.

In such a case, I imagine it's easy to keep putting it off, precisely because you can't think of a better scenario for yourself.

<comment><USER57> The person at at top-tier company who can't think of a better scenario AND has two years of savings seems to have no imagination or desire to enjoy life in any way...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> For some reason, I was so sure it was a sarcastic post, that while clicking to read it I was already half-smiling imagining the first topic would be:

\- _" First, make sure you write a public post announcing to the world that you quit Facebook/Google. What's the point of quiting if you can't tell anyone??"_

Imagine how disappointed I was.

</comment><comment><USER59> Quitting a top tier tech job isn't the difficult part. The difficult part is figuring out what to do next.

I quit my job as a Head of R&D for a major tech/publishing company and started [https://tradedash.io](https://tradedash.io) (crypto desktop trading platform) with an old friend of mine who also quit his job as one of the first employees in a major fintech unicorn. For both of us, it was hands down the best decision we've ever made career wise.

For years we were depressed, working jobs that we didnt value only for nothing other than the money and stability. Even though I make a whole lot less today, I haven't had a single night where I don't sleep like a baby. Quitting our jobs was the easy part once we figured out what it is that we wanted to do.

For anyone looking to quit their job: figure out what to do next. Once you know what you want to do, everything else will become much easier.

<comment><USER60> Because the author is delusional and thinks people actually give a shit about their "top tier" company...which most likely just sold ads on the internet.

<comment><USER25> I think my comment in this link applies to your comment as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16711642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16711642)

Is this person not allowed to put his own thoughts down on his own personal website? It's not like he's getting on CNN and preaching.

<comment><USER60> My comment was mostly in regards to the snobbiness of the "top tier" aspect. The person is free to explain his decision to leaving a job of course, but the bragging is just sad.

<comment><USER25> I think that's fair. Either way people don't need to be so unnecessarily harsh. It was pretty clear OP didn't intend anything particularly harmful. It was probably just naivety or a lack of self-awareness...but people are talking in here about it as if it were pure evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> > "I stopped having a career vision for myself for the last year or so of my > tenure at Facebook, for no particular reason."

Author cites "career vision" as motivation for leaving, but why no moral qualms about working at Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER62> Beyond 2 years salary in savings, one should also factor in the cost of medical insurance. One bad accident or illness will eat that savings account in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER49> The two year salary metric is very strange in my opinion. I've quit jobs and taken time off without anywhere near two years of savings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> How to Quit? really?

"Hey Jerry, got a min? Look, I don't think this is working out. Here is my letter of resignation, and my two week notice. Thank you."

Done!

How hard is that to do? There is nothing holding you in chain in that job unless you are actually being held in chain in that job, at which point you should seriously analyze your life choices.

<comment><USER64> > and my two week notice

That might not be a good idea to give.

<comment> coastal-fiesta What makes you say that?

<comment><USER65> 2 weeks is the norm for regular jobs, but top tech companies are really struggling to fill top talent spots these days. While it is perfectly legal to give only 2 weeks notice, it's normally better to ask your manager how much time they'd reasonably need to fill your position, then have a conversation.

So, I'd re-phrase the original conversation as

"Hey Jerry, got a minute? Look, I don't think this is working out. I intend to give you a letter of resignation by the end of the day, but I want to discuss how much time you'd need to reasonably fill my position before I give my notice."

Then again, if you

1\. hate your job, or

2\. your manager is being unreasonable about how much time they need to fill that position, or

3\. don't care about burning your bridges

Then go right ahead and give 2 weeks notice. It's up to you to decide how you want to frame the conversation.

<comment><USER66> > top tech companies are really struggling to fill top talent spots these days

Maybe they should do something about their interview false negative rate then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> > If your company's reputation can widen the eyes of everybody you meet when > they learn where you work, your company has given you a very powerful perk.

But you worked at FB, so everyone knows you're just a PHP monkey. j/k

<comment><USER60> To be fair, in my eyes working at Facebook is now a red flag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Relevant XKCD?

[https://xkcd.com/1768/](https://xkcd.com/1768/)

I was able to bide my time and leave at just the right time.

</comment><comment><USER69> I find the only people whose eyes go wide almost popping out of their head are younger people just entering the workforce whom may have never met someone who works at a big company whose products they use everyday (or recruiters I guess). It's like you're a celebrity to them. Hell, some of these kids used to get pumped when I was telling them I was merely heading to some Apple conference or Google I/O.

No one with experience in the industry gives two shits even if you worked at Facebook, Google and Apple, because they have no illusions about what it means to work there or what it must say about you.

<comment><USER70> Speak for yourself. I would definitely give a shit if someone who applied to my theoretical company worked at a top-tier company.

