Stocks Are Recovering While the Economy Collapses - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/5828898/stocks-recovering-economy-collapses-makes-sense/ <comment><USER2> 3.85 million more Americans filed for unemployment last week and the stock market barely moved. Its because your Fed is printing money to buy up assets and corporate junk bonds.

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm)

This is also the sign of the kind of plumbing that is baked into the US system - protect capital when things go belly up and allow labor to hit the reset button through unemployment and wage cuts. Flood the market with cheap credit and then eventually growth comes back. It's a rehash of the financial crisis response because it's the only sort of response the USA is configured for.

<comment><USER3> When all you have is a hammer...

The Fed has a twin mandate (price stability, maximum employment) and two tools to satisfy it with: rate adjustments and liquidity injection (QE). That's just about it. They aren't allowed or configured to do much of anything else.

If those two tools stop working or produce distorted results, they can't switch tools. They have to keep banging the hammer or choose to do nothing.

What we are seeing here is a failure of Congress and the Presidency, not the Fed. The Fed is doing the only thing it can possibly do in this situation. It has no more tools.

<comment><USER2> Completely agree. The Fed is one of the few institutions that has bipartisan support so its allowed to fulfil its mandate and the 'plumbing' so to speak works well when its trying to pump money into markets. But as we've seen getting money into people's pockets is more challenging in the USA as that bit of infrastructure wasn't seen as needing investment due to the way USA normally reacts to market shocks. (And by infrastructure I think of benefit systems running 50 year old bits of cobol, sending benefit payments via cheques, patchworks of state benefits instead of universal coverage etc.)

<comment><USER4> Nonsense. Money isn't getting into people's pockets because the political will isn't there. If it was an influential Bloc screaming for assistance, they would get it, and the details would be worked out later. Where there's a will there's a way, and where there's no will there are a bunch of phony excuses.

<comment><USER5> If the people protesting the lockdowns instead protested to demand immediate, and sustained benefits, and supporting policy, until the lockdowns are lifted under we may see different results. Of course, for that to work the protests must end entirely if demands are met.

Instead we get more reality TV. I keep going to bed every night wondering when I'll wake up from bassackwards nightmare.

<comment><USER3> I feel like a lot of Americans won't ask for help because they fear it will mean that others who are not just like them might also get help, and that quite a bit of it boils down to latent (and even assumed and subconscious) racism.

I wouldn't have said this 10 years ago. 10 years ago I thought racism was dead except for a few crackpots and maybe a few rural areas. The seemingly out of nowhere explosion of it in otherwise more contemporary settings on the Internet prove this is wrong and it's still very much alive. I don't think it ever died. It just became something you don't talk about in polite settings or in mainstream media. All it took was a few Youtube blowhards and trolls to challenge the taboo and it was back with a vengeance.

Other than racism the rest is self-righteousness: "I'm responsible and hard working, so sure I could deserve help, but what about _those_ people over there? If they're in trouble they must be lazy or stupid."

<comment><USER5> I've got a bit more hope in the median American than you I think. I don't expect racism to disappear entirely. It's an extension of a natural reaction to change or experience. It takes education, and good experiences to counter racism. Some people are just stupid, but even they aren't beyond help. Those who are should be imprisoned.

Anyways, if you care to know, I suspect that people etal have merely forgotten how much power to effect change we have when we unite towards a common goal. If every person claiming unemployment started protesting tomorrow for: [weekly stimulus money no delays no excuses, 100% free to consumer health care and treatment extended into single payer after covid19, and policies preventing repossession, evictions, foreclosures, and garnishment due to un/under- employment] then I would bet everything I own that you would see our politicians act with a swift decisiveness, to either effect a nationwide tianemin square or capitulate to the will of the people. I fully expect capitulation, but realize we have an absentee president.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hypothesis: the face-ripping rally in stocks and total disconnect from the real economy is the result of trading bots that have mistaken the flood of central bank liquidity as a demand spike.

The algos haven't yet been updated to reflect the fact that there's a man behind the curtain with an infinite supply of liquidity pumping, pumping as fast as he can.

And it's far from clear that the distinction matters anymore. Assets have become a kind of video game. When you strip stocks and bonds from their anchors to valuation (P/E multiple or inflation), you're left essentially with something very similar to gold and cryptocurrencies - assets that are difficult to value by any conventional means, but which become sensitive to central bank shenanigans. This could explain why all asset classes are now moving in unison.

<comment><USER7> Alternative hypothesis: bailouts are a temporary smoke screen for the pension and hedge funds, other financial institutions and the super rich to cash out, once they have liquidated their positions, the real crash happens.

<comment><USER8> Alternate hypothesis: The next year to 18 months of earnings reductions due to covid is not enough to justify a 30% drop in net present value of the market at large.

<comment><USER9> The the companies were accurately priced prior to COVID then that would be the case. If companies were in an overvalued bubble before COVID then that would not be the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _The Fed has committed to lend or buy [up to] $8 trillion in financial > assets_

The M2 money supply[1] is currently $16T. If the Fed creates $8T in new money, does that mean that the M2 grows to $24T and therefore the purchasing power of U.S. dollars will be 2/3 of what it used to be? If your nest egg is mostly in cash right now, what should you do?

[1] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/)

<comment><USER11> I'm a layman when it comes to economics, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. The way I think about it is, when the Fed "creates" like this, who actually gets it? Well, it's the person who holds the asset the Fed will buy. Those assets (like bonds) are held primarily by the wealthy _. The wealthy_ already have enough money to do the things they want and most of the time it's about watching the number in the account go up.

What I mean is, it seems like there are two economies. The economy where the wealthy* buy things. Things like art, yachts, houses in coastal cities, stocks, bonds, fancy education, fine collectables, fancy cars, fancy clothes. And the economy where the normal people buy their normal things like TVs, cell phones, commercial air travel, food, normal clothes.

So when the wealthy* get money for their assets from the Fed, they aren't really buying the same things normal people are buying. So inflation so far has not crept into normal things. It has crept into wealthy* people things, a lot.

Of course there is bleed-over, like housing and education and medicine, where inflation is showing up because the wealthy* and the normal people compete for the same resources or similar types of resources.

So when you're talking about purchasing power, are you referring to living a normal life or a wealthy* life? If it's the former, the current CPI seems like not a big problem.

<comment><USER12> > So when the wealthy* get money for their assets from the Fed, they aren't > really buying the same things normal people are buying. So inflation so far > has not crept into normal things. It has crept into wealthy* people things, > a lot.

They are not buying or rather spending more - that's the problem. The money stays within financial assets, rather than rich people buying a second and third yacht. If they did then more companies would build more yachts, creating additional jobs and eventually that wealth would trickle down. Now it just leads to higher asset prices.

<comment><USER13> > They are not buying or rather spending more - that's the problem

I think that you might be missing the point of the GP. They're not saying that trickle down will invigorate the economy. They're saying that QE is bread and circuses for the wealthy. Asset inflation is precisely the point. This does has some negative secondary effects (the GP mentioned housing, education, and medicine), but as long as consumer goods stay cheap there's essentially no downside to inflating the cost of Veblen goods.

<comment><USER12> > Asset inflation is precisely the point.

No it's not. The mandate of the FED is (among others) to maximize employment. The FED hopes to achieve this by stabilizing asset prices, therefore stabilizing pensions and housing prices, which creates consumer confidence and incentivizes spending. However as we can see there are diminishing returns - consumers are not nearly spending as much as the FED balance sheet would make you believe.

The real problem I see with FED interventionism is that it lets fiscal policy off the hook. If you want to actually stimulate the economy you need a strong effort by the politicians, increase government debt and let the government massively invest in infrastructure, health, education or even create a universal basic income. However because deficits are already high, lots of politicians (and a sizeable part of the voters for that matter) are not willing to do that. Central banks around the world keep calling for more fiscal measures - but in reality politicians are mostly kicking the can down the road.

<comment><USER4> The commenter you are responding to is positing the hidden mandate of the Fed is to inflate asset prices on behalf of the already wealthy. So to say the feds stated mandate is contrary to that is to say nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stock markets are also priced according to _expectations_ about the future, rather than the events at this very moment. So if a recovery is expected, the market will reflect it sooner than the economy at large.

<comment><USER15> You're basically saying that whatever the price is, the market is right. How do you square that with the elephant in the room, the FED's market interventions? Does it have an effect on prices? If it does, then the prices are obviously not driven only by expectations. If not, where does the excess liquidity on the other side of the FED's treasuries and bond trades go?

