To Get Rich, Just Follow the Instructions - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/24513 <comment><USER2> It's definitely true, but most important is the last paragraph at the end. The best example is building enterprise vs. consumer applications.

If you'd like a safe way to get rich off a start-up, creating a consulting gig doing something "enterprisey" and then morph it into a start-up. In 5-7 years that could mean wealth. But this also means you'll be coding Java/.NET all of that time and are never going to build the next google.

What you would build is something like the next Siebel: worse than what the open source community provides, but some suit somewhere will justify spending $1 mill on it as a "business decision".

<comment><USER3> I would advocate against going against the 'Enterprise' route, unless you already have contacts that can feed you your first few clients. Getting contracts at the sorts of companies that buy 'enterprise' systems is much more a matter of being connected than software quality. This should not come as a surprise. Taking a million-dollar wager on an unknown is corporate suicide. A million-dollar contract with an established partner that goes tango-uniform is just a 'bad call'.

<comment><USER2> You need contacts, but you don't need to market your business (or hope your business becomes viral). You can get contacts by starting off doing consulting work. You'd only need to hire (or have as a co-founder) a business/sales person, you won't need to hire a marketing person.

Nor do you begin with million dollar deals, first customers can be cheaper, just to establish a clientèle base/relationships. The fact you said it's a matter of contacts vs. software quality is a point I forgot to mention: as Ben Stein said, you don't need to be great to do this. You just need to follow directions.

pg makes the same recommendation (go into enterprise) for those who do not think they are smart or driven enough to build consumer web applications.

<comment><USER4> "pg makes the same recommendation (go into enterprise) for those who do not think they are smart or driven enough to build consumer web applications." what makes u think that enterprise stuff doesnt need smartness? vmware? oracle? fwiw, ppl go where the money is and/or where the barrier is low, not where its smarter. for enterprise barrier is too high to get customers or even your customers are evry limited and you have to spend lots of time building your product unlike in web where there are lots of "platforms" like ror,adsense etc etc.

<comment><USER5> A bunch of my friends were early VMWare customers (1999/2000). They were almost totally a consumer/small business company then. VMWare Workstation was their first product, and they only got into server virtualization and enterprise solutions after the dot-com recovery, when folks realized "Hey, our servers are sitting idle most of the time, let's put a bunch of additional virtual servers on it."

They've followed the path of many, many other successful disruptive innovations. They come out with something that's innovative & technically hard, release it as a low-margin consumer product, and then gradually move up- margin into enterprise systems as their product gets better & more widely known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ever since Ben Stein got into the business of spewing creationist claptrap in phony "documentaries", my respect for him and willingness to consider his opinions has dropped tremendously.

<comment><USER7> Nice people can be idiots and assholes can be wise. Sometimes it pays to listen to those you dislike.

It's a shame Ben Stein turns his brain off when his faith is questioned, but if blind belief in the sky elf is enough to turn you off someone's writing you'll miss out on a lot of good stuff.

<comment><USER6> There is more good writing than there is time to read, so I have the luxury of choosing not to listen to people like him.

<comment><USER7> That you do, but you're missing out on some pretty sound financial and business advice when you pass his columns by.

<comment><USER8> I don't see 1 thing I would have missed if I never stumbled on this article. This guy is so far from being rich it just pity looking at guys making fun of themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, that's great advice...when you have instructions to read.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Read the instructions." I'll add this to my other helpful HN startup advice like "only work four days a week" and "take more vacations".

</comment><comment><USER11> OK, so let's say Yanik has no costs at all -- he gets to take that entire $300,000 and put it right in his own pocket. Maybe lumber and concrete just fall out of the sky for him, and people work for him free because he's such a nice guy who'll help you with his stereo.

But Yanik is selling his time, he's getting $300k for the time it takes him to manage a building's construction. Stein says he's "well on his way to being in the top 1 percent and, after that, the top one-tenth of 1 percent." Absolutely false.

Let's say Yanik can put up not one but _three_ $300k buildings a year, because he's so talented. Great, he'll be a billionaire in just 1,111 years.

The wealthiest 1% of America isn't just a little ahead of the rest of us; as Stein correctly notes they're hugely ahead. It doesn't happen by trying harder at your job but by redefining the work, putting capital to work for you instead of going to work yourself.

<comment><USER12> bingo. renting your labor has always been the least efficient way to make money. more efficient is renting your land, more efficient than that is renting your capital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's decent enough advice, but I have a hard time taking any scientific advice from someone who doesn't even believe in evolution.

<comment><USER14> In terms of a minimal theoretic definition, ID is used by many professional disciplines today, since all it says is that intelligence can be detected. This comes up in any discipline that deals with human intent, such as forensics and law, signal processing, web search, spam filters, etc.

ID as a scientific methodology merely says we shouldn't arbitrarily limit where we can look for intelligence. The only reason we currently have this limit is because of purposeful cultural transformations (see "Closing of the American Mind") and not because of any rigorous arguments or evidence.

Also, it needs to be said that ID vs evolution is a false dichotomy.

<comment><USER14> Downmodder, could you point out where I am wrong, along with support? It'd be a help for me, since the above makes the most sense to me.</comment></comment></comment>


FBI chief warns encryption emboldens would-be Islamic State attackers - <AUTHOR> http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/08/uk-usa-fbi-islamic-state-idUKKCN0PI24L20150708 <comment><USER2> The trend, here, I believe is a movement to end all personal encryption. Both the US and UK state their best intentions, yes, as a tool to fight "terrorism" and "organized crime" and "drug trafficking." Fine.

However, in the Trust-me-we-won't-spy-on-everyone" Department, both are sadly bankrupt.

If these governments were people you actually had personal dealings with, how could you trust them to keep their word?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a lawyer, but here's how I think it should work:

1\. DA asks court for a search warrant because a crime may have been committed.

2\. If the evidence looks convincing, court issues warrant to search suspect's phone.

3\. DA serves suspect with search warrant.

If the suspect won't unlock phone voluntarily, the suspect is in contempt of court and subject to legal sanctions. Why does the phone manufacturer need to get involved?

<comment><USER4> For one thing, your scenario isn't what the government wants. The government wants to peek without the user knowing. This is the age of secret law.

For another, good security includes deniability: You can't prove a blob of random-seeming data is or isn't encrypted data, and even granting knowledge that it is, there is no way to prove there isn't more than one key to more than one set of data.</comment></comment>


Google Gulp - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/googlegulp/

<comment><USER2> Ah, it's that day again. When I take a holiday from the internet.

</comment><comment><USER3> OK, this is 5 years old and I hate the spam that April Fools Day generates on social news sites. Flagged.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this for tomorrow's April Fool or is it old and I just never saw it before?

<comment><USER5> Old: [http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/03/google-april- fools-...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/03/google-april-fools- day-2005-google.html)</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Open Webkit Inspector, hit CTRL + O - <AUTHOR>

For instant searching through the filenames! <comment><USER2> I haven't been this impressed by a keyboard shortcut in a long time. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER3> Genius! thank you...</comment>


The Product Design Sprint - <AUTHOR> http://robots.thoughtbot.com/the-product-design-sprint

<comment><USER2> It's not mind blowing stuff, but it's good. It takes an often unorganized process popularly characterized by a lack of structure and gives guidelines that keep stuff practical and centered on requirements. I'll be looking into this more.</comment>


Ask HN: What's up with laptops these days? This is about SSD and CPU - <AUTHOR> Laptop manufacturers are missing the price/performance ratio of having a) premium CPU with mechanical drive, and a lesser CPU with an SSD. You buy a decent laptop these days, but the CPU sits idle doing nothing while the stupid mechanical drive clutters along. A lesser CPU with an SSD would balance the price/performance ratio and arguably perform better. Simples. <comment><USER2> Because it is cheaper to swap components in a single design than to have multiple designs. Usually manufacturers do both - with different models targeting different target markets, then swap out parts in each model to appeal to different price points.