<comment><USER71> Do so at your own peril. Google is approaching 100,000 employees. The vast majority do boring data pipelines for CRUD apps.

Top-tier company != top-tier employees.

<comment><USER72> You're forgetting they all read all the way through cracking the code interview, the most difficult math book in history.

<comment><USER73> > the most difficult math book in history

It is not a math book rather more of a puzzle book. On a side note - it's full of mistakes (your experience may vary though)

If you like to see difficult math then please try to apply for a self-driving car engineer's job.

<comment><USER74> _whoosh_

Pretty sure the prize for 'most difficult math book in history' goes to Dummit and Foote's ponderous tome, _Abstract Algebra_.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Devious Defecator' case is a landmark for US genetic-privacy law - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/why-the-devious-defecator-case-is-a-landmark-for-us-genetic-privacy-law-1.17857 <comment><USER2> Shouldn't the company (Atlas) have just left it up to the police? That is, filed a police report and let the cops investigate the poo?

<comment><USER3> What law was violated?

You can be fired for doing something that does not break a law. Police are restricted to investigating cases where a law is broken.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a lawyer, but a few come to mind. Vandalism, destruction of property? Employees don't have free reign to... ahem, defecate where they please at work just by virtue of being an employee.

<comment><USER5> It would almost certainly constitute Indecent Exposure, and possible Sexual Assault depending on who witnessed and various pieces of context.

<comment><USER6> If someone had peered upon the person pooping, the proprietor would presumably not have proceeded to procure the DNA to try to pinpoint the perpetrator. They could have prevailed upon the peeper to peg the punk.

<comment><USER7> Please post penuriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As the case shows, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that a company should be allowed to compel an employee to surrender their genetic material.

<comment><USER9> From the article:

"The law does include limited exemptions, however. Forensic laboratories can ask workers for their DNA to check that employees' genetic material does not contaminate the genetic samples that they analyse."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like the mysterious case of the "Twitter Shitter" _.

_ There were a series of serial shower poopings that happened at Twitter several years ago. The perpetrator(s?) were never caught.

</comment><comment><USER11> Watch Gattaca in case this is confusing.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the plaintiffs is Dennis Reynolds. "The Gang Finds Poop in the Bar"

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought the article was going to be about the new Ubuntu release.... what a dissapointment!

</comment><comment><USER14> The judge in the case, Amy Totenberg, is the sister of the journalist Nina Totenberg, both of whom are daughters of the remarkable violinist Roman Totenberg. What an illustrious family!

<comment><USER15> _The case, nicknamed the 'mystery of the devious defecator' by US district court judge Amy Totenberg..._

She must be a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys fan.</comment></comment>


Convey raises $4.5M Series A to improve your delivery experience - <AUTHOR> http://m.builtinaustin.com/2016/06/28/convey-raises-45-million-series-a <comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: These guys are my friends and Techstars batch mates.</comment>


Linux disk encryption using hardware TPM (Trusted Platform Module) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/morbitzer/linux-luks-tpm-boot <comment><AUTHOR> Update. There were successful TPM attacks by sniffing data from LPC bus wires connecting TPM chip by HW logic analysers. The data is unecripted. "TPM2.0 devices support command and response parameter encryption, which would prevent the sniffing attacks. Windows doesn't configure this though,". This prevents bare-metal in datacenter use case.

[https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM- sniffing](https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM-sniffing)

</comment><comment><USER2> What version of TPM does this apply to? I've yet to dig deeper into TPM, but what I have read so far is that TPM 1.2 is a nightmare, but TPM 2.0 starts to get reasonable.

<comment><USER3> TrouSerS and tpm-tools supports TPM 1.2, and tss2 with tpm2-tools supports TPM 2.0. Also, I'm not aware of any hardware with BIOS firmware and TPM 2.0 even if nothing prevents the combination, TPM 2.0 post-dates UEFI. Consumer hardware circa 2016 is when I started seeing predominantly TPM 2.0 appearing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the TrustedGRUB2 doesn't yet support UEFI. I wonder will the guide still work if I simply boot in BIOS mode. All motherboards give you both boot options for any bootable drive.