<comment><USER16> Markets may well be, often are, irrational.

But it's not crazy to expect the markets to rebound. People are becoming unemployed for a _transient_ reason of lockdown etc., economic recession is due to the pause button being pressed, and not a fundamental breakdown in economic activity.

Of course prolonged lockdown etc. could make things worse still. But the main pain we see is definitely expected to me short-medium term.

As for markets being irrational - actually, I think they are more often rational than not. They are mostly bashed for being irrational in hindsight, which, well, is not really fair. Also, it is just often rational, but with respect to different criteria than what is widely assumed.

<comment><USER17> The market seems to be pricing in the best case scenario here. They're saying that almost everything is back to normal by Q3.

This would be 4 really bad months (March-June) total. The reality is that the future is very uncertain at this point. The market drastically underestimated the virus in early February, and it appears the same phenomenon is happening now.

<comment><USER18> Covid 19 will eventually (a year or 2) go through the whole population and kill a lot of people, especially pensioners. Then it will be a background level killer like flu and cars. This is bad for many humans and people who love them but it's not bad for the _economy_.

<comment><USER19> Just the real estate price collapse that will follow the deaths is very bad for the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My 2c as an active trader:

There's a lot of speculation, and I love it. Keeping an open mind is a necessity. Think of from the perspective of the funds managing billions of dollars: it's not in their interest to be predictable. There's nothing in the stock market that can be explained by a single headline. Misdirect, delay, prepare.

Coronavirus in February was already a red alert and we had a brief panic, but the stock market went back up. I promise you it wasn't a return to normal, it was a strategic delay. It's fun exercise to follow the timestamps, the down move started at exactly opex.

The move back up was more statistically sound than you'd think. The headlines saying expect a double bottom were basing that on history and ignoring the magnitude of the move. We were many many many standard deviations out of expectations. Put another way, the massive amount of short positions opened when closed out would put us roughly back at (starting price - 2 ln). A smooth drop would line up with expected move models and would have room to continue.

You have to be very careful drawing conclusions between current news and current stock prices. You also can't explain it all by forward looking expectations. If you're actively trading and don't have a full model based on past, present and future these types of articles will ruin you.

<comment><USER21> Technical trading is astrology — convince me otherwise.

<comment><USER22> I don't mean to challenge you, I don't believe in technical trading too. But I don't think its equivalent to astrology, which IMO is completely bogus.

Technical patterns work somewhat better than a coin toss in the short term. It is basically follow the trend. They might not be the most optimal, and might as well be self-fulfilling prophecies, but I don't think it can be compared with astrology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Or in other terms "Money tanks while an unprecedented amount of it is printed".

When looking at a stock chart, don't forget it is not the value of the company you are looking at. It is the ratio of two values. Of the company and a currency.

<comment><USER24> The Euro at $1.10 is at one of its lowest level. This suggests that the dollar does not drop in value, or that the Euro drops faster.

<comment><USER23> Well, while the FED is printing $, the ECB is printing €.

Who prints more is hard to say. One reason is the question, which definition of money we look at. Only central bank money? Or also private bank money? And there are many other forms of money.

Even if we only look at central bank money, it is tricky: Central bank money is not only created at the central bank. But also in private banks. For example in Germany, the central bank just announced they will back up 100% of loans that private banks give to businesses. So the private banks now can loan money without risk. Basically printing central bank money on their own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > ...these moves by the Fed and governments are the equivalent of flooding a > drought stricken area with water for a few days. It feels like a relief, but > if there is no rain in the months after, it does little good.

That's a very insightful metaphor.

At this point, after 12 years of QE policies that were meant to maintain the status quo, it's clear that the global economy is failing. Those "floods" of liquidity don't have any connection with actual value. They're just there to maintain the illusion of growth. Without central banks propping up stock markets, the entire globe would have already been deep in a painful unprecedented contraction.

At some point all this will unravel. Just like actual floods where a huge quantity of water washes the landscape, removing topsoil and flowing to the sea, so will those ever-growing floods of make-believe money wash the economy, removing what little real value still exists, and disappear into nothingness.

<comment><USER26> > ever-growing floods of make-believe money

Does there exist any other kind of money?

> removing what little real value still exists

Care to elaborate how an influx money should remove real value that exists? Isn't the relation between influx of money and real value a relatively loose one?

<comment><USER25> How? Central banks are essentially buying stock. The aid given to "normal" people is peanuts in comparison. This will further tip the balance between rich and poor, capital and labour. Lots of people lost their jobs, the value of labour is taking a nosedive.

But yes, your are of course right. Money has no intrinsic value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Expectations have been all over the place. If you sold in February you saved a lot of paper losses in March. If you missed out on April you lost a lot of gains as expectations improved.

For now, I'm keeping 5-year money (college tuition starts in a little over a year) really conservative. Retirement is staying diversified mostly in stocks and I'll try not to obsess over it too much. A little bit of "fun" money may go into play if I feel like a gamble.

<comment><USER28> Oof. I blew my "fun" money in a couple weeks. My mistake was thinking the stock market tracked the economy and would fall on bad news. I was wrong, and learned I don't know shit about the stock market. Buy and hold. Amen.

</comment></comment><comment> ur-whale > Stocks Are Recovering While the Economy Collapses

Let's reconvene here in one year and ponder the "stocks are recovering" statement again.

As the French saying goes: "Achetez au son des canons, vendez au son des clairons"

<comment><USER29> "Buy to the sound of cannons, sell to the sound of bugles"

(I was unfamiliar. I like it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The markets seem to be priced with lots of 'hopium' and Federal Reserve dollars propping them up. Assets have been overvalued by a lot for quite sometime now.

<comment><USER31> Only 11-12 years ago the Federal government propped up many companies that were poorly run and would have died without assistance by robbing taxpayers and giving the money to said companies.

If you view ownership of said failing companies as a way to get on the Fed gravy train it makes sense. They're not even "overvalued" if that's how you look at them.

How many people who would have started new, competing companies went on to have their taxes fund the competition?

<comment><USER32> > by robbing taxpayers and giving the money to said companies

... as loans, which had to be paid back with interest (and were).

<comment><USER33> It's not only via loans.

By pushing down interest rates via QE, the Fed has allowed so-called zombie companies to exist longer than they otherwise would have in an unmanipulated interest rate environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This isn't countrerintuitive. This isn't just about massive money printing and stimulus packages or some voodoo economics. People rush to stocks because stocks are long term investments, and there are no other good investments.

</comment><comment><USER35> After the peak of unemployment during the great recession, it took three years to get the U3 unemployment rate down from 10% and back below 8%. Three years. 2%.

We're somewhere around 23% right now. Call the peak 28%-30%. Assume a sharper bounce from the peak for various likely reasons. Can you imagine what things are going to look like in three years, if we're still near 14% unemployment? How about six years to get back to the worst of the great recession levels? It's going to take nearly a decade to get back to a normal job market. The market obviously isn't properly pricing based on the economic destruction and the fiscal consequences that will be entailed. The stock market is rolling around on the floor high on the Fed's supply while the house is on fire. How long can that last? I'm going to specifically watch for the inflection point of how fast the economy bounces back (or not), as that'll be an enormous confidence juncture for the market. It's pricing for the sharpest V shaped recovery imaginable, when the real recovery is more likely to look like a jagged, slowish, prodding swoosh; the difference between those two realities and how the present is being priced, is supplied by the Fed.

Can the US Government spend an extra $8 trillion beyond what they already have to pad everything through the next three years? They can, I don't know if they will. I suspect after this very brief period of barely bipartisan voting to support the population and economy, Congress will rip at eachother like we've rarely seen before. The partisan walls will go back up before this year is out. Each stimulus measure will separate the parties a bit more than the last. There will be wild political brawling between those who have survived this mostly intact and don't want to keep spending at the highly elevated rates, and those who want to keep providing full stimulus-level benefits to the very large number of unemployed persons for many years. The cost will be something beyond extreme to handle a situation with unemployment ranging between 10%-30% for a mere three years (how about if we spend six years elevated beyond the great recession peak unemployment rate?). Sympathy will dwindle rapidly in large segments of the population and people will begin to argue primarily from their personal bias and economic condition, seeking to guard their own survival against economic disaster.

