Defusing a binary bomb with gdb – Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.carlosgaldino.com/2015/11/12/defusing-a-binary-bomb-with-gdb-part-1.html <comment><USER2> I took the course the book was designed for at CMU (and with the guys who wrote it, all CS majors have to take it), everyone on campus always knew when "bomb-lab" was happening because people would post on FB "Just defused a bomb", confusing anyone who was new around =P

Not setting off the bomb is pretty easy as long as you remember to set a break point right before the "explode" function before every gdb run. Super satisfying when you get through all six stages. (there's also a secret bonus stage)

The book/course is the best designed one I've ever seen for the subject matter. Highly recommend it for anyone interested in taking it on, and on taking any course that is based on it.

<comment><USER3> I also took a class designed around this class at UCLA. The bomb lab was absolutely the standout, both in terms of what I learned and how much I enjoyed it.

Didn't see it mentioned, but the really cool thing is that the bomb required internet access and would phone home to a server to dock points if you let it go off. As you said, all it required was that one breakpoint, but it still made everything feel more critical.

<comment><USER4> I remember opening up the binary in IDA and patching out all the phoning home, allowing me to tinker with it as I pleased. I then patched out all the key checking and hooked it back online, only to realize in horror that all the inputs were validated server side. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was one of my favorite lab assignments when I was at university. If I recall correctly this lab was run back to back with another really fun one out of the same book. The other had to do with modifying code to take advantage of some compiler optimizations. Loop unrolling, array layout, stuff like that.

allow me to brag a bit: I was the only one in my class to not set off the bomb!

</comment><comment><USER6> At least for the first stage you don't actually need to run the executable (under gdb or otherwise). You can just get the string with objdump:

        $ objdump -s --start-address 0x402400 bomb|head

        bomb:     file format elf64-x86-64

        Contents of section .rodata:
         402400 426f7264 65722072 656c6174 696f6e73  Border relations
         402410 20776974 68204361 6e616461 20686176   with Canada hav
         402420 65206e65 76657220 6265656e 20626574  e never been bet
         402430 7465722e 00000000 576f7721 20596f75  ter.....Wow! You
         402440 27766520 64656675 73656420 74686520  've defused the
         402450 73656372 65742073 74616765 2100666c  secret stage!.fl

<comment><USER2> It's actually possible to defuse the whole thing by just decompiling it into assembly and reading that, but you have to really know and be comfortable with ASM. There are a handful of students that do it each year at CMU though, so it's not unsurmountable.

Students who are really comfortable with ASM will get through it fast by reading it, and those who are less so will GDB their way to the right answer. Which is exactly how a good CS assignment should work, where it scales for each skill level very well. Hence one of the reasons this book is great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the course I took, the program would call home whenever it exploded and deduct points from your grade on the assignment. So naturally I just went in with hexedit and deleted that particular call to that function in explode_bomb.

<comment><USER2> Yea, that's how it works at CMU too. Usually, we just made sure to set a breakpoint there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was a pain in the butt to find the bomb executable, so for anyone interested, here is the link for a Linux/x86-64 binary bomb: [http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/3e/bomb.tar](http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/3e/bomb.tar)

<comment><USER2> Well that's part of it, the real meat is in "phases.c", which would need to be generated by the instructors (and uniquely for each student). This way no two student's answers are both the same, and there's no public source code to reference to figure out what the bomb is "doing" to the input and what input it actually needs in order to "defuse" properly, without trial-and-error and debugging, or reading the ASM disassembly throughly if that's your style.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Part 2 is out: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10596078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10596078)

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember doing this assignment in 2003 with i386 executables.

</comment><comment><USER10> iirc there are (at least ;) ) 6 levels

</comment><comment><USER11> this was one of the assignments for the CS107 class at Stanford. it was fun :-).</comment>


Ask YC:  What is the most embarrassing technical book that you have ever owned? - <AUTHOR>

I'm particularly interested in knowing about technical books from the 80s that look silly/ridiculous now. <comment><USER2> Hard to say...There've been so many...

I had this awesome book full of BASIC games for the Commodore 64. It ruled.

Mastering Amiga Assembler

Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours (all of the Teach Yourself * in 24 Hours books are embarrassing, though not as embarrassing as "For Dummies" books).

Ooh...No, I've got it: I took the TCP/IP portion of the MCSE exams, and I had a study guide for that. That's the most embarrassing (because it indicates I took an MCSE exam...but, there were dark times in IT before most of you were born...many servers ran this OS named Windows NT, instead of UNIX or Linux).

</comment><comment><USER3> In 1997, getting my first HTML lessons using an illustrated guide.

The moment when I typed something in notepad and it opened in IE I was running all over the house screaming "IT WORKED!."

<comment><USER4> I had a similar reaction. I think a lot of people did. One should never underestimate the power of (a) making it easy for people to get a hello world running, and (b) view->source.

<comment><USER5> Thats one of the really interesting things about the OLPC - most of the programs are written in Python, and it has a 'source' button on the keyboard, so users can view and modify stuff [[http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/keyboard/children_view_sour...](http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/keyboard/children_view_source.html)]

I had that same experience with HTML, I'm sure if I could've viewed source on a load of decent Python programs I would've gone nuts for it as a kid. A hell of an improvement to feeding a book full of BASIC into a C64. If the rest goes to plan, there'll be a lot of handy hackers around in a few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not from the 80s, but Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science".

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm going to say GoF. Flame me.

Also "Learn Java" (1996) and "Enterprise Java Beans" (2000).

</comment><comment><USER8> "The Joy of Sex" HA!

</comment><comment><USER9> 1978 Guerin's, Vaschalde's and Warusfel's "Le calculateur programmable de poche" (in French, translated: "The Programmable Pocket Calculator"). A translated excerpt: "... we can imagine that [in the future] programmable calculators will be branched through the telephone network to central computers that hold massive amounts of data. "

</comment><comment><USER10> Anything with "Certification" and "Microsoft" in the title. It was a present. I swear. IT WAS A GIFT, OKAY? I have elderly relatives. [sigh] On the other hand, that really shouldn't count as a technical book.

Also, "The Road Ahead" by BillG. From my aunt.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide-Vms-Unsupported- Undo...](http://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide-Vms-Unsupported-Undocumented- Can-Go-Away-At-Any-Time-Feature/dp/1878956000)

</comment><comment><USER12> VB.NET for Dummies. Maybe it was VB for Dummies...i can't remember, it was 4 years ago, and I threw it away, along with my Java, C++ and Technical Math book (I regretted throwing the math book away).

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.mr- atari.com/afbeeldingen/atariforceENboeken/easy...](http://www.mr- atari.com/afbeeldingen/atariforceENboeken/easyguide600800blackadar.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER14> Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6.0 in 24 Hours.

I should make up some story about finding it in a dumpster or buying it for $2 at a garage sale or something, but whatever.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sybex HTML Complete. Worst book ever. Not worth the paper it's printed on. Bought it when I was in elementary school though..

</comment><comment><USER16> C for Dummies.

</comment><comment><USER17> Data Binding in Windows Forms 2.0. The book is terrible, but the API is worse, so...

</comment><comment><USER18> Dating Design Patterns

</comment><comment><USER19> Visual Basic 6.0 For Dummies (the french edition).

</comment><comment><USER20> Herb Schildt's "The Complete Reference: C++"

</comment><comment><USER21> Turbo Pascal FTW

<comment><USER7> Version 3 was great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Secrets of the 3D Game Programming Sages.

<comment><USER23> Did not plan on seeing that when I opened this, I have it too.... somewhere

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> XML Web Services for ASP.NET

</comment><comment><USER25> Teach Yourself Windows CE Programming in 6 Hours.</comment>


Ask HN: Launching a socially responsible ICO, suggestions to spread the word? - <AUTHOR> Here is more information about it https://mpk.impak.eco/en. But I am really interested in your opinion. It is listed on things such as smith and crown but wondering if you think of crafty things we haven't thought of <comment><USER2> Just FYI there are a couple of small typos like benefcial and fnancial

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks we will correct those asap</comment></comment>


Why landing a flying, fire-breathing Red Dragon on Mars is huge - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/why-landing-a-flying-fire-breathing-red-dragon-on-mars-is-huge/ <comment><USER2> So, it says:

> _Attorney Michael Listner, founder of Space Law and Policy Solutions, > explained to Ars that Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty requires > countries to ensure that launches from within their borders take > precautionary measures to prevent contamination of other planets. If SpaceX > can't demonstrate that it 's complying with the terms of the treaty with Red > Dragon, decontaminating both the inside and outside of the vehicle, the > Federal Aviation Administration could withhold a launch license._

And then down in the article:

> _Why is SpaceX doing this? Because Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars._

So how exactly do these two statements go together?</comment>


Should Larry Lessig Be Nominated to Replace Antonin Scalia? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd8c6y9Cd4Q <comment><USER2> [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/appoint- lawrence-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/appoint-lawrence- lessig-vacant-supreme-court-position)</comment>


A mile or two off Yarmouth (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/512cde83-3afb-3048-9ece-dba774b10f89 <comment><USER2> A weird, semi-random, yet improbably worthwhile essay (by the creator of The Living Dead) on the impact of people's tendency to substitute simplifying stories for more complex underlying reality. Interesting take on the intersection of cosmology (astrophysics), obscure films and television, macroeconomics, geopolitics and cultural psychology.

</comment><comment><USER3> I enjoyed that, but the physics content is badly wrong, which leads me to doubt the historical accuracy of the rest of it.

