Things You Should Never Do, Part I - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html <comment><USER2> If you really want to do a rewrite, first:

\- Write comprehensive test cases and run your current product agains them. Have these also benchmark the code if they're performance critical.

\- During the rewrite, slavishly adhere to the test cases. If there's an undesireable difference discovered between old/new, write another test case.

\- If possible, break up the original product into smaller modular sub- projects you can rewrite independently.

Most problems with rewrites come from starting from scratch - slowly replacing a code base from the inside is a much better way to do it.

<comment><USER3> > If possible, break up the original product into smaller modular sub-projects > you can rewrite independently.

This.

Many projects can be done this way. In particular, the process of figuring out the set that can be replaced at any given time can aid in the refactoring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you rewrite your code base to do the same things as the old code base was doing, yes, you're doing it wrong. If you rewrite your code base to do different things, you might very well be very right. (Depending on whether the market is more interested in those new things than the old things).

<comment><USER5> I agree, I actually just threw out a bunch of code and started with a fresh base with a much cleaner OOP structure and could not be happier with my results so far. Things that I was struggling with before are now super simple because everything is properly segmented. The whole process only took two days as many of my classes could be reused and I just needed to fix how they were interacting. Then again I was just correcting my quick and dirty code, I don't know if I would have done the same with a production application as it would be safer to just work on both at the same time until it was in good shape to cleanly replace the first.

An example of when a rewrite goes bad is Final Cut Pro X.. Apple really leaned a lesson with that fiasco.

<comment><USER6> I don't think Joel is arguing against throwing out old code here and there. Especially, if it only takes two days to replace it. I think most devs would view that as an inevitable step on large projects. Especially on projects that head into uncharted waters, where the chances of getting things right the first time are almost nil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If everyone followed this advise, most of my professional life today would consist of tweaking hundreds of bandaids for PostNuke modules and Classic ASP pages done in Visual Basic.

Technologies change. More importantly, requirements and visions change as well. Blindly throwing money at an existing system without considering alternatives is a really, really bad idea. And while you can argue that it's possible to refactor anything into anything else, you can't argue that it will always be cost-effective.

</comment><comment><USER8> Any suggestions for what to do in this situation?

I was unfortunate enough to work at a place with a 10+ year old code base where there have been 3 to 4 software architects that have all had their own vision over the years. The code has been refactored many times already. It consisted of a buttload of singletons that were all initialized at seemingly random places. It was impossible to start or shut down the app deterministically. It was massively multithreaded (in most cases for no good reason). They had this horrible implementation of a shared cache (because many instances of this app ran across many computers that needed to share state).

It had no unit tests. Whenever you change anything it would break something entirely different. To me it was an example of everything going wrong...many times.

The best part was that it had to run for weeks because it was a critical application (for fire, police and military services). It didn't. They were instructed to reboot all the machines every day. But it wouldn't start up properly every time so they may have to do it multiple times. I did my best for the year to clean up the critical parts of it. I was contracting there but they had offered me a full time position by the end.

I finally cracked it when the original "software architect" came back because he had been fired from his old position. He was annoyed that over the years his code had been changed so he started to put back in place everything that he had done before he left. Not only that we had an angry complaint from one of the customers about a possible hostage situation that could have turned very badly because of this crappy system.

We tried to reason with the software manager by suggesting that we assign one or two people to start from scratch and take across code that can reused. It would take a bit of time to reach the same feature set as the old application but it had become so difficult to add new features to the old one that it needed to be done.

<comment><USER9> If you're dealing with a complex system that needs a lot of work, I would recommend trying to break it down into subsystems and handle the subsystems one at a time.

The original article does assume that you're dealing with a system that more- or-less works. If your application flatly doesn't do the right thing, than a big rewrite from scratch may really be the best choice - there's nothing to save.

But spaghetti code doesn't just fall from the sky, it occurs because of politics, stubbornness, and bad processes. Over the course of the 10+ years it took to make the code base, is it really the case that nobody but you noticed the problem? It's more likely that there's a lot of pressure going in the opposite direction, and other maintainers didn't know what to do either.

Dealing with subsystems helps you handle both problems. Management might not be willing to let you rewrite the whole thing, but if you said, "Let's just fix the boot-up process for the Cyclotron 4000 resource. Nothing else changes, just the Cyclotron boot." you might be able to get permission. In a badly- maintained project, it's hard to replace all the instances of one service - that's what makes it 'badly-maintained' - but it's still easier than dealing with the whole system in one go. And, of course, instead of 'fixing' the Cyclotron you're actually rewriting it with a new, non-wacko Cyclotron service.

Then you go back to your manager and say, "It was rough, but the Cyclotron 4000 no longer blocks the start-up. Let's get the next thing on the list." Not only do you have a slightly better project, you also have better credibility with management, which makes it more likely you'll be listened to when you say a certain technical measure is necessary. Next, fix the subsystem that talks to the Cyclotron - and so on. Pick a right time to introduce tests, code review, and all the rest.

Remember that just as you had the experience working with the terrible code base, your managers had the experience of working with the previous 3 or 4 software architects who "had their own vision" and delivered a product that doesn't start up reliably - I don't think it's surprising that there was no longer the political will to assign people to refactoring or rewriting tasks. Bad architecture uses up the political will needed to approve good architecture, because it makes all "architecture" tasks look bad. You need to regard you reputation as a finite, under-supplied resource just as much as your time and budget and plan to get more.

From your use of the past tense, it looks like you're no longer in that situation (good for you!)... but that would be my advice if you see a similar situation in the future. I've used this plan in my own career to rewrite a (much smaller, only moderately troubled) project piece by piece over the course of a year.

<comment><USER8> Good response! Another part of the problem was that the company preferred contractors over full time staff. It had very high turn over because of this. Many have already replaced subsystems with their own versions over time. There had already been many implementations of the Cyclotron subsystem :). To be honest I probably ended up being one of them. Working there was too stressful and the rewards for trying to achieve more were not recognised.

The place had a reputation for hiring highly motivated engineers and burning them out. Just to be replaced by another. When I left, they hired a very talented guy that I worked with for a couple of months. He left recently and the cycle begins again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I mostly agree with this, I think over time you can see some reasons for re-write. Two of the errors used as examples as bug fixes may no longer be relevant with current hardware progress. "Another one fixes that bug that occurs in low memory conditions. Another one fixes that bug that occurred when the file is on a floppy disk and the user yanks out the disk in the middle."

Were the low memory issues due to the limitations of current hardware at the time and no longer relevant? Do many computers still have floppy disks, and would you still want to have to support that?

I think re-writes should be avoided unless you have a full understanding of the reasons for all the one-off patches. You should also have an idea of what you will lose/gain by getting rid of them.

</comment><comment><USER11> Given the trend towards bundling and a changing internet population (away from savvier early adopters and towards people more inclined to stick with the defaults), Netscape was always going to have a really tough time competing. Microsoft changed the game in browser distribution and competing effectively meant that your product had to succeed in several areas, none of which Netscape did. A string of inept management and product decisions didn't help either.

I would interpret Joel's point as: Not shipping something for years and then shipping unstable crap is a bad idea. In this case, it ruined people's already shaky confidence in Netscape. Rewriting to improve code isn't always a bad thing - in this case it did end up paying off, just too late to benefit Netscape. Firefox probably wouldn't have happened if the switch of codebases hadn't been made. Netscape being out of the picture by this time was a good thing - since Netscape was institutionally incapable of shipping quality software it would just have screwed it up.

</comment><comment><USER12> LOL @ "One project I worked on actually had a data type called a FuckedString."

On another note, things like Eclipse's refactoring tools have exponentially increased my ability to keep my codebase clean and easy to read. Renaming variables to stay consistent etc is extremely easy using these tools and I have to wonder why people still struggle with issues like this.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think this advice fits well with agile approaches to building software.

I've spent about three years (on and off) building a Django application for a team where I work and, over time, new functionality has been bolted on as and when the needs of the team changed. We've also gone through one fairly major model change that seriously wrecked the sense of symmetry in the v1.0 I delivered all those years ago.

A bit later this year I will be making a whole lot more changes to the application and I've decided that rather than going from a v1.6 to a v1.7 this is a great time to throw away the majority of the code and re-build from the ground up so that the v2.0 is properly architected to meet the needs that exist today.

It's going to be a lot of work but I think it's worth it in terms of making new features easier to add and reducing the maintenance burden associated with a structure that has become overburdened with technical debt.

<comment><USER14> Agile means different things to different people, but to me "the big rewrite" sounds pretty un-agile. You end up making a lot of architecture decisions all at once and go a long time between working releases.

If your business needs have completely changed then it might be worth it, but at that point it's no longer "the big rewrite" but instead just writing a new application. (that isn't required to fulfill the requirements of the old app)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reading poorly written English is hard. When the author can't keep their focus and weave together the structure of several disparate arguments into a cohesive essay, it can be very difficult to understand their intentions. It can be near impossible to follow them to their conclusion and decide what it is they're getting at if they muddy the waters with poor writing.

The same is true of software. Well written software is a joy to read and expresses an idea clearly. I love reading code like this. I love writing it even more.

If we want to write code that is easy to understand we should spend more time reading code than simply writing it all the time. Practice makes perfect but introspection reveals the path to self improvement. Absorbing the good ideas of others and filtering out the bad is part of being a good writer and is especially important to the programmer. Read more code!

<comment><USER16> The problem is that everyone has a different idea of what's nice to read. Some people are more comfortable with an algorithm in a for loop, while others would prefer to write it recursively. Who's to say which is objectively nicer to read?