<comment><USER3> Most, but not all boards with UEFI offer a compatibility support module to present a faux BIOS to the bootloader and OS. The presentation of both options is misleading, in particular the ones that refer to it as "UEFI enable/disable". Anyway if you boot with the faux BIOS, trustgrub2 will work, but no idea whether the TPM is supported via that CSM interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My (too simple) TLDR from other thread:

TPM measures stuff, then we put the key in TPM and seal it to PCRs 0-13 measurements (whole boot environment). At boot, TPM will allow tcsd daemon (part of initrd) to read LUKS key once, and only if all measurements match, this is as far as I got. End result is unlocked volume, without any passphrase prompts, neither on console nor via ssh.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19527493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19527493)</comment>


Ask HN: Link to earlier post on visual design for hackers? - <AUTHOR>

A few weeks back there was an article submitted on here by a guy who had a book-related app that he had been working on and had given it a substantial facelift with a few simple changes.  I've spent the better part of the last half hour searching Evernote, Instapaper and Google to try and find the article, but to no avail.  Does anyone on here recall the article and/or link? <comment><AUTHOR> Ah-ha! I found it!

<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1928157>

For reference, the title was: Lessons Learned: A non-designer's attempt at a redesign

I found it by doing a Google search for:

[http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=search+posterous#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&q=site%3Aposterous.com+book+design+hacker+OR+programmer+OR+developer&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=ca05a7bb65e82229)

</comment><comment><USER2> Possibly This:

"Ask HN: Visual Design for Hackers"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839022>

Found by:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%2Bbook+%2Bapp+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+inanchor%3Adesign&btnG=Search)

<comment><AUTHOR> I found that one a bunch of times in my searches. As you can see from my solution link (above) it turns out the issue was that the term 'book' and 'app' did not appear in the title, despite being central to the meaning of the post.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Cloudtpass - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudtpass.com <comment><USER2> reposting my comment:

[Warning: Autoplay video with sound :( .]

What can I do with the CloudtCoins? Can I exchange them for money? Discounts? Rewards? Prizes?

Why do I get x4 CloudtCoins for the data about my carrier???

Where is the install button?

[Disclaimer: I'm not a social media fan, so I'll probably not suscribe.]

Also, reading your post in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704872) Do you have a minimal implementation? Are you trying to make a new operative system or just an app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for finding us again! I've been wanting to chat with you.

Yes. CloudtCoins are exchanged for discounts and rewards.

You get the extra coins for wireless carrier because that information is important to us.

We're accepting emails to waitlist and update our subscribers for when the device is launched and usable.

The app is only accessible on our new device designed specifically for making social media content.

<comment><USER2> Do I have to buy a new phone to use Cloudtpass? I really don't expect too many people to like that part.

The Show HN are for project that have a (minimal) working implementations. Read the guidelines in [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

If you have still not launched, what does this mean?

> _Together, we have about 115 million voices_

[And, please turn off the sound.]

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish I knew how to mute the sound. Sorry buddy. Thanks for your feedback. It's valuable. We will adjust as soon as we learn how.

We're not too concerned with people wanting to purchase a new device.

We will post app shortly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Docker image for CozyCloud - <AUTHOR> http://cozy.io/en/host/install.html#docker-image

<comment><USER2> nice way to try this way, sometimes it's not so easy to setup by yourself</comment>


The Referendum - <AUTHOR> http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/the-referendum/

<comment><USER2> LOL.

I was just thinking about this today. In the end I dont think it matters which path you take as long as you were happy to take it at the time and you dont have any regrets. Everyone is different and everyone will have different wants. I'm 31 and single and I can feel this disconnect between my married friends (with kids) and I.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I feel way behind in some respect when I compare myself to women around my age. Almost all my college friends are have two kids or are expecting their second. Almost all my real female friends are single.

However, I'm fairly certain my drive is to create something that melds technology and art that people enjoy using.

If you have not yet seen this - this is very inspirational:

Ira Glass:

"Don't quit even when you know your stuff sucks".

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE>

<comment><USER4> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though the source escapes me, the best advice I've come across for avoiding this (and for living your life in general) was to the effect of "construct your life to fit you so perfectly that it's utterly incomparable with anyone elses."</comment>


Svelte Is Unappealing - <AUTHOR> https://www.ryanprior.com/posts/svelte-is-unappealing/ <comment><USER2> What I get is "Svelte is Unappealing" because the compiled code doesn't look like my code. If you minimize JS in general, it doesn't look like your code. SourceMaps are provided for this purpose.

Unappealing because of the approach taken for compilation is not a good reason for me not to recommend Svelte. I will recommend Svelte or any library that helps cut down on the cognitive overload on trying to get your application up and running and provides a multitude a ways to debug state.

The API surface of Svelte is very tiny allowing you to do what you need to do without running into limitation. I've never had to complain about Svelte not exposing something, but sure have for React. API on React has changed multiple times causing modest rewrites of components. I have found the debugger with Svelte's @debug marker very helpful during development.