Still, even if not factually correct it was an interesting essay. A post- modern version of pg's essay on Refragmentation.</comment>


B- environment merits B- effort - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3461-b-environment-merits-b-effort

<comment><USER4> "the statistical outliers who do not follow this are not worth focusing policy on"

This is a great idea that 37signals keeps coming back to, i.e. don't shape HR policies based on outliners and exceptions.

<comment><USER5> This is because they don't have a large enough group of outliers to matter.

So yeah, I wouldn't shape HR policy in a small company based on outliers.

But if i had a company of 50k people, i probably have at _least_ 3500 significant outliers, performance wise.

<comment><USER6> I don't think he meant let those people hang around being disruptive. Just don't structure policy around them. If they are outliers in that respect, then will any policy you come up with make those people productive? Will it have overall positive benefit or will it damage the ability for the other 95% to work?

If you have 95% of your workforce who want to succeed and 5% of your workforce who are "slackers', you can provide tools to help those who want to succeed and fire the slackers. On the other hand, you can force through workflow policies that force the slackers to do minimal work while frustrating and slowing down the workflow of the rest of the staff who want to excel.

As well, the more freedom you give to those staff who want to excel, the more rope you give those staff who will not to hang themselves with. Force them to jump through hoops to show that they are working and they will do what they can to hide the fact that they're not. Give them free reign to slack off and they will not have false metrics to hide behind, nor will they feel the need to hide so much.

<comment><USER5> I agree you should fire the slackers. But that is a policy, and you've focused on them and structured it around dealing with them, which goes against what he just said you should do :)

<comment><USER7> I think that he means do not do things like create a process that everyone must follow, full of red tape, simply because your worst employees cannot perform a task correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another 37signals post! Let's get started!

> If you want star quality effort, you need to provide a star quality > environment. No, window dressing like a free meal is not it.

Boy, we've all been there. I know what he's talking about! Now I want to know what specific advice he has.

> It can serve as a cherry on top, but if the rest of the cake is full of > shit, that's not going to make it any more appealing.

Hahaha, now he's got me on the hook!

> Make people proud to work where they work by involving them in projects that > matter and ignite a fire of urgency about your purpose. Find out who you are > as a company and be the very best you. Give people a strategic plan that's > coherent and believable and then leave the bulk of the tactical > implementation to their ingenuity.

Oh.

No specific advice. Free food isn't good enough, so... do some other stuff to get people excited. So this is another Chicken Soup for the Startup Soul post. Or maybe a more charitable interpretation, instead of just blowing hot air at us, he's asking us to blow hot air at employees?

<comment><USER9> I say this to my kids all the time: "Bye! Make good choices!"

I stole it from Jamie Lee Curtis's character in Freaky Friday when she drops her kids off at school.

<comment><USER10> My dad's was "Bye! Don't be stupid!"

It was endearing, and it stuck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Being a slacker is not an innate human quality"

I really can't swallow this. Laziness is /the/ primary motivator for invention. People want to do the least possible to attain their goals - <USER2> isn't a negative quality - but in the context of earning a paycheque it hurts the employer.

I've noticed the larger the company i've worked at, the more people treading water and hiding inbetween people who actually do work.

On the other hand I do broadly agree that window dressing is not enough. We end up judging employers by actions more than words by nature...

<comment><USER12> Laziness does not have to equate to being a slacker. Lazily (or inventively) pursuing your employers goals is not a problem - generally if you find a way to satisfy them with less work, everyone's happy. Slacking would be following your own goals (loafing around, hiding) when they conflict with your employer.

As the article says, if your people aren't bothered or motivated by your goals, they probably shouldn't be there (at least in skilled positions - <USER3> course there are plenty of jobs which are purely for the paycheck). It's not worth changing your company based on the attitudes and motivations of people who shouldn't be there anyway.

It is easier to hide in (many) big companies, but that doesn't mean that the solution should be to remove all potential hiding places - it should be to remove (or re-motivate) those who are hiding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While I certainly think a bad environment can make people perform worse, I'm not sure the reverse is true. There are just some people who don't give a shit regardless of the awesome trusting environment you give them.

<comment><USER14> He covers this point in the first paragraph, basically saying that they aren't worth your time. In short, fire them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "If you're doing work in a less than star environment, you owe less than star effort. Quid pro quo."

This describes every bad job I've ever had. You do a great job, nobody cares, you do a mediocre job, you feel bad. Lose lose.

<comment><USER16> DHH leaves professionalism and personal pride out of his analogy.

I try to do good work even for bad employers. Instead of reducing the quality of my work product, what I would do is quit and find a better employer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "It can serve as a cherry on top, but if the rest of the cake is full of shit, that's not going to make it any more appealing." Got to love that

<comment><USER18> Reminds me of a lot of shitty start-ups out there - where management is terrible but thinks it can bribe people into sweatshop-style labor with meaningless perks.

<comment><USER19> I used to do freelance work in a big open office setup with a lot of different companies all owned by the same big holding company. Once or twice a week one of the partners of the parent company would come in with a box of brownies or some such thing. The startup kids who hadn't paid themselves in months would all stand around eating the treat, saying "god, this is the best place to work."

<comment><USER20> If you can afford not to get paid for months...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've got that kind of mind that can drift off while reading. By the time I had regained my focus, the article had descended into this:

       "If you're doing work in a less than star environment,
        you owe less than star effort. Quid pro quo. By all
        means, do yours to affect and change the environment.
        Nudge it towards the stars. But also, accept the
        limitations of your power. You can drag a horse to the
        water, but you can't make it drink.

        So ration your will and determination. Invest what's
        left over, after meeting the bar of your work
        environment, in your own projects, skills, and future.
        The dividends is what's going to lead you to the next,
        better thing.

        Everyone deserves to work at a place that inspires them
        to give their very best. Don't stop reaching until you
        have that."

Thank _goodness_ I was worried I was going to run out of platitudes today.

<comment><USER22> Once you earn the spot of a visionary with an audience, you have to continue to espouse ideas. Movements require that ideas be constantly re-framed to draw more and more people into the fold. Also, you must reinforce the same ideas for the existing audience.

If you're beyond the need to receive the "milk of the gospel" and are ready for the meat, then its probably time for you to be a producer and not merely a consumer. But, don't blame the minister for continuing to feed the babes.

<comment><USER23> That is exceptionally deep, my friend.</comment></comment></comment>


Showtime at the Musée D'Orsay: Watching Varnish Dry - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/arts/design/showtime-at-the-musee-dorsay-watching-varnish-dry.html <comment><USER2> Varnish is meant to be stripped every 40-60 years.

For a stark example of how conservation effects the appearance of a work take a look at this image of the Mona Lisa, and the Pardos Mona Lisa replica (copied ~20 years from the original). Because the replica is much less valued, more aggressive conservation and restoration techniques have been applied. Compared to the original work which last saw major conservation over 200 years ago.

[1] [http://www.arthistorynews.com/i/entries/1069.jpg](http://www.arthistorynews.com/i/entries/1069.jpg)

<comment><USER3> I never knew there were other copies of Mona Lisa from Leonardo's time period, so to save others some confusion when googling: OP is talking about a copy of Mona Lisa in Museo del Prado in Madrid.</comment></comment>


Palestinian jailed for 9 years for hacking Israeli drones - a-smith https://www.rt.com/news/376137-palestinian-hacker-israel-drones/#.WNFo6phfzaY.twitter <comment><AUTHOR> is this a stone-throwing related issue?</comment>


Jq: A lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor - <AUTHOR> http://stedolan.github.io/jq/# <comment><USER2> _jq is written in portable C, and it has zero runtime dependencies._

Thank you! When I clicked on the link I was fully expecting it to be written in Node and I was going to cry.

<comment><USER3> Why is having node as a dependency such a bad thing? No snark. Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER4> Node is great, and a port of jq to node would be awesome (someone once hinted at such a port, but I've lost track of it).

But jq also has libjq, a C library. And jq uses a copy-on-write, reference counted representation of JSON values, which is, for example, inherently thread-safe (though jq isn't using atomic operations for refcount management yet). The library is easy to use and powerful.

Ultimately the main thing I love about jq (and why I contribute to it) is the jq language itself. It reminds me of my one-time favorite, Icon. But in a world where C is still the champion of systems programming (until Rust takes over?), it's real handy to have a C JSON library _and_ a functional DSL that's easy to invoke from C.

<comment><USER5> One of jq's maintainers (nicowilliams) often mentions Icon as a source of inspiration.

<comment><USER4> @nicowilliams (github) and cryptonector (HN) are one and the same ;)

It's no secret either, just look at my commit messages' email address :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They use this tool extensively at Spotify. I saw a presentation by [https://twitter.com/jooon](https://twitter.com/jooon), when I was over there in September last year.

It is a really cool tool. Especially since they use JSON internally for almost all of their data representations.

Jq + Percol[1] is kind of cool.

[1] [https://github.com/mooz/percol](https://github.com/mooz/percol) \- was on HN a few days ago.

<comment><USER7> If percol is based on aut-fu, then it's probably not that good. The screenshot shows auto-fu, I know that zsh-plugin, but it's really messy and does very aggressive auto-completion (erasing your previous input). I'd rather use fish- shell instead.

<comment><USER8> no percol is not shell plugin, but a simple cmdline util used in a pipeline, I suggest you take a look. I understand that animation on the website is a little bit confusing though.

<comment><USER7> oh, cool! I'll take a look then. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a really neat tool.