</comment><comment><USER36> The stock market is perfectly representing, well, something. Any attempts to explain it require loads of mental gymnastics because it's a layer of abstraction over so many layers of abstraction that I fear we've collectively lost sight of human welfare and real human advancement. I can assure you that the stock market doesn't represent that.

</comment><comment><USER37> The stock market is perfectly accurately representing the fact that every world leader and everyone filling their pockets have so much wealth invested in the assumption of the stock market increasing that no-matter the reality, every government in the world will print money and do everything in their power to keep the stocks valuable even while the companies they represent stakes in go bankrupt.

</comment><comment><USER38> As a non-US person, where would i invest instead of US equity ?

<comment><USER39> I'm a layman but my understanding is that this is in fact the issue stated in the article, there is nowhere else to invest, real economy is stopped, so currently everyone from individual to institutions and corporations put their money into stocks, thus the price increase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's a bit early for any of these predictions.

</comment><comment><USER41> The future isn't as dark as the present.

</comment><comment><USER42> "Hibernates" seems more accurate to me. And for big sections of the economy (healthcare, Amazon) is a fantastic time to be in business!

<comment><USER43> Healthcare not so much, most non emergency procedures have been cancelled. I don't know about the US, but over here a lot of staff has temporarily been laid off, and hospitals are struggling financially.

<comment><USER44> It's all over the US news that the healthcare system is having this exact same problem - because of all the procedures being cancelled, hospitals are in a terrible financial state and staff are being furloughed, laid off, and having their pay cut all over the place. What's interesting is that Americans seem to think that this is the result of some unique failure in how healthcare is structured over there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Article's argument boils down to the claim that outright inflation would buoy the prices of airlines, hotels, and retailers, and since that isn't happening, therefore QE isn't causing inflation.

Ongoing wealth inequality is producing a divergence in where currency is distributed in the economy, and thus producing an uneven effect on pricing. Where desirable investments exist, excess capital is flooding in to capture limited supply and causing inflation _in the prices of those investments_. Without a return to high employment, injections into capital markets cannot and will not reach Main Street and restore demand. Where demand is primarily driven by Main Street and is relatively elastic, we are beginning to see deflation, e.g. in the CPI which saw 0.4% deflation in March alone.

Arguing that the dollar, as a single fiat currency, has a single value is slowly becoming an outdated concept. The dollar is increasingly valued by Main Street and decreasingly valued by Wall Street. Ordinarily, this would be bridged by arbitrage - by Wall Street purchasing deflated investments and by Main Street selling inflating assets. But Wall Street can't capitalize on the low price of airline and retail stocks until governments permit those businesses to fully return to the market (whether they go bankrupt or not before that happens still being an open question, in spite of the Fed's injections), and Wall Street is failing to capitalize on other deflated opportunities, most spectacularly the failure to seize the opportunity posed by the collapsing price of oil due to a lack of storage. Meanwhile, Main Street has no appreciating assets to sell - the most common of which used to be real estate, but the failure of housing policy to encourage affordable mortgages and home-ownership has caused more and more of Main Street to rent their housing instead.

So there's real deflation that's being masked by an assets bubble. What will burst the bubble? If the Fed is committed to infinite QE, then eventually, political intervention. Look for the following:

* Intervention in housing: price-controls in rent and mortgages, as they become increasingly inaffordable for a Main Street with no income.

* Intervention in medical care: expansion of Medicare and Medicaid, as the demand for healthcare grows among the unemployed who have lost access to employer-provided health insurance.

* Intervention in additional markets that cater mostly to Main Street demand - food, clothing, energy.

Already we see Trump intervening in meat production to force meat suppliers to stay open. Why does the government have to force meat suppliers to stay open, unless they're no longer profitable because of production cuts (i.e. unavailability of labor) for reasons outside of their control?

The Caracas Stock Exchange, denominated in bolivars, has been doing _exceptionally_ well, some 220% YTD ROI. Anybody in the audience running to purchase bolivars?</comment>


Ask HN: Can someone make FB client that only shows posts that I'm interested in? - <AUTHOR> I'm still on FB because that's where my friends & family is. I'm tired of seeing promoted content in the feed & even "news" type content shared by my network. I'm only interested in seeing posts written by my friends showing their thoughts, pictures and such.<p>Can we build a client that bypasses the fluff? Quick look at the API docs & I didn't find any Feed API that supports retrieving posts from my friends. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> [https://www.fbpurity.com/](https://www.fbpurity.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing. F.B. Purity seems good for blocking explicit ads on the side bar. Good, that makes the UI clean. But I'm looking for something more. Something that hides the promoted content from feed, hides the posts that are basically links to news sites or a promoted page & such.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Is a laptop enough for development, or do you need a desktop? - <AUTHOR>

Imagine: You are about to get a new computer for development.
You'd like to have a comfortable dev environment at home - dual screen.
However, laptops have come down in price alot. Is it enough to buy a laptop, or do you go w/ a trusty desktop system? <comment><USER2> I always get a laptop because I like to code in unusual places - in bed, on the floor, on the couch watching TV, sitting out on my balcony like now. You can't really take a desktop with you and sit it down on the sofa. Same applies to the small-laptop/big-monitor approach, which sounds great in theory but doesn't really work for my particular situation.

<comment><USER3> Agreed... i can sit back or work at a desk... or even take my laptop outside and sit on the stairs to work if the weather is good.

But then you might also get a more powerful desktop for the same price. So in heaven you would buy both... until then i suggest paying a little more and get a good config laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't owned a desktop machine in 8 years. And I wouldn't touch a machine that isn't a Thinkpad.

<comment><USER5> HP has a very decent and _durable_ machines in the corporate line. I have one that operates practically 24/7 for two and a half years now. This particular one I've bought after my desktop workstation (IBM IntelliStation, double Xeon, Wildcat graphics, 15K drives..) died after just little more than one year in service. So much for desktop vs. laptop durability. I also prefer the keyboard (and rubber mouse buttons) to the ThinkPad's design.

Buying form corporate line has an additional benefit that one can use a docking station for all the external monitors, hard drives, mouse, keybord, speakers and the ethernet cable. Of course I know ThinkPads do have a docking connector too, but Macs do not and I hardly understand how people can trade convenience and commodity price for a shiny paint that wears off from sweat in under a year and a shiny GUI that annoys me (maybe it's just me) almost as Windows does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You certainly can get away with programming on a laptop, but I find the lack of screen real estate causes me to work a lot slower. The best option, for me, is getting a very powerful laptop with a connector for a second monitor while you're at home or work.

</comment><comment><USER7> A laptop may be enough for development. However, it feels very comfortable if you have a desk with a large screen (or screens) and perhaps an external keyboard and mouse that you can all attach to the laptop for heavy duty work. (As well as external hard drives and whatever tertiary storage you may need.)

If you are going to carry it around, make sure to back up religiously. Laptops often tend to be abused and thus have a noticeably shorter lifetime than desktops.

And in some cases, as people have mentioned, you may need a desktop simply to get as much power per buck as you can -- depending on your project.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use both because apparently I like to waste money. I have dual 20" and 24" hooked up on my desktop (which has a totally sweet humanscale keyboard tray) as well as a 12" thinkpad tablet.

When I'm sitting at my desk, I feel pretty awesome, I can fill my screens with whatever I'm working on etc. If I for some reason want to work outside or need to meet to discuss something the thinkpad is decent-ish (1400x1050 resolution) for coding and note taking.

I will admit I don't understand the need to lie on the couch and code. I feel like its best to separate out tasks and the places they are performed. When I'm sitting at my desktop I am either playing a computer game or programming. If I'm lying on the couch I'm watching TV. Typing on the couch seems hell on the wrists. (And doing so in bed hurts the quality of your sleep).

(Sidenote: I worked at a startup where I just brought in my thinkpad. I ended up borrowing a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse just so I wouldn't go crazy. I felt like I couldn't fit any code on my screen otherwise.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, I guess it depends on your situation.

Let me take my situation to explain: I see myself as a non-traditional web developer during my own free time. I like to work at various locations (my desk, sofa, bed, outside, library, ...). But at my normal, regular work, I'm just a traditional developer who demanded a dual screen set-up at the job interview.

So you have to ask yourself, are you the more traditional type who does work at a desk? You're better off with a large screen area/desktop. If your desk doesn't matter for you and you're just going to work on a lot of various locations I'd say, go for the laptop. Just for the record, you will notice some people said they used laptops with external monitors. You should ask yourself if you will ever use the machine as a real laptop, because if you don't, you'll probably be off cheaper with a regular desktop due to better upgrade opportunities/longer life in general.

