RaiBlocks: A Feeless Distributed Cryptocurrency Network [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://raiblocks.net/media/RaiBlocks_Whitepaper__English.pdf <comment><USER2> The RAIblocks whitepaper is worth reading just as a reference on how a technical paper should be written.

(Disclosure: I became interested in RAI on NYE and recently invested some money in it)

The RAI secret sauce is the "block lattice" design where each account is its own blockchain and you only need to care about the chains you want to do business with, unless you encounter conflicts. Conflicts are resolved by proof-of-stake voting. If you don't run a full node, you choose a representative to vote on your behalf.

Today I spent the afternoon playing around with a conceptual design in ClojureScript for a better desktop wallet: [http://petrustheron.com/posts/xrb- wallet-concept/](http://petrustheron.com/posts/xrb-wallet-concept/)

From a contrarian investor point-of-view, RAIBlocks is interesting because it is at the juncture of a terrible wallet experience, a weird name, dubious exchanges (at least UI wise), an okay website - but an excellent whitepaper and a working protocol that's free to transact on.

If it scales, I predict it will do well. My biggest concern is C++ as an implementation language, compared to, say OCaml that is easier to verify. I also don't have a strong feel for the robustness of the conflict resolution mechanism. However, the author is proficient and the codebase is readable.

The closest DAG impl. AFAIC, is Hashgraph, based on supermajority consensus that counts transactions that were "strongly witnessed", but it is patented with no coin presently for sale.

<comment><USER3> One thing that I don't get is what is the incentive to vote on tx?

<comment><USER2> As I see it, if you don't vote the wrong president might win. Dirty txes jeopardise the asset value and you could be left with a tyrant in your chain who has even more voting stake. It's self-regulating in that way. But there may be another consistency issue I'm not aware of.

<comment><USER3> So there is a conflicting tx, your software is going to vote on it automatically. How do you pick which tx is the 'clean' one and which one is the 'dirty' one?

<comment><USER2> When your node encounters a conflict (a fork), where two signed blocks have the same parent (double spend attempt), it creates a vote referencing the block and broadcasts it to the network.

The nodes vote and the weighted majority (>51%) is taken as the real fork. The weight of a node's vote is the sum of the balances all accounts that have named that node as its representative.

The key thing here is that when a fork or missing block occurs, _only the accounts referenced in the transaction are affected_. The rest of the network proceeds with processing transactions for other accounts.

The voting mechanism is to wait for 4 voting periods (1 minute total) and keep a cumulative tally of incoming votes from the other representatives. The most popular block wins majority and is kept. The other block is discarded.

Refer to page 4 (bottom right) of the whitepaper: [https://raiblocks.net/media/RaiBlocks_Whitepaper__English.pd...](https://raiblocks.net/media/RaiBlocks_Whitepaper__English.pdf)

As far as I am concerned, this is a great design (if you buy into proof-of- stake, which I do).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So - the currency is entirely "mined" and distributed already?

And that period is over? So is a small handful of a few developers/early- adopters that are trying to sell off a currency that they already own in its entirety?

Okay.

<comment><USER5> RaiBlocks was distributed using a captcha faucet. [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1381323.msg14252334#...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1381323.msg14252334#msg14252334)

<comment><USER6> The only people who would have solved the captcha faucet to get coins at virtually next to nothing value at that time would be the ones who believed in the project right from the start which to me is a fair distribution scheme. ICO based distribution is usually more greed driven. In this case the developers and team were more motivated in building a new innovative blockchain protocol as opposed to raising money by simply issuing ERC20 tokens. Speaks a lot about the project in itself. And the team has even succeeded in building a beautiful, disruptive scalable protocol and currency with no transaction fee. I've tried RaiBlocks and so far have been impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A word of caution: while DAG-only chains are a promising area of research for cryptocurrency data structures, there are many unresolved problems with them.

IOTA solves it with a centralized coordinator and claims to have decentralized solutions being planned. RaiBlocks is, in my opinion, more honest about its vulnerabilities and its progress in solving them (they say they're working on it). Since RaiBlocks has no centralized coordinator, it could come under attack as soon as a shorting market emerges for it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Glad to see a coin that has it's own codebase (not some fork). And the lattice approach sure is innovative :)

<comment><USER9> For the curious, the repo is here: [https://github.com/clemahieu/raiblocks](https://github.com/clemahieu/raiblocks)

Looking at the commit stats, it looks like almost all the work so far is by clemahieu. It'll be interesting to see if his codebase is solid enough to allow more contributors to easily hop in.

I thought their wiki page listing potential attacks was also pretty interesting: [https://github.com/clemahieu/raiblocks/wiki/Attacks](https://github.com/clemahieu/raiblocks/wiki/Attacks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone help me understand.

If a block chain (or whatever you want to call your token of choice) doesn't have any fees, how is it different from just having a database. No fees mean that every transaction has the same value so there is no transaction prioriization other than time. This seems like a glorified eventually consistent database synchronization algorithm. In a fee based blockchain, I can pay more to get my transactions through before someone else.

Again... I'm not a PHD, nor am I even that smart so can someone break this down.

<comment><USER8> The nodes are paid from "created coins", at the expense of everyone diluting. Could call it artificial inflation.

> This seems like a glorified eventually consistent database synchronization > algorithm.

To some extend that is what a blockchain is. Also: immutable, no-need-to- trust-every-node, KV, and sometimes with the ability to perform smart contracts.

> In a fee based blockchain, I can pay more to get my transactions through > before someone else.

Yes. Either way, as long as you tx comes through "quick enough"... :)

<comment><USER10> Ah okay thanks for helping. I guess in the case of RaiBlocks, since you're only transacting currency (not Turing complete smart contracts) there isn't really a need for fees to prevent the halting problem like you have with Ethereum.

I've made a list of tokens that I'm trying to categorize[1] so I think I've got RaiBlocks in the right place.

Is Bitcoin slightly over designed in how the fee structure is implemented for the problem it's solving?

[1] - [https://cryptostream.com/token- utility/](https://cryptostream.com/token-utility/)

<comment><USER11> In BTC land PoW = fee. In RaiBlocks they use it more like a Captcha before sending a transaction, effectively getting rid of Fees because it's just as useful anti-spam. (However, I think that fee transactions are actually quite important in a blockchain because you don't want nodes wasting resource adding and checking nonsense even if the captcha was computed.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would love to see a balanced discussion of pros and cons of the unusual lattice design used by raiblocks.

<comment><USER13> I often find myself judging cryptocurrency whitepapers by the number and breath of citations. Has the author's read previous attack papers and developed appropriate countermeasures. How does it compare to other schemes? Are the authors aware of the definitions and methods used in distributed systems?

However this approach should be tempered by the fact that the Bitcoin whitepaper would score poorly on this metric.

<comment><USER14> BTC was also closer to the ground floor of this research, you wouldn't expect it to be able to cite too many papers in similar subjects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel stupid cause I brushed this one aside in the summer in favor of iota... If only I'd found out about the faucet!

<comment><USER16> Same. Even though HackerNews despises IOTA for rolling their own crypto, building on ternary and having a centralized coordinator, I still think that IF IOTA manages to solve their issues and can establish themselves as an IOT powerhouse, they'll be absolutely enormous.

Also IOTA and Rai aren't really competitors. So for the time being, I hold both.

<comment><USER15> Cryptocurrency is about new, exciting ways of applying cryptography. People idolize the blockchain, but I think what's cooler than that is coming up with new ways to use crypto. DAGs are very cool. They can be used to compress volumetric data down to less than 1 bit/voxel! So its exciting to me that people are exploring DAGs + cryptography.

Anyway, the lesson for me was too look past the hype just a little deeper. At the time raiblocks was an underdog, so I closed the slack and forgot about it. At the very least, I could have learned a little more about it.

Lately I've really been curious about pascalcoin's approach. Its blockchain is trimmed constantly, acting as a short term, working memory. Its supposed to be very fast. Unfortunately, it's written in pascal, which has very crusty tools! Someone should clone pascalcoin in another obscure but modern language with cross platform tools. I think it'd be a hit. Haskellcoin? That rhymes with Pascal coin and Haskell is cooler. Ocamlcoin? Doesn't rhyme but Ocaml is cool too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> the concept seems cool but the creator doesn't inspire much hope to me

<comment><USER18> why's that?

<comment><USER17> [https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7nnf4v/yes_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7nnf4v/yes_there_is_a_bug_in_the_xrb_node_software_no_it/)

<comment><USER19> How is that an issue? It looks like they are trying to help.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Debian Technical Committee chooses systemd as default init system - <AUTHOR> https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/02/msg00332.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The previous submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203364) was a bit premature. Now that Colin Watson has voted other options before F, it's clear that D (systemd) will be the winner.</comment>


The iPod of Baby Tricycles - <AUTHOR> http://jonsteinberg.com/2010/03/the-ipod-of-baby-tricycles/ <comment><USER2> Don't be fooled by the word iPod - this has nothing to do with that, and has only to do with someone wanting to justify overpaying for a toy.

<comment><USER3> What's to justify? Cheap trikes are hard to ride and steer. I regret not getting my kids something decent, like a Kettler. Cheap kids' bikes are horrid too. I wonder: could a leasing system for quality kids' bikes/trikes work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So the author discovers the benefits of a quality product from a European company that has been making these things for 60 years.