</comment><comment><USER3> Consumers haven't gotten much awareness of the value of SSDs. Also I wonder if the industry would run into supply problems if SSD were pushed more aggressively.</comment>


Ask HN: Designing a crawler to extract all the links from a website (site map)? - <AUTHOR> How would you build a bot which receives a website address for an input, and then it extracts and visits all the (sub)pages that can be found on the website? Then, it uses the gathered data to save the statuses of the pages (response codes, title, description, load time...) and it saves the pages in a data structure where it's possible to create a tree map of the pages (like a folder structure in a file browser). This data structure needs to have weekly snapshots for making comparisons throughout time.
I'm thinking about the two main aspects of this bot - first one being the crawling strategy and the second one the data structure to store this data so it can be queried efficiently. Regarding the crawling algorithm, probably the easiest would be:
- Visit the page (level 1)
- Extract all the internal links
- Visit the first link, save data
- Go to step 2 (uncover the next level of links)
Obviously, there are some critical problems with this strategy. When do we know when we are done? How to prevent cyclical issues? What are the possible problems when crawls are performed concurrently?
The second point in question is the database for storing these links. Data should have the following properties:
- Associated to a specific website crawl at some point in time (to be compared with other crawls in different time)
- Links in each crawl need to be pointed to each other, so a website tree can be constructed.
This perhaps calls for a graph database, but that's expensive (learning it + maintaining cost). What about a traditional RDBMS (Postgres)? A "links" table, referenced by "crawls" and "websites" table, where links are uniquely identified by its URL and can point to other links - for example the parent link (previous level).
Can you point me to some good algorithms and strategies? <comment><USER2> [https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/html_node/Recursive...](https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/html_node/Recursive- Retrieval-Options.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out [https://scrapy.org/](https://scrapy.org/) to start</comment>


Advanced Google Analytics for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-google-analytics-tricks-to-use-for-your-website <comment><USER2> Also have a look at my <http://code.google.com/p/php-ga/> project, which opens the door to many advanced server-side use cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because I have a lot of web properties, I look at Google Analytics almost every day. So I'm not a noob to the idea of analytics by any means.

I keep reading these Google Analytics articles and they all just kind of wash over me. So many thousands of pieces of data. It just never all seems to come together into some kind of useful whole. It just never seems to add up to much.

I look at total traffic and how the traffic is getting there. Then I look at time on site and page views, which show me how engaged they are. Finally I glance at new vs. returning visitors. That's about it. I know I must be missing out on something -- writers keep telling me this -- but somehow I'm just not easily able to move from "here's a zillion pieces of data" to "here is something I can do today for my content to make it better for folks"

On on the positive side, I like the new interface and features. I've been geeking out on watching traffic arrive at the site realtime. But then again, just like all the other stuff, it's cool glossy data, but not a lot of actionable useful stuff.

<comment><USER4> You might want to follow Avinash Kaushik (hopefully I wrote it right), his blog is quite popular and for very good reasons: <http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/> His book, Web Analytics 2.0, is an eye opener in terms of defining your own goals and processes, highly suggested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Other tips, independent of whether you're using Google Analytics or any other tool:

\- Plan and set up your analytics early. If you're using Google Analytics, set up goals (and goal funnels) for the major actions that are successes for your business. If you're not using GA, figure out how to model user interactions in a meaningful way.

\- Track any and all of your efforts to spread your web presence. Tag links in emails, social sources, and advertising solutions. If you don't know how you acquired a particular customer, you don't know what's working.

\- There is only one number that matters at the end of the day: revenue. Understand how metrics play into revenue before trying to optimize for something web-centric like "Bounce Rate" or "Time on Site".

</comment><comment><USER6> The site goals is the one thing people always neglect when using analytics. I agree with the post that it is the foundation of your website analysis.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am learning webmaster skills and have marked this to study in detail later. I am scratching today after having my site ranked #3 on google for my keyword to today not being found in the search results at all. I went to bing and did not have this problem. The changes Google made with the new search format last year has a lot to be desired in my book.

</comment><comment><USER8> One thing people should track is mobile user agents, and the usernames they correspond to. That way when you do release a mobile app you know offhand who has android, and who has iphone, and send targeted emails to those groups of people. Same for Google Chrome, if you wish to release a Chrome app.

</comment><comment><USER9> Talk about HN title link-bait. The article's actual title - 11 Google Analytics Tricks to Use for Your Website - is much more accurate (namely because the article has 1) nothing to do with startups and 2) nothing "advanced".)</comment>


Ask HN: Should Apple acquire Stripe - <AUTHOR> Seems like a perfect play into Apple's second biggest market, services. However, I'd be curious to know Stripes top and bottom lines. Rumor is that Stripe only makes 1% on transactions, the rest goes to Wells Fargo. <comment><USER2> No.</comment>


Countries don't own their Internet domains, ICANN says - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/551289/countries_don_t_own_their_internet_domains_icann_says/ <comment><USER2> So instead the US is the only country that "owns" domain names, since ICANN is an American company? If the domains aren't property then how can they be seized? Is a distinction made between domain names and ccTLDs?

edit: Downvotes? Really? For asking a question that seems perfectly on-topic.

<comment><USER3> > So instead the US is the only country that "owns" domain names, since ICANN > is an American company?

If you read the article instead of responding to the title, you would recognize that ICANN is saying no one "owns" ccTLDs, because they aren't property at all.

<comment><USER2> I have, and yes, they say that, but since they are an American company and thus can be compelled to do pretty much anything by the American goverment (through secret courts even, which we've been hearing more and more about) it seems reasonable to say that America owns them, and their bookkeeping.

<comment><USER3> Their argument here is for why they _cannot_ be compelled to do certain things by American courts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> ICANN documents on the case: [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann- various-2014-07-...](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann- various-2014-07-30-en)

</comment><comment><USER4> Seriously, fuck the people that want to seize 3 countries worth of ccTLDs.

That isn't reasonable or rational behavior. You can't seize top level domains. You shouldn't be allowed to, regardless of the reasons. You break the human- readable internet and DNS if this is allowed.

Some countries will go along with such a seizure, some won't, and the internet will fragment.

<comment><USER5> I entirely agree with you in principle, but can't bring myself to be angry about it anymore. For the last few years I've been pessimistic about the long term viability of the unary root zone anyway.

At one point the users of the internet were collaborative enough to decide "lets just let Jon Postel run this shit." Almost half the world is online now, and depending on the Internet more and more. That kind of collaboration still works (in a more formal manner) for big things if they fly under the user's radar (like the switch to IPv6). Outside of a few flamewars, things gets done (slowly, it's a lot of work, but done nonetheless). How much of the planet relies on and has daily visible interaction with the root zone? A forth? At least?

There is already monkeying around in resolvers to add, remove or change records but those are generally isolated and/or purpose specific. Can ICANN, governments, and big ISPs all coordinate and keep their personal interests in check well enough to persevere the the root zone's position as the one and only source of authority?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They are assigned names and numbers. You have as much ownership over a domain as you do over the name of the street your home is on. Given the importance of assigned names and numbers to business, similar to trademarks, you have a certain amount of administrative control and protection against arbitrary reassignment.

Think about this: (800) 588-2300. Some of you reading this will automatically and involuntarily hear the end of the jingle: "Empiiiire." That number is not owned. It has just been continuously in use by the same company for decades.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That address is not owned. It's just how the USPS identifies the White House mailbox.

Changing assignments for a TLD makes about as much sense as renaming the postal code for California from CA to QM, or assigning the 777 area code to any place in the US other than the Las Vegas Strip. That code isn't even in use yet.

It's not about ownership, its about making sense and being intuitive for people trying to find the information they need. Purposefully ruining the addressing system for information is as much a dick move as heading to the public library and demolishing their card catalog terminals with a fireman's axe just because you don't want people to be able to check out any copies of a certain book.

</comment><comment><USER3> From a quick read-through of the documents I can find on this, it seems most likely that the ownership issue won't be reached because it looks like much clearer jurisdictional and procedural issues that ICANN also raises are likely to be dispositive as to the validity of the writs of attachment at issue.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it is good move. Otherwise many countries would see DNS as something worth controlling (and forking).

<comment><USER8> Only USA should have the power to seize domains. ICE FTW!

Merika! Fuck Yeah!

<comment><USER5> Has ICE ever seized a TLD?

Could a registrar that operates outside the US not be compelled by that nations laws w/r/t the domains under it's control? Because as far as I'm aware, that's how ICE does in the US.

Not saying I like it, but I don't know that your characterization is accurate.

<comment><USER9> ICE don't compel the registrar, they compel the registry normally; in the case of .com and .net that is Verisign.

<comment><USER5> Oops, that's what I meant. I tend to mix those up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> IF they want to seize domains in the country that is one thing. They want to seize, basically, the right to identify yourself as that country/origin online, as if to erase it from existence. Doesn't anyone see the de-humanizing aspect of this?

</comment><comment><USER11> What about a phone prefix, like +963 for Syria? Can it be "seized"? Bizarre.

<comment><USER12> Yes. They are assigned and controlled by the ITU much like ccTLDs are assigned and controlled by ICANN. The same is true for radio and television prefixes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like countries need to look into decentralized DNS. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin)

</comment><comment><USER14> How to realy realy piss off the ITU and the UN and give it ammunition to take over ICANT's job</comment>


NFL players' surprising performance hack: going vegan - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/nfl-players-are-going-vegan.html <comment><USER2> The article claims that "there's a new performance hack taking hold in the NFL — going vegan," mentioning Tom Brady as an example. Article later clarifies that "though not vegan, his personal diet is reportedly 80 percent plant- based." So the performance hack is just eating healthy food?

<comment><USER3> Which easily means that he does LCHF Paleo or an exceptionally clean Keto, maybe combined with OMAD, which is what I personally recommend for both physical and mental performance reasons.