<comment><USER17> Relativism has to be relativised. Some logic is better expressed in a loop, some other fits better in a recursion. A guideline is to use the simplest correct path, which means for example that if complexity of the result is similar, the loop is preferable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is an instance of the Fence Fallacy:

<http://minx.cc/?post=320257>

</comment><comment><USER19> > then they made it again in rewriting Quattro Pro from scratch and > astonishing people with how few features it had.

This reminds me of Final Cut Pro X. From an abstract code-base standpoint, it was much improved. Many people on the nets (that probably never used FCP) tried to cover for it with excuses like "it's a 1.0 product" or "just don't upgrade", but from a user standpoint, the rewrite left behind enough features that it became unusable to many people (myself included) that owned, used, and loved the previous version.

As developers, we need to do projects for ourselves (like code cleanups, and rearcitecting) but we need to understand the user impact first.

</comment><comment><USER20> I may not understand very deeply the topic discussed, but IMHO the FSF and Torvalds started a (very) successful movement which is all about contributing and sharing the code. It is, many years later, providing us with code of very high quality used in a number of complex and critical environments. I don't think FLOSS developers use to think that other's code is a mess... but there is no mention of open source in the article.

</comment><comment><USER21> Remember, this article was written about 12 years ago.

That said, there are times when tossing out the whole thing and starting over is absolutely the right thing to do. You can identify these apps by when the 8x5 sticky index cards describing defects fill a 9'x15' wall, application instability is a feature, and the "Big Ball of Mud" anti-pattern definition uses the app as its case study.

</comment><comment><USER22> I understand his point with gigantic messy software, but a lot of software you can actually learn the problems of how it was coded the first time and do it better the second time.

It is very situation dependent on whether the messiness is a result of bug fixes that will have to be reapplied, or because the system was built when no one had a clue how to build it.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Don't rewrite" seems like pretty good advice.

Can you make a case for "write a new product that will (eventually) replace the old one?" After all, you know a lot more now from having written the first one. Write one to throw away, and all that.

Or if you write an X, are you forever discouraged from ever producing another, better, more relevant X?

</comment><comment><USER24> This article was brilliant, the kind that seems obvious once you read it. Made me Joel's fan since.

My unfortunately long experience with maintaining code has taught me how true it is.

I would add that most often the maligned code is the only existing _documentation_ of a company's workings.

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't 37signals rewriting Basecamp (currently referred to as "Basecamp Next")?

Perhaps in some cases, rewriting your software can be a competitive advantage.

<comment><USER26> To be fair in this case it is the same people doing the rewrite as the original version so I guess the theory is that the hard-won knowledge has not been lost and can be integrated into the new code.

<comment><USER27> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect>

<comment><USER28> The second-system effect refers to the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to have elephantine, feature-laden monstrosities as their successors. The term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic The Mythical Man-Month.[1] It described the jump from a set of simple operating systems on the IBM 700/7000 series to OS/360 on the 360 series.

\---

FWIW I hate the posting of a link without describing the content in some way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> talk about reuse, the article is from 2000</comment>


Potent human neutralizing antibodies elicited by SARS-CoV-2 infection - <AUTHOR> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.21.990770v1 <comment><AUTHOR> It supports effort towards this:

[https://www.jci.org/articles/view/138003](https://www.jci.org/articles/view/138003)

</comment><comment><USER2> what does that mean?</comment>


Draftly: A Beautiful Dribbble Client for Apple TV - <AUTHOR> http://getdraftly.com <comment><AUTHOR> Good morning everyone!

I wanted to drop by and announce that Draftly, my brand-new Dribbble client for Apple TV, has officially been released.

I love Dribbble. I may not be much of a designer – more a "design-minded engineer" – but hardly a day goes by where I can't be found browsing the latest and greatest from designers all over the world. It's a constant source of inspiration for me.

My goal was to create a Dribbble client that feels at home on Apple TV. Draftly omits unnecessary features and cluttered interfaces to keep the focus where it should be: browsing the best Dribbble has to offer, right from your couch. Here's some of the highlights:

\- Large, beautiful images and animated GIF support \- Sections dedicated to Popular, Recent, Animated, and Debut Shots \- Top Shelf support: browse Popular Shots right from the home screen \- Full-screen mode, for when you need to see every detail \- Detail views, showing off the Shot description, likes, tags, and more \- Team & user profile views

It's a solid v1, but I'm far from done. I have a ton of features in mind for future updates. But I'm super proud of this first release and I'd love to know what you all think. The best part? Draftly is completely free.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> Curious as to what challenges were involved in the development... and if it meets the guidelines, this could be a "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Boffins create quantum gas with temperature BELOW absolute zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/05/quantum_gas_below_absolute_zero/ <comment><USER2> The discussion is over here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5004423>

Alternative submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008059>

Why this is not what you think: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5008111></comment>


Ask HN:Where to buy used Macbook Air? - <AUTHOR>

With the new version of Macbook Air out, I was thinking there may be some people wanting to upgrade. I may be interested in buying your previous version Macbook Air. <comment><USER2> UK or US? I'm selling my 13" Macbook air (it is literally in perfect condition) on ebay UK.</comment>


Baidu Tera – An Internet-Scale Database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/baidu/tera <comment><USER2> bigtable and base is old enough, it is a good time for challenge them. Baidu's new database Tera, does a good job.</comment>


Google introducing Gmail Blue - <AUTHOR> http://gmail.com/blue/

<comment><USER2> It's a nice dig at Apple but part of me wishes they really would put that much effort into their design. Gmail is pretty un-spectacular at this point.</comment>


World's first fully self-driving car will be ready this year, Elon Musk claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-self-driving-tesla-artificial-intelligence-a9634311.html <comment><USER2> I can not wait for these thing to become mainstream. I want to have me and my family being transported to wherever needed without having to drive</comment>


Ask HN: Taking a junior SWE job at around 7 years? - <AUTHOR> I'm a professional web developer of 7 years that, if taken at the superficial face value of how many years I've worked, is one that is expected to be mid-level or approaching senior-level.
The problem is, my career growth feels stunted.
All of this seems to be confirmed by interview feedback I've gathered recently from several companies. The gist of it is, I show knowledge in a couple of topics, but don't show a lot of depth in any of them. I've shown capability to perform my work as expected and told that I write clean code, but that I can't grasp the "big picture" ideas of software development better, or the minutiae of a given programming language.
So with this in mind, would it be possible to go back to a junior position?
I prefer to do so in a larger company, because I have never been actually mentored or have much guidance from a senior dev. In two places, I was the only programmer around.
The problem here is that at showing 7 years of experience, it sounds like a turn-off for many companies if I show that I'm only capable at a junior-level. Perhaps removing my oldest jobs might help. How would you approach this? <comment><USER2> You are almost certainly selling yourself short.

If you have 7 years of experience, you almost certainly have important, non- junior level skills of value.

But companies do not hire people based on how good of a developer they are, they hire you based on how good you are at interviewing. These are corrolated, but not equivalent skills.

What you need to do is get better at interviewing.

Interviewing is a skill that needs to be practiced.

That means you need to get better at programming silly algorithms on a whiteboard.

Fortunately, this is a skill that can be practiced. There are loads of resources out there that will teach you exactly the stuff you need to know to become good at interviewing.

<comment><USER3> _If you have 7 years of experience, you almost certainly have important, non- junior level skills of value._

If only that were true. There is a difference between having 7 years of experience and 1 year of experience 7 times. If he hasn't had a mentor and been in a bubble, it's possible that his skill set is not as high as it "should be" based on the number of years he's been working.

I found myself in a similar situation around 2008. I started programming in 1986 when I was 12 in AppleSoft Basic and assembly, went to college, got a degree in CS in 1996 and spent the first 12 years of my career being a solid C++ "programmer", who dabbled in other languages.

During those 12 years, I was also the only programmer at the company without a mentor. I could write clean code, bit twiddle with the best of them, but hadn't been exposed to sound engineering practices.

In 2008, at the age of 34, I humbled myself, got a job as what I would consider a junior "software engineer" (making about the same thing as I was already making) and spent the next 8 years, learning from others, studying, and job hopping my way between 4 jobs and becoming what I consider a pretty good architect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Coincidentally, I'm age 34 right now. So at that point where you were at a crossroads you turned things around. Did you work at large companies to correct that? Do you think development team size make an impact on your career growth?

<comment><USER3> Being at a large company isn't what made the difference. Even though I didn't realize it at the time, I think it is more important to work at a company that sells software and sees software development as a profit center and not a cost center.

There are some requirements I would look for:

1\. Do they have automated tests?

2\. Do they enforce code reviews?

3\. Do they use some type of continuos integration system?

4\. Do they use source control - preferable Git?

5\. For the server side, do they use a statically type language - Java, C#, or even NodeJS/TypeScript

6\. Do they have organized training sessions like lunch and learns?

I'm at a point in my career now where I'm pretty confident in what I know and I'm the only architect at my company. I ask for advice a lot from some of my former more experienced coworkers on a private Slack channel that we still use.

<comment><AUTHOR> To all those questions I can answer 'no' to all of them, besides no. 4 because I do use Git. Damn. Now if only I can get offers from companies that have the other qualities.

<comment><USER4> We are the same age and have about the same length of experience.

I totally get where you are coming from because I began to feel I wasn't learning anything new and just repeating the same processes. So I left after 3 1/2 years.

Since then every job I've had I try to work for people I can learn from and grow.

Having people who can mentor or just being around smart people and seeing how they work and implement processes can be really helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found myself in this scenario pretty recently. I had about 5 years experience at a non-tech company with experience in a million things.