Kettler isn't expensive for the sake of being expensive. It's just built well and it lasts. Families hand these things down. It just happens to not be built here (or in China).</comment>


McDonald's Actual Foursquare Test Numbers: 2,865 Check-Ins - <AUTHOR> http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1734203/mcdonalds-actual-foursquare-test-numbers-865-check-ins <comment><USER2> I usually hate it when newspapers waste most of their space poorly defining terms, leaving no room for the actual interesting bits. (This is especially true in science articles.) This article, however, would do very well to mention what Foursquare is. I assume it's not the elementary school ball game, since that doesn't involve any sort of checkins. Nonetheless, how cool would that be? I would totally go to McDonald's if I could play four square while waiting for my food.

<comment><USER3> I'd totally go to McDonald's if they served food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Take away from the article: McDonald's is a tough subject for piloting a FourSquare use-case. Too ubiquitous of a brand to be "discovered", customers probably not interested in location games, and how much more can you sweeten a deal at McDonald's.</comment>


Contra – social opinions platform - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/contra-social-opinions-platform/id965626204

<comment><USER2> Hey guys, one of the makers of Contra here, and we're super excited to launch Contra to the world!

Contra is a new way to get educated on any circumstance, be it a product comparison, news article, or current affair. Post two-sided topics, and acquire a well-rounded portfolio of opinions from multiple people! And if you're feeling strongly about something - go ahead and write your own opinion.

If you have any questions or feedback we'd love to hear it! Reach out to us!

Do download the app, too!</comment>


IBM Is Going Agile - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/04/27/ibm-cio-designs-new-it-workflow-for-struggling-tech-giant/ <comment><USER2> Alternate headline: "Agile Development Ski-Jumps Over Shark!"

Alternate alternate headline: "Final Nail in Agile Development Coffin is Big and Blue."

Agile is dead. Long live the new development process buzzwords.

It is now time again to rename everything, come up with new jargon and trademarks to describe the patterns and anti-patterns of the development processes that actually work for us, and set those words free. Then they can be co-opted and peddled by consultants. Afterward, they are embraced, extended, and extinguished by management. And then the new words change meaning to describe all the old things, and the circle of business buzzwords turns anew.

<comment><USER3> So, just to be clear, the fact that it's being used by a big company, and/or referred to in the WSJ means it's useless?

<comment><USER2> I didn't say the process is useless. That remains to be seen. My point was that the events described in the article have stretched the meaning of Agile so far that it can now be used to describe any software development process at all, regardless of whether it actually conforms to the principles that originally inspired Agile.

Agile can now mean anything. Therefore it means nothing.

The new IBM process won't be entirely useless. It will likely be very expensive for IBM consulting customers and slightly damaging to the souls of the software professionals required to use it. It will be the IBM development process, with a new set of names and jargon terms.

Imagine, for example, that the new development process is called Celeriflex. All the SV startups jump on Celeriflex like fleamen on a Belmont. They crank out awesome software and make huge exits. Some of those startup veterans use their payout to create consultancies to teach Celeriflex to other software businesses. They make money hand over fist. Then businesses whose primary product is not software notice. Their management hears good things about Celeriflex and orders the CTO/CIO to implement it. Eventually, the largest companies for whom software is a significant source of revenue keep doing what they have been doing for decades and use words culled from Celeriflex consultant documentation to describe it. At that point, Celeriflex is dead. The SV startups are using Speedcode now...

<comment><USER4> Add a few diagrams and you can brand your meta-process linguistic lifecycle :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Agile in a big company:

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2005-11-16](http://dilbert.com/strip/2005-11-16)

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2007-11-26](http://dilbert.com/strip/2007-11-26)

<comment><USER6> Some years ago I came to realize that someone I was working for was using "Agile" in the sense of the first strip.

We weren't at a big company...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked at IBM for 5 years, and some of the teams I was on used "agile" development methods. In that they used the names, but our "scrums" were an hour long, in a meeting room, with everyone bringing their laptop. Management more than 1 level up expected waterfall-like development, so it all just meshed badly.

I really don't hold out much hope that this is going to work out that well without a whole bunch of training and people actually wanting it.

<comment><USER8> I spent a long time at a boutique consultancy that specialized in rescuing at- risk software projects for fortune 100 firms. Mainly, that meant we got very, very good at building up waterfall adapters for our internal processes.

I won't say we were following agile, exactly, but the concept remains approximately the same. Big company management thrives on the mistaken notion that they can plan out the world years in advance. The key insights that made our adapters work were 1) no one has enough of a memory to hold anyone to those plans even six months down the line and 2) no one expects anything to work anyway, since they're all used to their plans falling over.

Which isn't to say this is going to work. I suspect that, like all things recent IBM, any success they find will be more attributable to inertia than execution excellence.

edit: clarification

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ouch. My heart goes out to all those men and women at IBM who are about to get "Agiled".

<comment><USER10> I always look at these announcements in the same way as gazing in on the office of some mid level executive where the bookshelf has a book for every business process type and programming language.

It is the old, "we do that" done for appearance sake, execution and actual knowledge rarely come in to play. If anything it is a club to wield to drive out those who management does not like; usually those who do get something done regardless of the the rules to prevent that

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised that there is no mention of Rational Team Concert:

[http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/rtc](http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/rtc)

Used in a big way to implement Agile within IBM and provides a nice coherent system for task management.

<comment><USER12> I'd rather unclog blocked toilets with my bare hands than touch anything with "Rational" on its name

<comment><USER13> As someone who regularly uses Git (and prefers it), RTC really isn't all that bad. I'd even go so far as to recommend it for some teams/companies.

<comment><USER12> As someone who wasted time and sanity with that ginourmous piece of crap called Clearcase, I'd rather flush money down the toilet than ever give money to IBM/Rational again

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The mission is to have innovation and the speed of small companies..."

If they keep laying off people, eventually they _will_ be a small company. Problem solved!

<comment><USER15> > _If they keep laying off people, eventually they will be a small company._

They'll _be_ a small company, but they'll have the innovation and speed of a large company :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd trust this all more if it was coming from the teams back up, rather than edict going down.

<comment><USER17> Also keep in mind this article is in the Wall Street Journal... take it with a grain of stock price PR salt... sadly developers and engineers at IBM are going to get the sh* end of that stick.

Anecdotally... we have a lot of IBM stuff here and had a consultant here last week teaching a class... he was an old guard IBMer, about to retire... every day he was here I was treated to at least 1 story about how great it used to be to work at IBM, and how those days are over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Enterprise companies are all going agile this year, I bet someone from Gartner is suggesting this shift... and the result is clearly not that effective.

<comment><USER19> Seriously, who instigates these fads? It's like every year there's some new business model that everyone follows like a bunch of lemmings. Last year (or the year before?) it was everyone working in the office (as opposed to at home) because someone at Yahoo! decreed that was the way to go.

<comment><USER20> If it isn't obvious, announcements like these are purely PR. Once the general public starts reading the stories like "Facebook is agile and uses open offices", they begin to associate the experience of their Facebook iPhone app with the result using agile and open offices. They then ask their boss why their CRUD accounting/finance/analytics app can't look and feel like FB and then those bosses (the CRUD vendor clients) put pressure on their vendors (such as IBM) to change or they're going elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> ( _standard disclaimer - I do not speak for IBM. I 'm not even a current employee_)

We were doing this at big blue seven years ago IIRC, and while it's a large company to transition like this, I don't think it's exactly new.

It's not quite agile as the writers of the agile manifesto would have it, but then most 'agile' seems beset by consultants and process, and IBM probably do it better than a bunch of other places I've worked.

RTC is a bit of a heavyweight and quite unwieldy though. Give me git and a text editor any day of the week....

</comment><comment><USER22> #1) Nothing says Agile like top down process design!

#2) I didn't quite believe Michael O Church's anti-Agile essay [1], but nothing justifies it more than this quote:

> The system is designed to foster accountability. And with that, finally, > comes speed.

[1] [https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/on- programme...](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/on-programmers- deadlines-and-agile/)

</comment><comment><USER23> That seems unlikely. Big companies like big ships have a lot of inertia. They may adapt "Agile", but almost certainly in name only.

<comment><USER24> This was the case in my few months there. We had "sprints" and "stories" but 75% of all the stories in every sprint would just get pushed to the next sprint with no thought behind it. Part of that was because our stories themselves were so broad and were worked in a long term waterfall manner. Our standups were just everyone falling asleep while each person took their turn saying what they did the previous day. If someone did actually have impediments or useful information to convey, most did not pay attention enough to notice. And finally, we didn't have retrospectives, which are a great time to be able to reflect on how to improve as a team and prevent issues in the future.

A lot of this came down to the people, but it didn't help that there was no leadership to help steer it in a good direction or notice the underlying issues. Story points were fabricated to help give good spreadsheets and charts to upper management, which led to us working insane overtime before our release due to how behind we were.

This is just one anecdote though, and I know there were other departments much better off than mine was. It was enough for me to want to get out though after I realized how difficult it was to get any change in place.

<comment><USER25> Sounds like pro-forma agile - phagile - if you will.