I'm glad I can use components compiled with Svelte in any application without bringing in a whole runtime and vice versa. It makes sharing natural and much easier than React, Angular, etc.. I dislike any frameworks (front and backend) that shut the door on previous work and make you conform to that world. Countless times I have questioned why do I need to build a component that implements pre-react work in React in order to use it in a React application. I should be able to bring in any library that works on the web today and use it without having it conform to "The Framework". I haven't had this trouble with Svelte.

I can agree that Svelte is early and there will be offspring that will likely leap frog and build on the ideas of Svelte.

<comment><USER3> You can use useRef in React to get a DOM node and pass it to other parts if needed.

Saying that every framework should be possible to combine with every other sounds very nice but probably impossible. Unless you restrict what you can do in a framework a lot. Most frameworks has components that has an api and a life cycle. Since frameworks have different api's and life cycles they are hard to combine in one application. Not impossible but hard.

I have a feeling this is somewhat true for Svelte also. How would I how to update a state inside a Svelte component from the outside?

There is a standard for components, Web Components, but it did not exist when Angular and React was created. It also works in a different way and don't solve the exact same use cases.

<comment><USER2> I am aware of useRef.

> Saying that every framework should be possible to combine with every other > sounds very nice but probably impossible.

I said specifically that I disliked frameworks that want me to conform. I did not say that all frameworks should conform to me.

> How would I how to update a state inside a Svelte component from the > outside?

How would you update a Web Component is the same way this works. [https://dev.to/silvio/how-to-create-a-web-components-in- svel...](https://dev.to/silvio/how-to-create-a-web-components-in-svelte-2g4j)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I stumbled on Svelte after using both react and vue. I have to say Svelte is a breath of fresh air and a pleasure to use, especially with a rails 6 app using webpacker.

I'd recommend you check Svelte out as it will only take 20 minutes for you to get your head around it. This is a far cry from react.

<comment><USER5> This was the same thought I had about Vue when I first used it.

I knew vanilla javascript - Vue is vanilla javascript. I knew HTML and CSS - Vue's component-based approach looks exactly like HTML.

It didn't take more than 20 minutes to get some code running using Vue and it made me significantly faster.

Then I stumbled upon Svelte and after using it for a day, I asserted it won't make me much faster and I'd have to learn yet another tool.

That's why I stuck with Vue, and then I discovered Vuetify and Nuxt, awesome tools that made my life even easier. I really can't draw a parallel between Svelte and Vue in terms of "better", so I started using my subjective feeling to justify my decision of going with a tool.

Subjectively speaking, I don't like Svelte. I don't have a solid, objective reason except this one: I really don't want to abandon 3 years of work I've put into projects that are based on Vue and TypeScript and go with Svelte without obvious gains.

There's nothing so different that it'd justify yet another downtime in order to swap the toolset so I can satisfy my peers online who approve or disapprove my choice of tooling.

<comment><USER6> Interestingly the more common view is that Vue feels less vanilla Javascripty than React.

When I am writing React I am writing Javascript (usually a bit obscured with JSX).

With Vue a large part of functionality is in v-directives.

That doesn't change the fact that Vue is easier to learn for those new to webdev than React.

Students who just started learning Javascript can usually pick up Vue but I am yet to see someone with little JS experience pick up React in a hurry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I understand the author's claims to be "Svelte makes it hard to debug the compiled code, compared to plain-old uncompiled JavaScript" and "the Svelte runtime architecture makes it harder to observe the system as a whole, so debugging is harder".

I think the article would benefit from specific examples of where this caused a problem, and if e.g. whether the claim about "compiled code hard to debug" applies to Svelte in a way that it doesn't apply to TypeScript, Babel, etc.

<comment><USER8> The likes of TypeScript, Babel and JSX are providing a simple source-to-source transformation that leaves the structure untouched, broadly just changing the exact syntax employed. (I exclude any transformation of async code to not use async/await syntax; that one is a more involved transformation.)

Svelte is not like that. It's unequivocally a _compiler_ , doing much more involved transformations. If reactivity becomes involved in your debugging efforts, it can indeed be harder to pin down than in plain old JavaScript—depending on how that JavaScript was written, of course.

Compared with the likes of React? I have no real idea, I've never used React seriously. If the issue gets involved with the depths of React or Svelte, remember that there's a lot less _of_ Svelte, which may make it easier to debug. But for some of the sorts of problems that could occur, I would expect React to be easier to debug, because the bit that's your code _is_ essentially just plain JavaScript.

For myself, I choose to use Svelte.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Debugging the svelte compiled code is easy though, it has an order of magnitude less indirection and layers than equivalent React code. Ever got a stack trace in a react event handler? 30 stack frames. Svelte handler? 3.