If you just need pretty printing and don't have jq installed, you can use the python command line with the built in JSON module:

wget [http://reddit.com/.json](http://reddit.com/.json) | python -mjson.tool

<comment><USER10> # (fixed) output to stdout:

wget -O- [http://reddit.com/.json](http://reddit.com/.json) | python -mjson.tool

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This script drops you into a coffescript REPL with the json loaded into memory under the variable j.

I find it nice to be able to loop the data, define new subsets, filter it with functions, etc.

It was a 10 minute slap-job to get it together, so it does barf on particularly large datasets. The obvious reason is that it serialises the JSON into an argument for a child process. Shouldn't be too hard to resolve if anyone feels like it.

[https://github.com/davidbanham/dotfiles/commit/0ea950373604e...](https://github.com/davidbanham/dotfiles/commit/0ea950373604e74f71c44fe99c8758572dc656db)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been using this tool to build a bash library for a JSON/REST API and I can attest to its usefulness. Filter huge data sets down to just the fields you want, mutate, select, search, filter. Most everything I've wanted to do this can handle. Plus it's fast and dead simple to install. Kudos to the devs for this fantastic tool that I hope will soon be part of the default CL toolset across the board.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm using this tool with curl in scripts calling AWS api. Looking for an id of an object (security group, autoscaling group etc.) with its name and referencing it afterward in another command.

<comment><USER14> Hey, me too! It's pretty awesome, although the documentation/examples aren't as great as they could be - it took me some time to figure out how to properly parse arrays, and I'm still not sure how to actually do what I want to do (I want to convert an array of two instance objects into an array with just two instance IDs.

<comment> mh-

        % aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids '["i-3026a249","i-28739551"]' \
        | jq '[.Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId]'
        [
          "i-28739551",
          "i-3026a249"
        ]

<comment><USER14> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know of a similar tool for XML? In particular, it would be cool to have a useful way to run xpath, and maybe xquery, from the command line. The tools I've found have unfortunate interfaces, e.g. they won't read XML from stdin.

<comment><USER16> Have you tried XMLStarlet[1]? It's my go-to for command line XML processing.

[1] [http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/](http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER17> Even with libxml's xmllint you can do some xpath stuff: [http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Xml_grep](http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Xml_grep)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been using it for over a year - especially with AWS CLI, but, I'm a little displeased that it only has the query feature (duh) and does not have a little more like merging JSONs (I think it only has appending). Another issue is that I wasn't able to find release notes for v1.4 - what's new since v1.3? There other similar tools, but they require node, Python packages, etc. jq really is installed with one command and no dependencies.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'm a schmuck, I forgot to add release notes :(

I've been thinking I need to do a 1.4.1 release just for that!

(Plus we're getting some cool new features suddenly. @wtlangford (on github) is working on regexps, for example. Maybe a 1.4.1 so soon would be justified.)

<comment><USER18> No, you're anything, but a schmuck! Thanks for the great project!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Been using jq for a while now. Probably since the last hn post. My biggest gripe with jq is the name and asking for help on stack overflow - the jq tag is an alias to the jquery tag. Someone with tag edit level rep should really fix that.

<comment><USER20> You can probably make a post on meta stack about it

<comment><USER4> [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=jq](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=jq)

<comment><USER20> the system works!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's a cute little jq script I used to munge some json around.

[https://gist.github.com/tbelaire/d00cb77fb0db7b38bed2](https://gist.github.com/tbelaire/d00cb77fb0db7b38bed2)

</comment><comment><USER22> I just use it just as a pretty-printer for the console (jq '.') , and it does the job very well.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't stress how useful this is. I use it to process AWS SQS messages for debugging. Incredibly powerful tool.

I have also used it to validate sudokus, because I can.

[https://github.com/slapresta/jq-sudoku](https://github.com/slapresta/jq- sudoku)

</comment><comment><USER23> If you get and build latest from master, you get the --sort-keys commandline option

And just like that, you have an amazing base for diffing json documents of arbitrary complexity:

        vimdiff <( cat doc1 | jq --sort-keys . ) <( cat doc2 | jq --sort-keys . )

<comment><USER4> It's in 1.4!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been using this for a while, and it's wonderful to parse the output from API calls requested via curl, as well as quickly checking a specific package.json field from the npm output. The --json flag is handy for the latter.

</comment><comment><USER25> Awesome stuff, thanks! Will give it a try really soon.

</comment><comment><USER26> This can help Docker automation by processing the output of `docker inspect`.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a great tool. I've longed for an equivalent for YAML.

</comment><comment><USER28> underscore-cli: a similar tool, in JS (node)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896054)

</comment><comment><USER29> Cool, just grabbed it with sudo apt-get install jq</comment>


Sony to acquire Ericsson's share of Sony Ericsson - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/ericsson-sony-to-acquire-ericssons-share-of-sony-ericsson-stkm-eric-1578330.htm

<comment><USER2> Seems very reasonable from Ericsson's point of view, and was probably just a matter of time.

Sony Ericsson has moved away from using the hardware platforms delevoped by ST-Ericsson (since they have been too late to market) and using Qualcom like many other Android handset makers which means there's little point in keeping them in their portfolio. Also, with the standardized features of all Android phones, it won't help in selling new end-to-end network features to operators either since most handsets support the same features. Sony Ericsson has been quite late in launching new features (still no LTE phones for example), so Ericsson was already relying on other partners to support deals with operators.

Hopefully this makes Ericsson focus on their competency (networks) and allows Sony to do something interesting with the mobile phone branch.

<comment><USER3> > allows Sony to do something interesting with the mobile phone branch.

That's the problem. When was the last time Sony did anything interesting? All their "interesting" attempts at integration with the PS3 have been met with a huge yawn by consumers.

<comment><USER2> Good point. I'd be very surprised if they managed to do anything to really stand out from the crowd. Most likely they'll continue the PS integration, but as you say it's not really interesting. And with more and more games coming to standard Android phones it's not that big a differentiator.

I see the deal more as Ericsson selling since they don't need Sony Ericsson than Sony buying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just have this observation ..

Apple makes only one mobile phone model, just one, all other mobile phone makers have several products lines and models of their mobile phones

Apple obviously is leading the way currently

As Designers, which do you think is the better approach, one model or many

My next phone will probably not be an iphone, probably an xperia mini

I personally think, we had a design wave here mutiple models -> single model -> multiple models

I mean, people went from wanting different things, to wanting the same thing, to back wanting different things

And I think this is how, sony, samsung and motorolla will start to eat into the iphone market share

Of course the other school of thought is, we only need one good model, mobile are more like TVs rather than Cars (all TVs nowadays look the same)

Which direction do you think will lead the way?

<comment><USER5> Apple _isn't_ leading the way if you're talking about mobile phone sales. They were leading a niche of the market. Last I saw, indications are that Samsung had even outsold Apple in the smartphone segment last quarter.

And if you think all TV's nowadays look the same I don't think you've seriously shopped for a TV. Yes, the _overall shape_ is the same, but there's a wide variety of designs within the constraints of utility. By constraints of utility I mean that all TV's look similar because we all want a screen that is suitable for existing programming and that means mostly 16:9 format, and it is impractical to have a TV that protrudes in all kinds of directions beyond the screen itself, so the overall design is limited to a 16:9 screen plus a reasonably narrow frame. We also don't generally want bright colors because it is distracting.

It is similar for mobiles - it is limited by weight and size constraints tied to our desire to carry them in our pockets and hold them in our hands, while having a large displace.

<comment><USER6> TVs are different, because with a TV you don't really care about how it looks.

Phones on the other hand ARE also fashion gadgets.

For this reason alone, there are companies out there that are dressing normal phones in gold and precious stones. It's crazy, but it goes to show that customers do want to set themselves apart.

<comment><USER7> I've heard from salespeople that Samsung TVs are among the easiest to sell precisely because they look good and are thin. Maybe a bit more because of the latter, but that still counts as looks.

Obviously one's phone's is more important because it's with you all the time being shown off, but design matters for everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bear in mind, when Sony say stuff like "to keep up with competitors", they don't mean proper marketing or sales channels like Samsung or HTC, they mean stupid stuff like the domestic competitor Sharp who have integration between their android phones and their TVs which looks nice on paper, but will influence absolutely noone to buy their phone.

</comment><comment><USER8> Disastrous, add more weight to a sinking ship.

<comment><USER9> Sony Ericsson has been consistently profitable. Not hugely, but still. I don't see how adding a profitable company to their portfolio will somehow endanger them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Finally.</comment>


Descrambling the voice inversion scrambler - <AUTHOR> http://windytan.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/descrambling-voice-inversion.html <comment><USER2> IIRC the scrambler I wrote for a marine radio application had 5 bands (which means each is about 600Hz wide for a 3kHz channel). The codes the user input would select where each of the 5 bands were mapped to. I think we had 16 combinations and that was pushing it -- it is pretty amazing what you can do to voice and still have it be understandable.</comment>


To Understand the Benefits of Tax Reform, Start by Understanding Apple's Taxes - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/10/31/trump-tax-reform-apple-multinational-companies/ <comment><USER2> The best way to think of the tax code is as an enormous legacy codebase whose authors were largely unaware of one another, often working at cross purposes, and subject to an ever changing set of requirements -- which requirements, importantly, are at _least_ as much about social engineering as they are about raising money.

There is a constant tension between:

\- backward compatibility ("we built our business around [tax provision]! you can't remove it now!"),

\- expansion of the codebase to accommodate new requirements ("we must get more $activity; let's add a tax credit to incentivize it!")