I was taught agile by a certified scrum master, but the dude was completely serious about 'this just lets you fail faster, and you _will_ fail, and often, as this process starts' which really helped.

He was right. It took a while to learn how to keep people honest and create succinct stories with a real scope. Particularly the guys who want to be architects or engineers perceive their jobs to start with the abstract and work down to specificity.

They can struggle with "What should this screen to today. Right now, today?" and want to talk about database design, message passing, data structures or anything else that doesn't answer the question.

At least for me and my planning it was far easier to make stories as small as possible and let the complexity build into a release which was roughly plotted out after velocity stabilized (even if into an upward slope).

I was probably doing it all wrong, but the hardest part was always keeping anyone from saying "well 6 more 2 weeks sprints means your release date is x, right?". Everyone wanted to just take the backlog depth, divide by velocity and project a date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If IBM didn't use Agile, what did they use?

The non-greedy benefit of Agile is that work and how work happens becomes more understandable in a consistent and reasonably-well studied manner.

<comment><USER11> "Waterfall" with detailed project schedules in tools like MS-Project (which BTW, is still useful for all-process oriented projects). I'm a little confused by the article since the parts of IBM I've seen have been using Agile for years (scrums, iterations, epics/themes/stories).

<comment><USER27> I'm part of a team within IBM that's been using Agile (Scrum) for the last 6 years.

Originally it was just quite close to Waterfall dressed up as Agile but "they" (senior management) are finally getting their heads around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> if IBM says its "going agile" then its time to start funeral arrangements for agile.

</comment><comment><USER29> like putting lipstick on a pig...</comment>


Beer delivered to your work place every friday. - <AUTHOR> https://www.deskbeers.com/ <comment><USER2> Finally an original app stock photo.

Instead of (wooden desk, mac air, moleskine, coffee) it's (wooden desk, mac air, moleskine, beer).

In all seriousness, I really wish I lived in London. For stuff like this and also it seems to have a pretty big indie game dev scene.

</comment><comment><USER3> Actually, bringing beer to work isn't that difficult. I mean, if you can get away with it. It's not something like pizza that has to be prepared and has a time window for consumption.

<comment><USER4> Nobody likes warm beer though, especially if you're in a hot climate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Where do you deliver?

>Just London at the moment, but we hope to expand to other areas real soon.

On the front page. Very nice to see up front if I can sign up or not right off the bat.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea of sampling different beers every week, this looks interesting.

What's the alcohol licensing situation like?

<comment><USER7> "alcohol licensing situation like"

Jesus - just enjoy the beers.

<comment><USER6> I love beer, but I also enjoy learning things :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We deliver multiples of 12 bottles at £2.50+VAT per bottle."

That's US$4/bottle for lazy converters. On the high side if you're coming from sourcing your own, but not horrible when factoring in delivery and the variety. Not many people would get through more than 2-3 on an average Friday while they wrap up work. I like the idea.

Here in my office, we get cases of craft beer direct from the source and pay cash. What's $65/case in a bottleshop is $50 direct and is there at all times rather than just Friday. Beer lasts pretty well, so it's rarely an issue to stock up in advance.

I think these guys should revise the "5pm at the latest" to more like "midday at the latest". I wouldn't want to be waiting past 2pm some tough days or 4pm any time. Not in the "desperate alcoholic" sense, but as a comparison to "how it is at the moment".

Regular subscription would be the key to income. Any spares can be saved for later or taken home. Could even stock up in advance and deliver mixed cases with tasting notes pretty easily, rather than a dozen at a time.

<comment><USER9> Given that you're converting this to dollars, I assume you're in America? (or Canada?)

If so, comparing the price of this delivered beer in the uk to the price in America is meaningless.

<comment><USER8> No, in Australia. Just figured many interested readers would think in USD and that it was a reasonably close comparison for Australians too.

Beer in America is indeed hilariously cheap so you're right - context is very different.

<comment><USER10> I pretty much drink only craft beer. When I was in NYC recently, I made sure to check out some bars with craft beer.

After tip, it wasn't really cheaper than my usual Sydney haunts. Is this a function of location and drink choice?

<comment><USER9> Yes. Alcohol in America is shockingly cheap.

I was just in Alaska for the weekend, and we bought two 24 packs for the price of one back in Canada (and Canada is a little cheaper than Oz). Hard liquor is less than 1/2 price.

In a bar, beers were $2 that we pay $5-$7 for in Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that this is in London where the majority of office workers don't drive to work. Don't know if this would be as successful elsewhere in the world, where more people drive and hence would be reluctant to drink before driving home.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Put down the can of Red Stripe.

What? No!

<comment><USER12> Yeah, why the Red Stripe hate?

<comment><USER13> Not to sound pretentious, because I'm a big craft beer fan, but I think they're just saying that because Red Stripe is a pretty typical beer in people's fridges. There are so many great craft beers out there, even if you like Red Stripe, nothing's wrong with a bit of variety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > You call it a week & sip back on some serious beer. _You did good._

I love everything about this site and concept. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER15> Deliver me from startup culture, i'll fetch my own beers from the corner store.

</comment><comment><USER16> In ${WORK} we've started to do 'treat days' on Mondays instead of Fridays. it really perks the mood, since everyone is dreary at the start of the week.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's ideas like these that inspire/challenge me to come up with something simple, and awesome. Love the idea. Hope they do well.

<comment><USER18> It would be better if they somehow delivered a draft beer...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just an FYI, there's a typo in the "How it works" section - should be "afternoon".

</comment><comment><USER20> Literally discussed this idea with a friend this morning. Surreal.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's awesome! Deliver in California as soon as you can!

</comment><comment><USER22> Some cabs/taxi do this

</comment><comment><USER23> I already have a producer.

</comment><comment><USER24> If your startup or organization has the kind of judgment that results in thinking it's somehow a good idea to bring alcoholic beverages into the office on Fridays or any other days, neither I nor anyone else I know will want to do any work with you.

Drinking is for after work, somewhere other than work.

<comment><USER25> I guess you don't know many people who work in tech in SF, then... companies regularly list office beer as a job perk along with the snacks and pingpong. In fact, I've never worked anywhere where drinking wasn't a significant part of the culture, including office drinking, during office hours (at least on Fridays).

<comment><USER24> Uh, actually I work in the SF and Valley tech scene and know it intimately and extensively. You somehow want to have us believe this is a widespread and accepted practice - it's not among any reputable groups.

The liability issues alone make "listing" drinking alcohol at work during or after office hours as a "job perk" even more moronic.

But do feel free to list right here on HN the startups who proudly list beer drinking during office hours on office premises as a "perk".

There are many of us who do business in the tech world who will consider that a public service announcement of organizations to avoid doing business with.

<comment><USER26> I'm not really sure you could call the engineers that work at Google in MTV not a reputable group?

<comment><USER27> Well, to be fair, Google doesn't list free beer as "perk"...

(Not that it stops Google employees from feeling deeply entitled to have free beer every week...)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Real Cuban Missile Crisis (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I like the comparison to the current China situation at the end of the article. It's true, China's military power and aggression are always being hyped, but when you get down to it, when is the last time you heard about a Chinese cruiser in the Mediterranean, or a Chinese aircraft carrier off Greenland? And yet the States are moving their naval task forces across the world all the time.

Perhaps we really are experiencing a similar twisting of the public view of military politics as happened back then.

<comment><USER3> While I agree with your point, accuracy is important even when it undermines what I'm agreeing with.

 _when is the last time you heard about a Chinese cruiser in the Mediterranean_

"On the Chinese side, the vessels involved were fewer in number but consisted of newer models including two Type 054A frigates, the Linyi and Weifang. Type 054A frigates are multirole warships and have been deployed for anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden since 2009. Also, among other tasks, in January 2014, a ship of the same class was sent to escort Syrian chemical weapons destined for destruction. The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) currently has 18 Type 054A frigates in service. The third Chinese vessel to participate in Joint Sea 2015 was the Type 903 replenishment ship Weishanhu."[1]

Ok, it was two frigates instead of a cruiser, but still...

 _or a Chinese aircraft carrier off Greenland_. I haven't heard of that. But:

"Five Chinese navy ships are currently operating in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Pentagon officials said Wednesday, marking the first time the U.S. military has seen Chinese naval activity in the area.... "This would be a first in the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands," one defense official said of the Chinese ships, which have been operating in international waters. "I don't think we'd characterize anything they're doing as threatening," the official said."[2]

[1] [http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/china-and-russia-conclude- nav...](http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/china-and-russia-conclude-naval-drill- in-mediterranean/)

[2] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-watches-as-chinese- navy...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-watches-as-chinese-navy-ships- sail-in-bering-sea-1441216258)

<comment><USER4> If you look at a globe the Bering sea is close to China. Greenland is easily 4 times as far away.

<comment><USER3> I believe the OP's point was about if the Chinese navy was expanding its area of operations, not specifically if it was operating off Greenland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (2013). This article is a review/excerpt of [http://www.amazon.com/Cuban- Missile-Crisis-American-Memory/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Cuban-Missile- Crisis-American-Memory/dp/0804783772/) by Sheldon Stern, a former historian at the JFK library in Boston.