This is one of the reasons Svelte is much faster than React.

<comment><USER10> _This is one of the reasons Svelte is much faster than React._

Possibly an unpopular opinion here on HN, but if the framework is actually making a difference to the speed of your app then you've probably made some horrible mistakes in _your_ part of the code. React apps aren't slow because of React. Vue apps aren't slow because of Vue. Svelte apps aren't slow because of Svelte. And so on. Framework developers work hard not to get in the way, and they do a damn good job. If your app is slow then it's _very_ likely to be your own fault. There are React apps out there that handle _tens of thousands_ of DOM elements at once at a solid 60fps. React doesn't automatically mean slow at scale. Likewise I could write a Svelte app that's struggles along at 5fps. Svelte doesn't automatically mean fast.

There are edge cases where an app is really pushing what the browser can do, and that's where the choice of framework really makes a difference. In those cases which framework is the right choice depends on the app - it's not simply a case that X is always better than Y. If you're updating tons of DOM elements then Svelte is a good choice. If you have lots of DOM elements but you're only updating a few then React (or any virtual DOM based framework) probably works better. But if your app is a glorified To Do list as so many really are, there's no excuse for it to be slow in _any_ framework.

<comment><USER9> Broadly I agree with you, though my personal opinion is that Svelte is also more pleasant to use, so it really only loses out to React in ecosystem. I've also used React for years and have used it much more than Svelte, so I may be biased from seeing all the warts of React.

Being small & fast enables real business use-cases that just weren't possible before, eg [https://artemdemo.com/static/2f8acbe19c0ba4ec4d98e06e6b8fd85...](https://artemdemo.com/static/2f8acbe19c0ba4ec4d98e06e6b8fd85b/2fc68/svelte- pos-twitter.jpg).

Billions of people around the world are coming online in recent years, and they're using budget $100, underpowered android phones. Every little difference in performance is magnified for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not sure why the author points out that Svelte isn't JS/HTML/CSS then goes on to recommend Preact over React. Preact isn't React either. If using Preact were caveat-free, React would be redundant.

<comment><USER12> > goes on to recommend Preact over React

The author isn't recommending Preact over React. He's recommending Preact over Svelte.

If one is already looking at Svelte because it's small (and a lot of people are), then Preact makes a lot of sense.

React is fine if size is not a constraint, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the writer of the post, but what I understand is that Svelte is a super-leaky abstraction mostly because the compiler's output is unpredictable.

JSX (that most React-esque libraries use) is basically a syntactic sugar for function calls with objects - so the output is fully predictable.

One of Svelte's selling points was that it abstracts complex state management by compiling JS down into DOM API calls - but that abstraction is leaky and it's hard to debug why something's not working when it's expected to be.

<comment><USER13> How do you think the final step of DOM updates are done in any other libraries if not via DOM API calls?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, React diffs the VDOM and decides what elements to update on runtime; Svelte decides the elements to update on compile time. That's the difference (and the meaning of 'compiling JS down into DOM API calls').

<comment><USER14> That's not true. I've been fighting with React rerendering every element of a long list when I change one element and update the context state. For some reason React rerenders everything, even when the keys are set and the references are the same.

The only recommendation I got is to use React.memo, which still rerenders every element, but from some internal cache.

<comment><USER3> I don't use context so I don't know if this is true or not. It might think it has to re-render since the context could affect anything below a component. It should however use the virtual DOM to diff first and not update the actual DOM more than needed.

For class components in react you also have a special method shouldComponentUpdate that you can write to optimize things. But I feel we are into performance details now, it doesn't make the code hard to understand. You updated a value in the context and some component re-renderd, hopefully with the correct output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a C++ developer, not a frontend developer. I can debug C++ executables, because of debug symbols and gdb. I generally don't need to know any assembly for debugging.

If Svelte is compiles down to JS where the connection between the compiled down code and the source code is unclear then maybe they need similar tooling to address this.

<comment><USER16> I've been testing Svelte for a project, and it seems to generate good source maps. In the Firefox Dev Tools, you can just breakpoint on .Svelte files with no issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would be great to see some code examples which exemplify the problems that the author is talking about, and compares it to alternative frameworks. Currently it's only about half a blog post.

</comment><comment><USER18> The author seems to start from the premise that the purpose of the Svelte compiler is to generate code for him to look at and fiddle with. Surely that is where he's going wrong? If it's merely a question of debugging, source maps are the answer, no?

<comment><USER19> I feel like the author would benefit from writing some tests or isolating his code better. It doesn't feel like a language or framework problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I sort of agree - for now, at least. The tooling around React for debugging is pretty great. React Dev Tools lets you easily debug your component tree. And the underlying source is pretty much what you wrote (JSX doesn't really get in the way here).