I had to move and was getting killed in interviews for sr. positions, until I wasn't. I found a company that saw my value and gave me a chance. I contracted for them for a few months then landed a 6-figure job doing stuff I'd never done before.

I would encourage you to hold your head up, build some stuff in your spare time, and find a company that values what you are. If you are capable with JS in any capacity, double-down on that since it seems a lot of people are being hired from that. Plus you can show projects that can impress people of all backgrounds.

I would also encourage you to reach out to any past associates or linkedin connections.

Another resource I recommend for people is Mike Hartl's book(1) on Ruby on Rails. Yes, it does teach you that language/framework specifically, but it also shows you how the web and server-side applications work. You will be able to speak about REST, DB Associations, OO concepts, TDD, and several other buzzwords that impress employers.

I don't know your work of course, but from the sounds of it you have a better shot than you think! Go get 'em.

[1][https://www.railstutorial.org/book](https://www.railstutorial.org/book)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm on mobile so not much time to type, but I do have a few JS projects. Some of them novel. I made a software renderer in JS that rasterizes triangles and takes JS shaders, emulating a programmable pipeline.

I hope that I would at least stand out from most JS developers with stuff like this. I don't really have an interest in making a Twitter clone with a Bootstrap UI. I'm hoping someone takes a chance at my skills with my not so typical JS projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When hiring a junior developer (or anyone, really), the attraction is the gleaming future potential of a person. So, if you want to get hired, you'll need to be projecting an exciting upward trajectory no matter what. I think you'll find it unconvincing to say "yes, I've been at it for seven years, but look, I should be able to do your junior work at least, yes?"

So you want to frame it differently. For example, provided this is true, you could emphasize that you've been the most senior person in your company, but that your company offered limited growth opportunities. Now you're just champing at the bit to work with people from whom you can learn and grow, and you're overflowing with energy to do so. Demonstrate why it's true, perhaps with examples of things you've been poking at on your own. Or something. You need your story to be true, and the above might not be. But you do need to have _a_ communicable story.

<comment><USER7> Second that this is a good reason to leave a company. Ideally you'll have some certain growth opportunities in mind to learn at the new place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd say go for a mid-level position. Most mid-level positions are really junior positions anyways given the way most companies define mid/senior positions. When interviewing look for feedback practices that can help you learn, like regular code reviews and peering. Every developer is constantly learning and some companies embrace that more than others, if you can find a company that takes it seriously then it shouldn't really matter if it is a junior position or not.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a difference between a software engineer and a web developer.

I'm assuming you build websites? Web developers don't typically deal with the sort of algorithmic problems that software engineers tend to deal with.

You're essentially switching to a new career path, which is not a deal- breaker.

Simply explain to companies that you are a senior level WEB developer, but a junior-level software engineer.

<comment><USER10> Honestly, being a web developer is dead nowadays anyway.

<comment><USER11> >>being a web developer is dead nowadays

What does that even mean?

<comment><USER10> being a web developer in the sense of making websites is something that is left to marketing teams and others. You likely will not be developing a website by writing raw HTML, PHP, etc. anymore.

Now web application development is very much alive, but that tends more to software development.

<comment><USER12> When I hear "web developer" I think of a person who produces web applications. "Web designer" is the term for someone who produces WordPress sites.

<comment><USER13> This highlights a very key problem that the OP may be having.

Less important than whether or not he is "junior", he needs to know what to call himself in order to correctly communicate the value proposition he's offering to the potential employer's HR department. The only way to know that is to figure out what people call what he wants to do in his market.

Maybe he's a "web developer", maybe he's a "software engineer", maybe he's something in between. But he should definitely A/B test terms to see whether his responses change and how.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware that job titles tend to be loosey-goosey in many programming jobs, aside from the largest of companies that have a big enough sample size.

For instance, my title for a web marketing agency was 'associate software engineer'. It was the typical job of setting up CMS sites, customizing plugins for them, or occasionally making a very static site from scratch.

I gradually got into doing more complex work like writing apps on MVC frameworks. But I think there may be indeed another career ladder I need to jump on if I want to actually do the "engineering" part correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Have you actually received offers at the junior/mid level? Or are you just thinking of applying?

I wouldn't worry about "years" too much. It's very very easy to work a number of years and still be a "junior" skill level. I see it all the time. It's not even a criticism of the person at all; if your job is "perform minor fixes/improvements to this web app" and you do that for 5 years, for example, you're not likely to have technical skills beyond the junior level even though you've worked for many years. This is not a problem. It just means that if you want to move your career forward you will need to find a position in a more tech-oriented, forward-moving, mentorship-based organization.

A senior developer at a non-tech organization can easily translate into a junior or mid level developer at a major tech or tech startup.

</comment><comment><USER15> The magic of it all. You are selling yourself short. You know and are capable of way more then you give yourself credit for. There are three camps, those you think they are everything, those who doubt themselves and those who have no clue of their value. The trick is finding the value spot for yourself. Likely you are in the middle, which is perfect, but if you don't learn how to sell yourself you will suck donkey dick (e.g. be at the bottom end).

Your job when applying for any position is to learn to sell your skill set and show what you can do for others. Learn to celebrate your success and tell other people what you can do, that is how you will make it to the next level. Sorry, it isn't all about perfect skill, it is about selling what skill you have.

</comment><comment><USER16> Do a side project, sell yourself on it, unless it works out and you can profit from the side project itself.

<comment><USER10> I thought most companies don't care about side projects.

<comment><USER17> Really? I get asked if I got some side project in most of the interviews... besides it is a good way of improving the skills he says is lacking

<comment><USER10> Where do you live and what type of jobs do you apply to?

<comment><USER17> Uruguay(South America)... mostly semi-senior android and fullstack web developer

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One challenge I face with applicants is that they actually have 1 year of experience 7 times and not 7 years of experience. You should consider if that's what they are seeing.

Some people are doing the exact same thing they were doing years ago and have no depth. Your challenge will be to paint a different picture. Which is easily possible. It sounds like you are interviewing but maybe not doing well face to face. Maybe you just need more prep and its not a deep issue?

<comment><USER19> What does that really mean, "1 year of experience 7 times"? The candidate has the memory of a goldfish and literally relearns their skills every year? I think you're undervaluing experience in general.

<comment><USER20> It's a way to easily dismiss 7 years of working experience.

Generally it means that the person being discussed hasn't spent those years acquiring skills that are specifically useful to the interviewer. So the years spent acquiring different skills don't count.

The intent is probably to say that the interviewee has spent 7 continuous years doing a job that can be done as easily by a person with one year of experience as someone with more, and therefore does not provide the necessary challenges to stimulate development in the employee. But again, it is still summarily dismissing actual experience just because it didn't happen in the right place, and is a variant of "not invented here" syndrome.

The people who say things like that should likely not be discussing "years of experience" at all, as their focus seems to be on breadth and depth of skillsets. The "seven years of experience" guy likely knows how to do X, Y, and Z, while the "one year of experience 7 times" guy likely only knows how to do X. In that case, talk about X, Y, and Z, instead of T.

<comment><USER18> It's definitely an issue of selling oneself. You either get stuck with an interviewer if your resume is not great or if you don't sell what you can do.

There are people that either via the jobs they choose or the long tenure at a company haven't built a strong case that they can tackle anything other then a small domain of problems.

I had an interview once who had 15 years of managing scientific data (he wrote a parser then changed it when the data set had format changes a few times a year) that parser and platform remained unchanged for 15 years and he had no other duty.

Another interviewee had only built WordPress sites for 4 years. He had no other projects (hobby or professional) to illustrate he could do more.

I see your point regarding a skill set that is maybe just not useful to the interviewer, certainly in 7 years there should be more. People can and do spend time working on very narrow problems though.

<comment><USER20> That parser guy had 15 years of experience with that one single parser. If he spent 15 years doing 15 different things a year at a time--one year of experience 15 times--he would have had a _broader, but shallower_ skill set. That wouldn't be more valuable in general, but it would be more likely to include skills that any particular interviewer values. But then he would still be dismissed as having "one year of experience, 15 times" from a guy who maybe wants someone with 15 years of experience specifically in writing parsers.

Time is a limited resource, and it belongs to the individual. You can't reasonably expect that someone will spend it making themselves more valuable to you when you aren't paying them, or even holding out a reasonable prospect of paying them in the future. By happy coincidence, there are plenty of people out there that _will_ make themselves more valuable to 10000 interviewers just like you, by acquiring skills that seem to be popular or becoming popular, but there are many more that won't live their lives for other people on the off chance that it might be rewarded someday.

You can't really measure skills by how long someone has done something. Some people can learn a new skill and be better at it after two weeks than someone who has done it for ten years. And there are also people who can practice a skill for ten years and be 100000 times better at it than the guy who just learned it two weeks ago. To make those judgments, you have to be able to measure aptitude, rather than just read timespans off a resume.

And right there, with the WordPress guy, you're implying that he wasted 4 years of his time because he didn't spend any of it preemptively learning any of the things you find valuable. Why should he? He hadn't even met you yet. How long had your job posting been open, declaiming that your company would need someone with M years of experience in skill X when it starts hiring for that in N years? (Yes, I know that's not how it works.) Did you even try to gauge how skilled he was able to become at WordPress site development after four years? Did you wonder why it took him 4 long years of doing just that before wanting to move on to something else? Or did you preemptively strike him off your list for having no prior "years of experience" in skill X?