Two earlier books by the author:

[http://www.amazon.com/Week-World-Stood-Still- Stanford/dp/080...](http://www.amazon.com/Week-World-Stood-Still- Stanford/dp/0804750777/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Averting-Final-Failure-Meetings- Stanfo...](http://www.amazon.com/Averting-Final-Failure-Meetings- Stanford/dp/0804748462/)

Some of the source material is available here:

[http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/kennedy](http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/kennedy)

</comment><comment><USER6> _In the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy had cynically attacked Richard Nixon from the right, claiming that the Eisenhower-Nixon administration had allowed a dangerous "missile gap" to grow in the U.S.S.R.'s favor. But in fact, just as Eisenhower and Nixon had suggested—and just as the classified briefings that Kennedy received as a presidential candidate indicated—the missile gap, and the nuclear balance generally, was overwhelmingly to America's advantage._

I'm glad stuff like this would not happen in 2015

<comment><USER7> > I'm glad stuff like this would not happen in 2015

There is one thing that would never happen today: a Democrat attacking from the right, or for that matter talking about military strategy at all. Of course, the Republicans don't seem interested in talking about China, either. It's the new third rail of American politics.

<comment><USER8> Kennedy was sensitive to the accusation that he was an "appeaser" as his father has been US ambassador to the UK at the time of the Munich agreement and had supported a policy of appeasing the Nazis.

General Curtis Le May even said to Kennedy "It will lead right to war. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this piece to HN because it exemplifies how useful falsehoods can permeate a free society. We laugh at North Korean propaganda, and rightly so. But if a well informed Russian watched _Thirteen Days_ , I'm sure he would find it a laugh-inducing example of American nationalist indoctrination.

All of us think we know the story, but few Americans have ever had occasion to consider some basic questions, such as: Why was it acceptable for America to place nuclear missiles near Russia, but not for Russia to respond by placing nuclear missiles near America?

The Cuban Missile Crisis also offers a humbling illustration of how American democracy rarely passes accurate judgment on the performance of the president. No matter how many justifications or excuses one makes for Kennedy's choices, there remains one inescapable fact: He brought the world as close to nuclear annihilation as it has ever come.

The successful "quarantine" that hagiographies of J.F.K. recount as his greatest diplomatic achievement almost destroyed the world, when American destroyers began dropping depth charges near a Soviet submarine in international waters. The submarine's captain ordered the launch of a nuclear torpedo, and his decision was affirmed by the sub's political officer — which normally would be enough to authorize the use of a nuclear weapon.

Why wasn't the world transformed into a sphere of radioactive ice? Pure Serendipity. The commander of the Soviet flotilla happened to be present on the submarine, and he was able to convince his comrades to stand down.

Thus, the man we owe our lives to is not Kennedy, our national icon, but rather a guy named Василий Архипов, whom most Americans will never hear about. I named my cat "Vasili" in his honor.

Sometimes, when I'm petting him, I think about the constant gulf between perception and reality that I have witnessed firsthand. How often do we think that the right people receive credit or blame when software breaks or corporations implode? Why would we expect verism to prevail in even higher stakes domains, like world history?

I stand by what I wrote a couple years ago: "[T]he highest entropy fields are also the ones with the highest stakes for society. For example, what were the consequences of American intervention against the Central Powers in World War I? They are difficult to fathom precisely because they were so immense. The problem is a combination of 'causal density' and 'holistic integration.' The more variables a decision affects, the harder it is to untangle the resulting chain of cause and effect. And if its consequences are far reaching, then there is rarely an opportunity to perform controlled experiments.

Thus, the experts who offer opinions about the momentous issues of our times are precisely those in whom we should have the least confidence. Their fields may appear prestigious because they involve matters of global importance, but there is a corollary decrease in the reliability of their insights."

<comment><USER9> > The submarine's captain ordered the launch of a nuclear torpedo, and his > decision was affirmed by the sub's political officer — which normally would > be enough to authorize the use of a nuclear weapon.

It sounds scary, but in fact there was quite a lot of procedural tolerance for the use of underwater nuclear devices; they wouldn't have crossed the NATO 'tripwire', for example, whereas using a tactical nuke of the same yield on land would have done so.[0]

Hence it doesn't automatically follow that the release of a nuclear torpedo would have escalated beyond the tactical level.

 _[0] In fact just months after the Cuban crisis the Canadian forces began an investigation as to whether they should up-gauge to nuclear anti-submarine weapons, simply to overcome targeting and effectiveness problems._

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it was pretty damn scary, and I would be very interested to see any sources you know about that suggest otherwise. I'm not being sarcastic, I really would appreciate a link if you have one. I have read some arguments about why the Russian submarine captain was not actually committed to using the nuclear torpedo, but nothing about the risk of escalation having been low.

Based on my memory of the Cold War literature, there was quite a bit of concern about a naval nuclear exchange triggering strategic nuclear war. A quick search seemed to confirm my recollection: "[T]he doctrines and operational procedures associated with sea-based nuclear weapons are subject to less well-defined thresholds and, in some cases, are quite provocative. Moreover, there are good reasons for believing that the first use of nuclear weapons could take place at sea, and for concern that the escalation dynamics of nuclear warfare in this theater are far less constrained than those that would attend nuclear operations on land." (Ball, Desmond. "Nuclear war at sea." _International Security_ (1985): 3-31.)

The risk of escalation would have been intensified during the missile crisis, because the underlying dispute involved strategic weapons. If a Soviet nuclear weapon destroyed an American carrier battle group, at minimum the U.S. would have retaliated with tactical nuclear weapons. And there would be significant pressure to target land-based military installations in order to achieve a proportionate response, because the Soviets were so much less dependent on their Navy than the U.S. At that point, all bets are off, particularly given the Soviet's proclivity for interpreting any American action in the worst possible light.

Escalation to extinction-level global nuclear war was certainly not guaranteed, but it was arguably the most probable outcome. One cannot reasonably dispute that it was well within the realm of possibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The leap from the specific to the general is _enormous_ here. It's certainly an interesting account of how the Cuban missile crisis became a crisis because of the Kennedys' political aspirations, not because of the machinations of the Soviets. However, there is then what seems to be a completely unjustified jump to the criticism of American global military strategy in general and I can't see how that's warranted.

EDIT: BTW, there are lots of interesting dissenting opinions in the comments section of the article.

</comment><comment><USER11> it's interesting, because they are doing it again via placing missile defense complexes with attacking potential in Europe.

<comment><USER12> How can missile interceptors be used to attack an enemy power?

<comment><USER13> They could prevent a retaliatory strike and thus are a first strike weapon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > It is a stance toward the world that can easily doom the United States to > military commitments and interventions in strategically insignificant places > over intrinsically trivial issues

Can?

</comment><comment><USER15> Read this in the book about him, Kennedy also had a "back pain" problem originating from the time where his patrol boat capsized and he barely lived through the WW2 war with Japan, and that drove him to stardom when he hit it off well with the moms who had their sons lost in the war.

The self prescription for Kennedy's back pain? Pussy from many different women.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was directly on Kennedy's hands, he directed the bombers and invasion based on his time zone and forgot to adjust it for cuban which resulted in b-52 bombers being decimated and the entire invasion blowing up.

<comment><USER16> Sigh. B-52 bombers were not used in Cuba. B-26/A-26 were. Please try to at least be marginally accurate, lest the rest of your points be ignored.

<comment> D-Coder Also, I doubt that the President set up the hour-by-hour invasion planning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure the new revalations here that prove the accusation that Kennedy caused the crisis. You would have to first, try to understand the cold war mentality prevalent at the time. Admittedly, the threat of Soviet expansion was at times exaggerated and grew to a paranoia, but still was a real threat.

We already know that Eisenhower, Nixon, and Kennedy all conspired to assasinate Castro. Kennedy invaded the country in the US sponsored Bay of Pigs. We know that the Cold War paranoia was used as a political tool particularly by Kennedy against Nixon in the 1960 election. We also know both the US and USSR were making provocative acts against the other.

What strikes me espeically is the argument here that, since McNamera said so, USSR putting nuclear missles 90 miles off the coast of Florida had no impact on the balance of power, ie.. not a real new threat - which means Kennedy should not have opposed that, at the risk of inflaming tensions. I just don't find that a sensible argument.

<comment><USER7> So how _did_ it alter the balance of power, then? The only argument I can see for it is the one the author is railing against.

I don't think the argument here is that Kennedy shouldn't have done anything about the missiles in Cuba. Clearly, for political reasons if nothing else, it was necessary. But as pointed out, he could have scored just as many points by agreeing publicly to a mutual reduction instead. Then he can not only go on TV and tell Americans that his stalwart determination rescued America from a grave threat, but he can also claim to have reduced overall tensions. If he wants to, he can even claim that the entire purpose of the Jupiters all along was to serve as a bargaining chip should such a situation arise (if you're going to lie, you may as well tell the lies that help you most). It would have been a fitting prelude to Reagan.

<comment><USER8> Reagan at least had the sense to realize that, in the aftermath of the Able Archer 83 debacle, that if you are dealing with completely paranoid Soviet leaders who think that _they_ are the ones who are going to be attacked at any moment then it is wise to tone down the "evil empire" rhetoric a bit.</comment></comment></comment>


For Some Men, Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lifestyle Guru - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/fashion/mens-style/mark-zuckerberg-lifestyle-guru.html <comment><USER2> What's Facebook's contribution to mankind?