I'm not saying it'll turn an everyman into a Tom Brady, but it could explain why Tom Brady performs so well against his peers (which is _just enough_ of a gap to near-consistently win; and all of these people, even on the Browns, are all absolutely amazing athletes at the top of their field).

<comment><USER4> I can't see how an 80% plant based diet could lead to a low carb, high fat outcome. It in no way implies to me a one meal a day diet.

It sounds more to me like the DASH diet, or Mediterranean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I looked seriously at veganism after reading a WHO report that attributes 13% of world greenhouse gas emissions to animal farming. [Strike that. The figure is 18%, and the source is a 2006 FAO study sponsored by the World Bank and the European Union, among others.] I built a database from the USDA's and whatever credible recommendations for daily micronutrition I could find, and then I built a diet around that database. All recommended micronutrients can be had from non-meat, non-dairy foods except two: it is not possible to be a healthy vegan without also taking choline and vitamin B12 supplements.

An athlete would face extra challenges. Tudor Bompa cites research showing athletes tend to be deficient in important micronutrients compared to the general population, likely because of the stresses of training. And though the position paper on sports nutrition published by the world's most important scientific journal on nutrition recommends that athletes consume up to 1.4g of protein per 1kg of body mass per day, for a vegan athlete this means consuming approximately 1kg to 2kg of beans a day, or even more if the food is less protein-dense than beans. It's hard to eat that many beans.

Sources:

 _Livestock 's Long Shadow: Environmental issues and options_, p.112, Food and Agriculture Organization, 2006

United States Department of Agriculture Food Composition Databases

Tudor S. Bompa, _Periodic Training for Sports_ , 2015

"Nutrition and Athletic Performance", Dietitians of Canada, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American College of Sports Medicine, December 2016

<comment><USER6> I didn't remember hearing about choline before.. I'm vegan so I looked into it.[0] "Humans make a small amount of choline in the liver. ..no reports of choline deficiency in the general population... the choline made by the body (assuming a dietary intake of zero) may be enough" There are many plant sources. So not sure why you're saying choline can't be gotten from vegan sources. That seems both untrue and misleading (It seems nobody may need to get choline from food sources)

B12 is a different matter, but as it seems a standard additive to soy milk, which I often have on breakfast cereal, I've never worried about that either.

No supplements needed. (Anecdata: I've been going strong for almost 30 years of vegan diet)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline#Dietary_sources_of_cho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline#Dietary_sources_of_choline)

<comment><USER7> > Humans make a small amount of choline in the liver.

I thought old "Element 17" was made by fusion in stars.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis)

<Oops: choline not chlorine!>

<comment><USER8> It's "choline", not "chlorine".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad this is getting attention. I was vegan for a while, but couldn't handle the constant social pressures. However, I'm now mostly a home cook with basic non-processed ingredients, lots of veggies, and low fat protein -- I've taken this to the point where I make my own breads.

I find if I eat too many processed foods my chronic depression comes back. So eating simply and regular exercise is how I stay off antidepressants and perform better at every aspect of my life.

<comment><USER10> Social pressures? You put other people's opinions over your own health? Honestly man, scuse my french but tell them to fuck off. I don't care if it's your own family, your wife, do whatever you want. Hearing stuff like that makes me sick, because you're basically saying you value other people more than you and you are who is most important. It's liberating to just not care.

<comment><USER11> There are overt pressures and subtle social inconveniences to anyone on a non- mainstream or non-omnivore diet.

"Hey wanna come over to a BBQ at our place on Saturday?" might be awkward for a vegan to respond to, just as "Hey, wanna come over for spaghetti night?" would be for someone on a low-carb diet without any specific disrespect or disapproval from the host about the particular diet. I'm assuming you wouldn't recommend telling someone to "fuck off" for inviting you to a BBQ.

<comment><USER12> I just show up with mushrooms, vegetable skewers, salad and high quality sourdough to share. Even at company picnics and other events. Rarely is there an issue and very often people are very complementary of my food. Don't make it other people's problem and they won't make it yours.

<comment><USER13> This is the correct answer right here. The only deviation of this is cooking services. When I did a cookout 2 weeks ago, I just told the vegan that she should be aware that the grill is heavily seasoned by meat. She used the stove and no one cared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a competitive athlete (powerlifting) and I've been experimenting with a flexitarian-style diet where the vast majority of my calories are from plant- based foods but I "supplement" with sardines and eggs to fill in the deficiencies.

With vegan diets, the most commonly deficient nutrients are: protein, calcium, choline, selenium, vitamin B12, vitamin D, iron, and zinc.

2 cans of sardines can provide almost all of the vitamin D, selenium, and B12 you need in a day, and a majority of calcium and protein, with a serious dent in your choline RDA as well. Not only that, they are among the most sustainably-caught and lowest-mercury fish you can eat.

Add in 3 pasture-raised, farm-fresh eggs and you've hit your RDA for choline (via the yolks) and protein.

The rest of your nutrients can be covered with vegan foods...for the remaining common deficiencies, a few scoops of vegan pea protein to finish up your RDA for iron with that athlete boost I need of additional protein.

Sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, lentils, garbanzo beans, cashews, and quinoa are all excellent sources of protein and zinc.

</comment><comment><USER15> I would seriously advise ignoring diet advice gleaned from elite athletes. A huge part of being an elite athlete is having good genetics for whatever sport you play. And when you're a genetic freak, you can get away with doing a lot of sub-optimal stuff.

<comment><USER16> Is it true that one can get away with doing a lot of stuff that's sub-optimal for short term performance in an extremely competitive league like the NFL? There's someone almost as freakishly good waiting to replace you.

On that note, is there any measure of how closely clustered top athletes are in different sports? Are there some in which the best are more separated from the rest than in others, so that the best in those sports can get away more sub-optimal stuff?

<comment><USER15> > Is it true that one can get away with doing a lot of stuff that's sub- > optimal for short term performance in an extremely competitive league like > the NFL?

You should read up on the training regimen of Usain Bolt. Fastest guy who ever lived. His training regime is basically that he doesn't train. I can't imagine that his dietary adherence is any better. Short of malnutrition or massive sugar consumption, there's probably not much he could do to screw himself up. Clearly his genes want to build a very specific phenotype.

<comment><USER16> OK, I googled it and "basically that he doesn't train" is a gross exaggeration. Same regarding diet. One link briefly covering both: [https://www.gq.com/story/runner-usain-bolt-training- secrets-...](https://www.gq.com/story/runner-usain-bolt-training-secrets-and- diet)

Same link also says Bolt has a freakishly long stride. I wonder if sprinting is one sport in which the very best are further from the rest relative to other sports due to sprinting involving exactly one activity? I'm not much of a sports fan but I can't recall another accounting of a great in my lifetime that didn't involve intense training.

<comment><USER15> That link refers to a 90 minute daily workout. For a point of comparison, 90 minutes per day would not be considered abnormal for a "fit" amateur (as in, the person in your office who is training for a marathon, iron man, crossfit games, etc.). It is not at all what most athletes would consider serious training.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Brady has survived for so long because he gets rid of the ball quickly and knows how to fall down without getting hurt. His diet and all the other snake oil he subscribes to has nothing to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Another cool "performance hack" by NFL players': liberal doses of hGH and testosterone

</comment><comment><USER10> It's about time I have a link to send people that make super played out vegan jokes. I love teasing and having a laugh at the expense of myself, but it's super old to see vegetarian-hating jokes equating it to being weak.

<comment><USER19> This is one of my favorites: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIKN5LNxFiQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIKN5LNxFiQ)

(My wife is a registered dietitian with a PhD in nutrition, so obviously we tend toward veganism.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I got no real problem with going meat free, and most of my diet is meatless, my partner was super keen to do this and she started making a lot of meat alternative type meals, and for the most, it's pretty good. Not as bad as I thought. Comes down to the flavors you use mostly.

however going dairy free is a whole other ball game, We've tried some alternatives, and things like banana ice cream is a pretty good ice cream alternative, but cheese alternatives are not so good.

<comment><USER21> This ultimately puts your taste preferences over the life of a sentient animal.

The core reason that many ethical vegans are vegans is that they decide not to put their taste preferences over an animal.

<comment><USER22> I wonder if "super-tasters" are under represented in vegetarian/vegan populations (or vice-versa)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anecdotally, after moving to a plant based diet, I feel a lot healthier and have a lot more energy.

I think that the main reason is less that meat itself is unhealthy though, but that I used to basically eat meat and carbs with little in the way of vegetables. Steak and chips isn't a very nutritionally complete meal.

Of course it's possible to eat shit food while still being a vegan. Oreos and fries are vegan.