My point is that I would very much prefer it if the industry hired for general aptitude rather than specific skills. If that doesn't happen, I would still prefer it if interviewing companies used a different metric for measuring the skills they find valuable than the total time spent practicing them. The glib comparison between "N years of experience" and "1 year of experience, N times" just presses all of my rage buttons at once. It almost perfectly highlights the gross disrespect that potential employers have towards job-seekers whom they perceive as unfit to serve them. It is part of the arrogance that prevents companies from critically examining their own hiring processes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What a crazy idea. I mean, if you want to be paid less, go for it. Mid and senior engineers aren't walking tomes of CS knowledge. And junior engineers aren't the only ones learning. I've mentored quite a few senior engineers. As others have said here, you're probably bad at selling yourself in an interview.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hit me up on [twitter]([https://www.twitter.com/davidsilvasmith](https://www.twitter.com/davidsilvasmith)) or [email](mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com) I'm curious to learn more about what you are looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good. Email sent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Web is the most evolving technology. Unlike a java or c developer, web developer should refresh himself everyday. Doesn't matter if one is 1 or 10 year developer. With a 5 year experience, I must confess I feel like I know a few. Here is a good article[1] by David Walsh describing this feeling. At an interview, I can say I wrote apps with Vue, Angular 1.x and React but if they ask a question like "how to add a new cookie with specific domain using JS", I can't code without googling.

[1] [https://davidwalsh.name/impostor- syndrome](https://davidwalsh.name/impostor-syndrome)

</comment><comment><USER23> Mentorship is important, but you can get mentorship without taking a junior position.

I have a very similar history in terms of starting my career as the only developer in my first few jobs. When I finally joined a few (small!) teams in a row that a) included other seniors; b) used mature processes; and c) included code review on every pull request, I caught up very quickly.

A capable manager or VPE/CTO who's committed to helping their reports grow is also invaluable to a senior developer.

And yes, it sounds like you may need to work on your interview technique.

</comment><comment><USER24> It sounds like you haven't really been pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, and instead have plateau'd in terms of growth.

Pick something that you find interesting, and go really deep in it (read books on the topic, develop OSS oriented around it). For a mid or senior level engineer, companies want someone with a broad enough set of skills that they can tackle most problems given to them, but also has a deep knowledge of one or more areas (which adds to the collective group of talents among the engineering team).

</comment><comment><USER25> My company Mattermark is hiring, and I'd be happy to talk to about the full stack position we have. We have several more senior engineers on staff that are great mentors. We also work with a range of technologies that give you a chance to sample broadly but also go deeply in 1-2 areas. This includes everything from crawling/scraping to website to REST/Graph QL API to 3rd party integrations.

Hit me up through firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll be in touch with you soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am going to get downvoted like hell for this, but if you feel like what they are saying is true, then sure.

<comment><USER26> Yeah. I'd chop a couple of the oldest jobs off my resume and look for companies with a culture of mentorship and training.</comment></comment>


Seeing Interactive And Weebly Partner, Offer White-Label Websites  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/28/seeing-interactive-weebly/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a really powerful partnership. This falls into the bucket of ways to fix restaurant websites. If GroupOn ever decided to go the route of local business tech powerhouse (way beyond what they do now), I'd buy this combo of startups together in a heartbeat.

Update of my GroupOn shopping spree ie- who I would buy if I were GroupOn aside from other GroupOn like sites. This takes into account a big vision of: "SMB web marketing leader for local businesses." May make no sense, but just thoughts:

Yodle- <http://www.yodle.com/>

Weebly

Seeing Interactive

Square (may be too pricey)

SailThru

<comment><USER2> Just playing devil's advocate here: seeing interactive helps newspapers make money (via ads and biz directories). But I see Groupon preferring that newspapers get out of those lines of business altogether so they can direct more consumers and marketing dollars towards their sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's still digital dollars being spent. It's also a great way to get in bed with those guys. My strategies in business is always about "Bread and Circus". Give your customers something they need, even if need be for free, to get the real value you will eventually want. It lets you get in bed much more easily. It's like buying a girl a drink at the bar. She will still need to like you, but it's a lot easier to start talking to her + get her in bed by breaking the ice buying a drink.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Andrew here from the Press-Enterprise. A few notes here on Groupon, websites and our success:

-we have a Groupon 'clone' program that is moderately successful. -we approached Groupon in 2009 and proposed a partnership to tackle the local market. Various issues came up and we could not reach an agreement that would take us beyond standard affiliate. Groupon is okay and is getting a ton of exposure, but I am interested in their ability to support local advertisers. I here good things from buyers, but not always from merchants...

-Newspapers, from my brief experience here, generally face 2 issues with partners like seeing interactive: 1) Historical tendency to pay too much for hosted solutions that actually take customers away. 2) Print mentality that change is very slow, but often dramatic (new front page or sports section) instead of rapidly iterating in increments at a target experience.

Biased as it may sound, Seeing Interactive eliminated both of these concerns as they continue to iterate and improve the product and help the Press Enterprise keep customers.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting prospect. Newspapers have been struggling with their websites trying to see profitability. The circulation model is there in small numbers, same conclusion with upselling advertising to the website. If newspapers can gain the "Community Bill Board" status once again then you have something. However, the redesign of websites needs to be an easy process or the newspapers have to offer redesign as a service. The search for the local businesses has to have a return on the top of the search page. If Seeing Interactive can offer these two key components, this will make a huge impact in how newspapers do business in the future. They could be on to something here!

<comment><USER5> It sounded to me like this was geared towards businesses that don't have any website yet (not redesigns of existing sites) -- hence the remark about clients never using anything beyond email.

<comment><USER6> The truth is that it's both.

For most small businesses, they're in one of two situations:

\- They had a website built for them a long time ago that doesn't really do the job anymore.

\- They don't have a website.

In either situation, we're happy to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if this partnership goes the other way as well -- is Seeing Interactive also offering SEO services to Weebly customers?</comment>


'We are in trouble.' Global carbon emissions reached a record high in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/12/05/we-are-trouble-global-carbon-emissions-reached-new-record-high/ <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion about same report here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611475)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly, I feel like people and politics lack common sense, especially in Germany. Hastily closing nuclear power plants after the Fukushima incident was not a smart decision and hurt the environment in the long term. It could've been a "safe bridge" to renewable energy, but instead more coal has to be burned to meet the demand, which is magnitudes worse. Additionally, if Germany wants to stay self-sufficient, an exit is currently impossible.

But in the end, how much does Germany really matter if China and the USA don't do their part?

<comment><USER4> Do not worry. Putin has made new pipelines and can now sell more gas. That methane would eventually leak to atmosphere anyways. So it is a good deed.

BTW. Small countries, like Finland, cannot sell cheese to Russia, because of embargo. While big countries, like Germany and USA, can freely cooperate with Russia in much bigger issues, like energy and space industry. Verrry strange.</comment></comment>


Finally, an alernative to WireShark on OSX - <AUTHOR> http://www.tastycocoabytes.com/cpa/

<comment><USER2> why is an alternative even needed in the first place ?

<comment><USER3> Last time I used it, Wireshark required X11 and had a typical ugly X11 GUI .. I'm sure lots of Mac users would love a polished interface designed for the Mac. That said, this doesn't look like it has near the same functionality yet, and it would take a long time to duplicate all of it.</comment></comment>


The Great Disruption: Newspapers versus New Media - <AUTHOR> http://fernblog.com/home/2009/4/24/the-great-disruption-newspapers-versus-new-media.html

<comment><USER2> > ... a century ago most U.S. cities (about 689) had more than one daily > newspaper. Today fewer than 15 cities have competing papers.

Yes, but the reasons behind that huge shift are probably irrelevant to the point the article is making.

A century ago, any sizable town in the U.S. would have had a Republican newspaper and a Democrat newspaper. The big cities also had Socialist newspapers, etc. But somewhere in the intervening decades the market changed, and people began expecting newspapers to be less overtly partisan. Thus, we saw mergers all over the country, which is why large parts of the U.S. are now full of newspapers with hyphenated names.

This was an interesting phenomenon, and I would like to learn more about why it happened. However, it appears to me that this has little to do with the recent severe decline in newspaper revenues.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point I was making was that despite newspapers facing little or no local competition from other traditional newspapers they are still struggling financially.

<comment><USER2> Ah, I see. I missed that.</comment></comment></comment>


Someone Made A Flexpicker Industrial Robot Out of Legos - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/09/15/someone-made-a-flexpicker-out-of-legos-nutty-video/

<comment><USER2> Open Source Robotics would rely on having access to lathes, milling machines, electronics equipment, etc. that most interested people don't have.

There are cottage industries of hobbyists that will supply the electronics and sensors at very reasonable cost, but the high cost items are always the mechanical bits.

The thing with hobby robotics is that it's very easy to build something simple; the problem is once you go beyond a little rugrat robot that scurries around the living room avoiding obstacles and annoying the cat, the next stage requires vastly more resources and a lot of commitment.

 _My_ personal problem is that I have the resources (lots of tools and misc. electromechanical hardware in my "lab"); I just don't have the time to build something I would think of as "cool."

Having a day job where I write code for complex moving mechanisms takes away from the "cool factor" of anything I have time to do at home :-(

</comment><comment><USER3> Beyond the cool factor of the robot itself, the article makes a great point about the need for something more advanced than Lego Mindstorms, but practical for an enthusiastic hobbyist.

The author uses an analog to the App store, but Linux is probably a better reference. Are there open source possibilities for robotics?

How would you frame it? People could work on sub components? Do you have a RoboFair to show off what has been built? Have a more participatory kind of BattleBots event?

In any case it is a cool opportunity to have intelligent roboticists have an outlet for their work that is more additive than the YouTube video that will be passed around tech blogs and ultimately forgotten.