\- refactoring to better serve existing organizational goals ("we are leaking billions of dollars because of [loophole]! we have to close it now!")

This is why things like the "flat tax" or other simplification schemes are perennially floated, and also why they continue to get shot down: desires to simplify and refactor run into desires to support existing worfklows as well as current and anticipated future social goals, and they just can't get off the ground.

This is also why I end up posting basically the same thing in every tax thread, from the late great Martin Ginsburg, from whom I was lucky enough to take corporate tax: " _Everything_ in the tax code is simultaneously a trap for the unwary, and an opportunity for the well-advised."

So your own interactions with the tax code should be considered similar to, say, an SAP deployment or something. Theoretically it's all documented and you can figure it out on your own, but in real life an expensive consultant will pay for herself over and over.

<comment><USER3> Another thing that has always bothered me about tax code (and criminal code but that's another story) is the explicit use of constant dollar amounts. For instance, how the child tax credit should be $1,000, the minimum wage should be $9.15, and the penalty for illegally parking your car should be $52.13. All of these numbers are completely arbitrary, and if they had any justification when they were decided, they lose their relationship to reality quickly over time as the money supply and other economic factors shift over time.

We have computers now. Why can't we write a code where the incentives and disincentives stay where we intend them to relative to the state of the economy?

<comment><USER4> Because politicians (in the aggregate) are stupid lawyers who barely passed math, at least in the US.

They come up with ideas, and when special interests and other actors end up completely breaking the intent by changing certain pieces, they still proceed with implementing the broken legislation for public perception reasons of "doing something".

See the Affordable Care Act for example. Obama wanted a public option to keep insurance companies in check and help drive down the price-gouging from the providers. Joe Lieberman, as the 60th Democrat in the Senate, was able to block that by pulling his vote, allowing for a fillibuster. He wanted the public option removed, and he got his wish.

Obama pushed the law through anyway, despite the fact that this change completely broke the design of the law. Insurance companies now saw it as a subsidy for new customers, which is what it was. The broken design failed to reign in costs, which made the subsidy provided by the government inadequate to make it affordable to the working-class, resulting in the law effectively being a Medicaid expansion and nothing more. The prices charged by insurance companies through the exchange were too high to ease the pain of people too rich for Medicaid but too

Obama originally treated it as a huge victory. It wasn't. It was broken on delivery. But hey, they "pushed something through" and "won."

Now we are getting honest assessment of it as it implodes, and the Democrats are talking about single-payer again.

<comment><USER5> The alternative was nothing. A flawed system that leads to single player is still a victory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a bunch of propaganda. The central theme of the article is that if Apple could repatriate its $200 Billion, it would have more money to invest and create more jobs. But this assumes that Apple is not investing as much as it would like.

There is no reason to believe that Apple feels it needs to invest more. And, if it did, it could borrow the money from its foreign subsidiaries and spend it without paying any taxes (and charge itself whatever it wanted in interest since it's borrowing from itself).

As the past 9 years since the Great Recession have shown, companies do not make investments just because they have more money. They invest for business reasons. It is true that Apple investors will be worth more if the money is repatriated, but more jobs?? not so much.

<comment><USER7> So if repatriated, the money disappears? It's not reinvested in Apple or other companies, put in the bank to be loaned out to other businesses, nor spent on goods and services?

Cause all three of those things create jobs.

<comment><USER8> I think OP's point is that its not "guaranteed" to do any of the things you listed. If the FED raises rates, the companies may want to hold it, as an example. Or if the best business application is to do a buyback or dividend, you're bypassing the jobs part.

We're also talking two buckets of money. The money coming back in to the US, and the taxes the govt collects. I think this one-time tax money in this case is already spent with these tax cuts?

<comment><USER7> both buybacks and dividends create jobs. in fact without buybacks and dividends no one would ever start a business and no jobs whatever be created, Other than sole proprietors.

<comment><USER9> Or worker co-ops.

<comment><USER7> Problem with worker co-ops is access to capital. In a world where dividends and buybacks were banned, where would they get capital? Not from investors, because few sole proprietors would be wealthy enough to invest. Not from banks, because they would be hugely capital starved without investors to fund them.

I'd like to imagine Ford Motor company could have been a worker co-op, but truth is it couldn't until later in life. Henry Ford raised $28,000 to start it in 1902, nominally that's around $1M today, but it's actually far more than that. Average income was around $450 a year, so he raised about 60 times the average worker's annual salary. Without wealthy investors, there was no shot at starting Ford. Once it was churning out Model Ts by the millions the workers co-op could have succeeded, but they could never get there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So if you're a US citizen or permanent resident or even just a tax resident (which includes working here on a temporary visa), the US taxes you on worldwide income. Any income from overseas needs to be reported (up to 3 times!) and taxed. With most countries you get credit for any taxes you paid in those countries. State taxes work the same in that you may have to file in more than one state and credit is given from taxes in one state to the others. This is actually all pretty sensible albeit tedious (particularly the part about reporting foreign assets and income).

Where it starts to go bonkers is for US citizens and PRs who live overseas. They still have to file taxes with the IRS for all worldwide income and report foreign assets and income as if they were present in the US. They get a certain amount of income (<$100k) each yeah exempted from US income taxes. Most countries do not do this.

My first problem is this: why exactly can't we treat companies the same way? I would be all for a 20% corporate tax rate if it meant a tax on worldwide income with credits for any taxes paid to foreign governments... exactly like individuals are treated. Why isn't this on the table? Is it that hard?

Second problem: in this world of multinationals and particularly when dealing with IP, companies seem to have free reign to book income in any country they like. Like any sales in the UK (and probably the EU as a whole) are reported to Irish subsidiaries.

To me this is fundamentally wrong. In other instances this is called transfer pricing and is illegal. For completeness, the classic case of transfer pricing is this:

Acme Inc buys a sofa from China for $200 in China and sells it in the US for $1000. That's $800 taxable profit right? Not so fast. Acme Inc instead forms a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands who buys that sofa from China for $200 and then sells it to the parent company for $990. Now only $10 is taxable in the US and $790 is taxed in the Cayman Islands at a zero or near-zero rate.

Now if that money is ever repatriated it's taxed. Thing is, it never is. Not until an ill-advised tax holiday and then the whole cycle repeats.

This brings me to the third problem: to get around the fact that all their money is offshore, companies borrow money in the US, which up until 1-2 years ago was at zero or near-zero levels. This debt covers their expenses and saves them from repatriating foreign profits and paying tax on them.

So why exactly don't we treat ever $1 borrow as repatriating $1 in foreign profits and tax it?

Now that would be true tax reform. Well, if we also got rid of the noticeably absent carried interest tax credit.

What a joke.

<comment><USER11> Why won't the US tax unrepatriated foreign income of corporations like they do for people? One answer is that the only reason they can get away with citizens is that they are a captive audience. Renouncing your US citizenship is painful. Corporate re-headquatering isn't so hard. Since a corporation can pick a home country, why would they pick the only country in the world that taxes money made both overseas and domestically?

<comment><USER10> It's not a question of picking a home country. If you operate in the US, you're subject to US laws. Give companies the choice of not operating here in the US at all or paying (at least) the US corporate tax rate on all profits either by paying the US or by paying some foreign government (which with double taxation would be credited towards US taxes owed).

Imagine if the EU also did this. It would go a damn long way to ending this absurd practice of offshoring profits.

<comment><USER12> Oh wow, if we did that, then the EU and much of Asia would follow in retaliation. So companies operating in the USA would have to pay taxes to the USA, China, the EU, on all their worldwide income, insane.

Let's not forget the problem that not all tax systems are very compatible, they all define income differently, some of them rely more on taxes that aren't income based.

<comment><USER10> There's already an established principle of double taxation treaties between countries so worst case the company would pay max((country.tax_rate for country in company.operating_countries)).

It's also worth noting that there has been and is a strong effort to harmonize accounting across countries (eg GAAP). Countries might tax differently but that really doesn't matter since you're just slicing up the same pie differently.

Don't get me wrong: this isn't simple. For one thing, once a company likes Apple gets into a position of choosing how to divide up $20B in taxes between countries, this gives them a lot of power. Countries will try and incentivize them to pay taxes to them instead of someone else.

Again there is precedent for this sort of thing and arrangements can be treated by the like of the EU or even the WTO as unfair tax subsidies. But it could get complicated. Like what if Ireland decides to exempt Apple from sales taxes and the UK decides to exempt Apple from payroll taxes to incentivize them to pay taxes their instead of somewhere else?

This is one reason why it'd be important to, at the same time, establish a minimum baseline for what taxes a multinational owes in each jurisdiction. The fact that a company can do billions of pounds in business in the UK and report all that income Ireland thus paying a few million pounds in taxes each year is ridiculous.

How about this for an idea: establish how much revenue comes from each country based on the source so if someone in UK hands you money then that money is attributed to the UK. Divide that by total global revenue and then at least that percentage of profit has to be taxed in that counry.

<comment><USER11> > Divide that by total global revenue and then at least that percentage of > profit has to be taxed in that counry.

So companies like Amazon which are profitable domestically but are losing money overseas would pay taxes on profits from US sales to countries where they're losing money?

Presumably companies would just find ways to have high revenue and little to no profit in low tax countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I recently read an excellent book on this subject: [https://www.amazon.com/Fine-Mess-Global-Simpler- Efficient/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Fine-Mess-Global-Simpler- Efficient/dp/1594205515)

I was kind of amazed that a book about the tax system could be page turner -- it was very interesting!