I've been working with some older Angular (1.5) code recently and it's been an absolute nightmare because the debugging experience is just awful. Error messages are unusable at times. Failures simply get swallowed. It's difficult to debug bindings. But with React, I don't have to deal with any of this (though much is because of the simpler API).

You see a similar thing with Redux. It's very straight-forward to debug, and there are similar dev tools. Even Apollo has dev tools for their GraphQL library. And I think this is what sets these things apart and makes them so much more popular than similar libraries - the debugging experience. And while I haven't used Svelte for a project, I'm getting the sense that the debugging experience is going to be painful. It may be great _most of the time_. But I don't think that's going to be enough in the long run. Just my opinion.

<comment><USER21> Isn't it a little crazy that we have to have bespoke dev tools for frameworks and APIs?

Has any other language needed this kind stack to support it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This reminds me that I've got to draft an email on why we should change our three quarters complete project from using Vue to using Svelte (even if it is not Typescript friendly yet).

Not that I'm actually intending to do that. I'm just going to send it to our front-end developer on April 1st and watch him freak out.

</comment><comment><USER19> So your overarching point is that compiled languages are unappealing. Obviously, this isn't correct.

If a fresh user were to spend a few minutes learning React (or Preact), Svelte, Vue, or Angular, they'd almost definitely pick the terse and simple API of Svelte, or Vue, over the others. I've in fact tested this with a number of Junior and Senior developers.

Every language has downsides and upsides, some people find interpreted languages easier to hack around with than compiled ones, but the sheer speed of Svelte's complilation (especially when you try out the new HMR stuff) really excludes Svelte from this anyway.

Your other point is about every component having it's own runtime. This also isn't correct. Have a look at the code outputted from the REPL to see the "runtime" (which is just a set of shared functions in pure javascript) being declared. These are global to your entire Svelte app. It's as close as Svelte gets to a runtime, and it's shared.

As for changing data somewhere and looking how it all renders differently, that's what the Store is for. It's a cross-component store of data, and if you change it, dependends will render differently.

It's not that there's no merit to your article, it's just that a lot of it applies to most development languages, and it would be silly to call them all unappealing. Upsides and downsides, that's all. And my personal feeling about interpreted frameworks like React or Preact is that they offload the downsides to the user, which is unnacceptable.

<comment><USER23> Sorry tangent, but been working w/ Svelte a long time. Can you tell me about this:

> especially when you try out the new HMR stuff

I tried setting up HMR w/ Sapper but couldn't figure it out. Using Rollup. Are you referring to WebPack? Happy to take offline. Ping me on Discord if you want: @arxpoetica

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Svelte code looks like JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, but its compilation stage > takes that and munges it totally out of recognition into a tangle of > reactive JS code.

Isn't that fairly similar to React? I tried to understand some React on a page, and there is no way the JavaScript events or HTML updeates have any obvious connection to the code causing it.

<comment><USER25> In React, they're basically all JavaScript. Even for JSX people can imagine themselves as compilers, and can easily write down the JavaScript output by hand - it's totally predictable. It's really a super thin layer of DSL with nothing interesting at all.

In Svelte, people cannot do that for a fairly small application with only hundreds lines of code.

<comment><USER26> I would say I could theoretically write down the JS output by hand, but not easily - for any application likely to need debugging. Also in most cases you've got WebPack there, and I'm not sure if I can really write down that output by hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Highly recommend this talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdNJ3fydeao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdNJ3fydeao)

Rich Harris is an excellent speaker and it's worth seeing how Svelte approaches some things

</comment><comment><USER23> Ryan's arguments are actually what so many of us love about Svelte. To each one's own.

</comment><comment><USER28> preact is a pretty bad framework. It's pretty funny to recommend it instead of svelte.

<comment><USER29> I've been looking to switch to it. What's bad about it?

<comment><USER12> Preact is great _by itself_ , and works _very well_. All the advantages are true, it's fast and about 10x smaller than React [1]. It's GREAT for super- small interactive apps that need to be fast.

But if you try to use it as a drop-in replacement for React [2] and use a lot of third-party React components, Redux, React Router, then you might run into incompatibilities. React is very large and some components rely on obscure behavior, sometimes bugs. You'll have to do some deep diving and opening PRs in third-party repos, and a lot of those people will even deny those PRs.

But honestly: if you're gonna use third-party stuff, Redux, React Router, all that... is the ~38kb it saves really all that much?

If you're doing startup-style development where number of dependencies don't matter, go with React. If you're aiming for an app with only 30kb or 50kb of gzipped Javascript, maybe try Preact.