<comment><USER4> yes, but they all cost way more than mindstorms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty impressive. I don't know who to praise, if the people that do these amazing things or the people that design lego mindstorm parts in the first place...

BTW, although those japanese humanoid robots that run, climb stairs and whatnot are much more complex, I find the FlexPicker robot much more impressive. I wonder why...

<comment><USER6> The muffin-sorting robot sorts muffins faster and better than any human could, whereas walking robots are still pretty terrible at walking even when compared to a below-average human.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's something a bit frightening about it. I think it's registering as a giant spider in the primal instinct section of my brain.

<comment><USER8> I'd attribute it to the jerky, springy motion --- it appears not to have the sinusoidal velocity cruve we expect from a friendly mammal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i wish i was smart</comment>


The Death of Surplus - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2015/12/07/the-death-of-surplus/ <comment><USER2> This article reads like a note from a parallel universe. I've been tinkering with electronics since the '80s but have never before heard of any such thing as an "electronics surplus store". On the other hand, I was utterly unsurprised to learn that these originated with military surplus, since "military surplus store" is an ubiquitous business category in my experience, a convenient place to buy camping gear, work clothes, parachutes, ammo boxes, etc. It is amusingly weird to imagine a world where giant warehouses full of electronic parts are normal, but shops full of cheap durable army gear are unknown.</comment>


Tesla invented the AND logic gate - <AUTHOR> http://www.tfcbooks.com/teslafaq/q&a_024.htm

<comment><USER2> This doesn't surprise me, it just confirms what I've always thought:

That Tesla is one of the most underrated scientists/inventors/engineers that has ever lived. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_patents>)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nicolai Tesla is almost the engineering equivalent of the Simpsons:

Tesla did it! Tesla did it!

<comment><USER4> It's Nikola actually.

<comment><USER3> D'oh!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how the computer industry would have changed had somebody been able to patent the AND gate instead of having the expired patent in place.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, that is some seriously radiopunk shit. I knew Tesla was awesome, but it doesn't sink in sometimes till you read something like this.</comment>


Show HN: Coffitivity for iOS and OS X - <AUTHOR> http://coffitivity.com/#intro

<comment><USER2> I really don't think this is about the sound effects.

To me, personally, it's about the ritual. You get up, pack up your things, go to school cafeteria, buy a coffee -- same routine, every day.

Same thing when I work from home, and it works just as well. Get up, walk to the store to get some fresh food, make a coffee, get to work.

Notice how coffee is nothing but part of the ritual -- I couldn't care less about the caffeine, it's just that drinking coffee is in my mind associated with doing work. :-)

Funny thing is this. Doing this ritual at a specific time helps a lot. Working from home can be hard with all the internet distractions, but creating a habit of getting to work at 9:00AM works miracles.

It even reminds me of the idea in Le Petit Prince, where the fox tells the prince to always show up at 4, so he would start being excited at 3.

<comment><USER3> We actually get feedback from all over the place saying similar things. I think the reality is sometimes we're in a position where going to a shop is out of the question and something like this is the next best thing. The science says one thing, but I feel like people have connected with the site for plenty of other reasons as well. Part of it is the ritual, part of it is the fact that you feel like you're out of the office, part of it is how well the audio drowns out the guys having a loud convo next to you. Those are the elements that really make Coffitivity interesting. IMO at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love how there's a "growth hacker", as if this is an actual viable business plan!

This is kinda like saying "People who go to concerts seem to like the music a lot, so let's start a service where a bunch of drunk people show up at your house when you're listening to music and stand really close to you whilst talking or screaming at the band"

<comment><USER3> The idea is more that there are elements of a coffee shop that actually help increase creativity, so we built a site that recreates that ambiance for people who can't or don't want to physically go to a coffee shop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know why this annoys me, but they still have their JS duplicated on the home page... including their google analytics calls

[https://twitter.com/felipesabino/status/354407029001027584](https://twitter.com/felipesabino/status/354407029001027584)

</comment><comment><USER6> "Coffee shop sounds boost creativity"

Is there any science behind this? The reason I find coffee shops less distracting is because there is usually nobody there I know to distract me. At home my housemates distract me, at work my colleagues distract me, in the coffee shop there is no one...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the science was pulled from a peer reviewed journal:

[http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048)

From the University of Chicago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Couldn't it simply be that drinking coffee in coffee shops increases productivity, not the sounds?

In all honesty, find a quiet place or get some noise canceling headphones, coffee shops are incredibly distracting.

<comment><USER3> The science suggests the sounds increase creativity, specifically. That distracting noise of a coffee shop actually helps abstract thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Safari this page swallows all key presses. Even ⌘+W. Very annoying.

<comment><USER9> That's actually on my plate for today, I only tested hotkeys on Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is interesting, but it would be more interesting if the audio had a binaural mode to give a 3D effect for headphones.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ADMIN: Can you change OSx to OS X? Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER11> i personally find the sound a bit annoying .. I guess the "studies" don't apply to me

</comment><comment><USER12> OS X

</comment><comment><USER13> ewwww those margins on the copy...</comment>


Ask HN: How do you research your competitor? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I understand that the good execution is the key for a successful startup. However, that doesn't mean you should naively jump onto an idea thinking that you can out-execute all the competitors out there. I believe you should research your competitors and try to position your startup so that it can stand firmly and grow strongly in the middle of the competitions.
So my question is, how do you research your competitors? When you have a great and seemingly novel idea, you probably won't know who your competitors are. What's the best way to find competitors who are doing the similar thing as you are thinking of?
What I do to find the competitions are: - googling - search on Apple Appstore, Google Play Store, chomp.com, angel.co, crunchbase etc. - etc. <comment><USER2> Your ideas for discovering competitors are generally a nice standard way of identifying some of your competition.

However, it completely depends on the niche/topic - if you're building a Mobile App its completely different to if you're building E-Commerce Store etc.

Secondly, I believe that whilst there is some case to execute the idea better than your competition it's actually more important to distribute much better than them.

I mean... does it _really_ matter to know what they're doing?

There are 7 Billion people on Earth... you should assume at least 50 people are working on your idea.

You should be focusing on ensuring your distribution is the best it can be (I mean sure, there are advantages for using some competitor analysis especially if you're trying to take advantage of SEO etc)

The more you're focusing on your competition the less focus you're spending on your product & distribution and the less likely you're going to fully exploit and maximize the opportunity.

<comment><USER3> I second itsprofitbaron's suggestion that a focus on product is definitely the path you want to take. Don't let competition deter you from an opportunity you believe is there. However, you should at least take the time to play around with what your competitors have to see what they're missing and get inspiration on what you can do to make a better product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We didn't do much of this at all. We "knew of" _some_ of our competitors by name and some of what they did but we didn't bother digging in, etc. I think (and this is purely an opinion) that when you become focused on your competitors or more aware, you end up being influenced whether you believe it or not. It leads to a lot of overlaps and copycat issues (see big companies competing).

By not concerning with that and concerning with building your product the exact way you'd use it to solve for your exact pain points and those of your early adopters, great things can come out of that that are sometimes planned and sometimes spontaneous.

</comment><comment><USER5> The answer to this question very much depends on your niche market. The assumption is that the founder is a domain expert in what ever niche (domain) he/she is starting in. Keeping this assumption in mind, one should at a minimum know who the competitors are.

In my humble opinion, the more important question is: does your competitors know who you are?

If they know who you are, then I would have tremendous trust in your execution.

</comment><comment><USER6> We do the same. It's a good idea to understand the value proposition of your competitors and try to position yourself even better.

Keep their marketing tricks on radars as well - what they say, where advertise, etc

</comment><comment><USER7> A small cheap tip I like to use when I need to do a bunch of research or comparison would be to use something like fiverr.com and pay someone $5 to do it for you.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's enough work just to find people to use your product. Why waste any effort checking out competitors? They'll find you if they're significant.

One tip though: use <http://usertesting.com> to do head-to-head comparisons between your product and the competitors'. It's eye-opening, and money well spent.</comment>


Details on Marc Andreessen's New Fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/05/details-on-marc-andreessen%e2%80%99s-new-fund-plus-five-other-interesting-things-he-said/ <comment><USER2> "The venture capital market should stop whining about Sarbox and other factors that are hurting their ability to take companies public."

Excellent point. Whenever anyone turns what should be a speedbump into a roadblock, you can bet there are bigger hidden issues. SOX is just the excuse du jour.</comment>


Grub with the partners of Sequoia Capital - <AUTHOR> http://www.grubwith.us/restaurants/tres-agaves-san-francisco/meals/212

<comment><USER3> It's a great idea. However, unless I'm mistaken, I believe his auction mechanism is not any of the standard "revenue maximizing" OR "social utility maximizing" mechanisms. The "maximum amount you would pay for this meal" suggests the meal's value to you.

However, for all K=# of seats, his Kth-price auction does not have the property that inputting your truthful value is your dominant strategy. The price should really be the bid of the K+1th person--otherwise, the Kth person can lower his bid in any outcome to the K+1th price/value (in descending order) and still obtain the seat. So it is not even a Nash Equilibrium to submit your truthful value.

So let's see how we can make the auction consistent with the desire to get everyone to bid their truthful value. If instead, the auction price was based on the 9th highest bid (which we assume to be the value) OR the reserve price (whichever one is higher), then it is everyone's dominant strategy to bid their value.

I don't want to rehash examples taught in an introductory Auction Theory class (which I greatly enjoyed), so if you're interested, take a look at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction>

It's basically a fancy name for what I described, plus a few modifications and extensions.