</comment><comment><USER10> Working on a laptop to me feels like trying to paint my hallway through the keyhole.

There is so much going on when writing software that even with two monitors I feel pretty cramped, as soon as I switch to a laptop I'm lost.

There was a time when I could do dev work on a laptop. No IDE required, no browser required (for testing or to look up documentation), just a text editor in a shell window. That time is now probably more than 5 years in the past and the more I'm doing this the more screen real estate I feel I need.

The other day I was wondering how hard it would be to connect four monitors instead of just 2 and how I would place them on my desk to get any kind of improvement over the current situation (with windows overlapped at least 3 deep on each monitor).

</comment><comment><USER11> It all depends on what you want to develop. For me, my number one priority is RAM and CPU since I have to do a lot of indexing. Since this is the case, a desktop machine would make the most sense for me.

Without any additional information, we really won't be able to help.

<comment><USER2> OTOH, less powerful developer computers often equal tighter, faster code, as you get more pissed off by the slowness of your own programs.

<comment><USER11> This is true, but the saying "time is money is also true". If you are in a situation where you can throw a thousand dollars at something that will save you half an hour in turn around for each build, then that would probably be a wise choice.

However once things have solidified, it would then make sense to look at optimization. You definitely have to be smart about your time, especially if you value it. Otherwise you can find yourself spending a week to optimize, plus test to gain very little performance.

I'm a strong believer in throw hardware at a problem if you can in the short term to buy you valuable time elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I do my development on a Macbook 13" with a 20" Dell LCD. High quality 20"+ external monitors have really dropped in price (<$200).

</comment><comment><USER13> I have both ... just keep the laptop off your lap and get a desk -- laptops are horrible ergonomically.

<comment><USER14> Depends on how much testing you do. I run regression tests on multiple-OS's so I use a lot of VmWare and a high-spec tower with dual 24" screens. The laptop is great for demos and coding between meetings, waiting, etc.

I prefer and recommend a proper keyboard and mouse. Even the best laptop keyboard will give you CTS/RSI eventually. I do about 80% of my work on the tower with full size keyboard and 20% on the laptop. Of course your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I bought a desktop because of the traditional powerhouse machine vs. meek laptop image among developers, but I regret it now. I've since sold it, and gotten a powerful laptop with external monitors. So much more flexible this way.

</comment><comment><USER16> I used to have a laptop that I developed on. I was much more comfortable sitting on the couch than at the desk. In fact, the only time I ever preferred being at the desk was if I was working with a book open.

</comment><comment><USER17> laptop with expose/spaces or equivalent. I'm faster with expose/spaces than dual monitors. You're eyes/focus doesn't move around as much. Though its good exercise for your eyes to focus on things at different depths every now and then.</comment>


Luper -Simple personal relationship manager.Remember to keep in touch,that's it - <AUTHOR> http://luperapp.com

<comment><USER2> Winning. I've been looking for this for years. Thank you for making it.

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure Nick. Let me know if you have any feedback or questions.</comment></comment>


The Startup Game: Making serious cash off casual web games - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.business2.com/startups/2007/08/david-scott-is-.html

<comment><USER2> Web game programming seems more reasonable now that ActionScript is no longer retardedly bad.</comment>


Type on Windows - <AUTHOR> http://nimblenotes.tumblr.com/post/28339275545/type-on-windows

<comment><USER2> The problem is likely that OP was using Chrome, which has pretty poor anti- aliasing on Windows, iirc. Text rendering in Windows, in general, is fine.</comment>


Salsa20 design [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cr.yp.to/snuffle/design.pdf <comment><USER2> For those who don't know, ChaCha20, a descendant of Salsa20, has become one of the most common OpenSSL ciphers over the last few years. When I ssh to my servers, it uses ChaCha20 by default.

And most of you probably know this, but just in case you don't: the author of this paper, djb, is one of the most competent and trusted cryptographers ever.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean OpenSSH? I think AES is still most common for SSL/TLS.

<comment><USER4> ChaCha20 is implemented in hardware on many mobile platforms. It's often a preferred TLS cipher on Android. AES is common in hardware as well.

<comment><USER5> This is inaccurate. AES is a block cipher, whereas salsa/cha-cha are stream ciphers. Block ciphers are easy to accelerate in hardware, as they act on "blocks" of data at a time, whereas streams almost go byte by byte

<comment><USER6> Typical stream cipher produces stream of bits (not even bytes), and often are described in manner that can be readily converted into hardware, also most of such ciphers are non trivial to implement efficiently in software.

Stream ciphers done in software that are actually somewhat widely used are either based on iterating some block cipher like primitive (which may be purpose designed as in Salsa/Chacha) or are related to RC4.

IIRC the fact that you can derive stream cipher by iterating essentially any cryptographic primitive (eg. hash function) was one of the arguments used by DJB in his court case against US.

<comment><USER7> What do you mean by typical stream ciphers? AFAIK the most common stream ciphers are A5/1 (and A5/2) used in GSM, Snow3G used in 3G and LTE, E0 used in Bluetooth and RC4 for WPA in Wifi.

Of these A5/1 generates bursts of 114 bits, E0 generates two bits at a time, Snow3G generates 32-bit words and RC4 generates bytes.

Implementing A5/1 in SW is not easy, but Snow3G can be efficiently implemented in SW. For RC4 there are many high performance implementations in SW.

I though agree that A5/1, E0 and Snow3G are designed to be efficiently implemented in HW.

Besides these algorithms block ciphers in stream cipher modes (esp CTR) are used a lot. KASUMI in 3G, LTE and AES in IEEE 802.15.4 (CCM mode) and WPA2 for example.

<comment><USER6> A5/1 is probably perfect example of what I had in mind as it generates output one bit at a time and it's output has quite large period, the fact that in GSM it's used to generate pair of 114bit keystreams is somewhat irelevant to that. All three ciphers in eSTREAM hardware profile are specified in same way (although all of them are designed in a way that allows for more output bits to be computed in parallel)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's sorta strange seeing this here today, since I'm not aware of anything happening with Salsa20 lately. But for people that are interested, the Petya ransomware that was running around a couple months ago used a borked version of Salsa20[1], returning 16-bit values instead of 32 bit values, which lead people to break it [2][3]. Moral of the story: don't roll your own crypto, even when you're a malware author.

[1]: [http://blog.checkpoint.com/2016/04/11/decrypting-the- petya-r...](http://blog.checkpoint.com/2016/04/11/decrypting-the-petya- ransomware/)

[2]: [https://github.com/leo-stone/hack-petya](https://github.com/leo- stone/hack-petya)

[3]: [https://0xec.blogspot.com/2016/04/reversing-petya- ransomware...](https://0xec.blogspot.com/2016/04/reversing-petya-ransomware- with.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this because I found it an interesting read. The article is not written very formally and confirms many thoughts I had myself but which I've not seen in writing before.

I'm slightly (but happily) surprised this many others found it a nice read too.</comment></comment>


I just created a Discord server for hak.to a new hacking community - <AUTHOR> Hey guys and girls, my name is George aka gexos and I'm the founder of hak.to a new hacking community that tries to grow, we follow in the steps of our friends at dev.to a great community for developers.
HAK.to is a community of hackers getting together to help one another out. The information security industry relies on collaboration and networked learning. We provide a place for that to happen.
For the moment this is the project of one person, but I believe I will find open minded people to join me on this journey!
I just created a discord server If you want to talk to me, or eachother, join with this link! https://discord.gg/wnzvH2q
I also need two admins, if you are interested and have some knowledge with discord then message me on discord.
Thank you!! <comment><USER2> Good luck with your new community

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you my friend!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you design the debugging mechanism/layer in large codebase - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> That's a very broad question, any details? What type of codebase? Distributed? Java-based? What's the context?</comment>


Chordify: Get the chords to any song, using Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://chordify.net/

<comment><USER2> It doesn't work. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvPY5BH38B8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvPY5BH38B8) Lists a million chords that simply are not there, it can't even detect that the main verse is just one chord. It's a good concept, but seriously needs work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great job. I also really like Capo for OS X: [http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/Capo/index.html](http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/Capo/index.html)

Edit: can anyone recommend a good, free chord dictionary for Android?