<comment><USER24> Oreos aren't vegan and many fries aren't either, including from some big chains. [http://www.oreo.co.uk/faq](http://www.oreo.co.uk/faq)

<comment><USER25> > No, Oreo have milk as cross contact and therefore they are not suitable for > vegans.

That's definitely a minority view. The point is to avoid creating demand for animal products, so most vegans don't worry about cross-contamination as if it were an allergy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Non-amp link: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/nfl-players-are-going- vegan....](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/nfl-players-are-going-vegan.html)

<comment><USER27> Thanks. Changed to that from [https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/09/07/nfl-players- are-going-ve...](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/09/07/nfl-players-are-going- vegan.html).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are Computer Science Courses at Santa Monica College Any Good? - <AUTHOR>

I don't have a background in computers, but I know how to do all the straight forward stuff (Windows, Microsoft Office, basic computer knowledge for office use, etc.).
Are programming and web development courses at Santa Monica college worth it? I'm a California resident, and it'll only be a couple hundred dollars per class.
I work full-time as a copywriter so I can only take a course or two at a time. My employer knows of my interest in web development, and my manager is interested in exploring opportunities where I may use them currently.
Also, my end goal isn't necessarily a degree or a diploma. I just want a chance to work on standard 'challenges' and have some type of guide. Also, I hope to meet people with a similar interest because I am somewhat new to Los Angeles and don't know many people.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> I'm finishing an Associate's Degree in CS at SMC this Spring. At SMC, I've taken Intro to CS, C programming, Java I, Web Programming I (HTML and CSS), PHP Programming, Database Concepts and Applications, Assembly Language Programming and Computer Architecture.

I am currently enrolled in Java II and Web Programming II (JavaScript).

My view might be skewed, as I was already a professional web developer before attending SMC, but I found the majority of the web-related coursework to be somewhat trivial and hard to directly apply to building any real-world applications.

As far as more the more 'core' CS related material is concerned (C Programming, Assembly, Computer Architecture, etc), I have really learned a ton, and plan to learn a ton more (as I've found the first ton learned is actually not that much!). I also highly recommend Database Design and Applications.

If your goal is to get a CS Degree, SMC (or any other reputable community college) is a great place to start.

If your goal is to be able to build applications and have a decent understanding of HTML, CSS JavaScript and maybe another widely used web language such as Ruby (and Rails, respectively), I would recommend this track, provided you have the self-motivation to do it:

1\. Code Academy - Finish completely the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and Ruby tracks. I like Ruby because there is an incredible support structure (both online and in person) for those new to programming.

2\. Read (and do the exercises in) Chris Pine's "Learn to Program"

3\. Read (and do the exercises in) Command Line Crash Course (easily found via Google Search)

4\. Read (and do the exercises in) Learn Ruby The Hard Way

5\. Go through most, but not necessarily all of the courses on RubyMonk.org (Metaprogramming is an advanced topic that you may not need to handle this early)

6\. Do all of the exercises from Test First Ruby (testfirst.org/learn_ruby)

7\. Do a lot (but not necessarily all) of the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery (and jQuery AJAX), SQL, and Ruby courses on Team Treehouse. If you interested in design, go through those courses as well.

8\. Do a lot (but not necessarily all) of the JavaScript, jQuery and Ruby courses on CodeSchool.com

9\. Learn about version control through Git and Github (there are many online tutorials, as well as on CodeSchool and Team Treehouse)

10\. Read (and do the exercises in) The Rails Tutorial (www.railstutorial.org). Do every single thing in this book step by step. Then do the entire book again. Then do it again.

11\. Build stuff using the knowledge you have gained. Use Google and Stack Overflow to help you when you get stuck.

In term of meeting people with similar interests, I have found that a community college is probably not the best place. I would attend local meetups, as those folks are genuinely passionate about the topics, are there to learn and meet people and can probably be more useful to you if you are trying to learn software development.

Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> My reply is a little late, but thanks for all the info.

I will probably take core CS courses and databases, and in the meantime do what you've suggested, as I've already almost finished with all of Codecademy tracks.

I'll look into those books and sites.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> will worth it.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a non-MVC Node.js framework? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a plugin-based node.js framework, as opposed to the  MVC (or MV*, etc.) which is all the rage these days.  I discuss my reasoning in a short blog post, but I'm hoping the HN community has some insight.  And, if I can't find an appropriate one, I'm considering starting one.
Your help/wisdom is greatly appreciated!
Blog post discussing the question is here: http://cscrunch.com/blog/corey-pennycuff/open-question-there-non-mvc-nodejs-framework <comment><USER2> > I can have a highly functional site in 10 minutes with Drupal, but node.js > (express), Django, Rails, etc. all seem to take forever just to get > something of minimal functional equivalence.

There's nothing about Express that enforces MVC and depending on your definition of 'highly functional' you can go from nothing to production in like 100 LOC with Express and npm.

Are you familiar at all with npm? There's a package or ten for everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to comment!

I've used Express, and it's great for what it does, it just doesn't do what I'm looking for. I'm wanting a framework that can be a CMS as well as a store, or a brochure-ware site, or a game backend server, or whatever else.

Basically, a plugin-able framework. I don't want to use a package from npm if that means having to hack it just to add something to a form. For that matter, I don't want to worry about the security of a 3rd party module simply because there is no standard way to generate/handle forms.

It's a philosophical argument, I suppose. You _can_ write secure code if you do everything right, but if a framework requires you to use an API everywhere (a la Drupal's FAPI), then you get security for free.

I've written my own login and session handling scripts. I've written my own CRUD routines. It's painful, because it should not be necessary (IMO).

<comment><USER3> node+npm does everything you need here. if you're writing your own libs, you're doing something wrong.

there are so many middleware modules for express that you can have a web app with a connected db, user auth, forms with csrf up in a matter of minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You don't want a "framework" you want a CMS or "app platform". Drupal isn't a "framework", laravel/symfony are "frameworks".

You are comparing a Tesla model S to a kit car chassis.

There is also no antipathy between plugin-based/modular systems and MVC. The reason node mostly has barebones frameworks and no content management platform like Drupal is because it is so new.

</comment><comment><USER5> Meteor.org is not too bad; apps built with it are comprised of a controller layer, and a presentation layer. Generally, both are very lightweight, and not much configuration is required. Just pull in the packages you need. Optionally, you may define hooks on your data collections, e.g. Posts.before.update = function(userId, doc, ...)</comment>


Citing papers that you've never read, or that were never written - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codalism.com/?p=773

<comment><USER2> I spent a while a few years back trying to track down the source(s) of the "superprogrammers are an order of magnitude more effective than mere mortals" belief. From my own experience of working with some great programmers, I believe this to be true, but I wanted to see if there was actual data to back it up. Unfortunately the study that's almost always cited doesn't really say what people think: the 28:1 ratio oft quoted is for debugging someone else's program, and involves two entirely different scenarios — one debugging machine code without realtime access to a computer, and one debugging a higher level language at the computer! In fact that's what the study was actually testing: whether working at the computer was really faster than old-school batch job programming. Really. This was a matter of much debate in the late 60s. Proponents of batch jobs argued that allowing a programmer to actually sit at a computer and type their code there would make them much too lazy and sloppy, just letting the computer tell them when they made a mistake, rather than taking the care to get it correct first like Real Programmers™. (Reading old CS papers can be fascinating!)

I'd bet quite a lot of money that most people citing this study have not only never read it, but don't have the faintest clue what it was actually about.

<http://dustyvolumes.com/archives/category/papers?s=sackman>

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I just checked, and Brook's The Mythical Man Month makes 5:1 and 10:1 claims (The Surgical Team, first page) and also cites the Sackman, Erikson, and Grant study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just cite papers I can find online. If you publish in some fancy magazine which is too expensive for my school (or my friends' organizations) to have a library access to - too bad for you I wont cite you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just 5 days ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=754566>

</comment><comment><USER6> I think their is also a difference in papers you have skimmed trough, or actually read. I notice that a lot of people make citations to the first category, but when a question is asked about a specific paper, they need to make a clean breast of it and admit that they only skimmed through the paper and did not read it with a certain amount of profoundness.

</comment><comment><USER7> I notice the author didn't cite Dubin's paper in his post. >:(</comment>


Ask HN: projects for self made web based analytics? - <AUTHOR>

Hi
I am looking for any open source project that gives users a good range of options to make their own analysis of structured data (sales, fiancials, etc.). Sort of like excel, but web based and able to connect to databases to pull data. Mostly I am thinking of giving users the tools to make web based plots, tables, pivot tables, with data from multiple sources (OLAP, external data, submitted data from foreign entities, etc.).
If there is not, I was thinking to start building it. I also was wondering if there is some market potential in this concept. <comment><USER2> Have you seen chart.io, not open source but it seems similar to what you're describing</comment>


How dropping out can change your life - <AUTHOR> http://www.uncollege.org/how-dropping-out-can-change-your-life/

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with the author. I talk about how I dropped out of school (twice) on my blog. Definitely life-changing in a positive way!

