Minimal Advice to Undergrads on Programming - <AUTHOR> http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/593.html

<comment><USER2> Does anyone comment to that degree?

My general policy is to follow the "Use meaningful names" policy and use that as the commenting. The meaningful names of the function give you an idea of what they do and what side effects they have. The meaningful names of the parameters tell you what they do.

Maybe it's not a perfect system, but I think it's a happy medium between eating up a lot of time commenting and having totally unreadable code

<comment><USER3> Personally I try to only comment the "why", as this is what you can't figure out from code. Having a good revision control system allows you to log the "why" why even better.

Comments themselves have, especially when you have lots of them, a really high danger of not getting updating and therefor becoming a liability.

When you write code you are supposed to write (1) the tests, (2) the documentation and (3) the actual code. Only one of those can make what you want to happen happen, and one of those is annoying if it doesn't get fixed but one of those wont do anything if completely wrong. At least not right away.</comment></comment>


Aristotle's influence on computational thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/03/aristotle-computer/518697/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> > The history of computers [...] is better understood as a history of ideas, > mainly ideas that emerged from mathematical logic

I have an advanced degree in CS and have done my fair share of theory, but ideas from logic are the cherry on the cake and did not create the computer. The real unsung heroes are those who invented relays, amplifiers and punched card machines. Babbage had a design in 1840, Boole had a theory in 1850; but without components neither of them made practical impact, and became nearly forgotten.

Once relays etc. became widely available in the 1930s it was anyone's game. Konrad Zuse built his first machine in his parents' apartment [1]. Feynman did complex computations at Los Alamos with punched card machines. And, as the article mentions, Shannon created a theory of relay circuits because they were _already_ building complex circuits.

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

<comment><USER3> A large part of this is, though, that the groundbreaking mathematical insights that paved the way for computers are things that any modern ten-year-old takes for granted. The idea that we could design a single set of fundamental computational steps (a CPU instruction set) that could execute any program was key; that allowed people to abstact over all the different "math engines people have made out of whatever compontents" and create the unified concept of "a computer."

More concretely- you can definitely get an advanced CS degree without seeing much math, since CS is a giant and heterogeneous field. But if you study something like language design, you quickly run into mathematics that Boole would have felt very comfortable with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Shannon himself encountered Boole's work in an undergraduate philosophy > class. "It just happened that no one else was familiar with both fields at > the same time," he commented later.

Never underestimate the power of being one of the few people to have a particular set of individually-common skills. If you know molecular biology and group theory, or chemical engineering and architecture, or web design and sign language, or _whatever_ and _whatever_ , there's special opportunities open to you and almost noone else.

</comment><comment><USER4> I honestly don't think that machine learning deserves to be on this timeline. Despite the hype, we haven't seen much indication that it's anything other than a fad, propped up by its ability to do more complex statistical regressions than ever before thanks to modern hardware.

Maybe ML truly is our best shot right now, but juxtaposing it with the massive leap that computable logic represented makes it seems pretty inconsequential.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am glad that someone is explaining how Aristotle is the great-grandfather of modern computing.

You know, when you look at the histories of the various fields of study in the modern university, it's quite remarkable how many of them got their start, or at least a large part of it, with something Aristotle wrote 2,300 years ago.</comment>


UglifyJS 3 Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2 <comment><USER2> There is a separate branch for ES2015+ here: [https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/tree/harmony](https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/tree/harmony)

The new primary committer, alexlamsl, is good about responding to bugs & pushing out new versions fast: [https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3...](https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Aharmony)

But there is still no CHANGELOG. He is aggressive at updating the docs, so you'll have to look at diffs yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can handle es6+ with the harmony flag but if you're already using Babel is there any reason to use Uglify over Babili?

I believe Babili generates minified/mangled output directly from the Babel AST which would be way more performant during the dev cycle.

<comment><USER4> Because Babili rarely works on Production code (in my experience).

I'm sure some people can get it to work but on anything vaguely complex it always errors out for me.

It's alpha software for a reason.

<comment><USER5> Similar experience. Tried it once last week & it was exceptions all the way down. Dunno why Babili is attractive w/ battle-tested uglify still making big moves.

<comment><USER4> If you _start_ a project with it it probably works fine (in that you can fix as you go).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely not a confusing repository name :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> What was improved with this release?

<comment><USER8> Here are the commits. Looks like the biggest backwards compatibility issue comes from the "Drop Angular" commit. He also changed the screw_ie8 option to be called ie8 now. A few bug fixes, too, but I'm definitely paraphrasing here.

[https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/compare/v2.8.23...v3.0.0](https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/compare/v2.8.23...v3.0.0)

<comment><USER9> Uglify is a mature and widely-used package. I use it and I love it. It's been years since uglify2, and I was excited to see this.

But... it appears that there are no release notes for version 3, apart from the three negative points at the top of the README: backwards incompatible, twice as slow on the latest Node, and still no ES6 ( _edit_ out of the box). No rationale for (or detail of) the breaking change is given. Really bizzare.

<comment><USER10> Given the (rude and unhelpful) reply from the team, I suppose it was a premature release.

[https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/issues/1875](https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/issues/1875)

<comment><USER11> The issue opener's phrasing was probably why the response was also rude.