<comment><USER14> What was so good about the book? What didn't you know before that you do know now?

<comment><USER13> How ingenious the VAT is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The only actual argument this article makes is:

 _Multinationals could often put foreign cash to more profitable use in the U.S. by making acquisitions, building plants, paying special dividends or repurchasing stock._

But that quickly falls apart: First, Apple is in no way constrained by cash in its investments. And even financially weaker companies could still use foreign cash reserves as collateral to get credit at almost insignificantly low interest rates.

More importantly: investments can be expensed. If you hire employees, their wages reduce your profit, and therefore your tax burden. The corporate tax only applies to profit, not revenue. Apple could repatriate those $200 billion, hire ten million employees, and wouldn't pay a dime in taxes.

Other than that, it almost seems like an effort to use these corporations' tax-avoidance schemes as an argument to reward them. The logic in that is the same as striking murder from the criminal code to reduce crime

<comment><USER7> Investments can't be expensed for tax purposes. If they repatriate $200B, they owe the state of CA roughly $20B and the US $63B in income taxes, no matter what they invest it in.

They could invest in hiring tons of employees and their salaries would be expenses (mostly future expenses) l. But that's no free ride, those employees need to increase sales to cover their costs or the money is wasted. If my business makes $1M this year and i pay a contractor $1M so I don't owe taxes this year, that contractor better build something worth more than a million or it was s huge waste. Losing $1M to save $350K is really bad business.

Imagine if the contractors project sold for $900k next year. Great, you deferred taxes a year, but still owe $315K on the contractor sale next year, and you lost $100k. Net loss $65,000. Dumb, dumb dumb.

What Apple would actually do if it repatriated the $200B is

a) pay the $80B in state/federal taxes, b) pay $117B in dividends, so its shareholders would have to pay at least $20B in state/federal dividend taxes, for a total tax of around $100B. But it's worse than that.

Remember, the $200B is only what's left after paying about $25B in income taxes to foreign governments. Your company earns $225B, and can only pay about 45% to you, and 55% ends up going to various taxes (note we ignored VAT/Excise/Payroll taxes too).

Now do you understand why Apple doesn't repatriate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Many of the same people who get angry about the complex tax acrobatics used by big corporations also deride people like Rand Paul who have suggested a one page tax code.

But what about my deduction for this? What about the deduction for that? Hundreds of thousands of pages later, that's how you end up with loopholes that only the savvy/wealthy are able to find.

That's the kind of thinking that led to this mess. Like good developers, we should abstract the tax code to simply define the acceptable conditions for something to be deducted. Then, the Treasury can provide a list of 'standard' deductions somewhere that won't attract any extra scrutiny, and which will suffice for most purposes. Things like a minimum rent amount, minimum food expenses, etc.

<comment><USER17> I would be with Rand Paul but his proposals would mainly reduce taxes for the wealth without making much of a difference for the average guy.

<comment><USER16> I see nothing wrong with only agreeing with a subset of a person's politics. I support some of his tax reform ideas (especially the common theme of simplifying the current system) not because they are perfect, but because they would be a large non-incremental improvement on the current system.

<comment><USER17> I don't think his plans would be an improvement because they would just make inequality even larger. I don't think we need that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> FTA: > But the U.S. code provides ample room for sheltering and avoiding taxes on foreign income, a major reason it needs an overhaul. The rules essentially divide foreign profits into three categories. One bucket of profits is more or less taxed at the full rate of 35%. On a second bucket, the multinational can defer paying the U.S. tax due. And a third category is excluded from all U.S. taxation, amounting to corporate America's biggest loophole.

> Apple generates more foreign income that any other U.S. company. In FY'16, > it booked $41.1 billion pre-tax profits outside the U.S., or 67% of the > $61.4 billion total.

> It's the third category that amounts to a big tax break, and explains why > Apple's effective rate is well below the statutory 35%.

> Once again, if Apple had faced the full 35% rate, it would have paid $21.46 > billion in federal taxes (as well as another $990 million to the states). > Instead, it paid $10.444 billion in cash, and accrued $5.241 billion in U.S. > tax owed on foreign profits, but deferred to be paid later. That's the total > of $15.685 billion that it booked in tax expense on its income statement. > The difference between that number and the approximately $21.5 billion it > would have paid at the 35% rate is the almost $5.6 billion attributed > "indefinitely invested foreign earnings under the GAAP rules."

</comment><comment><USER19> Not choosing a side, what is the justification for taxing foreign profits?

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I'm being serious, I can't understand why corporations are taxed at all. The money going to US citizens already gets taxed as income (although at capital gains rates). Even if the money funnels through a few corporations before it gets to the individual.

Money that would go to foreign shareholders (or foreign corporations) should be taxed at the same rate.

If we didn't tax businesses, they'd be more incentivized to stay in the US or even move here.

What would we lose from not taxing corporations (and adjusting capital gains tax to make up for that)?

<comment><USER21> You could also argue that income tax makes no sense, because the people are going to pay sales tax or property tax with it anyway.

The more you concentrate the tax in one area of the economy, the more you incentiveize people to try to find a way around that specific tax. Spreading it out reduces the risk of making people behave otherwise irrationally just to avoid paying tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While we may all be free marketeers and capitalists here, I think we do have to recognize that large corporations have very different interests than workers, managers and small business owners. We should also recognize that Fortune is not going to print anything that's not in a large corporation's very best interests. I didn't read this article, but it would seem that by recognizing the source, and reading the title, we can decide not to bother with large corporation propaganda.

<comment><USER23> There's a difference between pro-business and pro-market. There's nothing inconsistent with believing in free markets/rule of law and at the same time believing that a tax system should be fair. Scandinavian countries that people refer to as socialist are actually free market economies (in that they score just as well as the U.S. in the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom), but have more extensive tax and redistribution programs than the U.S.</comment></comment>


Whataboutism - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism <comment><USER2> I don't understand how other humans can't see through this.

I also don't understand how humans can accept liars or populists as leaders.

"This time is different", is the only rationalizing I've gotten from the masses. They are forever wrong, and there seems to be no way to prevent it.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to track leads and prospects? - <AUTHOR>

For those dealing with leads and prospects, I'm wondering what you're using to organize those leads and follow ups, and how you manage the process?<p>I'm interested in installed FOSS, or cloud solutions. If there are any very active Rails solutions, that might be interesting, as well.  Thoughts? <comment><USER2> <http://leadlogsys.com>

<http://fatfreecrm.com>

<http://pipelinedeals.com>

<http://highrisehq.com>

<http://oprius.com>

<http://salesforce.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> We use SugarCRM: (PHP/MySQL or hosted) <http://www.sugarcrm.com/> there's an open source version : <http://www.sugarforge.org/></comment>


Meteor.js in Action: Create an App, Test with Laika – Michael Herman - <AUTHOR> http://mjhea0.github.com/blog/2014/01/29/meteor-dot-js-in-action-create-an-app-test-with-laika#.UulJo-vVoGI.hackernews <comment><USER2> Meteor is a very impressive js framework. I cannot wait to find out how it will look like in a year :-)</comment>


IBM's School Could Fix Education and Tech's Diversity Gap - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/08/p-tech/

<comment><USER2> This not bad. I see a lot of "Oh they should have gone to a 4 year college". Well for many applicants here it might not be a choice between 4 a year college and this. It might be a choice between no college and this.

And no matter what the startup world tells you IBM is still a respected name in the real IT world (banks, finance, large retail stores, etc).

And I am saying even though I don't like the likes of University of Phoenix and friends. However IBM is an established technology not in the primary business of sucking down fat student loans from the government.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's almost like defunding and closing all the vocational schools and programs in the 80s and 90s wasn't as good of an idea as it seemed...

</comment><comment><USER4> This approach troubles me deeply. A graduate of IBM's program who doesn't get picked up by IBM is probably SOL. As opposed to a graduate of a traditional four-year BS in CS program.

<comment><USER5> People are already hiring out of "bootcamp"-style programming education programs that have far less repute. Why is IBM doing it going to be worse than what's already the best way to transition your career?

<comment><USER4> I have similar concerns about bootcamps. None of the ones I know about seem to be equipping their students for careers instead of jobs.

Which is to say it may not be worse, but I also don't see where it's better.

<comment><USER6> Most programming is about experience these days ("make this webapp and connect it to a DB"). If someone can demonstrate the basics in a bootcamp, don't see how they couldn't learn on the job and after work by stackoverflowing what they haven't learned yet.

<comment><USER4> The difference between having a job in programming and having a career in programming is your grasp of the fundamentals of computing. This is because the ability of a person to learn new technologies and techniques is largely a function of their grasp of fundamentals. Fundamentals that bootcamps uniformly skip over in the interests of getting to experience faster.

In the abstract, it is of course fully, completely, and totally possible for a person to learn this independently or on the job. In practice, that is sufficiently rare as to not be worth discussing. Jobs where relational calculus is taught in the office are, I suspect, similarly rare.

Bootcamp skills are only useful so long as the person never needs to learn a different paradigm, learn significantly different technologies that require thinking differently, move into a different type of programming, or desires significant technical career advancement. Those things require a mix of fundamental knowledge and experience.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER7> I feel like you're taking an elitist position... I've heard this applied to professionals at every level of education. A quick find-and-replace applied to your comment follows.

\---

The difference between having a job in programming and having a career in programming is your grasp of the fundamentals of computing. This is because the ability of a person to learn new technologies and techniques is largely a function of their grasp of fundamentals.