<comment><USER4> It's actually the multi-unit analogue of the first-price sealed bid auction.

Note that in FPSB you also don't have an incentive to report your true value, but it is revenue maximizing and efficient in expectation assuming risk- neutral bidders [1].

The basic gist of the proof is that everyone has an incentive to shade their bids down in proportion to the probability that their bid sets the price. The amount you shade is monotone in your valuation, so you end up with the same relative ordering of bids.

And the punchline is that you get the same winner and the same expected revenue for the Vickrey vs. FPSB.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_equivalence_theorem#Rev...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_equivalence_theorem#Revenue_Equivalence)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it might be what they were after, but their text (How much are you willing to pay?) suggests that your dominant strategy is to input your true value.

If that's what they're after, the text is misleading in my opinion...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> GrubWith.us removes your period as soon as you type it, so if you try to enter (say) 100.00, it is actually a bid for 10,000 -- I consider this a VERY BAD THING in this context.

<comment><USER6> Beyond that, it's bugged:

        $(".only_numbers").keydown(function(e) {
            var key = e.charCode || e.keyCode || 0;
            // allow backspace, tab, delete, arrows, numbers and keypad numbers ONLY
            return (
               key == 8 ||
               key == 9 ||
               key == 46 ||
               (key >= 37 && key <= 40) ||
               (key >= 48 && key <= 57) ||
               (key >= 96 && key <= 105));
        });

You're able to type ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) into .only_numbers boxes.

And you can't press cmd+a to select all, or ctrl+a to go to the beginning of the line, and _argh_ all manner of awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Starving entrepreneurs outbidding each other to sit with two rich guys? It is just me or does this seem backwards?

<comment><USER8> People seeking knowledge, experience, and advice outbidding each other to sit down with people with knowledge, experience, and advice. For charity. Doesn't seem so backwards to me.

<comment><USER9> Start-up knowledge, experience and advice comes from entrepreneurs, not VCs. Read their bios, they are financial and marketing professionals. Nothing wrong with that, but they are not the kind of people who started companies from nothing and now are VCs (like PG for example).

It should be the other way around: They should be buying lunches for entrepreneurs. Scouting deals is their job after all.

<comment><USER10> You don't consider Alfred Lin an entrepreneur?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to keep working on my own idea until they are bidding on having lunch with me.

<comment><USER12> I like that attitude, I'll buy you a market price beer.

<comment><USER11> Deal. Are you in sf?

<comment><USER12> NY right not but I will back in SF on the 11th. My email is in my profile hit me up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this a pivot for grubwith.us? I know the founders original idea was to connect people via family-style restaurant meals. But I've signed up for 3 meals now, and all were because I wanted to meet someone specific (Harj, other YC founders, Robert Scoble). It's a brilliant marketing idea, and a great example of why YC backs founders, not ideas. I could see these mini-fundraiser dinners being a huge market.

</comment><comment><USER14> Although it is presented as a sealed bid/blind bid auction - when you submit your bid the following page seems to indicate the current minimum bid - <USER2> at the moment is $56.

Nevertheless I think this charity bid model is a great use for the grubwith.us system.

<comment><USER15> I took that more as a "reserve" price to make sure Tres Agaves has their costs covered. I didn't expect it to go up as the bidding commenced. I could be wrong though.

<comment><USER16> yep -- this price will not change. it's a fixed min bid price. we will be clearer next time. thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Something something Color. There, I said it. Now we don't need to humour any cheap jokes.

</comment><comment><USER15> GrubWithUs for charity. I like this idea. I once had breakfast with the entire Detroit Red Wings team when I was a kid. What a fun charity event that was.

I'm also curious as to how much these particular plates will end up going for considering all of the corporate cards out there held by CEOs who probably wouldn't mind schmoozing with Sequoia.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love this idea. This model could certainly expand to celebrities to capture the interest of the mainstream. Celebrities were largely responsible for Twitter's hockeystick growth.

Side note: I went to my first Grubwithus earlier this week and had a great time. If you have the opportunity, I definitely recommend you give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER19> Damn, I wish this was in a few weeks time, I'm travelling to SF on April 22nd and would've loved to have met both Alfred Lin and Mark Dempster!

</comment><comment><USER20> If you're going to pay to eat with VCs... Wonder what the final price will be, for some reason I'm thinking 100.00 won't cut it!

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't that a bootloader, that loads VCs on startup, and leverages equity resources as the company shell starts up?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you still use RSS? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Yes, I consume:

1\. Twitter via Twitter lists using Feedbin: [https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best- way-...](https://feedbin.com/blog/2018/01/11/feedbin-is-the-best-way-to-read- twitter/)

2\. Email newsletters via RSS (also thanks to Feedbin): [https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email- newsl...](https://feedbin.com/blog/2016/02/03/subscribe-to-email-newsletters- in-feedbin/)

3\. HN via hnrss.org[†]

4\. Reddit via subreddit RSS. (Just add .rss after the subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/golang.rss](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang.rss) )

5\. A small selection of hand-curated blogs and friends' sites.

If the firehose ever seems too overwhelming (>200 new items), I generally just skim the titles for stand-out items and then mark all as read guilt-free.

[†] For example:

\- hnrss.org/newest?points=50

\- hnrss.org/whoishiring/jobs/?q=React

\- hnrss.org/replies/?id=youruserid

<comment><USER3> I just discovered Feedbin and never paid for a RSS Reader before. Is it really worth paying 5$ ?

<comment><USER2> I save at least $5/month in time and sanity by using Feedbin instead of twitter directly.

There's a 14-day free trial so you could try it yourself to see if you get value from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes. I don't understand how else I'm supposed to receive content without constantly rechecking everything and having to remember where I stopped previously.

What is more, I've got bunch of scripts that do keyword search for topics that interest me on Reddit/Hackernews/GitHub/pinboard and generate private RSS feeds. That way I can quickly skim through them once in a while and stay up to date without having to do manual searches.

P.S. if the website doesn't support RSS, you can still use one of feed generators that basically scrape the website now and then and generate the feed. I've used [http://fetchrss.com](http://fetchrss.com) so far, there are also some open source/selfhosted alternatives like [https://github.com/RSS- Bridge/rss-bridge](https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge)

</comment><comment><USER5> Of course. Podcasts are the one "hidden" usage of RSS that many people don't know about.

That's actually how it should be. RSS is a "machine talks to another machine" thing.

I have an IRC bot that relays RSS feeds into IRC channels: [https://github.com/bhaak/cinchfeed2ircbot](https://github.com/bhaak/cinchfeed2ircbot)

I also have a little static pages generator that fetches RSS feeds and turns them into minimalistic web pages to read through on mobile devices. I have to clean that up somewhat for putting on "Show HN" these days.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yep, every day. I do notice that it's getting worse, though. Many websites' feeds are just broken these days. They'll randomly refresh after months of inactivity with dozens of new articles from the intervening period; or they'll re-list a slew of previously listed entries; or it'll be entirely random whether a new entry shows up when a new item is posted on the website, such that I can only take an entry as a sort of "unread badge reminder" for the website rather than taking each RSS entry in my reader as an individual article I should read.

I think some of this is the fault of bad RSS feeds being generated by bad CMS software that never gets its RSS path tested; but other parts of this are the fault of the RSS feed getting fronted by a CDN like Cloudflare, or the URL pulling the feed in through some sort of PuSH hub with non-compliant retrieval semantics, or etc.

It's gotten me to feeling that I should be writing software to synthesize my own RSS feeds from these websites using scraping, with the RSS feed itself just being an edge-triggered "no longer fresh" trigger to get the site put back into the scrape queue. Most of the sites I subscribe to have very simple linear indices available somewhere anyway, so scraping that into a feed really shouldn't be that hard. (I remember when Dapper was trying to do this, but Dapper was trying to solve the problem in full generality for even cases where the site generates "changes" without creating new permalinked entry URLs, which is hardly ever a problem any more.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Just configured a new RSS setup for myself! I deployed[0] Miniflux[1], and then I:

\- Added a couple blogs, of course

\- Added a bunch of GitHub releases feeds[2]

\- Unsubscribed from all email newsletters and added them via an email-to-RSS conversion service[3]

\- Subscribed to high voted HN posts via a custom made RSS feed for those[4]

\- Disabled all YouTube notifications to subscribe to channels or playlists via their RSS feeds[5] instead.

[0]: See Kubernetes manifests at [https://gitlab.com/underyx/ops/commit/fcc6b3f0bdd3cb393bc0bd...](https://gitlab.com/underyx/ops/commit/fcc6b3f0bdd3cb393bc0bd56b5ce1bf20eb30d50)

[1]: [https://miniflux.app/](https://miniflux.app/)

[2]: e.g. [https://github.com/miniflux/miniflux/releases.atom](https://github.com/miniflux/miniflux/releases.atom)

[3]: [https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/](https://www.kill-the- newsletter.com/)

[4]: [https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/](https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/)

[5]: using [https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=foo](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=foo) and [https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=bar](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=bar)

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Yeah. I currently gate 155 RSS feeds to email using a custom built Perl script. A sieve filter directs them to a "News" folder, which I consume using my phone and laptops IMAP clients. Some of those feeds are very busy, e.g [https://news.ycombinator.com/rss](https://news.ycombinator.com/rss) so I updated my script to allow me to assign regexes to particular feeds so I only get articles of interest.