<comment><USER12> While the issue opener is quite brisk and curt, they hardly goes as far as overt rudeness. The blank non-response is astoundingly rude and dismissive in contrast.

<comment><USER13> Give me a break. The project maintainer is volunteering his time to help the javascript community and is doing a fantastic job fixing dozens of bugs and adding new optimizations and features - often the same day as issues are opened. Rather than nag him, step up and review the commits yourself and make a pull request implementing a ChangeLog.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. And asking the opener (or somebody in general) to do so would've been a reasonable and polite response.

Unceremoniously closing the ticket on the other hand seems to me to indicate the maintainer really doesn't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've switched to google-closure-compiler-js, which eats ES6 by default.

<comment><USER15> In my experience: slightly smaller js, and significantly slower.

<comment><USER16> Closure compiler understands your code, it is using Java based Rhino Javascript engine. And using "advanced mode" it is really good - just make sure you read the docu to understand advanced mode!

edit:

What you meant with "it barely understands your code" is probably: if you compress just one JS and they access third party libraries, you have to write some annotation OR import their object namespaces (the annotation style is a bit weird in JS world and looks like Java Doc comments, but you can completely avoid it as I mentioned; read the documentation)

Closure Compiler compiles from JavaScript to better JavaScript. It parses your JavaScript, analyzes it, removes dead code and rewrites and minimizes what's left. It also checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about common JavaScript pitfalls. UglifyJS and co don't understand Javascript, they do regex/string replace operations which is faster, but you get bigger code output and less warranty as they don't understand JS.

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately, as abritinthebay noted, Closure Compiler doesn't really understand JS and compile it to better JS. It understands a certain style of JS with some significant limitations and compiles it to better JS as long as it actually runs in your browser.

We used it for a while but we've now completely abandoned it. The overheads of complying with its rules were significant, but worse, it sometimes produced output that didn't run in some older browsers where the original code did. Now, that might really not be Closure Compiler's fault, if the output it produced was technically equivalent to the input according to the JS standards. However, the fact is that we can't ship code that runs into bugs in production and whether those bugs come from the tools or the browsers does not change this.

We fixed that problem by removing the Closure Compiler step from our build process and switching to Uglify. It took a little time, but not much. It gave a handy speed-up in the development process, since CC is relatively slow. But most important of all, it has reliably produced working code from working code.

<comment><USER18> Uglify has actually gotten better the last few years, but Closure is still faster on multi-core machines.

Here's Closure vs. Uglify on one of our apps:

        $ wc -c index.js | grep -v total
        9320511 index.js

        $ cat index.js | time closure-compiler \
          --warning_level quiet \
          --third_party \
          --jscomp_off es3 \
          --compilation_level SIMPLE_OPTIMIZATIONS \
          --language_in ECMASCRIPT5 > index.js.closure 2>/dev/null
        33.54s user 0.93s system 369% cpu 9.336 total

        $ cat index.js | time closure-compiler \
          --warning_level quiet \
          --third_party \
          --jscomp_off es3 \
          --compilation_level ADVANCED_OPTIMIZATIONS \
          --language_in ECMASCRIPT5 > index.js.closure-advanced 2>/dev/null
        33.54s user 0.93s system 369% cpu 9.336 total

        $ cat index.js | time node_modules/.bin/uglifyjs \
          --screw-ie8 --mangle --compress - > index.js.uglify 2>/dev/null
        18.88s user 0.24s system 103% cpu 18.475 total

        $ wc -c index.js.*. | grep -v total
        1750478 index.js.closure
        1515331 index.js.closure-advanced
        1763350 index.js.uglify

        $ gzip -9 index.js.*

        $ wc -c index.js*.gz | grep -v total
         369749 index.js.closure-advanced.gz
         397468 index.js.closure.gz
         387896 index.js.uglify.gz

This is Closure 20170218 (Oracle Java 8), uglify-js 2.4.19 (Node 6.8.1) on a quad-core MBP Pro 2015.

Note the total times. Closure is heavily parallelized, and is twice as fast as uglify by using all 4 cores at almost 100% utilization. If you only have one core, though, Closure will be much slower.

Of course, YMMV.

It's true that Closure does a lot better if you use Google's Closure style, but it's not true that you have to. Without those tricks, Closure still produces code that's as compact as Uglify.

<comment><USER13> My experience with Closure and Uglify matches the benchmarks seen here:

[https://github.com/babel/babili#benchmarks](https://github.com/babel/babili#benchmarks)

<comment><USER18> Ran them on my machine; Closure is a bit slower, but not hugely so (still within a second of Uglify):

[https://gist.github.com/atombender/a10c8ad409abb6c4995a60374...](https://gist.github.com/atombender/a10c8ad409abb6c4995a603749b0ef29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> iso-8859-1 Support for pure annotations was added.

[https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/commit/1e51586996ae4fdac...](https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/commit/1e51586996ae4fdac68a8ea597c20ab170809c43)

This will enable removing unused transpiled classes from e.g. Babel.

See [https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/issues/1261](https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2/issues/1261)

</comment><comment> angry-hacker How much does these uglifiers slow down the code for a the client? Especially if you're using a mobile or slow arm machine? I started to think about these things when u started using an arm based chromebook. Stupidly bloated js heavy sites started to stand out. Facebook is unusable, slightly better if you disable extensions.