<http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/how-to-drop-out>

</comment><comment><USER2> I think people get so freaked out at the idea of doing anything out of the ordinary. If you end up trying to go your own way people discourage you because it brings up they're own fears. If you can stick to your guns, power to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dropping out saved my life. College was not for me yet I was constantly told that I had to go to school. Glad people are realizing that's not the only solution.</comment>


Collaborative Charity - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/06/collaborative-charity.html <comment><USER2> Evaluating charities can be very tough and many people tend to be blinded by nice pictures or compelling but simplifying stories (eg Kivas effect on the poor is far less straight forward than it sounds after spending 5 minutes on their website).

After working in development aid for a couple of years I'm very reluctant when it comes to having a vote on what is the best charity. Sounds to me a little like voting on the most efficient code by the general public...

<comment><USER3> That's why I'm looking for commentary from knowledgeable people, not just simple vote counts (which reflect enthusiasm, but not effectiveness).

<comment><USER4> I just did a totally typical thing (for me): wrote half of this, deleted it because I thought it sucked, went away for a while. But this time it really stayed inside me, so here it is.

The problem is not a financial one. Money is not the constraint. There are people with access to (for our purposes) unlimited sums, with good intentions, and a good track record at getting difficult things done, who have not made a meaningful dent in the problem.

The answer must lie in an approach nobody tries, which immediately eliminates throwing money at problems. It also means that it doesn't make sense to give money to an existing organization.

The problem is inherently informational. How many thousands of small villages have wells, but no access to clean water because some small, inexpensive part is broken? I've travelled extensively in the third world, and this is the situation in all too many places. The key is in knowing what is needed where, and what equipment and knowledge is required to redress the problem.

The right answer is some sort of mega-clearinghouse of such information; matching people who know what is needed where with people who are headed in that direction and can bring equipment and acquire the knowledge required to successfully deploy the equipment before they go.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's roughly my thinking. Everyone has some part of the puzzle, but nobody has been able to put it together. My goal is to find a way to combine all the parts of the puzzle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks Paul.

I added the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). Vote here: [http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=90c6a&t=90c6b](http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=90c6a&t=90c6b)</comment>


Tumblr Opensources Kubernetes Utilities - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.tumblr.com/post/182013497734/open-sourcing-our-kubernetes-tools <comment><USER2> My tinfoil hat is telling me that the engineers are pushing to open source as much as possible before the company inevitably goes under due to the recent banning of NSFW content.

<comment><USER3> That's actually not coming from the hat, you're receiving signals of the site's impending collapse _through_ the foil. You way want to consider adding a few more layers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not a cryptographer, but a few things irked me about the secret projector encryption features:

1\. Calls it AES-CBC, but it's using AES-GCM [https://github.com/tumblr/k8s-secret- projector/blob/master/p...](https://github.com/tumblr/k8s-secret- projector/blob/master/pkg/encryption/cbc/block.go#L88)

2\. Encryption key generation (edited: from a password) uses a hash function rather than using a KDF. Short hashes are padded (takes first N bytes required to hit max length, appends to end) or trimmed to the appropriate length. [https://github.com/tumblr/k8s-secret- projector/blob/master/p...](https://github.com/tumblr/k8s-secret- projector/blob/master/pkg/encryption/cbc/key.go#L43)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair points :)

Do you have any examples of using a KDF that jives with the bitlength requirements of a given cipher?

<comment><USER5> There's an RFC for that: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5869](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5869)

Doesn't look like the Go API[1] allows you to specify an output key material length, so you'd just truncate or iterate until you get however much material you need (The HKDF Wiki implementation does this[2]).

1: [https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/crypto/hkdf](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/crypto/hkdf)

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKDF#Example:_Python_implement...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKDF#Example:_Python_implementation)

<comment><USER4> You don't want to generate key material from a password with hkdf. From the RFC:

 _On the other hand, it is anticipated that some applications will not be able to use HKDF "as-is" due to specific operational requirements, or will be able to use it but without the full benefits of the scheme. One significant example is the derivation of cryptographic keys from a source of low entropy, such as a user's password. The extract step in HKDF can concentrate existing entropy but cannot amplify entropy. In the case of password-based KDFs, a main goal is to slow down dictionary attacks using two ingredients: a salt value,and the intentional slowing of the key derivation computation. HKDF naturally accommodates the use of salt; however, a slowing down mechanism is not part of this specification. Applications interested in a password-based KDF should consider whether, for example, [PKCS5] meets their needs better than HKDF._

<comment><USER5> Ah, excuse my skimming. I wasn't aware it was being generated from a password. :x

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That config injector seems super useful. I immediately start to wonder what subset of config options I can inject, and actually get the application to update.

<comment><AUTHOR> K8s will update mounted ConfigMaps "live" in your pod, by updating a symlink. If your application is using inotify or file polling to watch the ConfigMap as a volume, you can reconfigure your app when changes happen (or signal your liveness probe you should be terminated to reload latest config).

<comment><USER7> This partly solves a big problem for me, which was how do I keep those configmaps up to date for a bunch of customers with a legacy application that writes UI config updates to a local xml config file. I wanted that file to live inside of configmaps but I have this problem. I already found a bash script that does inotify pushes to git (called git-watch), but I didn't have the other half of this equation. The missing half was getting those new config changes applied back into the configmap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope Regulator has been decommissioned ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> How did you see my Q1 TODO list?

<comment><USER9> ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I miss Tumblr.</comment>


D3, Conceptually - Lesson 2 - <AUTHOR> http://code.hazzens.com/d3tut/lesson_2.html

<comment><USER2> Nice job of showing/hiding the source behind each chart. For me the real power of D3 is binding it to data using APIs. I wonder who is already doing this.

<comment><USER3> To add to this, anyone using D3 as the render target in Backbone views?

<comment><USER4> <http://vimeo.com/45558674>

<comment><USER3> Excellent find, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On a tangent to another one of these great lessons, I have to ask this. Does anyone have a correct D3 world json file with the missing countries and islands ?

<comment><USER6> Be sure to use the recently released TopoJSON world map, though it doesn't have comprehensive islands.

<http://bl.ocks.org/4180634>

TopoJSON is a variant of GeoJSON that supports shape simplification, map coloring, cartograms and other topology-related features.

<https://github.com/mbostock/topojson>

For small geographic features like tiny islands, try the new d3.geo.tile plugin with a high-resolution tileset.

<http://bl.ocks.org/4162068> <https://github.com/d3/d3-plugins/tree/master/geo/tile>

TileMill can create tilesets from shapefiles and other formats. It can export GeoJSON for D3 too.

<http://mapbox.com/tilemill/>

More examples:

<http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock> <http://bl.ocks.org/jasondavies> <http://bl.ocks.org/tmcw>

<comment><USER5> Thank you for the links oscilloscope, jit resources. Not having Malta in there was killing any european biz intel graph.</comment></comment></comment>


Parsing C++ is literally undecidable - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/08/parsing-c-is-literally-undecidable.html

<comment><USER2> This seems like an observation about how people currently write C++ compilers, rather than a theoretical difficulty.

Does parsing end at the parse tree, or at the AST?

And if the latter, don't compiler writers have the freedom to choose their own AST? What's stopping me from having a 'FuzzyCompositeNode' in my AST that has children for each ambiguous case, with a later stage of the compiler being responsible for choosing it?</comment>


Show HN: A collaborative map of public pianos - <AUTHOR> https://pianos.travel <comment><USER2> You should also share this on the piano subreddit if you haven't already!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea, thanks!</comment></comment>


Level Up Your Concurrency Skills with Rust [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIikwmeGVYY <comment><USER2> Sorry for straying offtopic, but what are some good resources to understand concurrency in general?

<comment><USER3> Is there a specific aspect of it you want to understand?

My recommendation to younger colleagues has been: Learn Go and Erlang. Go implements (basically) communicating sequential processes. If you want to know more from a theory side, you can read C.A.R. Hoare's book on the topic [0]. Erlang uses the actor model and message passing. There are many similarities but enough differences that you can learn a lot by learning both. Other languages offer these same approaches, but these two are the closest mainstream languages I'm aware of that take CSP or actor model as almost their basic design philosophy. This reduces the semantic distance between the language and the theory and makes it easy to learn, IMHO.

Lots of good resources for both, you can google around for.

After getting the hang of things here, I'd continue with studying the concurrency primitives or libraries of your language of choice. You'll hopefully find that you can apply the knowledge you've found from the first two to designing good concurrent software in most other languages.

[0] [http://www.usingcsp.com/](http://www.usingcsp.com/)

<comment><USER2> Yeah learning Go and Erlang has been on my mind. Basically I am interested in learning about the different prevalent models like CSP, STM, actors and how they differ or relate to each other, or how things like event loops or sync and async fit in here. I have a basic idea of the terms but I don't have a clear picture in mind.