</comment><comment><USER3> The farther we skid along into a _fin-de-bubble_ era, the more tech articles read like something out of GQ or Maxim. In addition to the above, we also have, for example:

 _Nadler, who is 32, spent the rest of the morning checking in with some of the bank's most regular Kensho users — a top executive on the options-and- derivatives-trading desks, a fund manager — then took an Uber down for a lunch meeting at Goldman's glass tower just off the West Side Highway in Manhattan. While almost everyone in the building dresses in neatly pressed work attire, Nadler rarely deviates from his standard outfit: Louis Vuitton leather sandals and a casual but well-cut T-shirt and pants, both by the designer Alexander Wang. Nadler owns 10 of these._

Memo to wannabe alpha geeks: you now have more options besides back turtlenecks.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/the-robots-are- co...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/the-robots-are-coming-for- wall-street.html)

<comment><USER4> That is not what I got from the article at all. It's about people being inspired to live a fuller life by someone they look up to. Setting time aside for reflection, self-improvement, and giving back.

<comment><USER3> Except they can also find qualities like that in people they directly know, can't they?

They don't have to model themselves after billionaires.

<comment><USER4> This is a very cynical view to take. Much of your life is shaped by emulating people you have never known directly. And for the better.

Every time you read a book, you're engaging in a dialogue with someone you have likely never known personally. Be it the author, or the characters of fictional works.

Your heroes span time and space, find them everywhere, even among billionaires.

<comment><USER3> You're right, perhaps I've allowed myself to become a bit cynical. I just tend to think that, rather than "heroic" figures our society has awarded outsize rewards (i.e. stupendously humungous amounts of money and/or recognition) we'd be better off looking for "heroic" qualities in people already around us -- and who may be serving in roles far less glamorous: teachers, social workers, parents... or the guy in the next cube, even.

You know, in the spirit of the:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Santa made out of CSS - Merry Christmas everyone - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/thirty-two-digital/pen/jpkuL

<comment><USER2> Wait, we did Excel in like 7 lines of code, but Santa takes how many? :-)

Can someone please explain how those bows are getting drawn? So neat!

And don't forget to compare it to the source: [http://dribbble.com/shots/835890-This- guy](http://dribbble.com/shots/835890-This-guy)

<comment><USER3> requires javascript as well

<comment><USER4> Nah, the JS is for codepen. Santa himself is CSS only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Heh. I was ready to downvote this link because I usually dislike foo made of CSS posts, but I really like this Santa's design. Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice. Merry Christmas hacker news.

<comment><USER6> such present. much happy. :)

Merry Christmas, brickcap!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So we can draw Santa 100% semantically, but real pages? Not so much.

<comment><USER8> If the level of effort that was put forth here was applied to some _reasonable_ "real page", it could probably be done without javascript too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very nice! This inspired me to create my own Merry Christmas "card" in CSS: [http://codepen.io/userapp/full/DbhnB](http://codepen.io/userapp/full/DbhnB)

Merry Christmas!

</comment><comment><USER10> Could this be made resizable based on the window size using only CSS?</comment>


An Examination of Physics in Video Games - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/article/1960-video-game-physics/ <comment><USER2> >If the physical forces are too lifelike, it can ruin the fun factor. For example, imagine what it would be like to play Grand Theft Auto V with unforgiving physics — there's a mod for that by the way.

There's an entire game for that, GTA IV. Not sure if "fun" is a right term for its plot, but that ruined nothing imo.

Apart from gta, I think physics and realism advancements look funny before the fact that in most 3d games you still get stuck in floor irregularities while running and die trying to get around that invisible wall. Or that you can wipe an armored squad with a plasma weapon, but has to find a key to a wooden door. Or that your superexoskeleton cannot do pull ups. Or that you shoot one of guards and after a couple of minutes their buddies calm down and lose their interest in the event. Like, you know, our guards die twice a day, not a big deal.

I wish realism fixed _that_ instead of waving tents and accurate explosions.

<comment><USER3> Needing to find the key to a flimsy office door while equipped with grenades and a rocket launcher was always a pet peeve of mine when gaming :P

<comment><USER4> Fallouts 1 and 2 let you force some doors open if you had high enough STR and/or a crowbar. You could also blow them up with explosives.

In Wasteland 2, there's a specific Brute Force skill and you can attack pretty my any object that you can interact with. If you have high strength and/or big enough melee weapon (or dynamite), you can bypass most Brute Force checks (but also make a _lot_ more noise in the process), and break down a lot of doors.

I agree that far too few games let you take a genuinely destructive approach, except for specific scripted instances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Successful implementations of game physics often has far less to do with realistic simulation and far more to do with sensation. For anybody interested in diving deep, pick up Game Feel by Steve Swink[0]

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation- Kaufman...](https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation- Kaufmann/dp/0123743281)

</comment><comment><USER6> With platformers, if you want satisfying physics, you have to turn up the gravitational constant way up, increase the force of everything even more, then add artificial hangtime to jumps. Which is nothing to say of being able to change direction in midair with no external force acting on it.

<comment><USER7> Yup, platforming physics with a 5'10" character and accurate to real life gravity feels _awful_.

Although perhaps that's because platformer characters behave more like small jumping insects a few millimeters tall, and that's where we should go for "realism" that still feels good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Making video games with physical elements is about clever approximations and gimmicks to make things seem physical, rather than simulating the physics outright.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. It's a lesson that developers of Breath of the Wild taught us: physics don't have to be _realistic_ , they have to be _a believable approximation_. Same idea really as in most platformer games: you don't want an accurate reproduction of a human jumper, you want a a believable approximation such that it is joyful to just jump around.

<comment><USER8> I was originally only thinking about realism and believability on a computational budget, but you're right, the aesthetic qualities of the physics in a video game can be the difference between fun and soul-crushing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A pretty good example of where physics have gone in video games is in pinball, pool and golf sims. The earliest of these generally had very simple ball movement behaviors and the constraint solving, to the extent that it existed as a concept, was designed to execute fast and model physics sometimes. And this remained basically true through the 16-bit generations.

But by the mid-90's it was just starting to be possible to do it somewhat right. There were a lot of pinball, pool, and golf games released in this time frame, as well as some of the early physics puzzle games(namely The Incredible Machine).

So by now you'd imagine it's close to perfect, right? Well, not really. Most video pinball games still emphasize the "video" part of it. Bounces are muted, the ball rolls a bit too smoothly, and the flipper angle dictates the shot trajectory more than in reality. And the same is true with other genres: there are plenty of things not modelled.

The best sim games are much better, but they still have their lingering issues.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised the article didn't mention bunnyhopping or other kinds of physics exploitation-based gameplay. It could also have talked about games like Rocket League which rely on completely impossible physics to make a fun game.

<comment><USER12> why did bunny hopping exist?

as far as I remember, it was to do with jumping sideways being a lot faster than other movement, but I can't imagine why you'd program that in?

<comment><USER13> The player can jump both forward and sideways with a maximum speed. If you do that both at once the end result is you exceed to maximum speed diagonally. Now if the player is on the ground he brakes to the maximum speed. So by keeping contact with the ground as brief as possible you maintain more speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >For example, imagine what it would be like to play Grand Theft Auto V with unforgiving physics — there's a mod for that by the way.

A mod? GTA IV! The article should of showed a gameplay clip of gta 4's racing and especially the car damage physics. It's far more complex than what gta 5 offered. I was hoping to see a gta 4 mention lol

</comment><comment><USER15> The tyre model in Rfactor 2 is something to behold, relatively cutting edge let alone for a video game.</comment>


Uber Account Hacked, Terrible Uber Customer Service - <AUTHOR> 1. Received an email saying my account info was updated. 2. Unable to log in in phone app or website 3. Uber doesn't recognize email or phone number so I'm not longer an 'active' rider.
Got these Uber responses:
Email 1: Hi, We do not have any active rider accounts in our system associated with the information that you provided.
If you have an alternative phone number, or email address, that your existing account might be associated with, please follow up with us and we'll be happy to take another look.
Email 2:
Hi, Uber policy limits our ability to share account holder information. This information can only be shared via the process outlined in our Privacy Policy.
For guidelines on information typically requested by local law enforcement, please visit this page.
Note: I already blocked the ccard, and nothing was charged. <comment><USER2> I guess those responses aren't wrong, technically, if the person who stole your account changed the email address and phone number for your account. Not very forward-thinking on Uber's part though.

Annoying for you, but I guess it won't be too difficult for you to get a new account, since they no longer recognize you.

</comment><comment><USER3> email is a dead end with Uber. If you listen to the Reply All episodes about a hacked account, the only way they got to a person was by calling the emergency phone line.

(ignore the vast portions of the episodes where they wild goose chase improbable scenario after improbable scenario though. Bloody infuriating)

[https://gimletmedia.com/episode/91-the-russian- passenger/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/91-the-russian-passenger/)

[https://gimletmedia.com/episode/93-beware- all/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/93-beware-all/)</comment>


Isaac Asimov on Security Theatre. - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/10/isaac_asimov_on.html

<comment><USER2> I thought the point of "terrorism" is to inflict change on behaviors and confidence of a population? Changing someone's way of life impacts their confidence which seems to be the end goal of terrorism. It stands to reason that in order to make it an ineffective tactic, change as little as possible within the population and do not react.