<comment><USER19> Minification makes code both faster to download (less total bytes) and faster to execute (less memory usage for symbols and dead code elimination).

<comment> angry-hacker Well, in most cases my test with minifiers is that output code performs worse than uncompressed code.

<comment><USER20> What minifiers?

Some do very much trade speed for size, but in my experience the opposite is overwhelmingly true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Syntactic Sugar Sculptures!

</comment><comment><USER22> Sadly it still only supports ES5.

<comment><USER4> ES6 is supported behind a flag

<comment><USER23> Nope, it's supported in the Harmony branch, which is still under development

<comment><USER4> Realized I was thinking about Uglify-ES which _also_ came out.

So.. there are options :D</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TCP Puzzlers (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.joyent.com/blog/tcp-puzzlers <comment><USER2> The general principle underlying all of these situations may in some ways seem like common sense, but it's worth repeating: one side can only know the state of the other side if the other side tells it; and vice-versa.

</comment><comment><USER3> A cool thing HTTP/2 provides is PING frames, which allow clients and servers to check if connections are still alive. In case your application can't turn on TCP keep-alives, you can enable it at the application layer. This allows both sides to know if the connection is still around and active, and avoids NAT boxes from removing long lived connections. Rather than wait around 5 minutes, or tune your system, you can control how quickly dead connections are discovered.

<comment><USER4> HTTP/2 was not the first to have this; both SSH and IMAP have it, IIRC.

<comment><USER3> It may not be the first but it is a reason to upgrade from HTTP/1.1. PING frames have other uses too, like being able to estimate connection latency in an application, rather than trying to read it from the kernel. This can be used to load balance across connections, or estimate the bandwidth delay product of a connection. PINGs have a lot of uses; the new thing is being able to control it from an app rather than it being OS specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315814).</comment>


What Science Has to Say About Genuine vs. Fake Smiles - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thriving101/201001/what-science-has-say-about-genuine-vs-fake-smiles <comment><USER2> Perhaps I am misunderstanding (the article was fairly short and I haven't looked into this elsewhere) - but it seems to me that this is flimsy at best.

I don't run scientific studies so if anyone can correct or educate me I'd be happy to learn - but can you really get any solid scientific conclusions by examining a single smile at a single point of time, in a small group (one yearbook, 141 photos)?

Certainly such an insignificant event such as a smile, in an uncontrolled environment without knowing any surrounding factors, in such a small set of people shouldn't be extrapolated and generalized this way?</comment>


#158 the Case of the Missing Hit - <AUTHOR> https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx <comment><USER2> "So Much Better" by Evan Scott Olson, 1999</comment>


Pro-security? Stay away from these hosters - <AUTHOR> https://blog.patrolserver.com/2015/07/28/the-infamy-list-hosters-edition/ <comment><USER2> Without knowing the OS and patch version number, whether or not a company uses PHP 5.3 is completely irrelevant to how secure they are.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ships with PHP 5.3.10, and has been backporting security fixes since the PHP project EOL'd it. This will continue until April 2017.

RHEL 6 and CentOS 6 both support PHP 5.3.3, and will continue to do so for the remainder of their impressively long support cycle, until November 2020.

There's been a lot of FUD about outdated PHP versions going around in some circles, and I'm frankly very annoyed by it. Free and open-source software aren't like Windows XP. The original developer(s) announced EOL, so what? I'm under no obligation to get my PHP interpreter from the original developer(s), I get it from Red Hat and/or Canonical.

The whole point of having a stable Linux distribution is so that you can stop worrying about upstream EOL issues. Heck, RHEL/CentOS have even been backporting security fixes for PHP 5.1.6, not that any sane person would want to use that dinosaur of a version.

Some of the hosts on that list, however, are indeed using dangerously outdated PHP versions. Feel free to name and shame them.

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, when we say outdated PHP 5.3, we only mean the standalone PHP version. When an ubuntu version was detected, it was correctly marked as maintained. So all these hosters use 5.3 without package managers.

<comment><USER3> How are you scanning to detect the OS version though? And verifying if PHP came from a package or a separate compile? Some hosts deliberately fuzz external indications of the base OS so you'd need an account to log into to properly check this, and they could have a compile from source version of PHP due to install procedures that date back before major updates to the base OS (and were updated "the wrong way"). Your effort is laudable (I'm all for naming and shaming the insecure) but you are open to false positives which could cause you legal issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> By using multiple versions of multiple software, you can determine the false positives. There are little servers that deliberately fuzz external in a consistent way of all software found. Mostly they only do PHP or Apache, but forget OpenSSH. If there is a hoster doing it in consistent way and ended on our shame list. Please stand up, you deserve a full new blog post about how it should be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if anyone bothered to contact the hosters? If not I think this is in poor taste. As far as I'm concerned when you see issues like this the right thing to do is to reach out to said companies, detail the problem you found and give them some time to fix it before setting up a wall of shame.

Besides that, being up to date with software patches is hardly the only measurement of good security. The fact that some hosters don't even provide 2FA for your account would have me equally if not more worried, as would their practices regarding storing data and credentials.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is definitely not the only measure. There are many more aspects of security. But a hacker only needs to find one gap. So the security is not the average of all aspects, but the minimum. So finding hosters that fail one aspect (outdated software) are already problematic.