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not perfect, but it's close enough that a halfway decent musician can correct its mistakes. I've used Chordify plenty of times to help me learn songs on the ukulele. It takes less time than guessing the chords by ear.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow. I'm learning to play by ear right now and this is a godsend.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty amazing. Does anyone know how this works?</comment>


Ask YC: User feedback? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wrapping up my last year of school and plan on applying for the summer YC program with two friends to work on a project we're experimenting with now. One of the key elements that I proposed was having an absolute seamless user feedback system.
I spent the past six months as an intern at a company that practiced a mix of scrum and XP methodologies and learned how important getting feedback is for the success and direction of a product, so I'm asking every bright person here for any examples or ideas in integrating in a feedback system for a web application. I like twitter.com's system [http://twitter.com/help], but that is simply to request to get help. What about a way of allowing for user suggestions? My only concern is that it could easily be "overdone" and draw away from a clean and usable site. <comment><USER2> I liked Reddit's system. Click on a prominent "feedback" link (in the early Reddit it was in the top left, and one of the most prominent actions on the page), it takes you to a page with a textbox that e-mails the founders. I submitted a couple bug reports to Reddit when it was a few months old and got back fixes within the hour, which was one of the main reasons I decided to stick around.

Also, don't underestimate the usefulness of forums. They become a pain to manage when you get big, but they're absolutely invaluable at getting feedback and building community when you're small. Forums let power-users help newbies (pulling some of the support load off you), and they also give users a chance to weigh in with "No, that's a _terrible_ idea" when another user proposes a half-baked idea. When I was working on FictionAlley, there were many times when a user came up with a suggestion, I was like "Yeah, I can implement that", then other users chimed in with "Please don't; it'll ruin things for the rest of us. Here's what you could try instead."

<comment><USER3> Great post. I realized forums help build a community and augment help files and help desks, but it escaped me that forums also help brainstorm ways through bad ideas without offending the userbase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the Feedback button on Swivel.com is quite neat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you like the captcha as well? I just checked it out and I was able to find it (as it is clearly labeled 'Feedback') and could enter whatever I want. But say you wanted to say something in a search result or your menu pane was missing something...would it all be routed through that one small link at the top of the page? I guess I'm going for how can I integrate it to be part of the user experience.</comment></comment>


Concurrency has landed (emacs-devel post announcing the new threads feature) - <AUTHOR> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-12/msg00378.html <comment><USER2> Exciting! I hope this is the watershed moment I have imagined it to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> Praise the GNU overlords, the day has finally come!

</comment><comment><USER4> Emacs is now a proper operating system!

<comment><USER5> If only it had a decent editor!

<comment><USER6> We have evil-mode now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone ELI5 this for a normal users?

<comment><AUTHOR> As of that commit, Emacs now contains threading primitives. It doesn't change anything visibly for a normal user, but it should now be much easier to build extensions that don't hang the entire editor while performing certain long- running operations.

One of the features a lot of people are hoping for is to have Gnus no longer block everything while fetching emails from the server. Of course, Gnus needs to be updated to support this.</comment></comment>


The Internet is my religion (motivational) - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetismyreligion.com/

<comment><USER2> It's been posted here several times over the last 2 months: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22internet+is+my+religion%22&start=0)</comment>


Why Enterprise Is Avoiding Windows 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2013/05/19/why-enterprise-is-avoiding-windows-8/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, if there is one thing, us 'IT people' don't like, it's uncertainty. Unlike regular people, who love it!

I get what he is saying, but the wording is a bit off. Furthermore, if IT departments are complaining about faster release cycles for Windows, then they are missing the point; because it's a good thing.

Making smaller, but more often upgrades, will ensure that programs can more easily be maintained during each version, so you don't end up with a situation where you are unable to upgrade Windows XP or Internet Explorer 6, because of programs that over time have become too tied into these programs.

Because more upgrades (albeit smaller) will hopefully make designers think differently, 'in a year, there will be a new version of Windows, so let's not make it too specific to this one'.</comment>


US inmates stage nationwide prison labor strike over 'modern slavery' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/20/prison-labor-protest-america-jailhouse-lawyers-speak <comment><USER2> Having done time in state and federal facilities, I would like to comment that this is stupid on the Inmates' part. There are jobs you can get in a prison, all have varying levels of income and responsibilities.

Inmates don't have to take a job. However, there are loss of privileges if you refuse. Prison officials are aware that there are prisoners who are not work ethic orientated, and so there are jobs where inmates are not expected to do much more than just be in an area during daytime work hours (albeit they only get about $5-10 per month in pay). Typically this is a recreation yard orderly position, where you hang out on the rec yard and lift weights or play basketball, etc.

There are two classes of really good jobs in prison. The best are "Industries" jobs, where you go perform really laborious jobs. An example of this was in a state prison that had a commercial laundry service. I worked in that place cleaning sheets, towels, and running them through industrial folding machines. I made minimum wage in that job. There is a lot of competition to get one of those jobs, and you must be a model inmate with no write-ups to get in. This means you need some way to keep other inmates from giving you grief that would require violence to repel.

The second type of good job is the general population job where you teach a good skill or work in a secure place. I taught computer skills as an example of the first. I worked in the prison Commissary as an example of the second. Both jobs paid $100-150 per month, which in prison, allowed me to live pretty nice. I had enough money to get good hygiene items, snacks, canned soda, and either a clothing article or a book or two each month.

Prisons don't have to necessarily provide that gratuity. They can just make you sit in a cell if they really want to.</comment>


AWS status updates not working due to S3 - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/awscloud/status/836656664635846656 <comment><USER3> It baffles me that AWS, a leader in cloud computing can make such a rudimentary mistake. Seriously, I interviewed there and they asked me to write a b+ tree and I failed. And then you see fundamental errors like this which possibly cannot be made by people who had the smarts to write b+ trees in 15 minutes...

I want to take this opportunity to complain about the interview system. Hire people who care about the product and company. Such mistakes cannot be made by people who care.

<comment><USER4> Writing a B+ tree from memory and making sure your infrastructure isn't doing something stupid are fundamentally different skills. One requires that you regurgitate the contents of a text book on a white board, the other that you can engineer a solution. I wish them well on an interview set up for hiring the former; I try to hire the later.

<comment><USER3> > Writing a B+ tree from memory and making sure your infrastructure isn't > doing something stupid are fundamentally different skills.

It's funny. You know it. I know it. Entire HN knows it. And yet _no_ interview follows any such common sense rules. Just go to a Google/FB interview and they ask you all sort of questions. It doesn't matter what you are interviewing for. In fact, in many cases they don't even tell you which group/team/project you will be assigned to. Since they will "assess" where you fit best.

<comment><USER5> > Since they will "assess" where you fit best.

Disclaimer: I work for Google

At Google this just isn't true unless we are talking about new grads. After you pass the interviews, you have to do team matching, where you will have informal 2 way interviews with prospective teams. Only after you find a team that you like and that likes you can you get an offer, assuming your application is approved.

It's definitely not a case of sticking you in a team without your input. It's true that at the interview stage you won't know, but by the time you have an offer you know what team you'll be on.

I believe at Facebook you have even more freedom. You get to go to boot camp for 3 months and after that get to choose what team you want to be on. I haven't worked there so this is just based off what recruiters and friends have told me though so hopefully someone else can correct me or elaborate.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reply. I am talking about the interviewing stage. I have more than 10 years of engineering experience but the Google HR actually sent me a PDF of all the topics I should be well versed it. The booklet was basically my entire grad course and masters and more. I can confirm from more than 5 sources that this is the case with Google interviews.

<comment><USER6> You stated two things: the fact that Google asks algorithms questions and "Since they will "assess" where you fit best". The GP was refuting the second of these things (the GP even quoted it) while you were defending the first statement.

BTW, I think that second point is a common misconception that deserves rebuttal because I think that until a five years ago or so Google wouldn't tell you which team you would join (or give you much choice) before deciding on an offer, even if experienced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So now you know that a deadman switch is the better way to report availability. The logic was backwards for this signal. The default condition is failed. Not failed requires proof.

It's interesting how easy it is to accidentally invert logical operations. I see it in code all the time. A condition will test that A is true when what they really need to know is if B and C are both false. It's like some kind of cognitive tick.

<comment><USER8> That's good practice, sure, but their problem was even more fundamental than that. Their status page was dependent on the service it was reporting on being up. That fails the most basic requirement of a status page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This should be the official anti-pattern when designing a status page.