<comment><USER4> You might try "Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks" for a high-level overview of different approaches.

[https://pragprog.com/book/pb7con/seven-concurrency-models- in...](https://pragprog.com/book/pb7con/seven-concurrency-models-in-seven- weeks)

<comment><USER2> Whoa nice, seems like exactly what I wanted

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The music does end after the first minute, fortunately.

<comment><USER6> I wish I had the name of the song. It's great.</comment></comment>


Weev has left the United States - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/09/hacker-weev-has-left-united-states.html

<comment><USER2> good riddance, now if the rest of decent society could shun him for the way he treats women like Kathy Sierra [1], we'd all be better off

       [weev] circulated her home address and Social Security number online. He
       also made false statements about her being a battered wife and a former
       prostitute.  Not only did Sierra find herself a target for identity theft,
       but all the people who had threatened to brutally rape and kill her now knew
       where she lived. [1]

charming guy...

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of- kindnes...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness- weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man)

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know all this about him. Now I feel bad I even posted it here.

<comment><USER3> Don't. People are more than one thing.

Edit: Also, while it's important part of the story of _Weev_ , it's not necessarily an important part of the story of US mistreatment of hackers. In other words, even if I think Weev is a terrible person, it's still newsworthy to know what he's up to.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that's been frustrating. Weev's case should have gotten even more publicity and discussion than it did, but every single time it came up, one of the first comments you'd see -- and it's a very low-hanging-fruit sort of comment -- is, "Weev's a scumbag."

That would be relevant if you were writing a book about him. Or an expose.

But if you're writing about the case, it's not.

Everyone falls all over eachother in a rush to be the first or the loudest to proclaim Weev's scumbagishness, that smarter conversation gets drowned out.

<comment><USER2> weev is a scumbag, who made it his business to shit on other people. When the same happens to him, well, karma.

The case was resolved in his favor, so you should have no problem with the label "piece of shit" following weev everywhere he goes.

<comment><USER4> Thank you. Your commentary on that case -- and, more to the point, the people involved -- is unique, clever, and insightful.

Your comment has completely changed the way that I view that case. Previously, I thought I had at least a cursory layman's understanding of it, but your analysis is deep and technical, while still being approachable by average joes like myself. It reminds me of the excellent commentary I used to expect from Pamela Jones on important cases in the past. It is comments like yours that have kept me coming back to HN these past six and a half years.

The comment is so carefully written, so thoughtful, and obviously your time is so valuable, that I feel I ought to pay you for having made it.

Regrettably, I have but a single plonk to give.

<comment><USER2> My commentary, unlike yours, is informative (viz aespinoza).

Further, the cfaa case has been hashed over (conviction vacated in april), and the linked article pretty much says he left the states and may or may not do things. It's a discussion of weev, not the cfaa.

If you're so upset that weev's behavior towards women keeps getting brought up (and you can't even pretend it wasn't news to people right here), perhaps you should do some introspection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone update the title to read "asshole" or "troll" rather than "hacker"? It's inaccurate as it stands.</comment>


Chrome 69 arrives with revamped design, more powerful omnibox - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/04/chrome-69-arrives-with-revamped-design-more-powerful-omnibox-and-better-password-manager/ <comment><USER2> For users who don't like the new design:

[https://lifehacker.com/how-to-ditch-chromes-new-material- des...](https://lifehacker.com/how-to-ditch-chromes-new-material-design-and- get-the-ol-1784822156)

In my humble opinion, the new tabs look the worst out of all the major browsers.</comment>


Human-Assisted Archival of Yahoo Groups - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-joiner <comment><USER3> Wonder if we could make a deal with all those casino seo spammers from indonesia. (Or whoever sells their service to them.)

If they will use their cache of yahoo addys to exfiltrate Yahoo Group content, we'll give them a free month of gitlab user spam usage no questions asked.

<comment><USER4> I agree there must be something that could be done to utilize the click farms elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Leaderboard: [https://df58.host.cs.st- andrews.ac.uk/yahoogroups/leaderboar...](https://df58.host.cs.st- andrews.ac.uk/yahoogroups/leaderboard)

Unfortunately doesn't seem to be updated very frequently.

<comment><USER5> And my new yahoo account can't join any groups :/

<comment><USER6> I had this. Once I added a backup email address, it worked. I found this by trial and error. It seems that Yahoo doesn't consider its email addresses to be valid.

<comment><USER5> Did you see the sibling comment to yours, posted 7 hours earlier? Is that not a different issue?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a possibility of asking ReCaptcha to disable their protection for Yahoo Groups? It's a reach I guess.

<comment><USER8> That's Google, and that would be suicide to the brand.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. Especially since Google is trying to transform reCAPTCHA into an enterprise offering: [https://cloud.google.com/recaptcha- enterprise/](https://cloud.google.com/recaptcha-enterprise/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As of now(), it seems the reCAPTCHA is over the limit

[https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups- joiner/issues/1...](https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups- joiner/issues/14#issuecomment-563060387)

<comment><USER11> It works fine now, I have been joining groups for some hours.

<comment><USER12> That's great! Thanks to whoever fixed this - at e.g. Google or Verizon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can join a Yahoo group by sending a blank email to "<groupname>-email@example.com". There is no CAPTCHA, only an automated email confirmation which you reply to. Is there a reason why that wouldn't work for this project?

<comment><USER10> If this works, would be much easier to automate the army of manual archivistas that is currently using the chrome extension and blocked by recaptcha.

<comment><USER14> You can only join a very small number of groups this way before it just stops working - we did try this out early in the archive process

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could Mechanical Turk be used to do this? I'd be happy to make a donation to help offset the cost.

<comment><USER16> This is the third time I have seen this suggested. Maybe get in touch, and try to suggest that. I am also in a tight schedule these days and it would be easier to help with money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How fitting that Yahoo archival needs to be organized by people.

<comment><USER18> How so? Are you referring to some kind of history of Yahoo?

<comment><USER17> Yahoo started by building an index of the internet but instead of using an algorithm, they primarily relied on people crawling the web and categorizing websites and curating things. It was a people powered directory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Jumped in when we were joining groups starting with 'S', and now we're already at 'E'. Really satisfying.

Given that my account got a connection attempt from Sweden, I guess that's where the archivist live. Hopefully he will have a nice morning tomorrow thanks to the community.

<comment><USER11> I started joining groups a few hours ago and now have 43. The first group I joined started with U. Then there were some with T, some with S, and I'm at R now.

I'd rather we archive large or relevant groups first instead of going alphabetically and having to join groups with just 1 post.

<comment><USER14> It's going alphabetically through the group's people have nominated, and once that's done, it'll go by group member count.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some things I noticed about google re-captcha already. It can't tell the difference between a 3x3 matrix of a house and a bus, it doesn't know the difference between scooters and motorcycles, it has a margin of error on fire hydrants/usually the last image that it asks you to identify a fire hydrant in and fades out will not bring up another fire hydrant so you can click verify early.

<comment><USER20> I believe I read something on HN months ago that claimed Google would force failures on otherwise successful captchas. Little bit of gas-lighting if true.

<comment><USER21> Anecdotal I know, but I have definitely experienced this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if groups with actual members will be OK. I'm a member of one and have several years of message digests in my email. I just downloaded all of them. For groups without members, or with no-one bothering to read them anyway, maybe it doesn't actually matter?

<comment><USER23> If they are public, yes, it should be ok. Regarding groups that are old or inactive, A couple that I'm concerned with had important early discussions, that people on other derivative groups refer to regularly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I haven't seen anything about this saga in mainstream news; I can't see that it's going to be won without getting papers on-side.

<comment><USER23> There are three that we've noticed so far:

[https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/as-the-end-nears-for-yahoo- grou...](https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/as-the-end-nears-for-yahoo-groups- verizon-pulls-out-all-the-stops-to-keep-archivists-from-preserving- them/156924)

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/verizon-kills-email- accounts-o...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/verizon-kills-email-accounts-of- archivists-trying-to-save-yahoo-groups-history/)

[https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3084557/verizon- bl...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3084557/verizon-blocks- archivists-yahoo-group-content)

But yes, you are right. We need to keep pushing it into the public sphere. Twitter, Reddit, I hate to mention FB here, but ...

<comment><USER24> I don't really consider those 'mainstream news', I've only heard of zdnet - <USER2> thought boingboing was a public WiFi hotspot provider.

I primarily mean newspapers. The Times (of London & New York), The Guardian, but Bloomberg too.

The story is probably a wider point about the fragility of online information, for which this is a mere significant event, but without that happening I just don't see the give-a-shit count increasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How can I recognise services that intend to live forever? Meetup used to have reports and mailing lists but it went to a sinking company and is now a pointless SPA which doesnt let Firefox log in. I know a group that acquired several competing products, and they missed a crucial innovation which the indies had for a while.