That is the reason why security is hard ;)

<comment><USER5> Mediacatch here. We really do appreciate it. I'm surprised we made it to the list of 100 hosters since we're very(extremely) small compared to the others.

As to the issues:

\- Our apache was 2.2.29, it is recommended for 2.2.31 due to the 1 CVE. The re-compile is running now. Edit: It's now done.

\- We use a piece of software called cloudlinux, and it features the ability to switch PHP versions. We just moved this server a few months ago and it had PHP 5.2 as the default. Admittingly, this was an oversight and I've just switched it to PHP 5.3.29. This PHP version does have security backports for CentOS/RHEL 6. This is the latest version that we can use due to our billing system. We use WHMCS, so we need to go to V6 instead of our current V5. This is a large undertaking since we need to re-theme a complex theme.

\- Openssl/OpenSSH is now up to date according to the CentOS repo, which has backported patches for exploits mentioned. I'm actually not sure why this wasn't auto-updated since we had that enabled like our other servers. We don't have the experimental J-PAKE enabled, so the 2 warning vulnerabilities that your system cited are not relevant.

I've also run this your tool again on our site to confirm the openssl/openssh were fixed.

You didn't provide a contact on your blog post, would you be able to please downgrade/remove us?

Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to see you fixed the issues, I absolutely love it that you acted to fast. You have been removed from the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > sometimes see that their front page has outdated PHP, as in 5.3 old. EOL for > 11 months. That really bothers me. How can I rely on their security when > their frontpage isn't even up-to-date.

Errr... are you determining that the software is vulnerable through the version number alone? That won't work, some vendors backport security patches.

<comment><USER7> A version that has been end-of-lifed and is superseded by three minor releases is a pretty strong indication. The amount of work involved in backporting patches is likely to be significantly more than migrating to a supported version which receives timely patches.

<comment><USER6> No it's not a strong indication at all. Red Hat does the backporting work for you. You choose that platform if you want your software you spent man-decades writing to keep working for 10-13 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a strong indication, because we are talking about non-packaged versions. PHP 5.3 is still maintained in Ubuntu, so those hosters aren't on the blame list. Only if PHP 5.3 / 5.2 / 5.1 is used without package manager.

<comment><USER6> It might be a strong enough indication to investigate further, but it is not a strong enough indication to out a company. You need to actively test the vulnerability to be sure (or relabel your page with a heavy disclaimer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Error establishing a database connection", googlecache here: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ablog....](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ablog.patrolserver.com%2F2015%2F07%2F28%2Fthe- infamy-list-hosters- edition%2F&oq=cache%3Ablog.patrolserver.com%2F2015%2F07%2F28%2Fthe-infamy- list-hosters-edition%2F)

<comment><AUTHOR> The HackerNews effect, was unfortunately down for 3 min. Should be okay now. Apparently login into Wordpress was a query to much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pro-security? Stay away from shared hosting.

VPS/VDS are cheap nowadays

<comment><USER10> Depends on whether you consider "privacy" as paramount in your security, in that case VPS's aint that great either.

Shared hosting can be more secure than most self configured dedicated hosting options, simply because the hosting providers "cares" about the security in the former while outsourcing the risk to you for the most part in the latter.

If say we look at how many times a shared hosting provider was compromised (excluding stolen credentials for individual accounts since it doesn't matter if they steal your credentials for the shared control panel or for the SSH on your dedicated box) i think the picture will be quite different than what you imagine.

Big hosting providers rarely get actually compromised, on the other hand self configured dedicated hosting boxes get owned everyday by the truck load, from configuration issues to missing updates to unhardened environments they tend to be much more vulnerable.

Shared hosting providers need and do lockdown everything since their adversaries are not only external attackers but also customers with high degree of access. This doesn't just reduces the likelihood of a security issue but also reduces the impact of such issues for example SQL injection on a shared hosting will yield pretty much nothing, yes they'll be able to dump the application tables but that's it, forget about code/command execution that DB is locked down harder than one would think it's possible same thing go for other issues, local file inclusion? well GL, directory traversal, breaking out of the chroot, try agin...

Now this ofc doesn't mean that some one can't configure their own box to be just as secure for but for all effective purposes if you are running a small operation like a personal site or a site for you own small business the chances of you being able to effectively managing security at the same level of a solid hosting provider is quite slim.</comment></comment>


TechCrunch Deconstructed - <AUTHOR> http://zurb.notableapp.com/website-feedback/17215/TechCrunch-Deconstructed

<comment><USER2> Very interesting deconstruction but what I find more interesting is that app - Wow! Very crisp and useful service. Going to be using it for the current project I have with a friend of mine.

<comment><USER3> I thought the same thing until I saw this: <http://www.notableapp.com/plans>

To me at least, that seems waaaay overpriced for what the service offers -- but I admit I have not investigated it very thoroughly.</comment></comment>


Craft Your First Impression - <AUTHOR> http://robertnealan.com/craft-your-first-impression/

<comment><USER2> I received the same email and had the same reaction. I even emailed the founder back personally to offer some notes on their application design because I was genuinely impressed by their effort.</comment>


Akamai provides infrastructure for blockchain consensus nodes on their network - <AUTHOR> https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/32130/mufg-to-roll-out-blockchain-payment-network-next-year <comment><USER2> From the official press release:

Tokyo, May 21, 2018 --- MUFG and Akamai Technologies, Inc. ("Akamai") are pleased to announce the development of a new blockchain service, to realize the world's most scalable and fastest payment processing platform with a capacity to process a million transactions per second and the ability to finalize transactions in less than 2 seconds. By combining MUFG's payments business expertise with advanced blockchain technology implemented on Akamai's global cloud delivery platform, they aim to offer a new global payment network1 service from fiscal year 2019 compatible with IoT and other new technologies.