Fundamentals that _Undergraduate Computer Science Programs_ uniformly skip over in the interests of getting to experience faster.

In the abstract, it is of course fully, completely, and totally possible for a person to learn this independently or on the job. In practice, that is sufficiently rare as to not be worth discussing. Jobs where _Recent Developments in Deep Learning at Stanford_ are taught in the office are, I suspect, similarly rare.

 _Undergraduate Computer Science_ skills are only useful so long as the person never needs to learn a different paradigm, learn significantly different technologies that require thinking differently, move into a different type of programming, or desires significant technical career advancement. Those things require a mix of fundamental knowledge and experience.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER4> I've been accused of elitism before on this subject.

Let me tell you about a person who did so. This person wanted to help the team design database schemas. This person did not have a background with strong computer science fundamentals and did not understand relational calculus. The person struggled to contribute, ultimately becoming a drag on the schema design process. When offered educational materials on the subject of relational calculus that would have addressed this lack of knowledge, using them was quickly given up as too difficult. This person was thus sharply limited, and extremely frustrated, by their lack of _Undergraduate Computer Science_ fundamentals.

Your find-and-replace is only meaningful if you treat "Undergraduate Computer Science" as a string literal with no semantic meaning.

Elitist is not the same as wrong. Medical education is pretty elitist too. That doesn't mean I want to designate everyone who owns a knife as a surgeon. Should I find-and-replace your comment to the tune of s/elitist/populist/, on the assumption that elitism == bad and populism == good?

And before you say that we're just programmers and thus not dealing with life- critical things like doctors are, I refer you to the case of Therac-25.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Q has IBM changed and be going to hire these kids. I went to interview at IBM a while back and they very quickly lost interest when they found I did not have a BSC.</comment>


Lack of sleep boosts levels of Alzheimer's proteins - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-lack-boosts-alzheimer-proteins.html <comment><USER3> Blogspam of

[https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/lack-sleep-boosts-levels- alz...](https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/lack-sleep-boosts-levels-alzheimers- proteins/)

</comment><comment><USER4> But remember that the largest effects are from darkness, not sleep per se. True darkness (can't see your hand), at very regular times and long enough to create biphasic sleep. Red light doesn't trigger ipRGCs, and melatonin leads garbage clean up in mitochondria.

<comment><USER5> That's interesting, because I've acquired an aversion to having the light off when I sleep. For some reason it doesn't inhibit me from falling asleep with it on any more and while I can sleep with it off, it doesn't feel quite right somehow. I also have developed irregular sleep patterns, spending anywhere from 5 to 22 hours awake, and 8-10 asleep.

<comment><USER6> Alcohol also doesn't inhibit one from falling asleep (on the contrary), but sleep phases are messed up. I feel quite rested after one night with alcohol, but things fall apart after 2-3 consecutive nights.

What I mean is.. if I were you, I would try sleeping in pitch black for a week and then check how I've adjusted.

<comment><USER7> Alcohol screws you up in long term - try some valerian - it produces the same hormone that makes you fall asleep on booze GABA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In recent weeks if not months, HN has been my go-to "fret about getting Alzheimer's/dementia" newsfeed.

<comment><USER9> Has it come up here before? I don't really recall.

<comment><USER8> Search turns up way more, but these were the recent stories that came to mind:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15978252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15978252) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477048) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508714)

<comment><USER10> I think that was a joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This video lecture by Professor Matthew Walker is great to learn more on the importance of sleep: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXflBZXAucQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXflBZXAucQ)

<comment><USER12> I can highly recommend the book - Why We Sleep - mentioned at the top of the video. It goes into quite some depth on the reasons for and mechanics of sleep in a way I found approachable for someone with only a layman's understanding of chemistry:

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501144316](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501144316)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of course we still don't actually know if amyloid beta causes Alzheimer's, or if it's just another symptom.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how the protein collects in people like myself, who will routinely stay up 24-30 hours, but then sleep 12-14 hours after.

<comment><USER15> It says in the article, clearing away happens at the same rate, but production happens at a higher rate when awake. Your peak concentration of this protein will be higher, thus causing more damage. This seems to indicate that frequent naps and polyphasic sleep may be good.

<comment><USER14> But if the rate of clearage is the same then because I'm sleeping longer it should clear more of the protein?

<comment><USER16> The amount of harmful protein cleared is likely proportional to the product of concentrations of the harmful protein and the clearing protein, because the two need to interact. That means that clearing becomes slower as less harmful protein is left.

Prolonging the clearing process would mean that you spend a longer time at very low concentration, but not that the minimum concentration would be much lower. If the harm of high concentrations is disproportionally higher, the longer time at lower concentration would be unable to balance that out.

However, this is only based on my rough intuition and I didn't even do any napkin math. If you want to really get a quantifiable comparison, you'd better find out about the concrete interactions in question and calculate it yourself.

Or you could ask a physician who specializes in sleep (I forget what they are called), but if it isn't already published science somewhere, it's unlikely they could tell you anything other than that what you're doing is highly unusual and you should probably stop.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the intuition. We're done very soon and hope to never go this hard again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's worth pointing out that while b-amyloid and tau proteins are _suspected_ of playing a crucial role in Alzheimer's, disease it isn't actually confirmed.

</comment><comment><USER18> It is hard to tell from this article, but looking at the paper the key thing they were focusing on is the mechanism for the previously observed diurnal variation in amyloid beta. They do some modeling that they say suggests that the main factor allowing levels to decrease at night is reduced production rather than increased clearance. One implication of this is "Given that there are many approved therapies targeting sleep, the effect of sleep-inducing drugs on CSF Aβ should be tested in individuals with sleep disruption and promising candidates investigated in AD prevention trials."

</comment><comment><USER7> I keep wondering how much impact cannabis has.

I recently found out that it inhibits REM sleep, which really starts to feel after few months being stoned. The worst part is coming back from it - <USER2> dreams are extra vivid.

Now the article mentions long-wave sleep being the cause tho, but I can't help to think that constant REM sleep deprevation has to have some sort of impact in the long term, perhaps we haven't discovered it yet.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this process helped by taking melatonin?

</comment><comment><USER20> Given that the etiology of Alzheimer's is tied to the very same proteins that must be cleared out during sleep, and that the requirements of sleep decrease with age, there seems to be a cyclical feedback loop at play here, insofar as healthy aging does not typically difficulties with R&R. (This example becomes more salient in the case of supergenarians who can rest and let little stress them a great deal.) Compound that with a likely immunodeficient response during sleep (where the brain is supposed to become more spongy) for these proteins to be cleared out and a poorly functioning blood-brain barrier, it would seem finding treatments that focus on these self-restorative responses would be most beneficial. Whereas treatments that temporarily boost processing capabilities will only somewhat delay the onset clearly shows that this is most likely the case.

I wonder what study on general EEG signatures may reveal with respect to the efficiency with which the cleanup process can be facilitated thereby. Perhaps meditative practices could be demonstrated as a form of protein-cache clearing even when in a waking, albeit altered, state of consciousness.

<comment><USER18> It sounds like production is the key here not clearance but I am also interested if meditation affects that. I did a quick search and didn't see anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> To be clear, afaik, the lack of sleep doesn't increase levels; sleep lowers levels, as sleep is the body's / brain's recovery process.

<comment><USER18> It looks like they are saying the opposite, that the lack of sleep does increase levels.

<comment><USER21> Waking ups levels. Sleep lowers them. This is the natural cycle/process. Remove sleep and yes levels will increase. But the cause isn't being awake, it's the lack of sleep. Yes?

<comment><USER18> My understanding is that they are saying that the cause is being awake. I don't understand the modeling they are doing, but they are saying that the time curve of the concentration should be different if clearance was changing at night, so they think there is little change in clearance but only in production.

They mention one alternative that would also fit the data: "In order for decreased glymphatic clearance during sleep deprivation to increase soluble CSF Aβ, a decrease in irreversible losses (e.g. to the bloodstream or lymphatics) due to prolonged overnight waking would have to be perfectly matched by an increase in Aβ clearance to CSF. This is plausible but unlikely and not identifiable from the current data."

They say "The SILK kinetics results unequivocally show that glymphatic clearance alone, without compensation from other clearance mechanisms, would be ineffective in protecting the brain from AD because overall clearance rates are not changing. Glymphatic clearance may potentially contribute to the protective effects of sleep against AD, but changes in production rate seem to be the necessary and critical factor."

Also worth noting that they were unable to test if changes in slow wave sleep made a difference because sodium oxybate didn't actually increase slow wave sleep in that group vs normal sleepers.

It does sound like this contradicts previous research, at least: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880190/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880190/)

They do cite that paper but do not have a detailed analysis of how their results could be consistant or are contradictory to what that study found. In that study radioactive amyloid beta was directly injected into mice and then how much of it was left was observed after varying amounts of time later and in sleeping vs. awake vs anesthetized. Maybe newly produced amyloid beta could be cleared instead of the radiolabeled amyloid beta or maybe the injected amyloid beta had different clearanace properties than naturally generated amyloid beta, but I don't know if either of those are plausable. Maybe they are just contradictory results.

If it is correct that the production changes are what makes the difference, I wonder why that is the case considering the much larger fluid exchange that happens at night. Also I wonder if some of the other similar substances that cause problems if they accumulate too much have a similar issue. Maybe stuff that can be cleared at high rate is easier to get rid of with relatively little sleep and stuff that can't is more likely to cause trouble over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That lacking sleep creates all kinds of disease is no surprise. The question is _how_ to get sleep.