<comment><USER10> It is...it's literally the reason products like statuspage.io exist, because if your status page has any dependencies on the services for which is provides statuses, then it's not really a useful status page.

<comment><USER3> And yet, I cannot find any obvious information on where statuspage is hosted.

<comment><USER11> Builtwith seems to think they are hosted on EC2 [https://builtwith.com/statuspage.io](https://builtwith.com/statuspage.io)

<comment><USER12> Their status page says so anyway - [http://metastatuspage.com/incidents/lb3rpt031vmx](http://metastatuspage.com/incidents/lb3rpt031vmx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like they've fixed it now. (The status page, not s3)

<comment><AUTHOR> yup - [https://twitter.com/awscloud/status/836662601090134017](https://twitter.com/awscloud/status/836662601090134017)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a problem of "monoculture" dependencies and failure to implement HA by using multiple services. All Github releases are down, atom downloads are down and so on. Companies, including Amazon, should be using other CDNs for HA purposes, even if NIH.

It's a similar mistake of making DNS a dependency for monitoring/control infrastructure when DNS is down.

<comment><USER15> Assuming that it actually makes business sense to do so. There are certainly cases where you can make a perfectly rational business decision to depend on someone else's services and you're OK with your uptime not being any better than their uptime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The dashboard not changing color is related to S3 issue.

I don't understand this. The icon URL is in the HTML. Both icons [https://status.aws.amazon.com/images/status0.gif](https://status.aws.amazon.com/images/status0.gif) and [https://status.aws.amazon.com/images/status3.gif](https://status.aws.amazon.com/images/status3.gif) have been working for us all along. Plus clearly they are able to update the status page contents, because they added the "increased error rates" message there too. I don't want to believe it but is it fair to assume they did not want to replace status0.gif with status3.gif in HTML? Please correct me if I'm not getting this straight.

In any case, it's a bad day for AWS folks, I'm feeling their pain too. Being a cloud provider is a tough business to be at and the pressure is really high.

<comment><USER8> One explanation might be that they use an internal tool to update the status page definitions, and parts of that tool are hosted on S3. Or that the status definitions themselves are hosted on S3 (and then read and transformed into the HTML page everyone sees)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Drone crashes into my living room with groceries. Receive email that my package was successfully delivered.

<comment><USER18> I would hate to imagine drones dropping out of the sky if S3 went down in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So the obvious answer would be to host it on like azure or google cloud storage but I can just imagine the institutional push back that would get trying to do that.

<comment><USER20> What if I told you you could make a red dot without hosting an image anywhere?

<comment><USER21> Red dot as a service?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just to be clear...best practices with designing status pages:

1\. ensure it does not depend on your infra (if your api server goes down - <USER2> should not take down your status api with it)

2\. make sure your service reports to your status page instead of your status page looking for the service.

3\. redundancy for your status page?

anything anyone-else wants to add?

<comment><USER23> Not sure about 2 - What are your arguments for this?

If the status page relies on getting updated information from the service, it may not even notice when the whole thing just crashes and goes down in flames. Attempting to do some predefined calls to the service to evaluate whether it is working correctly appears like a better solution?

<comment><USER24> Yea I was wondering about that comment too. I mean you can do both. Your status page should be static, updated by a service which both polls and accepts information from your services. You ideally want to go yellow if one of the two fails.

But yes, in general, the status page and status services should be entirely on their own independent infrastructure; and in a different data centre. A number of providers offer independent status page services. If your entire company runs off Digital Ocean, your status page/services should probably be running on Linode or AWS or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> ironic .the status update doomed by its own downtime</comment>


Intelligent chatbots could automate away nearly all of commercial interactions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/14/magazine/tech-design-ai-chatbot.html <comment><USER2> Well, as long as they won't replace me and my job, or other people's jobs for that matter, then I don't see any problem with this. They could make our jobs easier tbh.</comment>


Using your TVs energy profile to determine what you were actually watching - <AUTHOR> http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~yoshi/papers/ccs2011-emi.pdf <comment><USER2> In the UK we have a TV license fee that you need to pay in order to watch television as it's broadcast live. The way the license fee is enforced was by a fleet of detector vans driving around measuring the EM signature of televisions in houses. Allegedly, at least, for there's a theory that the vans never actually did anything. Exactly what these people in the article are doing, but mobile, and since the 1970s.

[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage...](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1964to1979/filmpage_tv.htm)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Detection_technology)</comment>


The 5 AM principle - 4 hrs of uninterrupted work - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-healthy-entrepreneur/1bb5a8b90a18

<comment><USER2> Has anyone had much luck with getting up earlier and actually getting more done?</comment>


Code Rush – The Beginnings of Netscape / Mozilla (2000) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y <comment><USER2> Wow. I remember watching this fifteen years ago and seeing that young kid (Stuart Parmenter) join Netscape right out of high school and thinking, "Don't do it!". I, too, joined the industry early and by 2000, I'd pissed away the first half of my twenties pulling all-nighters working at tech startups while the rest of my friends were partying at college or backpacking around Europe.

Recently, I'd read something about Mozilla and wonder whatever happened to that kid. Well, looks like he's all grown up now. I'm impressed to see that he spent so many years with Mozilla. I wonder if he has any regrets at starting so young.

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartparmenter](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartparmenter)

<comment><USER3> I read about jwz in months old copies of Wired in the 90s and basically wanted to be him. Then he left the tech industry because it was so shitty which made me question that plan.

<comment><USER4> So then he joined an arguably much shittier industry? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Lounge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Lounge)

No matter how shitty either industry is, I'd much rather own a nightclub and have my entire life be about the music than work in tech at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That was really cool. Thanks for posting.

I think like a lot of you I probably can't watch a documentary without feeling "omg that guy was biased!" but I felt like they were pretty even-handed here.

      - long hours
      - stock options are a lottery, a stupid tax
        - "and I won the lottery"
      - the countdown timer at the open-source launch, the last minute typo of domain name, the person who observed it and directed the fix - that was awesome
      - the realistic portrayal of burnout and long hours
      - the sale to the giant evil internet corporation
      - the original reply to jwz's "AOL is buying us and here's why its not so bad" mozilla.org post

I use Mozilla (Firefox) as my "daily driver". At work I recently had to switch to Chrome because they offer a USB/serial device API through extensions. If Firefox did too I'd maybe work overtime to port that shit over because I love Mozilla. What an organization.

I feel bad because these guys did waste a bunch of their time building a fucking web browser. But maybe, just maybe, the web would suck a lot less without mozilla.org and their free codebase. And then, I did start to get the idea, "hmmm, maybe it'd be good to write HTTP again... this time with sessions baked in..." and wander off into "Can I implement that?" territory.

<comment><USER6> If they hadn't written a web browser, the internet would have been the internet of IE6 forever.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord "Yeah, my mom can use it. My mom can write optimizing compilers." (10:45)

Devastating comeback.

<comment><USER7> that's Michael Toy. Along with jz, easily the most insightful person in this film ~ [http://toyblog.typepad.com/about.html](http://toyblog.typepad.com/about.html) & [https://twitter.com/mtoy](https://twitter.com/mtoy)

remember Andy Baio released made this film viewable in 2008 and wrote about ~ [http://waxy.org/2008/06/code_rush/](http://waxy.org/2008/06/code_rush/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 23:13 for a young Marc Andreessen writing down what presumably is Steve Jobs' number.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is really good. Thank you for sharing.

As a younger person, this is a piece of history that was never taught.

<comment><USER10> I absolutely agree. When I watched this for the first time ~6 months ago it was crazy how much of this relatable oh-so-familiar stuff was taking place before I existed, the central date of March 31, 1998 being about 3 months before I was born. Programmers these days stand on the shoulders of giants, most of them still living and breathing. And it is a priceless gift that it is so much easier to learn this craft when you're starting out. It is a huge mistake to be the smartest person in a room, so I seek out people who floor me, people who are good at what I want to be good at. The Internet, built by our heroes, allow us young programmers to talk to our heroes as if they were people, and I suppose that helps us to discover that that's all they are.

Edit: If you enjoyed this, another personal-story-tinged entertaining-but- technical diamond I can recommend is a book about id Software, Masters of Doom.

<comment><USER11> > And it is a priceless gift that it is so much easier to learn this craft > when you're starting out.