Well, they're not really all RSS. 27 of those RSS feeds are actually Twitter streams that I gated to RSS first using this application which I wrote: [https://gitlab.com/mikecardwell/functwitter](https://gitlab.com/mikecardwell/functwitter)

Oh, and 7 of them are actually just normal web pages which I converted to RSS feeds using [https://fetchrss.com/](https://fetchrss.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Just going to plug Tiny Tiny RSS here since no one else has mentioned it: [https://tt-rss.org/](https://tt-rss.org/)

It's a PHP-based server-side reader with lots of customizations and great Android support.

<comment><USER9> Yep, I love TinyRSS. I use it for webcomics, blogs, even YouTube so I don't have to use their shitty web interface. Here are some dockerfiles I made:

[https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/tree/master/dockerfiles/TTRSS](https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/tree/master/dockerfiles/TTRSS)

[https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/tree/master/dockerfiles/TTRSS...](https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/tree/master/dockerfiles/TTRSSUpdater)

<comment><USER10> Have you found a way to subscribe to youtube channels and view the video embedded insite ttrss? The official youtube feeds appear to be empty or just contain a URL to the video.

<comment><USER11> Subcribe to: [https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=USERNAME](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=USERNAME) or [https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELI...](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELID)

and enable plugin af_youtube_embed

<comment><USER10> Yes, I'm using the [https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELI...](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELID) format with af_youtube_embed enabled and it is just showing blank entries on the newest version of ttrs & plugins. Looks like my installation is bugged then, but I don't have the time to investigate at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of course I still use RSS. RSS offers me the possibility to consume news in the way I want. No algorithms that think they have to decide for me what interests me and what not. No algorithms that withhold news from me. Only the feeds I have subscribed to, all news from these feeds and no advertising between the news. I'm done when I'm done and don't have to look at any more suggested articles. And I have the possibility to save articles for later reading. Miniflux is my favorite RSS reader. And I use the word RSS representatively for RSS, Atom and JSON Feed.

( Posted on [https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2019/12/do-you-still-use- rss/](https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2019/12/do-you-still-use-rss/) )

</comment><comment><USER13> Actually, no.

But I consider it a useful and unexpensive feature so I'll support it on my blog nevertheless.

<comment><USER14> Kudos. In 00's there was print version, a very convenient feature. They are actually needed mpre today. Not just for printers of course. For the real content, wo banners, ads and crap :

<comment><USER15> Trying to read some articles, especially without an adblocker, like if I'm on iOS, can be quite annoying. I've found some ways around it, but I use reddit on my phone a lot and anytime I open an article in the app I get frustrated at how horrible the experience is and wonder how many people read articles like that and find it acceptable. I also wonder how the company thinks their website isn't the worst thing to ever exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use RSS daily for all things. Those webpages without an RSS feed are ones I never visit as I don't want to change my habit of 15 years.

<comment><USER17> > Those webpages without an RSS feed

I'm with you there. If I'm only stopping by a website for a one-off thing, I don't care if it has an RSS feed or not. However, sites that don't are sites that I won't be checking in with on the regular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes. I'm subscribed to 170 feeds using the Newsblur app. I started using feeds with Google Reader. When it was shutdown, I self-hosted Tiny Tiny RSS for a while, hosted using a cloud provider's free plan. After some time and a server out of disk space disaster, I didn't want to bother with hosting it myself anymore. So I tried other services like Digg Reader, The Old Reader and Feedly. I finally settled on using Newsblur and I have been a subscriber for many years now.

The primary reason for selecting Newsblur is the excellent offline support in the Android app. When commuting to work with metro, cellular reception is spotty. So before I go in the train, I refresh my feeds in the app, then I turn off the WIFI and read the content offline. When I get off the metro, I re-enable the WiFi for the read status to sync up.

Anyone reading, please, please provide a feed for your blog, newsletter, etc. for us to follow your content. And no, posting updates to Twitter is not an alternative.

I wish web browsers had better support for feeds to make them more convenient for everyone to use. Instead they seem to have given up on RSS and removed any support or made it optional through difficult to find and setup add-ons :(

<comment><USER19> Well, that's what services like Query Feed are for, or any service that converts Twitter to RSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tragically, no. After Google killed Reader, I (amazingly) couldn't find another client that didn't have some fatal flaw that didn't make it not worth the bother.

I now use the dumb, low-tech solution of having a few folders of bookmarks of sites in various categories, which I'll occasionally check using "Open in Tabs".

 _Lamentable_

<comment><USER21> At one point, I was building a service that allowed you to build digests of collections of feeds and presented the articles in a reddit-style view. Additionally, if others had the articles in their digests, it added a comment section. Is this something you would use? I had trouble gaining traction with the service and shuttered it, but I think about starting it again often.

<comment><USER20> It's an interesting idea, but probably personally I wouldn't use it.

Honestly, I think momentum has shifted, mostly to twitter, w/ people either posting content directly there or linking to medium, and occasionally, personal blogs.

But Twitter is flawed (if for no other reason, than because they are increasingly exercising editorial control). I look forward to whatever replaces it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yep. Inoreader. I browse 300-400 items a day through it.

<comment><USER23> I'm also a Inoreader user. It's one of the few services I pay for (bottom tier). I can't imagine being without an RSS-based content- monitoring/-consumption system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I _love_ RSS, I used to have an OPML file of hundreds of feeds (mainly blogs/ppl I follow but also various company news feeds and other news content). Don't know when it happened but for a few years I didn't have a RSS reader because the sw just got too unmaintained and bad (on macOS / iOS).

But a few months back I finally took the time and set up a reader. Now I again get annoyed by sites that don't offer feeds of their content. But RSS is still hands down the best eay to be notified and on top of vast amount of new content of various sites all over the Web.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't. For me the death of RSS was a gift in disguise. I think it encouraged me to spend too much time obliging myself to read articles and keep up with sources, too much time trying to "curate" my media sources, and so on. I'm very sour on that way of using time now.

Instead I use Twitter, I _don 't_ use lists or curate, and I try to liberally follow enough people so that I always see some people that are way outside my bubble, people with very different views from my own. I learn from them, interact with them, try to sympathize with them and get a feel for them. I make friends this way, too. I never made friends reading "the news" however you define it.

I definitely don't want to go back to a "media diet" of stuff that I don't (or can't) interact with. I think this is a poor way of being. We lived in dialogue for thousands of years, all information we got was two-way communication, and then between the printing press and radio we switched to one-way communication, and I'm really happy that Twitter allows us to, at least a little bit, bring back the old way. Use it!

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes. I can't even imagine using the hundreds of different ways of "subscribing" to things every site feels the need to reinvent for itself. YouTube is a perfect example, using their subscribe method when will you actually know when a subscribed channel posts a new video? Same day? Week later? When it hits a certain view count? That's not up to the user.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hell yes

I try to put everything in my RSS reader.

Currently I subscribed to 7110 feeds. (YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Instagram, BiliBili, pixiv.net, Facebook, DevianArt, GitHub, News sites, Reddit, ... - there are no limits :D)

Reader of choice: * [https://www.inoreader.com](https://www.inoreader.com) because they support filtering of feeds (even RegEx)

Unfortunately not every site offers native RSS support, that's why I use some tools to generate RSS feeds from these sites.

For example: * [https://docs.rsshub.app/en/](https://docs.rsshub.app/en/) (as Docker container) * [http://createfeed.fivefilters.org/](http://createfeed.fivefilters.org/) (self-hosted version) * [https://visualping.io/](https://visualping.io/)

As soon as I have some time, I will try to convert email archives and discord channels to RSS feeds, too - saw some python projects about this :p

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes. I use RSS-Bridge and Huginn to automate the mixing of RSS feeds into deduplicated feeds, then put that into wallabag which regenerates an RSS feed with excerpts. It sounds a bit bass ackward, but:

1\. Huginn sends me and my partner an email every day about new properties in areas we would like to live so we can better understand the market.

2\. Huginn also feeds my social media posting schedule by pulling out content from Reddit and some other places, filtering and deduping. The next step is to add scoring thresholds based on votes at source.

3\. I use an RSS notifier to pick up Regulatory News Service (RNS) posts from any stocks I follow.

4\. I generate periodic subject-specific summaries of news using Huginn for topics from Infosec to commoddities markets and sports.

Once I have the scoring system set up for the social media feed I'm going to look at integrating threat intel data into the same model using scoring to provide thresholds for digest vs immediate notification.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yes. Moved to feedly when google reader was closed. It's useful to follow news, blogs, etc. The idea of using social media to replace RSS never worked for me, specially after platforms like Facebook started hiding content from our timelines, so I never stopped using RSS.

I also listen to podcasts and that's all powered by RSS feeds.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yes. Please don't ever go away (even more )

</comment><comment><USER31> Yes, and will continue to use it until support for it dies or someone comes up with a better way to aggregate things I actually care about reading into a simple interface. Hopefully the latter comes first :)

I was sad when Google killed Reader, but Inoreader has been a great alternative for my daily use.

</comment><comment><USER32> No and I miss it. But I don't see it as a technology issue anymore. The rise of video and podcasts have greatly reduced the signal to noise ratio. Even if we were to assume the conversations are as interesting and relevant, that content is slower to consume by orders of magnitude.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, I consider it my main source of internet news.

Selfhosted, no additional ads except for those on the sites, no algorithm trying to keep me "in" with noisy influencer clickbait. I rarely add sites but I'm quick to remove them if they become too sensationalist/inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER33> Yep. I use my Feedbin[1] account to follow YouTube channels — I use Invidious's[2] RSS feature for that —, interesting Twitter users, Reddit, Hacker News and a bunch of blogs and websites.

Been thinking about moving from Feedbin to a self-hosted and slightly modified version of Miniflux, though. Mostly because I got a cool domain that I want to use and like self-hosting everything.