<comment><USER23> The answer is going to sleep, at a regular time. Put down the computer, put down the cell phone, put down the games. Go to bed early. Above all else I make sure I get my eight hours every night. If I'm tossing and turning, I'll call into work. As a result, I am NEVER sick. Ever. Anecdotal sure, but if I don't get sleep, I feel like I'm coming down with something.

Also naps, take advantage of them. I'll often go home on lunch, and take a snooze for an hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reads like a commercial for Sodium oxybate. Also makes me want to further hone in on my sleep.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is this why living life according to a stupid fucking alarm clock, where I have to blast my ears with noise at 6AM, to snooze until I actually get out of bed at 7AM every morning, be out the door by 8AM, and wade through shitty commuter traffic until 9AM, makes me want to stab people?

I honestly am not worth talking to before 11AM, and I need at least half an hour to settle in and check emails. Oh, you're taking lunch at noon? Good for you. See you at 1PM. I don't care. I'll stay until 8PM. Just give me my mornings back, please?

Why the fuck am I in 10AM meetings? Why are people awake at 9AM? I have to drink a gallon of coffee to make it to 5PM, and that fucks my shit up until 2AM. I fucking hate all of you.</comment>


Fox News Digitally Alters Images of Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/fox-news-runs-digitally-altered-images-in-coverage-of-seattles-protests-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone/ <comment><USER2> I have no respect for Fox News, but this is pretty much a non-story. They ran an image of two photos from the unrest in Seattle mashed up together alongside stories of the unrest in Seattle. It wasn't like it was from Gaza or Escape from New York or something. And in TV news terms it was probably run as a graphic and not a photo of the action on the ground. It's also worth noting that the resulting photo is really no more shocking or scandalous than the source photos.

<comment><USER3> Photoshopping an armed man into a photograph from days ago and implying it was an on-the-ground example of the area is more than a little egregious.

If this resembled the current situation even remotely, they would have simply used one of the many photos from the countless on the ground photographers.

Saying this is a non-story is absolutely mind boggling.

<comment><USER4> I agree. They wanted to fool people into thinking the situation is worse than it really is, so they faked a photograph.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A successful penny-auction bot - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/qix/penny-bot <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer them.

Unfortunately working on my startup came first over challenging them legally -- since the value of the winnings was over $5000, I would have had to fly to their local court in order to proceed legally.

<comment><USER2> If placing a bet increases the time remaining, then how does "sniping" work and what advantage does your bot give you?

<comment><USER3> Looking at the readme, it looks like his strategy is to anticipate the other bots and bid a few seconds before they try to snipe it.

      There are quite often a number of people waiting to snipe that bid after the
      time limit has exceeded. When this happens, even though my bot prevented the
      auction from ending, they land up with the timer counting down (and then I
      need to bid to prevent them from winning.) For this reason the bot has a
      percentage chance it will try 'kill', by bidding with 4-5s remaining, and
      hoping all the snipers miss.hoping all the snipers miss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> i wrote up some content and code (just a greasemonkey script) for doing this on swoopo last year - [http://jcs.org/notaweblog/2009/03/06/trying_to_game_swoopo_c...](http://jcs.org/notaweblog/2009/03/06/trying_to_game_swoopo_com/).

i assume the site you did this with doesn't have the same problem as swoopo did, where their automated server-side bidding mechanism was favored over manual bids?

do you have any figures on how long it took to win any particular auctions, how much money it cost, and how many auctions you lost?

<comment><AUTHOR> The automated bidding was randomly in the last ten seconds (from a brief look at Swoopo its the same). That was quite easily beaten my a bot that could bid at the last second.

I put in equivalent of $3,000

Won: iPhone 4 32gb, $200 vouchers, Dell Streak, 64gb iPad, 640gb hdd, BlackBerry Torch, 2x GPS, Wii game, 32gb iPod, 100gm gold bar (and still had roughly $300 of bids left)

^ All in two weeks which raised a lot of red flags and then got my account suspended. It was a little greedy perhaps - but I figured they'd probably update their terms and conditions with text against bots at which point I would have stopped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wasn't aware that penny auctions are continuously winnable at all.

<comment><USER6> Now that there are bots, they really aren't.

<comment><USER7> See my answer above but bots really don't change anything about penny auctions. Most allow for placing multiple bids which effectively automates the auto-bids and does what bots would do but better.

<comment><USER8> Well, it's "better" in the sense that they may allow things that a bot couldn't realistically pull off, but it's not really better because everyone has access to the tool. The advantage of writing a bot is exploiting a loophole in the system that most people aren't aware of. If everyone has the same tools then it's a fools game through and through, at least for something as simple as penny auctions (Poker is another story obviously).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Static site Jekyll vs. Middleman for a portfolio with blog? - <AUTHOR>

Any thoughts from people who've used them? Which should I go with? <comment><USER2> Jekyll is easier to get started with.

If you know ruby, middleman can be very powerful if not it can be a pain.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty good with Ruby. Does Middleman offer more power than Jekyll? All I need really is to upload my Bootstrap front-end, showcase my work, have a blog with Disqus comments integrated.

What does Middleman offer that Jekyll doesn't?</comment></comment>


SCO Loses - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070810165237718 <comment><USER2> Right now, SCO has lost ~70% of their value [http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=SCOX](http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=SCOX)

</comment><comment><USER2> Finally.</comment>


Estimote Wins Best Hardware Startup At TechCrunch Disrupt SF - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/estimote-wins-best-hardware-startup-at-techcrunch-disrupt-sf/

<comment><USER2> Their idea looks great. I want to see this in action. Could this be NFC killer?

<comment><USER3> With Apple getting behind BLE it's pretty much a done deal. QR-codes and RFID also dead.</comment></comment>


Extracting Immutable Objects - <AUTHOR> https://push.cx/2013/extracting-immutable-objects <comment><USER2> Most seem like Value Objects[http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ValueObject.html](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ValueObject.html)

I usually find there are several value objects for every entity [https://dddsamplenet.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=DDD%20build...](https://dddsamplenet.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=DDD%20building%20blocks%20in%20DDDSample.Net)

<comment><USER3> 'Value Object' and 'Immutable Object' are a contradiction in terms. Immutability refers to values, not 'objects'.

<comment><USER2> Not sure what you are getting at. I assume you are using a specific definition of these terms from a particular domain?

Immutable is just a word that means unchanging, as in "immutable laws of nature". . Consequently Objects can be immutable if they cannot change after creation. This seems a pretty commonly held view [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immutable_object](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immutable_object)

How would you define Objects and Values?

<comment><USER4> An object has state by definition.

More to the point, an object has agency: It gets to decide how to interpret messages sent to it (this is why we say that putting setters on classes turns objects back into mere data structures [1]).

[http://www.devx.com/enterprise/the-vision-of-kay-and- fieldin...](http://www.devx.com/enterprise/the-vision-of-kay-and-fielding- growable-systems-that-last-for-decades.html) (right after the seventh paragraph)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Activity Walls...Twitter and Instagram displays for events in - <AUTHOR> http://www.activitywalls.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Founder of Eventjoy here. We unbundled some of the core experience at Eventjoy to roll this out as a separate product. Would love any feedback.

<comment><USER2> I'm glad you posted this here. I saw it on Product Hunt but couldn't comment. I think the whole service, especially the UX, is awesome. I'm just curious if/how you're monetising this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This product is a part of Eventjoy.com, so it fits in with our overall strategy. We'll be rolling out other premium features for it soon. If you have any feedback, would love to hear.</comment></comment></comment>


Stocks Perform Better if Women Are on Company Boards - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-31/women-as-directors-beat-men-only-boards-in-company-stock-return.html <comment><USER2> Not only cause and correlation but what's the cause?

Do companies with women on their board perform better, or do companies that perform better take women into their boards.

Do companies that have the mindset to take on less dept, have the mindset to encourage women to take board positions, or do companies with women in board positions get a mindset to take on less dept.

Do companies that perform better take on less dept or do companies that take on less dept perform better.

The article is inconclusive for me.

(I personally think women in director positions are a good thing because an all-men board obviously can't consist of the best people available)

<comment><USER3> _(I personally think women in director positions are a good thing because an all-men board obviously can't consist of the best people available)_

I don't want to turn this into a flame war about gender, but this does not seem obvious to me. It's certainly not the case in other fields. For example, the best mathematicians are predominantly male. (No female has ever won the Fields Medal or Abel Prize.) The same goes for computer science (only two women have won the Turing Award).

I'm not saying there's no inertia or social dynamics involved, but publicly- traded companies have large incentives to select the best board members they can find. Considering these incentives, a massive imbalance would make sense if one gender was better at running public companies.

<comment><USER2> While it's not clear if this is gender specific or culture.

<comment><USER4> To be the devil's advocate (I do NOT seriously defend sexism) why does the cause matter if you are looking for the best person? If women are almost always better potters in Norway, and you must make pots in Norway, then it makes sense that you would hire a lot of women.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whilst a attention grabbing headline article I'd be more interested in a better breakdown and also a more uptodate one given "according to a report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute, created in 2008 to analyze trends expected to affect global markets.". So thats 2008, four years ago. Things have moved on, but why is this only now making the news?

Diversity is always good and the size of boards, statisticaly for them to not have one single women would be indicative of a narror mindset and also one that is less able to adapt - period. So in that this is hardly supprising in any way.