I'd it's actually more of a competitor to Svelte or to VanillaJS, not to React.

\--

[1] 3750 vs 42623 gzipped for the UMD, last I checked. Used the UMD production dist of both of them. Used React+React-DOM concatenated for measuring React.

[2] Sure, maybe they should drop the compatibility line from their "sales" pitch. It mostly works fine, but it's a hard position for them to be in.</comment></comment></comment>


CIA says Russia intervened to help Trump win White House - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-cyber-russia-idUSKBN13Z05B <comment><USER2> CIA says Russia helped Trump win the White House. . . by leaking emails showing the extreme corruption going on in the Clinton campaign and doing the job the media organizations should have been doing all along were they not just puppets for the establishment.

<comment><USER3> Enough of this nonsense. She wasn't doing anything that was in the same stratosphere of the stuff Trump and his team have been for years. To pretend otherwise is like putting 2 scientists with opposing beliefs on climate change on TV and claiming "the debate is still out on climate change".

<comment><USER2> I don't think rigging the primaries to make Bernie Sanders lose is anywhere in the same stratosphere. Or how about the clinton foundation recieving money from Saudi Arabia and Quatar despite knowing that they were funding ISIL. I could go on. . .

Or is that all written off as "fake news" now because it's inconvenient and silicon valley happens to disapprove of the source.

<comment><USER4> The democratic party can select their candidate any way they like. There's no question about laws there. Just disgruntled members of the party, but what else is new.

As for a foundation receiving money to benefit children and families by providing programs for health and education - shame on you for comparing that to ISIL. That's just low. Its a petty political stunt - "Look at them, helping the poor! They are just like ISIL!" Fooey.

And I'm sure we could go on and on, with soundbyte journalism and smear tactics, like has been the norm for years. Say something often enough and uncritical people will begin to believe it.

<comment><USER5> By that same logic, what law did Russia break when they intervened?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> CIA just came out and said that the Washington Post report linking Russian government to Trump election hacking is an outright lie. Looks like The Washington Post is reporting #FakeNews.

Source: [http://truepundit.com/cia-washington-post-report-linking- rus...](http://truepundit.com/cia-washington-post-report-linking-russian- government-to-trump-election-hacking-is-outright-lie/)</comment>


Ask HN: How to warm up a domain for email - <AUTHOR> I send out ~40k emails every morning through mailchimp to our subscribers and for the past three years or so have fairly regularly gotten low 40's% open rates every weekday. Then last Wednesday, it dropped to low 30's. Our format hasn't changed, our content hasn't changed. Mailchimp doesn't see anything wrong. We can't figure out what might have caused the drop. (Did anything happen that I don't know about in Mailchimp, gmail, etc?)<p>We never authenticated our domain (so our sender shows as 'via' mailchimps servers) and I think perhaps that's the next step to take. I'm worried about our open rates/deliverability taking a huge dip since our domain isn't 'warmed up' with sending that many emails out every day. Does that happen? Anything I need to do or anything else I should think about? <comment><USER2> > Then last Wednesday, it dropped to low 30's. Our format hasn't changed, our > content hasn't changed. Mailchimp doesn't see anything wrong. We can't > figure out what might have caused the drop.

A fairly significant number of recipients disabling tracking/opening detection on the client end?

In my case, I have never allowed an email sender to have any knowledge of whether I have ever opened an email they send. Maybe more people are turning off the tracking?

</comment><comment><USER3> Generally speaking, it's IP addresses that need warming up, not domains. Unless you have a dedicated IP then mailchimp ha probably taken care of that for you. If you set up DKIM and SPF properly then your emails will be authorized to be sent from mailchimps pre-warmed IPs.

Perhaps a Wednesday service outage occurred? I wouldn't necessarily worry about it unless it becomes a pattern.</comment>


Death on the Steppes: Mystery Disease Kills Saigas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/science/saiga-antelope-mystery-disease-die-off.html

<comment><USER2> And there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the sudden death of 10.000 herbivorous mammals that nobody seems to see: Chernobyl fire forests in 30-april-2015 releasing clouds of radioactive dust only 10 days before this event. Dust travelling by air normally settle down after a raining episode.

Animals died in few hours with synthoms totally compatible with radioactive poisoning in the chain food. Strange inmunosupresion, diarrhoea, pain in the mouths and guts and problems with breathing. Saigas are animals with a interesting nose that filters dust and those tissues are connect with a net of blood capillaires so poisoning by dust could be quicker in this species.