<comment><USER26> Nobody and nothing lives forever.

For organisations, the best you might be able to do is some kind of co- operative: it's much less likely to sell out (although not impossible), you generally get a vote in how it's run, and since they're forced to be self- funding you're not dependent on VC funding whims. With sufficient runway transparency you can always know how far they are away from shutdown and how much funding they need.

Twenty years ago (!) I helped set up a hosting co-op for university societies: [https://www.srcf.net/](https://www.srcf.net/)

One of our specific aims was preserving continuity. Most societies are run by undergraduates who do it for a year or two and leave after 3 years, so making it as easy as possible to handle handover was a key feature. It's done pretty well for something that pre-dates Facebook, Github, Myspace, and even Yahoo Groups itself.

<comment><USER25> I admire the neat design and a backend of (quoting your site) "the server". Have you written an article about this?

<comment><USER26> Oh, it's been years since I was involved with any of the actual running of it. I don't even have a shell account any more. In the early days it _was_ "the server", a spare PC that was donated. These days it looks like they have a donated cluster: [https://www.srcf.net/faq/about#system](https://www.srcf.net/faq/about#system)

The "backend" will be Apache. On day 1 we used SSI (server-side includes) for "theming" pages, which were all in handwritten HTML. I suspect it's still like that given the five blank lines before DOCTYPE. It looks like some bootstrap CSS has been sprinkled on it since then. There's no front-end Javascript because there doesn't need to be.

> Until 2006 we had just one server in use, kern (a dual Athlon 1.6GHz PC with > 2GB of RAM and 400GB of disk). Before that we used to run on an ancient > Intel Pentium running at 166MHz with 128MB of RAM. How times have changed :)

Indeed. That ancient system was perfectly adequate for serving web pages to a few thousand people for light use. At the time I was carrying around the amazing new thing that was a computer you could fit in your pocket and play music illegally downloaded from the internet on. It was a Toshiba Libretto 30 with 8MB (eight megabytes) of RAM and a PCMCIA sound card.

Our systems approach to the SRCF was very much "what is the simplest thing that could possibly work". Apache+CGI+PHP with UNIX user accounts will get you a _long_ way if you let it.

The real achievement is political and personal. I'm amazed that they've always managed to find good enough volunteer staff for the whole thing for twenty years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How many more groups are left to join? There's no easy to way as far as I can tell to get a sense of completion. The extension goes in reverse alphabetical order, but also loops around again.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there any market to run a self sustained website like Yahoo Groups? By self sustained, I mean that there would be income that would pay the hosting costs.

<comment><USER29> Facebook and Reddit are pretty good at running groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there any way to make this extension work on Firefox?

</comment><comment><USER23> Three Ways You Can Help:

Help by Joining Yahoo Groups so the Archive Team can Download them (easy! - this is the link in the OP here): [https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups- joiner](https://github.com/davidferguson/yahoogroups-joiner)

(That's the most needed right now so the scripts can get access to the groups.)

Help by Downloading yahoo Groups with the Archive Team's Script (not hard!): [https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warr...](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior)

Get the word out/Call for Action (put pressure on Verizon!): [https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/taking- action/](https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/taking-action/)

Don't miss the sidebar with these links:

       https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/media-contacts/

       https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-directly/

       https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/contacting-verizon-yahoo-stockholders/

Also, you can add these emails to the media contacts:

      "Reporter Katyanna Quach" <firstname.lastname@example.com>,
       "Managing editor Gavin Clarke" <email@example.com>,
       "Corey Wilson & Rachel Janc; Senior Director, Communications" <firstname.lastname@example.com>,
       "Pitches" <email@example.com>,
       "Rich Woods" <firstname.lastname@example.com>,
       "Paul Thurrott" <email@example.com>,
       "Brad Sams" <email@example.com>,
        "Kate Rayford, Media Inquiries" <firstname.lastname@example.com>,
        "Bryan Lowder (LGBTQ issues/culture)" < email@example.com>,
        "Torie Bosch (emerging technology effects on public policy and society)" <email@example.com>,
        "Jonathan Fischer (big tech, cities, media/internet culture)" <email@example.com>,
        "Susan Matthews, Health & Science" <firstname.lastname@example.com>,
        "Erika Allen, Executive Managing Editor" <email@example.com>,
        "Katie Drummond, SVP, Global Content" <firstname.lastname@example.com>,
        "Press, US" <email@example.com>,
        "Press, Canada" <email@example.com>,
        "Press, UK" <email@example.com>,
        "Pitches, Culture" <email@example.com>,
        "Pitches, Tech" <firstname.lastname@example.com>,
        "Issues" <firstname.lastname@example.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> Can you only join one group per account?

<comment><USER27> You can join as many groups as you want. For example: [https://df58.host.cs.st- andrews.ac.uk/yahoogroups/leaderboar...](https://df58.host.cs.st- andrews.ac.uk/yahoogroups/leaderboard)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> An injunction would be nice, though I'm not sure if a court would see anyone as having sufficient standing to stop the gears entirely.

<comment><USER26> There's absolutely no legal basis for such a thing, though. _Legally_ it's Yahoo's and they can shut it down and delete it tomorrow. It's only morally that they have an obligation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On It!!!

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow! Kudos to the Archive Team on not giving up on this mission.</comment>


DBSlayer - SQL over JSON for easy scaling-- from the folks at NYTimes.com - <AUTHOR> http://code.nytimes.com/projects/dbslayer <comment><USER2> This is quite a brilliant little idea. A couple of years ago I was involved in a newspaper project (Boston.com) that used Squid with ESI to build the page from disparate Zope backend servers, and it resolved quite a lot of problems-- like being able to have a fast and database-less server in the front that could make decisions about which backend servers to draw from based on the required content. The backend servers then didn't need full copies of the database, because they would only ever be asked for content they were authoritative for.

DBSlayer takes the web server and the proxy server out of the picture, and puts the site building burden (to some degree) on the client. It could, theoretically, also make decisions about which database to query, such that the memory caches on the database servers will always be primed with the content that the database is authoritative for.

The comments so far seem concerned about security...but DBSlayer wouldn't need write access, or access to all tables. It could simply be a read-only window into some tables. I guess that's a foreign notion to folks who do everything in one process, which has to have write access...but it's one of the aspects of proper databases that makes them useful in large scale deployments.

<comment><USER3> I do think there would be serious security implications in exposing read-only access to even a limited number of tables via arbitrary queries from clients. DoS would be trivial and unexpected data leaks easy. Having to explicitly expose parts of your data only as you intend is a great security precaution (and good use of abstraction).

But I don't think the intended use is to have client browsers hit DBSlayer directly. My understanding is that you send SQL from your app layer via HTTP to DBSlayer then it hits a DB and returns JSON.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's cool that NYT is releasing some of their code as open source projects, but I'm not sure I understand this particular project. The first thing I thought of when I heard "SQL" and "JSON" in the same sentence was "oh please don't let this be some client side JavaScript SQL thing"... it basically exposes your database as a HTTP service: you send it SQL in a HTTP request and it returns JSON in a HTTP response. Where's the authentication? What's stopping someone from doing "<http://myserver.com:9090/db?DROP%20TABLE%20articles>" or something?

<comment><USER5> This is basically just a database proxy, but allows the responses to be transmitted as JSON, which is cool because it can interface with just about any other server backend that supports HTTP requests and can parse JSON.

I can't find any indication of being able to authenticate with the HTTP request. So I assume this means you would need to ensure the connection between the web server and DB proxy services were locked down, meaning no access outside of the subnet between the severs. I guess since the service pools connections to the actual DB that is where the authentication to the DB is handled. However like you say if someone could get access to the DBSlayer they could get access to all of your data, if this were the case. An option would be to just use SSL if it were supported. There is a bit more overhead with this, but if you are not needing to make tons of frequent queries it should be fine and sufficiently secure. I cant find any info on if SSL is supported..

Still though, if it could be made secure I like this because it is so universal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is cool stuff, guys. Using JSON means you can put the authentication in the HTTP request, split up the services between various platforms, proxy out the web apps to any kind of tech, and scale the page load performance in a hardware-agnostic fashion.

I wrote someting a few years ago with JSON. IMO, it's way better than that old XMLHTTPRequest stuff. Done correctly, it really makes this web-as-a-platform thing sing.

Very cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish they had given examples of how they use it internally. From the lack of authentication I would guess that they don't call it directly from the client, but it could be made safe for certain readonly data.

While their reasons for using http and its benefits are clear, I'm still trying to figure out why they used json though. Why not XML or a compact binary protocol?

<comment><USER2> "From the lack of authentication I would guess that they don't call it directly from the client"

I don't see how lack of authentication has anything to do with requests coming directly from the client.