Not a greatly written article and I say that as they quote a 2008 report and then go on about companies who were not even a factor in 2008, which to me seems somewhat attention news based. Still simple fact that say a board of 12 people has no women and fails to adapt as well as a board that has some is perhaps obvious to me and many others. Now the question I'd ask is if you had a all women board would they perform as well and if that was the case, then I'd say the battle of the sex's is over and women won at board level. Sadly there isn't enough data to even touch upon that question, one day. Still I'd like to see boards made up of people who can do the job, nomatter there sex, preferences, colour or whatever. But I also understand the bias's and hurdles many face and in that I'm all for boards having women on them, I just hope it is done for the right reasons and not a case of we saw some old report and now need a token women to make our shares look good approach.

One last thought, those who are on boards, clearly are exceptional people as they have had to stand out above the many forms of descrimination that legacy has to offer. So is it becasue there women or just exceptional good at what they do and in that measuring things and putting a sex label on it is in many ways the kind of mentality that has limited many women getting to were they deserve.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I think anyone with any basic logic course under their belt can see many cause and effect fallacies going on here. I'd expect a little more from Bloomberg.

Is it that they perform better because there are women on the board, that women make better decision, or that companies that perform better are more likely to also have women on the board? It could be any number of things and any reasonable person wouldn't even need these things spelled out for them.

<comment><USER7> Indeed not only that could be that mixing genders means mixing perspectives and this leads to better decision-making.

Additionally if a business is seen as a riskier investment does this mean that women would be less interested in investing time/money in it?

<comment><USER8> If mixing perspectives is better for boards, does it mean they would benefit from putting more anarchists, Inuits and children on board? They also deliver other perspectives.

<comment><USER7> You know, Quakers still give children over a certain age (depending on meeting, maybe 7) full _veto_ power over meeting business. And anarchists might have some helpful insights. I don't know what you have against Inuits though.

<comment><USER8> I'd say that if you'd bring in an average Inuit into a board meeting, you'd have some language problems, and you'd have to explain a lot of things to him.

My argument is that there is such a thing as "too much diversity" - if a group that has to make some kind of a decision is too diverse, it will have communication problems. Therefore it's not as simple as saying "oh, anything that brings in more diversity is better for a board".

<comment><USER7> If the Innuit doesn't know anything about the business, then there is a different issue.

If the business is drilling for oil in the Arctic, I think the average Innuit would have something important to say, though.

But how many average anything do you see on boards of directors, I wonder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Correlation vs. Causation. Good day.

</comment><comment><USER10> World wide? So among other questions to come to mind, maybe companies in some countries happened to perform better than in other countries. For example if companies in liberal countries performed better, they would be likely to also have more female board members.

</comment><comment><USER11> what about companies with no men on board?

<comment><USER12> Well, clearly, there is a strong correlation between a company existing and men being on the board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> " _So is it because they're women or just exceptionally good at what they do?_ "

Both. Women are biologically known to diversify their risks much more than men. Both in life and in business. Companies started by women have a much smaller chance of failing and reach profitability much sooner. Female business owners are more steady and less risky. Male business owners tend to take more risk, thus getting ahead faster but at the cost of failing much faster as well. The reason we don't see big companies started by women is that taking "crazy risks" are usually a masculine trait caused by testosterone. And in order to win quickly you have to take a lot more risk. When women are administered testosterone they become more aggressive, masculine in risk taking analysis, and violent. In both men and women, the more testosterone the subject's body produces the more violent, aggressive, commanding, and confident the subject is. These findings from many studies over the course of decades. From testosterone injections in women to checking the testosterone levels of prison inmates (surprise! the most violent inmates had the highest levels of testosterone). Testosterone provides a boost in confidence and dominance but as a side effect a boost in violence and aggression. This also explains why men who hold children, even if it's a doll, had immediate decreases in testosterone levels. It's a sort of evolutionary response to try to prevent men from harming their offspring. Historicall, almost every war or genocide in human history was caused, planned, and carried out exclusively by men.

People don't like hearing those studies, they like to think that they're in control of their own life and are not slaves to their gender, genitals, or hormones. But the evidence clearly shows that we are not as much in control of ourselves as we think we are.

Too many men, like too much testosterone, is not a good thing. (see - testosterone's role in wallstreet's collapse [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-31/managing- wal...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-31/managing-wall-streets- winner-effect)) In the old economy [More risk = higher rewards] so the men won that round. Of course the worldwide economic slump is changing that. Right now it's more important to slowly grow your company safely, plan for the long term instead of the short term, and keep the company you have while growing slowly. The only two groups of people that are more prone to follow those rules are 1) women and 2)men with low testosterone levels.

So in this economic downturn women are really going to shine, which is hopefully going to open the door to more opportunities in government and leadership positions. I for one am very happy to see this, we've seen what the men have done/caused, it's time to see how the women will handle things.

<comment><USER14> Where did the "women are less risky" thing come from? The Bundesbank published a paper about women bankers being riskier.

[http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cd4a3ac0-77f6-11e1-b437-00144...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cd4a3ac0-77f6-11e1-b437-00144feab49a.html)

<comment><USER4> I can't speak to the application in business. It's a well established idea in biology.

Females invest more biologically in eggs and pregnancy. Men may have many more children than women but also have greater risk of having none. Similar patterns show up in lots of areas. At human conception there are significantly more males than females, at birth they are close to 50/50 - males are more fragile. Even after that point, on average, men take more risks, die earlier and are more likely to be murdered.

So again, I don't have expertise to know what any of this has to do with who should run a company, the correlation may be extremely dodgy; but men are at a biological level riskier critters than women.

<comment><USER8> Any scientific research to support that?

Just because you can put a nice story behind a theory doesn't make it true.

<comment><USER7> Some if it ties in with this:

<http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/105013.php> at least regarding sex at conception. I am not entirely sure about whether we really have hard direct data regarding sex at conception but that's one possibility regarding that data. On the other hand, it's possible that there are biological differences between sperm carrying X and Y chromosomes and that these might be selected for one way or another.

However, trans-historically (closer to my field of expertise) it is generally true that men take on riskier endeavors than women do, and that women follow as areas develop. Frontiers generally tend to be nearly exclusively male (at one point the Wild West had a gender ratio of 50 men per woman, and this is not isolated. Consider the early classical practice of having the men march off in search of fortune, for example.

The thing to keep in mind here is that women have a narrower window of opportunity to start a family than men do. If you are 40 and male, and you are not married, you could still get married to a younger woman and have kids, but if you are 40 and female, you are less likely to be able to have kids. Therefore men can generally better afford to move into immature markets and riskier endeavors than women can.

<comment><USER8> Well, I think the question is not whether an average woman is more or less risky than an average man, but whether an average woman banker/manager is more or less risky than an average man on that position.

Think of that one woman per 50 man on the Wild West. How tolerant to risk must she have been to go to a dangerous land populated mostly by men. All of her family must've told her to stay home, and she had no role models to follow.

Also, you mentioned that in biology it's well established that women are (inherently?) less adventurous than man. You've got research which talks about sex at conception, but I was asking about a research which proves that any such relation persists beyond conception and is not a result of sociological effects (because we're talking biology here).

<comment><USER7> Well, I wasn't the one who brought up biology and in fact in my brief mention suggested there were some questions.

The larger issue is trans-historicly men tend to be, well, pioneers, and women tend to follow and build civilization. To the extent that there is a biological inherent risk aspect, it is because of differences in timeframes to establish a family. Men and women are different in this regard biologically. Men can have kids when relatively old while women cannot.

For this reason if you expect someone to take risks while young, this favors men over women, particularly if the risk is that one might not be as established by the time one is, say, 30 years old. It is different, for example, to require an extensive post-doc program followed by a lengthy tenure track in order to get a coveted academic position if you are a man and can delay getting married and having kids than if you are a woman.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: do you have troubles buying shoes? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious, because for me it is impossible to buy shoes that fit. But my size is on the fringe, so the selection is not so big. Maybe for most people it isn't an issue. At the moment I don't own a single pair of satisfactory shoes, and I don't even know where to turn to find some.
Since it is a recurring problem for me, I keep thinking it would be great to have build on demand shoes. Atm I don't know anything about how shoes are being made, but who knows, eventually I might just be annoyed enough to get serious.
I have considered getting handmade expensive shoes, but then I heard they are actually even harder on the feet. But I admit I haven't really talked to a shoemaker yet. <comment><USER2> If its sneakers you're looking for, you need to check out New Balance; they have many sizes...check out their wikipedia page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Size isn't a problem for me, but comfort always was until I started buying Blundstones. You get them 0.5-1 size smaller than you usually wear and break them in. Worst, most painful 3 weeks of my shoe-wearing life, but after that they were like indestructible slippers.</comment>


Ask HN: "The Joel Test" and other gauges of quality software companies - <AUTHOR>

I've seen a few discussions on "The Joel Test" [1], but most of them are dated.  I wanted to see who still considers this a good gauge for quality software companies.<p>Assuming that I'm being interviewed for a developer position, are these good questions for me to ask?  Are there any other "must ask" questions that aren't covered here?<p>[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html <comment><AUTHOR> "The Joel Test" clickable: [1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html></comment>


Is your website a leaky bucket? 4 scenarios for user retention - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2007/12/4-scenarios-for.html

<comment><USER2> I've been wondering lately what is a good way of setting up infrastructure to measure these kinds of engagement and retention metrics?

Google Analytics doesn't cut it for this kind of analysis.

</comment><comment><USER3> Andrew, what's a good way to contact you? Would you shoot me an email plz (email in profile)?

</comment><comment><USER4> my website is so wet;(</comment>