<comment><USER3> TBH I have been thinking about this since 9/11. I doubt it was that philosophical. They wanted to show that they could attack us. And they did. They had ZERO, no tech, no highly trained snipers and marines, very little funding (compare al-qaida's funding with the US Government's). It is us who did it all. We "refuse to be terrorized" but instead we give up liberties like they are tumors that we will gladly shed to increase our perceived chances of survival.

<comment><USER4> >We "refuse to be terrorized" but instead we give up liberties like they are tumors that we will gladly shed to increase our perceived chances of survival.

I don't know if it is appropriate here on HackerNews, but there's this one Philosoraptor (an image meme) which just perfectly sums this up in a single sentence:

      "If terrorists hate us for our freedom, does this mean
       they're starting to like us?"

<http://i.imgur.com/XbmFg.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Forget terrorism. This is EXACTLY the same as God and Elevators. Think about it. Lets start easy:

I see people every day come into an elevator and press the door close button like it is the only way to get air. Nobody realizes that the button does nothing. Furthermore many do, but they do it any ways on the off chance that it saves them an extra millisecond here or there of waiting. It never gives any benefit. However "may as well do it just in case it works". Trivial to disprove but still.

God: People worship. Why? Do we know god does exist? no we don't. In fact all signs point to got not existing. Why worship though? On the off chance that god does exist and we won't go to hell. It does not matter that there is no god, people will still worship.

Both examples are ways for people to feel better about something they can't control and makes them feel that they can.

Now the TSA is exactly the same. It makes no difference, or it does, all signs point to the TSA being complete horsecrap, but people want it just in case there is a possibility they can prevent an act of terrorism and save 10 people at the price of insane expenses, time expenses, people unalbe to travel, personal rights violated, etc.

<comment><USER5> After spending an entire semester in a course on the philosophy of religion and revieing things like the Scopes Monkey Trial during law school, I see arguments both for an against the existence of God.

I think there is no proof either way. I personally believe in God and am in fact Christian, but that is a personal choice based on faith and I have great respect for people who have chosen other faiths or who believe that there is no God.

This however is different. It can be shown that certain security measures actually are quite useful (sturdy, locked cockpit doors separating pilots and passengers for instance.) It can be shown that others are completely ineffective at their stated goals and seek only to avoid "donothingism" and fall into security theater

<comment><USER6> For purposes of keeping the discussion on topic, can we just assume dlikhten's comment is specifically about people whose belief in God is based on Pascal's wager, and not about believers in general?

<comment><USER3> Its a shame people down-voted this. This is exactly what I meant. I care not about existence vs non-existence but the way people treat it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love Asimov's stories, but it always pains me at how wrong his guesses were in regards to what would be easy and what would be difficult when it came to robotics.

<comment><USER8> Since no one has successfully made a robot worthy of an Asimov story, I would say that no one knows what is easy vs hard when it comes to robotics. We can make guesses but in the end until someone has a working copy, we won't know which parts of the development process were the most painful.

<comment><USER9> Asimov thought that it'd be easier to make general-purpose human-like robots than to automate our machines one at a time using specialized automation hardware/software.

In this, he has been proven wrong, as nearly all machines of industry are slowly becoming more and more automated, using hardware and software specialized to that particular machine.

As far as I can tell, AI is turning out like Philosophy. Back in the day, all science was philosophy. As a particular field of philosophy became advanced enough that we can actually do things with it, we broke it out into a science, like, say, physics.

The same is happening with AI. It used to be that natural language and image recognition were AI. Now that we actually have that technology working to the point where it can do useful things, it's no longer considered AI.

Both philosophy and AI, I think, are catchall buckets for "We want to study these things, but we don't understand these things well enough to properly define them."

I mean, it's a useful catchall, especially at first, but I think that breaking down a poorly defined field into many smaller but specifically defined fields is a natural part of scientific progress.

My guess is that we will reach the capability to build something that looks like asimov-style robots, but by that point we won't see any of the technologies involved as "AI"</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Afraid I've dug myself into a hole - <AUTHOR>

Hello guys. This is my first time writing to HN so I'm not sure if I'm stepping out of line here in any way, sorry in advance if I am.
 I'm  a Computer Engineer and right out of college I started working as a SAP Consultant (BW/BI in case you are familiar) and I have been doing that for the last 4 years.  Now I want to change the course, I'm no longer satisfied by the work I do and by the SAP environment and would like to try something else, because after all, SAP is all I've known since college and I cannot say if that's what I really want to do for the rest of my life.  This is the point where I find that I might have digged myself into a hole because once I started looking around I realized that apparently all the technical skills I gained during this four years are only valuable in a SAP environment and that outside of that I have not gained anything that a non-SAP recruiter might be looking for. To complicate things even more, this particular hole I'm in seems to be particularly lucrative, and the SAP market is really huge with very good perspectives in the years to come, so that makes the whole "try something else" plan sound like a bit of a pipe dream. I've  considered going back to college and get a Masters degree but I'm not sure if that's  gonna help me with my situation or if I'll end up worst than I am now. Now, my question to you is, do you think is possible for a person that has only worked in the SAP market in the last 4 years to find a technical job (developer, programmer, designer, etc) outside of the SAP world where every job description seems to require "3 to 5 years of experience with [C | C++ | Java | Ruby | Python | PHP ]"? I know that I'm a really good programmer/developer and I could be very productive in any of those languages, but any potential employer would have to take my word for it.
What do you think, am I or am I not in a hole? <comment><USER3> This reminds me of something one of my professors wrote about: "Don't get good at something you hate because then people will pay you a lot of money to do it and you'll never be able to stop".

Lots of good advice on this board. I love Hacker News.

<comment> alan-crowe Hitokiri82 needs to take a more quantitative approach to accouning than simply saying "a lot of money". For example, there is something of a trade-off in consultancy that you can get more money for more esoteric skills, but you will get fewer billable hours per year. If a narrow speciallity pays twice as well, but you only get half the work, you will not be taking home any more money, and that extra spare time? You might need more than 100% of it to prepare for when the speciality narrows to nothing.

Hitokiri's key problem is to settle on his accounting treatment of his Plan B. At some point in the future the SAP gig will turn sour. Perhaps in five years, perhaps Hitokiri will need two years money in the bank to maintain his standard of living while he rebuilds his career. If that is the assessment, then Hitokiri has to save 40% less inventment returns. That makes it look a lot less lucrative.

The key point is that the extra pay has to cover both Plan B and compensate for any special unpleasantness in the work. You have to be very careful to avoid double counting the extra salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Write something in one of those languages. If you can show people something you've done, you've pretty much got it made.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you would say that the whole "3+ years of experience" is bogus, and whats really important is that you have something to show?

<comment><USER5> Remember that job ads don't sample the market for programmers evenly. People often complain that there are no ads asking for programmers with 0-6 months of experience. But that's not necessarily because those positions don't exist: It's because advertising for them is a no-win proposition. Think of it from the employer's perspective: If you put up such a job ad you will receive an absolute _flood_ of responses, which you will not be able to screen accurately, because how the hell can you tell the difference between two programmers who have never worked in your field? It's hard enough to judge _experienced_ programmers based on resumes and interviews alone.

So if you need someone with less than a boatload of experience (perhaps because the experienced ones are too expensive, or perhaps because you can't find them...) the most reliable method is word-of-mouth recommendation, also known as _networking_. You ask your friends and your friends' friends if they know any smart but disgruntled SAP programmers who need a better gig.

So, write some code and use it as a networking tool. If you write a sample app that works decently well and show it to a pro, that pro might put you on his list of _people who have at least some clue and who might need a job_ , and eventually someone will ask him to do a project that he doesn't have time for and he will give them your name...

<comment><USER6> Advertising in general can be a no-win proposition. Posting ads for a 2-5 years of experience programming gig garners a similarly flood-like number of responses, and you get a near equal number of bad programmers. The key difference is now someone else has had to put up with them first.

There are worthwhile places to look though, anyway. Imagine yourself in the same position as a fresh college graduate, and imagine where they go looking. Past the obvious answer of asking friends, they visit career fairs and university career centers. Those or something analogous might work well for you, too.

As for garnering recommendations, I think they can be a very good source of leads. But, and I'm probably going to gain a lot of flak for saying this, I don't think they are a panacea. It'd be nice if people were impartial enough to only recommend colleagues they know are qualified and will work out well, and it would be equally nice if the people doing the recommending were clueful enough to know when someone _isn't_. Sadly, not everything is nice, and nepotism for social motives drives more of the recommending that I wish it did.

Thus, I and some of the people I know have developed a slightly thicker skin toward people recommended to us; a smile and thumbs up from someone the hiring manager knows isn't enough, and that not having that doesn't preclude your being considered. Who you know might help you get past human relations, but once you get to someone like me, _what_ you know, and more importantly, _what you can learn_ , really start to matter.