It truly is. I started my career in July, 1999 and even though there was an open source movement, it was nothing like there is today. Young people can post code up on Github and even participate in huge open source projects that affect millions of people.

Teach each other. Learn from each other. Grow together, and make the world more awesome than you found it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This documentary glorifies the insane practice of working unreasonably long hours to meet a self-imposed deadline. What bad things would have happened if the Mozilla release date had just been pushed back? Probably nothing. And maybe the quality of that initial release would have been better, and the people working on it wouldn't be burnt out afterward.

<comment><USER13> The cynicism that jwz wrote with in this time period about what it's like for young people working in tech was influential on me. I do believe it also comes through in some of his segments in the film.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A classic. I think I'll watch it again tonight...

<comment><USER15> agreed. I can't believe I had never seen this until a few months ago. Speaking of great tech documentaries, just got done with Jason Scott's BBS documentary, which was fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Look closely and you'll see Don Melton ("Gramps") who was responsible for the Mac port at the time, then went to Eazel, then to Apple where he managed Safari from its creation. He's now retired from Apple and does some entertaining podcasts and speaking.

<comment><USER17> Gramps was my first manager @ Netscape when I was hired after contributing patches through Mozilla. He is wickedly funny as were a lot of the rest of the people that worked there. One of these days I need to write down some of my recollections of that time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just FYI for everyone... Andy Baio created a fully annotated version of this documentary on Viddler [http://www.viddler.com/v/90571b61](http://www.viddler.com/v/90571b61)

</comment><comment><USER19> The history of Netscape, part of this is also very well described in Ben Horowitz's book, 'the hard thing about hard things'.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice! Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER21> I got eye cancer after one second from the broken de-interlacing, but thanks nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER22> It Mozilla on an upswing or a decline since the Brendan Eich / Firefox OS stuff happened?

They're kind of shifting more from technology into politics. I heard they were cutting employees and divisions a lot.

I know former employees have to sign a waiver not to talk about their layoff, but why hasn't Mozilla's layoffs gotten any press, but startups do?

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Mozilla- Reviews-E19129.htm](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Mozilla- Reviews-E19129.htm) gives a clue.

<comment><USER23> FF users have almost halved over the last 2 years, despite what feels like solid technology - I wonder what the folks at Opera Software think?

[http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/07/firefox-...](http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/07/firefox- share-over-the-last-two-years-100595221-primary.idge.jpeg)

<comment><USER24> > FF users have almost halved over the last 2 years,

That's not what your linked chart shows. First, the chart is a % market share, not raw user counts. Second, ~18% down to ~13% isn't really "almost half" anyway.

<comment><USER22> Yeah but significant still. 27.7% of their pie disappeared.

Recent versions of Firefox have introduced third party plugins (like pocket).

After the Eich thing, they lost the "hacker" cred and their talent was pretty easy much poached. Further, the concept of merit - overlooking the political in lieu of skill / talent - is no longer a core value of the organization. [1]

Recruiters were all over linkedin and taking away the best talent left and right.

[1] [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6688](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6688)

<comment><USER25> That explains it. The reason you think Mozilla is shifting from technology into politics is that you've been reading ESR's lunatic ravings.

<comment><USER26> You don't have to read any of the political culture ranting of ESR (and you probably shouldn't unless you're masochistic) to have seen that Eich was railroaded and screwed and witch-hunted pretty hard.

It seems very reasonable to interpret that whole situation as Mozilla acknowledging the importance of politics over technical leadership--fair or not, when you broadcast your realpolitik that hard, you're gonna lose people.

<comment><USER22> > when you broadcast your realpolitik that hard, you're gonna lose people.

Hacker culture may not necessarily be aligned with Eich's personal views / situations. But crucial underlying concept is ignoring nebulous things like that. So taking action / reforms based off the premise feels like a Chesteron's fence [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do Cops Have a Right to Access Your Smartphone? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/video-do-police-officers-have-right-access-your-smartphone

<comment><USER2> This debate has increased significance in Michigan where the state police are using a device that dumps your phone. It doesn't matter whether its password protected or not.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20055431-1.html>

Note this began during the previous Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm's rein.

Its been reported that one interesting development from this practice has been that drug dealers no longer conduct business using iPhones.

<comment><USER3> That's an appeal waiting to happen. Forget the $500,000.00 requirement, you can't use that evidence against me if you seized it illegally. I don't see how the contents of a cell phone can be seized legally.

(The only - horrible - exception is if a person doesn't have standing to contest the seizure. For example, if they extract the data from a user's phone & use that to bust the dealer, the dealer might not have a remedy because the dealer doesn't have any expectation of privacy in the user's cell phone.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rights are not granted, only violated.

</comment><comment><USER5> more from the EFF on when the government can look through your computers: <https://ssd.eff.org/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Lock your phone.</comment>


Be Successful First Thing in the Morning - <AUTHOR> http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2012/03/be-successful-first-thing-in-the-morning/

<comment><USER2> I'm one of those "lazy" late risers. I do my best work at night while you early risers are snoring.

The only good thing about rising early is so you can catch the early bird senior citizens special at Denny's.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't be confusing this with early rising, despite the fact that the author has.

If you wake up at 2PM, but first duties are expected from you at 4PM, then you by all means are an early riser -- in the respect of your own day schedule.

Time doesn't exist. Time is just a way of how we humans learnt to include the concept of movement of objects in space, into our non-linear memory, so that we can use it in reasoning. (Earth has rotated by 180 degrees - now who said it took "12" "hours" and where exactly can these "12 hours" be found, tangibly? In our head only, and non tangibly. That is, if every human on earth lost their memory in this very second, those "12 hours" would stop to exist entirely, until a similar interpretation of Earth's rotation would be devised again.)

Good morning from GMT+2 btw.

<comment><USER2> I try to explain that to my co-workers every day!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Morning nazis must die!</comment>


'Moore's law' for carbon would defeat global warming - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/23/moores-law-carbon-would-defeat-global-warming <comment> a-smith So some wallstreet moneychanger get's a huge amount of money from citizens and business's forced to use available energy resources. Meanwhile mass deforestation guarantee's not only would mega tons of released carbons would continue to saturate the already supersaturated world's oceans, but global heating would continue. If all factors with carbon, methane gas releases were solved tomorrow, it would still take more than 2 decades (20 Years) for the heated oceans to no longer add massive heat levels to the existing ambient temperatures. With the ongoing Western funded global wars, Nations are simply unable to collaborate on dealing with global heating much less solve even a single issue such as mass desertification, much less ocean acidification which both result from global heating going on now. Moore's Law Pfth, merely spin words for the wallstreet banksters to divert cash to their pockets under the false guise of a greener future for the 90%.

</comment><comment><USER2> Moores law described an observed trend, while this is more of a "wouldn't it be nice if..." navel gaze.</comment>


Ask HN: Are comments necessary? - <AUTHOR>

I'm brainstorming a new startup, and it crossed my mind how much of our online world revolves around comments. It's necessary for people to receive feedback, and to communicate with one another using the comment section. What if instead of comments though, there was some other way to leave feedback? Maybe a rating system in place of comments.
I want to see if comments are truly necessary- oftentimes I feel that comments are critical but way too bulky. I'm trying to cut out all the things that just aren't needed in order to launch.
*Edit:  I'll clarify the question a little. I understand comments depends on what kind of site it is. Let's take a photo sharing site for example. I read recently somewhere that a company made a phone app that could let you wink, smiley face, or unhappy face at a photo instead of the generic comments you see.
I'm asking whether or not you could see alternatives to comments becoming a success by changing the commenting model as a whole. It's not about my site in particular, it's about comments itself. Do you see yourself satisfied with not being able to leave actual text as comments but instead having to wink, leave a smiley face, rate the photo? <comment><USER2> I believe Path is what you are referring to with the emoticons. That was the first feature of Path that I found really innovative - it encourages greater participation because it's faster than commenting, like the "Like" button, but allows you to convey a greater degree of emotion. But I still comment on photos in Path - having real conversations are valuable in most situations.

Hard to answer for your particular site without knowing more detail, but why not just use Disqus? They're likely to be better than what you hack together yourself, and most early adopter types are familiar with it which will probably increase your engagement rate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Path is the one I'm referring to. I thought it was very innovative as well- and it ties in well to the concept of path. It mimics the real life emotions that your friends might have if they see how your life unfolds. I don't think that their emoticons could work with just any other site.