[https://www.mufg.jp/english/vcms_lf/news/pressrelease-201805...](https://www.mufg.jp/english/vcms_lf/news/pressrelease-20180521-002-e.pdf)

The new service enables higher transaction speed and processing capacity by adopting the following system structure:

(1) Achieving high-speed communication between nodes by positioning all nodes responsible for consensus decision-making on the Akamai Intelligent Platform.

(2) Developing a unique design permitting high-speed and high-capacity creation and verification of new blocks within nodes.</comment>


My coding is completed. - <AUTHOR> http://hunterp.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/my-coding-is-completed/

<comment><USER2> I'm one of the young foolish programmers mentioned in the article. While I don't think every problem can be brute forced with code, I do feel that the only problems worth working on are those solved with code.

Code can be a end itself, and not just the means to build some grand master plan. Nobody minds that linguists study our spoken languages (or even dead ones - Latin). But we have to act like code is something banal and shallow.

Then again, what do I know. I'm 24 and have just started working. Maybe I'm completely stupid. Maybe I won't be as idealist at 40. Maybe the majority of people in my class were right to tell recruiters "I'm not really interested in technical jobs, I'm more into management"? Maybe I should follow the money and apply to these consulting firms that are happy to hire engineers from prestigious schools?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author.

Keep your skills sharp. Every product that has software has a purpose. Google is a search engine. Android is a phone and an app market. A good app has a clear purpose and is easy to use.

But, work on your social skills. An idea that is coded with someone else as a sounding board is generally stronger than an idea coded by someone sitting alone at a desk.

Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Younger programmers will latch on to the newest trends and make you obsolete... Your best bet is to get out of coding and into management or into entrepreneurship as soon as possible._

I'm starting to bristle at this attitude because I'm encountering it more and more often. The implication that others (the young) "make you" obsolete is just BS. Most professions require one to keep up with new trends, and programming is no exception.

The other implication is that management is some sort of Golden Acres for people to end up in when they can't keep up with their younger and sharper coworker, ostensibly because it is easier, slower, or doesn't have new trends? This should be similarly annoying to managers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was my article.

A team is a group of people that are greater than the sum of parts alone. A manager coordinates the team, keeps them on target, and brings out the magic that only good teams have. Can you have an orchestra without a conductor?...same goes for a team.

And I would rather keep up with new trends by hiring someone with those new skills than having to learn them myself. Call me lazy, but I call this entrepreneurial.

Studies have shown that the older you get, the more strategic your thinking becomes, but the less sharp your raw calculation power. Same reason the fields medal in mathematics is only awarded to those under 40.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A software engineer that moves into management / entrepreneurship because he feels that youngsters make him obsolete, was probably not a very good engineer, and will probably not be a very good manager or entrepeneur.

But good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the author of this article, but without trying to sound too self promotional, I disagree. I was the only Android engineer on an app that is currently featured on the front page of <http://market.android.com>

Entrepreneurship is awesome. I have self generating, passive income from my personal Android apps and I respond to most customers emails personally.

As far as my skills on SoundTracking:

I already had 2 years of solid Android experience under my belt, and over the course of the project, I learned a shitload more about Android.

I made use of my teammates extensively.

I released early and often.

I managed to generate positive relationships with over 20 api partners to make this project happen.

I discovered new ways to make objected oriented abstractions work in Android.

The list goes on.

<comment><USER4> Then I will posit that:

\- You became an entrepeneur because you want. \- You don't believe that your programming skills are obsolete.

And thus your article doesn't really talk about your actual experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. Not trying to toot my own horn, but after 10 years of getting better each year, I am solid programmer. I literally just finished working on SoundTracking.

However, I have focused solely on programming the last 10 years, and I believe my focus depleted from other skills that are highly necessary to balance someone out: product development, winning friends and influencing people, sales, marketing, physical builds, the arts and humanities, entrepreneurship and finally understanding and gettings your hands deep and dirty into real business experience:construction, food and restaurants, medecine, education, finance, fashion, etc, etc.

My intention is to help others not go down such a narrow path as I have.

Reading the Steve Jobs biography really lit a fire under me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Damn i was hoping it would be an Android version of [SoundTracker](<http://www.soundtracker.org/>) :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious, what part of the app required 9 months of work to finish?</comment>


My Parents Give Me $28k a Year - <AUTHOR> https://www.ejroller.com/2018/10/25/my-parents-give-me-28000-a-year/ <comment><USER2> Plus, the parents apparently paid at least $250k in college tuition for her. So she has world class education, zero debt from it, and then this stipend _on top of that_. The stipend wouldn't go anywhere near as far if she were saddled with crushing student loans.

I come from a more privileged background than I realized and that included better educational opportunities. I was in gifted programs as early as second grade and had several college-equivalent math classes through my high school by the time I graduated high school. I took more math in high school for free than a lot of people with (non STEM) bachelor's degrees take.