Do you make people authenticate before they can read your website?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It does look pretty neat. Too bad it only works over Mysql currently. I wonder how their approach to the problems compares with CouchDb

</comment><comment><USER9> Brilliant... I suspect that quite a large number of similar projects already exist in non-open-source fashion.</comment>


On "Learning to Summarize" - <AUTHOR> https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/629020418641199104/on-learning-to-summarize <comment><USER2> I initially thought this would be about "humans" learning to summarize longer texts in a smart way. It's a topic dear to my heart; in fact, I even launched a little side project a few years back, called MNMN [0], with the aim of providing summarization of interesting articles or discussions on the web. I started with my own itch to scratch: Hacker News homepage, which I religiously read pretty much every day.

Here's an example of how the Hacker News home page would be summarized: [1].

Instead, this "learning to summarize" article is about another interesting topic, which is how you teach an AI (GPT-2 and GPT-3) how to summarize text. It's also - bear with me - something dear to my heart, as I used to teach compilers at a CS course in an Italian university in 2004-2006, and I developed an interest for languages in general (not just computer ones).

This one below is the central point of the article, and it is indeed a crucial part of having success with an AI (note: LM stands for Language Model):

> IMO there are two almost unrelated ideas going on in OpenAI's preference > learning work.

> First, the idea of collecting binary preference annotations on LM samples, > and (in some way) tuning the LM so its samples are better aligned with the > preferences.

> Second, a specific method for tuning the sampling behavior of LMs to > maximize an (arbitrary) score function defined over entire samples.

We are, IMHO, at the cusp of a true revolution in linguistics. Can't wait to see what happens in the coming 18-24 months. I expect to be blown away on at least a few fronts.

[0]: [https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN](https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN)

[1]: [https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly- Su...](https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly- Summaries/2016-10.md)

<comment><USER3> How much traction/revenue would you need to keep mnmn alive? Like, if you made $1000 per day you would probably keep it up?

<comment><USER4> $1000 per day?

<comment><USER3> Yes, that amounts to $250,000 year.

<comment><USER4> Hmm doesn't sound that much now that I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that the title seems like a mix on Learning to Rank, in which a preferred ordering is learned for relevant ranking of search results...but doesn't mention this anywhere in the article! As noted, you don't want to do RL if you can avoid it - so I'm wondering if learning decision trees (common in LTR with LambdaMART) can be helpful with summarization to best fit the annotator preferred passages over others. Perhaps the title name is just a coincidence but there is value in exploring, for example, random forests...which are way easier (and faster) than things like RL or CNNs

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, that article had nothing to do with the title, for a normal person reading it.

It should really get a much more technical title, befitting the dissertation it leads to.</comment>


package.json – An interactive guide - <AUTHOR> http://package.json.jit.su/

<comment><USER2> Weird, I made something exactly like this about a year ago [1]. I think theirs is more complete by now. I also made a package.json generator to go along with it [2], though that is more specifically for front-end javascript packages, so it doesn't have all the fields.

[1] <http://jspkg.com/package_json>

[2] <http://jspkg.com/generator>

<comment><USER3> Just passing through. Anyways: Nodejitsu made package.json.jit.su well over a year ago (August-ish 2011 iirc) and I'm honestly a bit surprised to see it popping up here now of all times.

Generator's not bad. Nodejitsu never made anything like that on the web, though `npm init` and jitsu's built-in prompts fulfill a similar need on the cli.

<comment><USER2> Wow, that timing is eerie. I just checked the logs and the jspkg sample package.json is from July '11 and the generator is from December '11. Let summer 2011 become known henceforth as The Summer of Package.json.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only who really dislikes the use of the word "binary" to simply mean "executable"?

In particular, calling an executable js file a "binary script" just seems wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do some people refuse to get vaccinated against the flu? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It makes me feel ill, and prevents the so far unlikely chance I'll contract the flu.

I don't feel like the risk-reward is there, because the few times I've had the vaccine I have felt terrible afterwards, and as far as I know I have never had the flu.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, like other people on this earth, some are stubborn.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The single best way to protect against the flu is to get vaccinated each year.</comment>


The Open-Office Trap (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap <comment><USER2> I'd wager that in twoish years we'll see articles talking about the Remote Office Trap.

Over the years we've seen a huge surge of individuals talking about the benefits of remote work and there are many. I'm not trying to ignore those benefits in any way, but there are downsides and I have little faith in most corporations to do a good job of addressing these new found problems in an optimal manner. And what works for some portion of the workforce (some amount of workers like open offices), might not be optimal for another significant portion of the workforce.

Speculating on possible problem points in articles about remote work:

I would guess they will simply see the savings in office costs and pass on very small portion of that, leaving employees with the need to now rent/buy bigger houses to allocate space for a permanent home office situation. Other problems include a possible increase in always on-call attitudes in that, managers will feel even more open to ask employees to work on something at non-standard hours since it's simply a matter of walking a couple steps to their desk. Workplaces are filled with humans and without causal interaction outside of standard work related meetings, I wonder how people will care about each other. Will employees have less empathy for each other since bonds between them are weaker? Things like asking for help someone on a task is harder if you're not as familiar with them. I wonder what other changes we'll see.

<comment><USER3> > Things like asking for help someone on a task is harder if you're not as > familiar with them.

Anecdotes are anecdotal, but I'm seeing this in my peers. In particular newer and shyer peers are telling me this the most. They are also telling me their hours worked have gone up as well. One has specifically said their increase in hours is too make up for the lack of help.

I think wfh will prove to be beneficial for the confident engineers at the expense of the shy. EDIT: and those who are active in Slack at the expense of those who aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only people who like open offices are typically the folks in higher up positions who still have their own private office.

One silver lining of covid I suppose is it should at least bring some sanity with dividers/cubes back in the mix.

</comment><comment><USER5> Three threads from back then:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7024488)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7832209)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8696391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8696391)

</comment><comment><USER6> From my experience, only people who prefer open offices are junior devs who need lot of help from peers/mentors and managers who often likes to check on team's progress. I personally hate open office for the similar reasons mentioned in the article.

</comment><comment><USER7> Rebrand them as Libre offices

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://archive.is/e7On1](http://archive.is/e7On1)</comment>


Programming Fonts - <AUTHOR> http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~programming-fonts <comment><AUTHOR> My personal favorite is Mononoki [0].

[0]: [https://madmalik.github.io/mononoki/](https://madmalik.github.io/mononoki/)

<comment><USER2> Oh that is very easy on the eyes, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please, contribute your choices!

Also, not all are available via Homebrew Cask [0] although most are available, for example,

        brew cask install font-source-code-pro

Although I'm not aware why one can't search for fonts in Cask anymore (previously you could).

[0]: [https://caskroom.github.io/](https://caskroom.github.io/)

<comment><USER3> This is my fav: [https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's nice, but not Sans Serif, unfortunately...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Currently the sample image for each font is small. Would it be possible for it to be more prominent?

<comment><USER5> Agreed, unfortunately Slant isn't really designed perfectly for this sort of question. We typically deal with things with more emphasis on the Pros/Cons like comparing Linux distros.</comment></comment>


This Nordic Tech Company's Onboarding Secret? Cinnamon Buns - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40498017/this-nordic-tech-companys-onboarding-secret-cinnamon-buns <comment><USER2> With all do respect, the items covered in that article seem like common sense. My company is less than 20 people and we have always done that pretty naturally.

I guess the hard part is keeping that culture when there are hundreds of people.</comment>


Making every Git repository deployable to the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/Disturbing/e37b2206a5045515f1fbdf040fc469f7 <comment><USER2> Pretty sure there are more repositories which will never deploy, as they are libraries, not programs</comment>


No Coin to Spend Your Coins On - <AUTHOR> http://fredericiana.com/2013/11/17/no-coin/

<comment><USER2> When the pastebin file for the latest security breach of COIN appears, It would be too late</comment>


Ask HN: What makes junior developers stand out? - <AUTHOR> Me and many other students will graduate soon and we're flooding the market with our job applications. What makes one junior developer stand out from another? The technologies they know? Projects? Coursework? Specialties? Something else entirely? <comment><USER2> Junior developers barely "know" any technology. You're hiring them to learn. Completing multiple projects with different stacks is, to me, a better indicator than someone claiming to be good at a single thing. "Specialties" are not something a junior has yet.

As far as coursework, that will matter a lot for some companies and not at all for others. CS coursework is not very relevant for writing CRUD apps, but someone doing computer vision or geospatial software will prefer to see it.

Unfortunately you're in the same position as many other entry-level employees: the only way to stand out is through nepotism. Do you know someone you can talk to about pushing your resume to the right person's desk? Talk to that person.</comment>


Is It Christmas? - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/2236/ <comment><USER2> Somehow this associates in my mind with [https://0.30000000000000004.com/](https://0.30000000000000004.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Had the same association while posting this minutes after reading the above :)</comment></comment>