Real life conversations are valuable- sometimes it just feels like there's too much spam going on. I have a fully functional comment section, but just not sure if I want to keep it. I'm looking for a better way to improve engagement rates by making the comments somehow more interactive with maybe some kind of alternative.

Thanks for the thoughtful answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Whether to have commenting or not depends heavily on your specific site/app, there's no generic answer. Depending on how much user interaction you want/anticipate, you could have like/dislike, rating/stars, or comments.

If you _would_ like to have comments, but don't want to waste time on building them, you could use external comment system like Disqus (or even Facebook comments, if it makes sense for your case).

</comment><comment><USER4> The answer is a firm "it depends", and you haven't given any relevant information to narrow it down beyond that. You haven't even given any useful information to grab on to to start asking questions about.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think alternatives could exist and be extremely popular, especially since people are crunched for time. On the flip side, sites like HN exist for the insights provided by comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think so too. Path that was mentioned is a very unique and original idea to promote further interaction as an alternative to commenting. It saves a ton of time allowing you more time to explore.

HN is fantastic. It doesn't feel bulky because commenting is integrated with the original idea of the site. In fact, you can't do anything but read and leave comments.

For another site though, like a blog, or a photo sharing site, or even a news article you read online- there aren't a lot of alternative to comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think comments are truly necessary at launch. IIRC, Reddit launched without comments.</comment>


Preprint: Hydroxychloroquine in patients with Covid-19: Results - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v1 <comment><USER2> This is the first pre-publication of the very first study on HCQ efficacy that was started early February (source [http://www.chictr.org.cn/showprojen.aspx?proj=48880](http://www.chictr.org.cn/showprojen.aspx?proj=48880)) in Wuhan by Dr Zhang Zhan.

These results are very encouraging.</comment>


"tight" and "loose" cultures and threats - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/17/science-behind-brexit-vote-trump <comment><USER2> I'd wrestled with titles submitting this (before discovering gumby had), choosing:

"Research shows that when people feel threatened they want 'tighter' social norms"

From the subhead: My research shows that when people feel threatened they want 'tighter' social norms, with profound consequences for politics

Very interesting, and playing to several elements of social dynamics, risk and unceertainty, information flows, and behaviours.</comment>


Show HN: A static site generator as a service - <AUTHOR> https://appernetic.io <comment><USER2> Interesting. I've been planning in my head a very similar idea. Best of luck to you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's more difficult than you can imagine to develop...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should I be aware of when open sourcing code from my company? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to get permission to open source some components that are currently in private repositories for the company I work for.
Is there anything we should be aware of beyond simply choosing a licence and putting it up on our company's public github?
What has your experience been doing this? <comment><USER2> Hard-coded "test" credentials, IPs, API keys, basically anything that you assume no sane person has left in - yet there's always at least one instance of.

A lot of people have been accidentally hosed by having AWS keys buried five directories deep in a now-deprecated-and-forgotten " _test_aws.rb_ " file, make sure that doesn't happen to you!

<comment><USER3> Doesn't even matter if you remove it, it will still be in the history. You need to purge your history completely. Start a new repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depending on how big the project is and what your goals are you also need to consider:

\- IP release protocol for submitters

\- Licenses of dependencies

\- Copyright/patent issues

Usually your legal can provide guidance on these things.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I start out as a junior developer? - <AUTHOR> I have finished a computer programming bootcamp and found I took to programming deeply. Some of my course mates have found jobs which are not 'junior developer' jobs (i.e. jobs which focus heavily on feature building, rather than on QA, etc...).
I would like to take the course of maximum learning, so is doing a typical junior developer job an important stepping stone on the way to being a great developer?
Thank you <comment><USER2> Think you should define what you think is a junior developer.

Because in my experience seniors/juniors have not that much to do with the type of tasks you do, but more with the responsibilities. I would advise against taking a job that would put you into a QA position because you are a junior. The only way you become better is by actual development, code reviewing working together with other people, writing tests for your code. Reading books like refactoring, clean code/solid, code complete and working effectively with legacy code. While you make mistakes, and learn from it.

</comment><comment><USER3> As some already explained in their answers, maybe the more important thins is what you are going to do and in what environment, rather than the title itself.

In my mind 'junior developer' is not somebody who does QA only, but is connected to the responsibility. You could be as well working on developing features as a junior developer, in fact I would expect it. It is only that you will get guidance and mentoring from senior developers.

From what you described about your background, I would expect you to start as a junior developer - as for anybody who does not have work experience yet.

So my advice would be to make sure the company has a good mentoring system in place and enough senior developers to support that. Even if you got a job in e.g. some startup and you get a mid/senior title because they don't know better, that will very soon backfire on both of you. They will expect results you won't be able to deliver and noone will understand why.

Of course if you could give us more details - on what is a "typical" junior dev job for you, what are your mates doing etc., we could provide a more directed answer.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> QA is fucking boring but teaches you how to become a better developer. If you are fresh out of bootcamp you are probably not qualified for QA, tbh. I would suggest a job which allows you to switch between tasks; some team leading/mentoring, some QA, some bugfixing legacy enterprise software, some sysadmin, some new development, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with winkelwagen. You should do development, and also, take advantage in that you're a junior, to learn as much as possible. Read as much as you can, and apply it. And tackle harder and harder tasks, but definitely start from easy and go your way up.</comment>


Survey: 52% of consumers are overwhelmed by daily deal emails - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/survey-52-of-consumers-are-overwhelmed-by-daily-deal-emails/51023 <comment><USER2> If you're like me you bought 1-2 daily deals early on, and then never went back to using Groupon or daily deal sites. Do they publish any financial information on repeat purchases? I haven't been able to find it...</comment>


Finding a startup partner - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on my own startup, and I can manage it on my own for now, but it would be nice to work with someone. I was thinking it would be cool to find someone already working on something of their own too, so it's easier to stay motivated, to give each other ideas and insights, and help each other if one or the other gets stuck. Then, if either of our projects take off, we've got someone we can turn to if we need. What do you think? Anyone interested? How many of you are working on something solo, and are you a developer or a designer? <comment><USER2> I am interested. I also have a small hobby project that I am working on. I don't want to call it a start up yet. I would like to take part in this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it would be a bit much to call what I have so far a startup too, but I'm hoping to do a lot of work on it over the summer. Hit me up on IM or email at email@example.com.</comment></comment>


Israel approves Intel's $6B investment in chip plant - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/22/us-israel-intel-plant-idUSKCN0HH1F720140922

<comment><AUTHOR> Intel is apparently not the only hardware company with R&D operations in Israel: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multinationals_with_res...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multinationals_with_research_and_development_centres_in_Israel)

AMD and Qualcomm are also on that list.</comment>


Uncle Sam Kicks Out Legal Immigrants for Down Profits in Recession - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/07/22/uncle-sam-kicks-out-legal-immigrants-for-down-profits-in-recession/ <comment><USER2> God those damn immigrants taking our jobs... oh wait, the government did that in this case.

Ok those damn immigrant spies... oh wait those were legal too, and a drain on their country's resources.

Ok those damn illegal immigrants and their taking of american jobs that were created by immigrants who we now depor... damn, this aint working out.

I'm going to stop listening to fox.</comment>


Show HN: My little project, (us-only) Weather for Smartphones - <AUTHOR> http://instantwx.com

<comment><AUTHOR> It's my first mobile web project. I know a thousand weather apps already exist, but my girlfriend couldn't find one that showed moon phases too. So, instantwx.com was born for her and as an excuse to learn HTML5 geolocation. :)

It was created for Android. I haven't been able to test it for iPhone.

Oh, and it was made with Geolocation in mind, too. Need to figure out a better way to discover searched locations. It currently fails on "NYC". Needs to have "City, ST" in that format

<comment><USER2> looks pretty, but why not use ip geolocation by default, and use browser-based geolocation for a more specific answer (only if it doesn't come back as the same city name)? that way you can show something while the browser geolocation is taking place (it can take a few seconds on some browsers).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think I'm going to set that up in a bit. Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER2> also consider making a 32x32 icon for it (the apple-touch-icon.png; android uses it too) so if users add it as a bookmark on their home screen, it shows up with something unique instead of a page overview (or the red bookmark icon on android).

also, you may want to make the <title> short so the default text for the icon is what you want.

just some tips from my experience running <http://goingtorain.com/></comment></comment></comment></comment>