As a homemaker in my twenties, I kept running tallies in my head for every single item that went into my shopping cart. I never bothered to carry a calculator. I could run the numbers in my head faster than other people could punch it into a calculator.

So much knowledge and training makes sparse material resources stretch a lot further than people stumbling their way forward with limited finances and less education, fewer solid mental models to inform their decisions, etc.

I mean, I appreciate that she wrote the article and she's not wrong, but I think the issue runs so much deeper than she's indicating. Just because I had smart parents who knew a lot, I had a leg up before I ever started school at age five. And the gulf between me and most of my age mates only grew the older I got.

<comment><USER3> And yet if you even dare to open up the argument that government should try to encourage the types of families and behavior that show the best results for this type of childhood, you'll immediately be drowned out in ad hominem attacks. Even Obama took a lot of heat for saying dad's should help raise their kids. Never mind more seriously statically relevant approaches like waiting until after high school and marriage to have kids.

<comment><USER4> Most of the arguments you refer to are actually thinly veiled racism ("black dads don't care about their kids") and that is the source of antagonism against them. There is more than a little classism behind Obama's remarks, though: he wasn't exactly raised impoverished or by family who were constantly running afoul of a racist, classist "justice" system.

<comment><USER5> Isn't it also racist to hear someone say "fathers need to be parents too" and jump to the conclusion that the speaker is singling out about black men? There are plenty of fathers of all racists who are skipping out on being parents.

<comment><USER6> > Isn't it also racist to hear someone say "fathers need to be parents too" > and jump to the conclusion that the speaker is singling out about black men?

If that were the issue, it's not racist. The response isn't based on the speaker's race but on the content. But it arguably could be 'jumping to a conclusion'.

But I don't think it's that either. The comment said that such statements are often thinly-veiled racism, which is true. Racism is infrequently expressed literally; there is a lot of 'dog whistle' communication and policies. For example, there's a semi-famous interview with a Republican strategist who said that, during the Reagan years, they realized they could no longer make outright racist statements, so they adopted school busing as an issue and expected that everyone would get the message - they couldn't outright say, 'you don't want your kids going to school with black kids, and we're the party that will stop that kind of thing', but they could talk about busing.

Today, when Republican state governments take away voting locations in minority areas, and create ID and registration requirements that disproportionately affect minorities, it's pretty thinly veiled. In fact, those are some of the same tactics were used before the Voting Rights Act (the tactics returned immediately after Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated parts of the Act). Some Republicans openly say that it's to prevent Democrats from voting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The value of this gift is much greater than then nominal sum.

My parents gave me $3000 for the down-payment on my first house, which cost $100k. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to afford to buy a house. But I bought instead of renting and ended up selling it for $200k years later. That was a big financial win early on and meant I was never in debt again.

My financial situation at the time was barely-making-ends-meet, so I had to sell the house to recover the equity to buy a car and move across the country when I was transferred.

Had my parents given me $30k as a one-time gift, I wouldn't have had to sell that house at all and would have rented it out in perpetuity. That would have been about $1000k a month of income for me, in addition to keeping the equity in the house.

I've resisted spending money on a lot of things like, say, home renovations, new cars, etc. until I felt like I was paying for it solely from interest earned on investments or the purchase was an absolute necessity. The only reason I was able to start investing at a young age, on a very small income, was the sale of that house. Those savings have compounded, but more importantly I've always had enough cash to cover incidental expenses and that's enabled me to continue investing.

Even small gifts can lift you out of a cycle of poverty. $3000 at the right time made a dramatic difference in my financial situation and will for the rest of my life. But $30k at the right time would ultimately have been worth about an extra $500k to me twenty years later.

$30k a year like in the article would have just ensured I was as rich as my parents. That would have all gone to investments.

<comment> rigged-system I sometimes think about debt the same way. In college I scraped by on ramen noodles and avoided doing anything that cost money. For example I wanted to go camping but didn't have say, $100 for a tent. If I had just put the $100 on my credit card, I'd probably have happy memories with friends, but now I can't get that experience back for any price.

<comment><USER8> When I was in college I was broke one summer and not keen on working as I was heavily invested in producing music (which wasn't paying at the time). I took a £500 credit card and then immediately blew it on a weekend at the Edinburgh fringe festival. I spent 3 weeks eating plain white rice afterwards until I started working because I had to as that was all I had left at home. Though I'm now interested in FIRE and have a family and this behaviour is the opposite of what is required I'm still happy I did it. One of the best memories I have. I should note that I definitely did this from a position of privilege and if shit really hit the fan I could have always swallowed my pride and asked for a family bail out. Not sure if I would feel the same way had this not been the case.

<comment><USER9> > I should note that I definitely did this from a position of privilege and if > shit really hit the fan I could have always swallowed my pride and asked for > a family bail out.

I think this is really insightful. The difference between being truly poor and just being a broke college student is that while a broke student may not have any money on their pocket, they can always call it quits if things just too hard.* Makes me think more carefully when people claim "hey I know what it's like to be poor too - I had no money at college!"

*assuming they're not also truly poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A refrain that is very true in NYC.