If someone here have friends or know some scientists working in Kazakhstan, please warn them that have extra care with saiga corpses and also with goats and cattle and try to protect native people. Somebody should start looking for radioactivity as soon as possible to discard or confirm this hypothese. I think is the most logical solution to this mystery.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a96nEk-f6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a96nEk-f6Y)

<comment><USER3> Looking at the radiation patterns from the Chernobyl accident itself:

[http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/glbrad.html](http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/glbrad.html)

I doubt that radiation from a fire in the area around Chernobyl would be significant, especially in Kazakhstan.

The animals and people who died from the Chernobyl accident were exposed to thousands of times as much radiation as had landed anywhere outside of the Ukraine and Belarus.

<comment><USER4> The spread of radioactivity depends on wind and weather patterns, which aren't constant.

The article even mentions recent heavy rainfall in the steppe which could have washed radioactive particles out of the upper atmosphere.

It's not that hard to disprove this theory with a Geiger counter, so it seems worth checking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An article from the BBC [0] suggests that the animals' immune systems were compromised to the point that they were killed by two endemic bacteria. The suggestion is that they were in a weakened state due to this year's very cold winter and very wet spring. Also they observe that this species has frequent die-offs and repopulations. I suspect that would be more sustainable over the species' original range, which apparently stretched from Britain to China rather than just over one Kazakh national park.

[0] [http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-32958032](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32958032)

</comment><comment><USER6> Regardless of the actual cause of this mass-dying, what steps (if any) are being taken to secure the species? Are any saigas being kept in quarantine anywhere?

If one third of the total population can be wiped out within two weeks without prior notice, it would make sense to me to keep a small subpopulation in safety somewhere else.

<comment><USER2> Saiga is a little like the tasman tiger in that almost all zoos had some in the last 60 years but lost its animals gradually. Is a gregarious animal that needs a lot of space to be itself and is very fragile also, living short lives in zoos (less than 5 years). In the reproductive season males seem prone to forget all except sex, stop to eat and die easily (bassically sacrifice itselves for giving a better survival probability to pregnant females). Females have only one or very few babies in its entire live when in zoos.

ISIS (the International Species Information System) is a software/database used to trace all rare animals captive in zoos all around the world.

[http://www2.isis.org/](http://www2.isis.org/)

After ISIS this species could be very rare in zoos currently with an entire world zoo population of maybe 2-4 specimens only: A couple of females in Moscow at least. Dallas, Cologne, Seoul, New Jersey, Beijing, Berlin and San Diego had saigas in the past but it seems that no one survived until today.

The species does much better in semi-captive environments. At least a place in Ukraine (and maybe other in Roskow and Palmyra) have small herds of 50-250 animals running free in big enclosures. The problem is that we know that those herds can be entirely wipped in the blink of an eye.

Illegal poachers also killed in 2014 the equivalent to many times the entire captive world population.</comment></comment>


$17 DIY A/R kit - <AUTHOR> http://r-libre.teluq.ca/1029/ <comment><AUTHOR> Tutorial on how to build your own smartphone powered A/R device using cardboard.</comment>


What is dapp and why is it important? - <AUTHOR> https://www.dapp.com/article/what-is-dapp-and-why-is-it-important <comment><USER2> Good explanation of Dapp features & benefits from a "decentralized backend". I would add a frontend aspect to the "Flawless incorporation with cryptocurrency": Dapps allow strong blockchain wallet integration. A Dapp can easily triggered a blockchain (trans)action done by the wallet (e.g. payment, send a token to a friend, trade a gaming asset, or breed Cryptokitties <3 ). How? By having the Dapp & the wallet together. You can integrate a wallet within your Dapp, but it is often more user-friendly to have several Dapps working with the same "external" blockchain wallet. For a lot of Dapps that are browser-based: a) Standard browser & wallet as plugin (e.g. Metamask, Scatter, TronLink); or b) wallet with browsing features (e.g. Cipher, Trustwallet, Casa Tookan, Toshi-coinbase)

<comment><AUTHOR> YES :)

The idea of putting together an article about dapp is trying to explain the concept of dapp in a simple way. Maybe we should write a separate one about frontend, wallet and others!

Thanks, Nicolas, always appreciate your comment.

<comment><USER2> I can support for the article's content & add examples from gaming & collectibles. The related community is partially on discord & telegram, e.g. [https://t.me/BlockchainGamesCommunity](https://t.me/BlockchainGamesCommunity), [https://t.me/egamersio](https://t.me/egamersio) [https://t.me/cryptobitgames](https://t.me/cryptobitgames). Writing, you have the experience (and can do it better ;-) )</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Google Maps API v3 - <AUTHOR> http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2009/05/announcing-google-maps-api-v3.html <comment><USER2> _No keys required._ – that will save some failures in deployment and migration.</comment>