According to screen time on iOS, reading stuff from my feed is where I spend most of my time after work.

[1] [https://feedbin.com](https://feedbin.com)

[2] [https://www.invidio.us](https://www.invidio.us)

</comment><comment><USER34> Yes, reading all my subscriptions through Feedbin is part of my morning routine. So much less stressful than trying to read a social media feed with everyone sharing about whatever outrage of the day is.

</comment><comment><USER35> Yes. It's still the most convenient way to keep up with news, blogs, product updates, etc. It's also a fantastic way to keep an eye on the competition :)

</comment><comment><USER36> In a word, yes. I use QuiteRSS as my reader of choice for news articles. As well as monitoring feeds for some of the websites and servers that I run. The reason I like RSS is because it is focused on exactly the information I need with no distractions. No extra popups, menus, offers to subscribe to mailing lists and most of all, no adverts. All in one place in a common format that is easily parsed.

</comment><comment><USER37> I stopped for a while after Google reader died, but a couple years ago I started feeling like I was missing things and happily picked RSS back up.

</comment><comment><USER38> Absolutely, saw this post via Hacker News feed. I consume Reuters and BBC news for general news and follow other blogs via feeds. Feeds are still the best and fastest way to easily stay informed.

For the general news I peruse the headlines and read the things that interest me. I have had a TinyTinyRSS installation running since 2012, before that I used GoogleReader and I think it was called Bloglines.

</comment><comment><USER39> Indeed! I use the FeedBro plugin for Firefox, with feeds for my various webcomics, a couple of blogs, a couple of news sites (including HN), a Forum, a couple smaller subreddits, and more recently my favorite YouTubers since Google can't get it together when it comes to notifications of new uploads by creators.

I also use it at work to get notifications of when our Jenkins Builds/Jobs fail.

<comment><USER40> FeedBro user here too, it also runs well on Chrome. I have nearly 1k subscriptions and the tab consumes less than 2Mb. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I use RSS for Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, News, HN, and Reddit. It's my main way of keeping up with goings on these days.

As a plug: I run Pine.blog. A feed reader and blogging app. It's basically a Social Network built on RSS and Blogging. If anyone is interested, I'd love feedback on it. It hasn't gotten much HN attention in the past.

[https://pine.blog](https://pine.blog)

</comment><comment><USER42> Heavily. Preferably text only, full text. I've just written about it: [https://raymii.org/s/articles/Tiny-Tiny-RSS-Readability- plai...](https://raymii.org/s/articles/Tiny-Tiny-RSS-Readability- plaintext.html)

I've got almost a thousand feeds I'm following actively.

</comment><comment><USER17> I use RSS heavily, on a daily basis.

Primarily, I use it to read the day's news from various sources. I also use it to follow podcasts.

</comment><comment><USER43> Of course yes. Feedly to the rescue after Google Reader shut down.

I even build apps to read more: \- [https://f43.me](https://f43.me) to have full content in RSS feeds \- [https://bandito.re](https://bandito.re) to have GitHub star repo's release as feed

</comment><comment><USER44> Yeah, using NetNewsWire. The original author bought it back somewhat recently and afaik it's a complete rewrite now and open source, go ahead and check it out [https://ranchero.com/netnewswire/](https://ranchero.com/netnewswire/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Yes. I've read about this thread in selfoss ([https://github.com/SSilence/selfoss](https://github.com/SSilence/selfoss)), "a multipurpose RSS reader and feed aggregation web application."

</comment><comment><USER46> Yes, I still use the Firefox dynamic bookmarks with the help of an extension that reproduces the classic Firefox behavior.

Livemarks: [https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/](https://github.com/nt1m/livemarks/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Yes, I use Feedly.

</comment><comment><USER48> Yes, using rss2email for about 100 items a day, mostly blogs and forum posts. They end up in a RSS folder and are quickly processed with your favourite MUA (mutt in my case).

I make sure that any new sites I build offer RSS and / or Atom feeds.

</comment><comment><USER49> Yes. that's how I follow all the websites I find interesting. I haven't seen the homepage of some of those in years. Added benefit, on Android my reader simplifies the formatting and puts everything in Noght Mode.

</comment><comment><USER50> Yes, as much as I can. And I click through articles to reward sites that provide one. If a site doesn't provide one, I may hit an article or two, but I'm much more likely to just get a summary from social media.

</comment><comment><USER51> Yes. My only web interface to the www. I successfully blocked everything and everyone. VPN, filtering DNS, blacklist - you name it I have it. I live in a text world for a decade and I love it. RSS is how I got this.

</comment><comment><USER52> Absolute. I'm using the Nextcloud News plugin which works great and keeps in sync between my devices. Actually I even wrote my own Android client. Because I couldn't find the perfect reader app for me.

</comment><comment><USER53> All the time. I use Feeder from the F-Droid repo on my phone. Just a few tech blogs, slashdot, hn. I've been thinking about branching out to other sources lately, interesting that this question got asked.

</comment><comment><USER54> Yes, every day, for checking various websites. I realize most people prefer Twitter/Instagram for getting their updates, but RSS gives me only the things I asked for, right when there's an update.

</comment><comment><USER55> It is my hope, as an RSS junky (Feedly.com) that this post doesn't doom the protocol the way being caught enjoying features seems to lead to their demise so often these days.

</comment><comment><USER56> Yes, thats the primary way I consume web (including HN). If a website doesn't have an RSS feed (or feedly doesn't have it) then I don't care about that site.

</comment><comment><USER57> I load up a bunch of selected feeds with a embarassingly simple php script that then shows me the headlines. Easy to visit on any device. koppen.ga for anyone interested.

</comment><comment><USER58> Yes.

Also, I wrote [https://github.com/urandom/readeef](https://github.com/urandom/readeef) after google shut down reader.

</comment><comment><USER59> I use self-hosted Feedbin. This ensures the profiling is not done by the third party which hosts the state of sync as a service, and it barely uses resources anyway.

</comment><comment><USER60> I switched to [http://www.ighome.com](http://www.ighome.com) after Google shut down Homepage Feed Reader

</comment><comment><USER61> Only started using it last year! (although programming since the 80s) Using RSSOwl, works well. It's been useful for blogs and youtube channels.

</comment><comment><USER62> Hell yes! Even for my podcasts. One place for everything, no algorithm to mess it up. I'll cry the day a GAFA will use their power to kill it.

</comment><comment><USER63> Yes. To me that questions is like asking if i still use shoes, you can theoretically survive modern life without them, but why would you?

</comment><comment><USER64> Absolutely. Reeder for iPad ftw, and FeedWrangler for syncing (although Reeder might do that now, I haven't bothered to look).

</comment><comment><USER65> Yes. [https://feedreader.com/online](https://feedreader.com/online)

</comment><comment><USER66> Yes, I came across this while browsing theoldreader.com/

I have way too many feeds that I don't really read, but I subscribe to.

</comment><comment><USER67> Yep. I have my own web-based feed reader that I wrote when they shut down Google Reader and have used daily ever since.

</comment><comment><USER68> Yes, of course. Over 200 handpicked feeds, plus a few automatically generated ones. It's sill my primary news intake.

</comment><comment><USER69> I saw this very post from theoldreader, reading the official RSS feed from ycombinator: news.ycombinator.com/rss

</comment><comment><USER70> I have several RSS feeds aggregated via my Nextcloud home instance. Works perfectly. Don't want to loose it.

</comment><comment><USER71> Yes. Watching 20 news/tech/community sites plus torrent announcements for automated download.

</comment><comment><USER72> Yes, it is the best format to aggregate news to single reader. I use self hosted FreshRSS for that.

</comment><comment><USER73> Yes. Feedly as my Google Reader replacement and my desktop consumption. Then Reeder on the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER74> Yes, it's free from all the funny ads even though I know I'm being tracked still.

</comment><comment><USER75> Yes. In fact, I check hn through hnrss. I filter for posts with more than 75 points.

</comment><comment><USER76> Yes, I use feedly for many blogs.

I also have many scripts that scrape web page and generate RSS.

</comment><comment><USER77> Yes, with Feedly.

I wished all my favorite bands had a RSS feed so I could finally ditch FB

</comment><comment><USER19> Yep, and I probably always will, as long as it continues to exist.

</comment><comment><USER78> Yes I do, and I'm still annoyed about Google Reader.

</comment><comment><USER79> Yes. I use feed2imap to follow rarely updated blogs.

</comment><comment><USER80> Yes. I use Newsblur (commercial website/app)

</comment><comment><USER81> Yes,actually RSS becomes more powerful today

</comment><comment><USER82> Yes, I use it for podcast all the time.

</comment><comment><USER83> More than ever

</comment><comment><USER84> Yes, using Feedly for many years now.

</comment><comment><USER85> Yes, daily. Reading this via Feedly.

</comment><comment><USER86> Yes, that's how I got here.

</comment><comment><USER87> No.

</comment><comment><USER88> Yes, to read blogs.

</comment><comment><USER89> Yep, all the time.

</comment><comment><USER90> yes- daily - my preferred method of getting info

</comment><comment><USER91> Yes

</comment><comment><USER92> Yes

</comment><comment><USER93> Yuppers.

</comment><comment><USER94> yes

</comment><comment> peter-m80 yes</comment>


Good Office Chairs for Every Budget - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/ss/goods-office-chairs-every-budget?partner=rss <comment><USER2> The cheapest chair in that article is $200...

</comment><comment><USER3> That was the least substantive link I have ever followed on HN. I wish there was a way to down vote.</comment>