It is a bit off-putting (and just wrong) to read the author talk about white male privilege being a comparable head start to her half a million dollars of family money she's received. (And 28,000/yr still coming!) For an essay centered on owning up to personal privilege it still has some serious short comings in recognizing how extreme her wealth privilege is versus almost all intrinsic characteristic in society privileges.

<comment> crooked-v Consider that even well-known black movie stars occasionally get the "shopping while black" treatment. [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/forest- whitaker-fa...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/forest-whitaker- falsely-accused-shoplifting-frisked-new-york-deli_n_2719712.html) Having even absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away.

<comment><USER11> And yet I bet that 95%+ of American white males would easily, easily, easily make the trade between 'shopping while black' and $28,000/year. I actually wonder if you took the poorest 50% of white males and asked them what poor treatment they would suffer for $28,000/year tax-free - how much would they willing endure? I dare to say quite a lot.

>Having even absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away.

And having white skin and a penis doesn't make inequality go away either.

<comment><USER12> Intersectionality ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality)) is an interesting subject. Privilege has many axes and can vary with circumstances; it's dangerous to reduce to a one-dimensional less- than/greater-than scale. A black woman from a wealthy family may have more privilege and more opportunities than a white man from a dirt-poor family, and that must be taken into consideration if we want to make a better world. But at the same time, it remains true that the average black woman has less privilege (in most circumstances) than the average white man.

<comment><USER13> It almost like one should judge people individually and not by the groups they are a part of.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

<comment><USER14> It is politically useful to pick at partially healed wounds to make them bleed again, rather than allow them to heal completely. I hope that MLK would have fought against the current trend of re-opening those wounds and undoing any healing that had already begun.

<comment><USER6> > I hope that MLK would have ...

I once said similar things. Then I learned that MLK was told similar things then - he was constantly told that he was creating trouble by inflaming things. I strongly encourage you to read his "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" to see not only that the same things have always been said, but his response - it transformed my understanding of these issues.

> partially healed wounds ...

> re-opening those wounds and undoing any healing that had already begun.

I think we should question the assumptions that the wounds were as healed as perhaps is widely thought by people who aren't in minorities. What makes you say they are healed to the extent you think? When I ask people who have those experiences personally and directly, they almost always have a starkly different view of the amount of 'healing'.

Part of MLK's response is that, unless compelled to address it, people don't take them seriously and they linger. Racism has lingered in the U.S. for centuries. IME, people who aren't directly affected by problems tend to project their experiences onto them - they unconsciously infer that 'I don't see bad things' means 'it's not bad'.

Finally, a bit of a tangent: MLK is often adopted by white Americans because his message, misunderstood, makes them feel comfortable. MLK was very much about making people uncomfortable, and he believed (again, see the Letter) that that was the only way to foster change. (And IIRC, even after the Voting Rights Act, surveys showed that MLK had more people in the U.S. who thought negatively about him than positively.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Relevant John Adams quote:

I could fill volumes with descriptions of temples and palaces, paintings, sculptures, tapestry, porcelain, etc., etc., etc.—if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences: the art of legislation and administration and negotiation, ought to take place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other arts. I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

<comment><USER16> "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."

Why should we aim to have future generations of artists and leisure enthusiasts, only so the cycle can begin anew?

<comment><USER2> Yes, obviously, we should strive to not improve anything. Having the occasional bright spot punctuating the gloom of history is such a waste of time.

/s

<comment><USER16> How about maintaining some sense of balance, responsibility, and austerity in our societies, instead of forever marching towards a fictional leisure-filled utopia?

<comment><USER17> What leisure-filled society are you referring to in the post you originally responded to, and where are you getting the notion that somebody here thinks such a thing would be a utopia? All I saw in that quote was the ideal of achieving a world where we have the right to work hard at whatever passions we have, which sounds like a hacker's utopia to me.

<comment><USER18> I think the charitable interpretation would be [0]: Conflation of economic value with non-leisure classification. That is, if it had economic value, then they should be able to make a living doing it. And doing an activity for a living could certainly be seen as an operating definition for "non-leisure activity".

So, by such definition, if everyone is free to run around and do whatever activity they want, then either every activity is economically valued and thereby non-leisure... Or everyone can somehow take part in leisurely activities without regard to making a living. Which could certainly be seen as an operation definition for "leisure-filled utopia".

[0] Not GP. This is me possibly putting words into GP's mouth, while also asserting that these are not my words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but could someone explain the rationale for taxing gifts within a family? Ignoring the possibility of using it to circumvent an income tax, etc., my initial thought is that if my dad wants to give me $30,001 this year, or even $300,000 this year, that he's already paid taxes on it and it's not the government's business. I feel the same way about inheritance taxes, although those are high enough I'm not too concerned about it.

I hope this doesn't start any arguments, but that's just my take on it and I'm open to hearing why it's a bad idea.

Edit: I appreciate the responses, they've cleared up some misconceptions I had and moved my viewpoint a bit.

<comment><USER20> The gift tax exists largely to prevent people from avoiding estate tax by gifting large sums of money just before death. That's why they're linked. If there was an estate tax and no gift tax, people would just give all their money away in the years leading up to death.

The gift tax exemption is co-mingled with the estate tax exemption, so you can just think of the gift tax as pre-death estate taxes.