Oh, and mechanical_fish, I'm not trying to provoke you. Your two comments got me thinking the most of the one's I saw here, and so I decided to respond to them. :-)

<comment><USER5> _mechanical_fish, I'm not trying to provoke you._

Your on-topic and thoughtful responses are so annoying! Why can't you write rude monosyllabic flames like everyone else on the web? ;)

But, seriously, I overstated my case a bit. I didn't mean to imply that networking is some kind of miracle solution to the hiring problem -- for either the employer or the employee. AFAIK there is no miracle solution to the hiring problem. We're all forced to play it by ear.

But _because_ there is no one best practice for finding the right person for a given software job, people are using a bunch of different practices. Which is why you can't look at a single aspect of the job-search market (job ads posted to Monster.com; density of keywords on the resumes that are slid under your door; number of recruiter phone calls, whatever) and expect it to accurately represent the whole state of the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course you can get a different job.

Pick a specific alternative technology and field, and learn that. If you go looking for "anything but SAP" of course you're not going to find it. That's spread too thin. And "I could be productive with any of those languages" is a very bad sales pitch. People don't want a generalist. They want to hire someone who will immediately get to work on their specific problem. Decide to become a Ruby web programmer, or a Java middleware programmer, or an Objective-C iPhone programmer, or (god help you) a C++ game programmer, and _focus_ : Read the books, read the blogs, go to the user group meetings, build a practice site or practice app.

If you want to leverage your SAP experience as you seek another field, you could try sniffing around the edges of the SAP world. For example, there are surely lots and lots of web apps that are compelled to talk to SAP. If you know a little about web apps and a lot about SAP, a team might want to hire you.

The masters' degree might be good for creating a break on your resume, and perhaps for buying you a little time, and it will help you meet other programmers who have nothing to do with SAP. But you're probably right to worry that the degree itself won't help you. You probably need practice, and allies, and networking more than you need formal courses.

<comment><USER6> >And "I could be productive with any of those languages" is a very bad sales pitch. People don't want a generalist.

Which people? I'm not asking this to be provocative, but this one of those points where a lot of people seem to have strong opinions, both in blogs and off-line, and the sides seem pretty balanced in size. Even the advertisements seem split between very specialized work, and a company that just wants someone who is intelligent, for whatever internal value of intelligent they choose. The most notable characteristic I've seen for tending toward either side of wanting a specialist is the company's size.

My own thoughts on this are torn, but tend toward one of the sides.

On one hand, I can understand needing someone who is highly specialized in something simply because it takes so long to become highly specialized in it. Usually, this has much less to do with the language, though, and much more to do with the domain of the problem needing code to solve.

On the other hand, the claim that someone can hit the ground running if only they specialized in the particular language du jour is completely bogus. There is _far_ more to understanding a system than understanding the language it was written in, and learning whatever technology they based the system on will disappear into the noise compared to trying to understand what they wrote on top of it if the system is of any size.

I can imagine that, in a lot of cases, a generalist would be able to get up to speed nearly as fast as a specialist. More importantly, they would be able to adapt to inevitable change _far_ better than a specialist; the one thing that they perhaps specialize in is learning and drawing parallels. I think this skill is way undervalued in most development teams when hiring.

And all this specialization goes out the window when the system gets iterated to a new platform, and they fire the specialists, hire on an entire new set, and then become stunned again when these new people don't come in able to be maximally productive on the first day. I don't know that I'd want to work for someone who wants to hire people this way.

You'll forgive me for pontificating for a second here, but usually when I see the call for "specialize, specialize," it is from someone who is looking themselves to find a very small niche, negotiate a massive salary based on their specialized knowledge, and live the good life once they have cashed out their knowledge capital in a few years. I'm not implying that the parent commenter holds this philosophy, but I've never seen this work. Either the niche vanishes or becomes less relevant, or they get thrown to the curb when the company "re-specializes" the IT group.

<comment><USER7> Interview situation: "What do you want to do/what are you passionate about? What motivated you to apply to this job?"

"It's not SAP, and I don't like doing SAP, so I was very happy to apply for any non-SAP job."

Fail. (Keep reading please; there's some non-LOLcats level of discussion below)

This is an industry where lots of non-traditional backgrounds can succeed. (My degree is in mechanical engineering; I haven't made enough from working as a Mech E to buy a cup of coffee.) I've worked with or currently have people on my team with non-technical degrees, college dropouts, and one that never finished high school.

Assuming OP wants to code, the solution is not going back to school, but rather finding a job as a not-quite entry level non-SAP coder. But I know what we pay our SAP consultants, and in this economy, you're looking at a steep decline in take-home to go from 3-4 years SAP experience to entry-level coder in Foo language. That may very well be the more significant hurdle, esp if you've built a life around a relatively high level of income.

In sharp agreement with azanar though, I think the best people I've worked with are generalists over time and specialists in the moment. I've had the luxury of working with a great team that's been (with additions and deletions to the group, and mergers/acquisitions/voluntary move to new startups) working a 4 different companies over the span of 12 years. Along the way, we've gone from Tcl and C++ on Solaris, through C++/COM/COM+/DCOM using DB2 and mainframe DBs, and now to an all MSFT .Net/MS-SQL (with a little MySQL at the edges) platform. None of us have had substantial issues moving from one platform to the next, so in that sense you could say we're generalists. But in each position, we spend 3-5 years deeply specializing and getting to know all the corners of the platform.

Our sales pitch applying to the current place back in 2003 wasn't "We hate our current gig consulting and we're only here because Merrill Lynch has clicked on golden handcuffs that just unlocked. They want us to stay, we can't imagine having our souls crushed one more day, so please get us out!" All of that was true, but the focus wasn't on what CurrentCo could do for us, it was about what we could do for CurrentCo. 6 years later (with an IPO along the way), both sides are very happy about the situation!

<comment><USER5> _I think the best people I've worked with are generalists over time and specialists in the moment._

Precisely, and very well worded.

Being a generalist is a great strategy, but not a great job-search tactic. Hiring managers would _like_ to hire someone who will be a generalist over time, but they _need_ someone who is able and willing to solve the specific problem that's bothering them this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This begs the question: why is SAP work so grossly overpaid (at least over here in Germany)? Doesn't look particularly exciting or challenging to me. Most of the implementations I've seen are of the 'meh' type: buggy, boring, bloated. I'm a bit biased though since a colleague of mine ran away screaming from a highly-paid SAP job. 'Never again', he said.

<comment><USER9> This is where startups will be strong next year.

The focus of the last couple of years - especially YC type startups - has been on social - which is pretty much saturated now (I laughed/cried at some of the content on that dreamitventures site that was posted yesterday).

We're in a recession now that means _big_ opportunity for replacing established business software apps - because existing apps have grown bloated and carry huge costs - which gives a massive attack surface - a startup can do take an existing app and do the key features better, cheaper and simpler - <USER2> instantly bite in to some revenue.

New startups need to be taking on salesforce.com not trying to be the next Facebook or Twitter.

2010 will be all about revenue not unique visitors.

<comment><USER10> We have to wait another YEAR? :(

<comment><USER11> Use that year to get a jump start on everyone else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why does the employer have to take your word for it? Why don't you write something in the language/technology that you want to work with and post it up on your website...or contribute to an open source project that uses it...etc

The point is, code speaks louder than words. And your project doesn't haven't to be anything fancy or big, just something that you might need. A blog engine, an rss reader, a utility to do foo. Anything that shows that you can solve problems in this new environment as well as you can in a SAP based one.

</comment><comment><USER13> SAP is dead. Listen to this debate between Saleforce CEO Mark Benioff and SAP's Chairman Hasso Plattner. Benioff totally destroys SAP for an hour.

<http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8481>

Your best bet is to save up a /lot/ of money, enough for a year or two, then quit and start working in your own time on another project in another language.

Enterprises are moving away from big bulky ERP systems like SAP in droves. They are too expensive, they take too long to implement, they are impossible to maintain without a full time staff of outside consultants who don't care about your business, but do care about charging you more money.

I've known many SAP consultants and every one of them hates everything about their job except the money.

Why are you wasting your life away doing that crappy stuff? It's terrible.

There are great companies out there right now who need people who understand how crappy SAP and other products like them are. They want to build better software. Find one of those companies and go work for them.

Tell them you are trying to get away from SAP and you know how bad it is and you can help them make a product better than SAP for less money and that is actually /good/ software.

Your life will thank you for it.

<comment><USER14> > Enterprises are moving away from big bulky ERP systems like SAP in droves.

Even SAP is moving away from those. Last time I checked 'Software as a Service' was all the rage at SAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ask HN: Afraid I've dug myself into a hole

12 points by fbacon 80 years ago | 20 comments | flag

Hello guys. This is my first time writing to HN - I've held off mainly because the internet hasn't been invented yet. I'm an interior designer, and I have been doing that for the last 4 years...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon_(painter)>

<comment><USER16> He might also be the 1st Viscount St Alban.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You're in a rut, but not a hole. You'll be okay! :-)

First step... start looking for a new job! Second step, look for jobs that require SAP experience, but at employers that will give you room to grow as a developer beyond a strict SAP admin/dev role. (For what's it's worth, I think Lego is an SAP shop. :-)

I was in a similar spot about 8 years ago when I was a consultant at PeopleSoft. (It, too, was my first job out of college.) I got to a point 2 years in where I wanted to work a bit more "closer to the metal" with web development tools and -- like you -- I felt that only knowing PS technologies was a bit too "sharecropper" for me. I made the switch away from PS by going "in house" and becoming a PeopleSoft admin at a software development house in Chicago. (It should be easy enough for you to find SAP customers in the city you want to live in.) At my new employer, over time I took on more projects and roles (in addition to using my PS skills), until I officially could "let go" of my PS role and do custom software development full time. I was able to then develop "pure" Python and JavaScript dev skills in my new role and I've been having fun every since -- including a tour of duty at Google and cofounding my own startup last summer.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here are a couple of ideas:

* Like other people said, start doing some projects in interesting languages. Preferably, they should be open source projects so that you can get feedback about what you're doing, and meet other people.

* If you want to do something that's not too far from SAP, is open source, and could use some good hackers, OFBiz is an interesting project: <http://ofbiz.apache.org/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I too was a SAP consultant! Yeah it sux big time. I saved my money, got a biz started in my spare time and jumped ship when I had a nest egg and the beginnings of a business. I'm not a millionaire ... yet. But Much HAPPIER!

The economy is not looking good right now. So I suggest hanging in there and saving as much as you can. You might even get retrenched and get some severence money to top up your savings.

Of course, if you're happy with you big spender lifestyle, then that the Faustian Deal you've made.

God Bless!

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know much about SAP. All I've heard is that it's a beast big corporations seem to seek out and battle with varying results. However I'm guessing there are likely places where a little Python or Ruby program could have made a positive difference in an SAP implementation.

Is there any way you can find the opportunity to do some non-SAP programming that would make an SAP system work better? If so, then I would start there because that would allow you to build on what you've already learned.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think you're in a hole. You've got a high-paying job and four more years of experience (in a field you dislike) than all of the folks coming out of college.

The point is that if a kid coming out of college can get a job writing Python or whatever, you can too. You even get a salary while you look for the job!

In a sense, whether you're in a hole is relative. Compared to [Torvalds, Gates, Jobs, name your hero], we're all in a hole.

</comment><comment><USER22> Try to move across from BW/BI to Enterprise Portal-type work, anything on the Netweaver side will bring you closer to Java, PHP and Ruby etc. From there you'll find it easier to migrate into a generic dev role.

I got _very_ heavily into SAP security a while back and I understand your situation completely. Your alternative would be to take the Database route, but then you're just swapping one hole for another.

</comment><comment><USER23> Simple, been there before. I call it the "Four Step" career turn. \- First pick a language you like, that could land you the kind of job you want and STICK to it. \- Second, practice, write a few complete apps \- Try to get any type of "paid" work that involved coding in that particular language... I recommend consulting...freelance. \- Now you have a credible portfolio, finding a pretty serious Software engineering position in ur desired domain should no longer be a problem.

The whole process should take about year or less. And no you're not in a hole. If you know ur stuff u'll get noticed. Besides an addition to ur new knowledge u'll have 4 year of SAP ...nothing to sneeze at. For some companies that may just be the perfect mix. Personal bias (I recomend PHP)

</comment><comment><USER24> Hack on an open source project. Get your work out there for people to see and link it on your resume (Direct links to a web-VCS/SCM or something like Ohloh or CIA.vc).

Employers like seeing things like this, its verifiable that you did what you said you did on your resume.

My analysis is that you should probably do this stuff in your spare time while continuing to work your current field as its still lucrative and the economy isn't that great. I'd wait a while before making the transition as it would be advantageous to have some body of work to show for it :).

</comment><comment><USER25> I think the best advice so far is in fact to learn other tools in your spare time and work on some open source and personal projects so you have something to show. Start a blog to describe your experiences. Send a potential employer to look at your blog and projects and they will see someone who (hopefully) communicates clearly and codes well and thus will want to hire you.

</comment><comment><USER26> Over the last 4 years you've gained more than SAP-specific knowledge. You've developed a process, or methodology, for solving problems. This is very important, and smart employers will recognize it.

Also, use your spare time to code in one of those languages so you have something to show employers. I would suggest a more advanced language, such as Scala, because Java, C# and Python are all essentially subsets of Scala.

For what it's worth, I had pigeonholed myself into PHP/MySQL development and was getting sick of it. So I applied for a summer internship with a financial company and got to work on some much more interesting stuff. Of course, I was still in college, so your mileage may vary, but what I'm trying to say is that if you want to change courses just start applying.

<comment><USER12> I don't quite agree on the first statement. I've known programmers who have been working with COBOL for the past 15-20 years. And they're good at it. Except that it seems that they've been living in a cave for the past 15-20 years and know nothing about current programming paradigms or technology and definitely not languages. So yeah, those people have pretty much placed coded themselves into a hole.

Of course, they might be good COBOL programmers, but that doesn't mean that they're good programmers. In my opinion, a good programmer would always be trying to enrich his knowledge by working on different ideas, different technology no matter what his day job is.

<comment><USER27> job security :)

<comment><USER14> A perverse point: Not learning other languages might contribute to job security if you are a COBOL programmer. Because if you'd learn another languague you could not bear going back to COBOL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I saw myself pretty much in the same hole as you do now. I worked for a couple of years as an SAP developer but then got bored with the ABAP stuff. Luckily, I had the chance to do a lateral move within the same company and coded in Java from then on. Finally, I left the whole SAP field and now develop industry automation applications for a mid-range company (another hole, but that's a different story.)

What I want to say is, yes, you can get out of that hole. Of course, you will come across recruiters who will label you as the SAP guy. But there are others out there who know that there's more to it than just the programming language. So take the advice given in all the comments here, create something in your favorite technology and apply for the jobs that really interest you.

</comment><comment><USER29> From an employer's point of view, they don't like to take risks where hiring is concerned. Your wages are a sizable cost. That's why most would require you to work in a similar environment before they would hire you. Not many would want to spend $$ to train or risk hiring a lemon.

So going by reverse psychology, the best way to convince your future employers is to build projects similar to what the position entails. If you're looking for Java jobs, build something(substantial) in Java. It tells them 'Hey, this guy has done it before. He probably can do it"

</comment><comment><USER30> Also, having some kind of certification like Sun's Certified Java Programmer/Developer thing can be useful

IMO, you should write something cool and then apply for some jobs and if nothing works out then just wait a while, write something else, then apply again

Ow, and you are definitely not in a hole, SAP is an awesome company. If you're bored with what you do now ask for a transfer to a different department.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow!. I just want to say I'm completely amazed by the quality of the answers and the discussion that my post generated. I'm not gonna be able to check back until tomorrow night (another big part of the crappines of my job, heavily restricted Internet access).Thanks a lot to everyone for the time they have taken to participate.

</comment><comment><USER31> I found myself in a similar "hole" -- QA in my case (not to disparage QA; it just wasn't my optimal choice) -- and eventually managed to get out of it via a lateral move. I was lucky to be in a flexible enough organization and to have enough programming experience to make it possible.

</comment><comment><USER32> there's a lot of languages and applications out there. you should spend your spare time researching and investigating.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am looking for someone to help me build a web app. I think it may be possible to do by building or extending a module for Drupal. If you are interested I would share my concept and you can see if it is appealing to you. This way you can gain some experience and maybe we can create something great. :)

<comment><USER14> I wonder why this was down-voted so much..

<comment><USER33> lol, tell me about it, I was just offering to partner up, he helps me build an app from which we could potentially both benefit and he gets the experience he is looking for along the way.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps people interpreted your post like you would only contribute the idea?

<comment><USER33> maybe, I can program. more front end than back, but realistically I can't completely do any of my ideas n my own :(

<comment><USER14> Ideas without implementation aren't held in high regard around here. Pick a toy project and learn..</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook and Google Aren't the Only Ones Tracking Your Clicks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-19/facebook-and-google-aren-t-the-only-ones-tracking-your-clicks <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion still on front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19424041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19424041)</comment>


Panel on Language Design (Graham, Maeda, Rees, Steele in 2001) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agw-wlHGi0E <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dynlangs/talks.htm](http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dynlangs/talks.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> this seems to be Paul Graham's related essay [http://www.paulgraham.com/langdes.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/langdes.html)

edit: this essay is also part of the panel at around 42min in [http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html)</comment></comment>


We're Building the Holodeck with Andreessen Horowitz - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/sandbox-vr/were-building-the-holodeck-with-andreessen-horowitz-79e2cb18046 <comment><USER2> How is this different from the Void or other VR arcades/spaces?

Good luck to the team. AR/VR is an insanely difficult market.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to submit my appreciation for their logo design. It's VERY cool! Looks like skateboarding stencil</comment>


The best way to work while traveling - www.wandertroupe.com - <AUTHOR> Traveling and working is possible today and there is someone responding to this need and it's Wander Troupe: a travel and creative exchange program for artists and creatives co-working on their personal projects and on social issues with local artists and associations. Find out more at www.wandertroupe.com <comment><USER2> Is every startup too special to explain what they actually do anymore? No clickable link, just marketing drivel without anything actionable. Cmon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not too special to explain. We are building a network of creatives and artists working and traveling together while solving social challenges through creative thinking and arts. Working with different associations and local artists for a month on particular cultural matters.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> How does it work?</comment>