As for why we have an estate tax, the general idea is that oligarcies and plutocracies are bad; that while you should be able to give your kids (and grandkids, and even great-grandkids) every leg up in the world, they should have to work and contribute to society; that the pernicious effects of wealth snowball as generations pass; etc. Add to that the fact that an estate tax has the least negative impact on the taxpayer (and their spouse), given that the taxpayer is dead, it's a pretty good tax. Especially now that the exemption is so high, I feel like the value proposition is pretty good.

<comment><USER21> At the generational time frame, the estate tax serves to capture otherwise untaxed asset appreciation…

Consider Grandpa buys an asset; as company, land, a football team, whatever. 50 years later Grandpa dies and his will transfers it to you. If Grandpa had sold it the day before he died and given you the stack of money, he would have been taxed on the appreciation of the investment. If there were no estate tax, then that appreciation would never be exposed to taxation as long as families pass their assets down to heirs.

The estate tax isn't so much about controlling plutocracy as it is leveling the taxation field between people who buy and sell assets and people with so many assets that they don't need to sell them.

<comment><USER22> I'd argue that we should eliminate the step up basis at death despite having an estate tax. The estate tax after all only starts at $11 million dollars. Why should an estate with $10 million worth of appreciated assets pay no capital gains and no estate tax?

<comment><USER23> Why should an estate with $100K worth of appreciated assets pay no capital gains and no estate tax?

<comment><USER22> Right. I don't see why we need a step up basis at death. If you want to put it at $10,000 or something just to avoid a lot of paperwork for a de minimis tax loss, that'd be fine. But otherwise the tax basis of an asset should be whatever it was bought for, by whoever bought it.

<comment><USER21> The problem here is that the buyer is dead and knowledge of the basis may be lost. It could be written down in a safe place, but not known to estate's executor.

<comment><USER20> That was the historic reason, and it certainly had value. In the information age, I think we could consider requiring the recording of cost basic for assets purchased after some date. (The SEC started requiring brokerage firms to record cost basis a few years back, so we're on the way)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > With the arts, a student may be accepted to an arts program without a > scholarship and find herself $200,000 in debt before realizing she isn't > going to be able to get a real paycheck with her arts degree—at least in the > next decade.

We need the government to stop backing these bad loans. Any bank that makes enough bad loans will eventually fail, so they try and avoid it. I'd rather see someone say "Well, you can borrow $50k for an arts degree because that's all it's worth" ... Then we'll start to see the market fulfill college options at reasonable prices for artists.

<comment><USER25> Theoretically college is not supposed to be a purely business transaction.

<comment><USER26> College isn't. Loans are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone have recommendations on how to overcome the resentment I feel against people like the author? I am jealous and frustrated by their advantage, but that opinion is purely negative and doesn't help me at all.

<comment><USER28> I have none of those advantages either but I am fantastically lucky to be basically perfectly healthy.

I can only imagine what someone in chronic lifelong pain must feel about me.

I can just jump up and _run_ whenever, wherever I feel like and my prescription drug bill each month is _zero_. Talk about an unfair advantage in life!

<comment><USER29> This is it right here.

My teeth are horrible. A combination of genetics and an adolescence/pre- college diet of soda, I'd imagine. We're talking trips to the dentist every month or two for fillings, replacing fillings, the odd root canal here and there.

This year was the first year I've ever "used up" all of my dental insurance. Let's count my blessings, first of all: Holy shit am I lucky to have a world class dentist a few blocks away. Holy shit am I lucky to even have dental insurance at all, provided by my employer.

I recently scheduled a root canal for a tooth that's been causing tremendous pain. Crippling, anything touches the tooth and I black out for a couple seconds, creeping into a constant stabbing headache, barely kept under control by OTC pain meds, kind of pain. Without dental insurance, it'll be $600. Can I afford to do this every month? Heck no, this will be the last time I go to the dentist until insurance comes back in 2019.

But how fortunate am I that I can afford to pay for this once? Imagine being told it would cost even a few hundred at a cheaper dentist, you don't have insurance, and you're already counting dollars to make ends meet. Imagine being born in a third world country and you've got this problem; at best you'd just pull the tooth, which is going to create more problems, hopefully better problems.

During one dental procedure in the past I was prescribed Vicodin, 30 pills. I went to the pharmacist; that'll be $3 with insurance. What?!

Pain is a universal human feeling that, if you take a moment, offers an amazing moment of reflection and humility about how lucky most of us are that it's temporary. If you have chronic migraines, or joint pain, or diabetes, or anything like that: it affects _everything_ you can do in life. You can't think clearly. You can't work as hard as your potential. This impacts all the future earnings you'll ever earn.

If you're generally healthy, generally pain free, and have access to healthcare when you're not, you're literally among the luckiest people on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> First off - I really dislike it when people deal with blocks of people as if they are a monolith. As if all white people have some innate starting advantage, all black people have some disadvantage, etc. It's a brutally racist mentality that is very common.

Secondly, poverty is not a lack of money or material wealth. That is part of it and is definitely a symptom. But actual poverty is a culture and a set of habits that easily pass from one generation to the next. The idea that just injecting money at the lowest levels of society will fix this is absurd. This is a multi generational problem that will not be fixed with money. I don't know a better answer, but I think about it a lot.

<comment><USER31> > I really dislike it when people deal with blocks of people as if they are a > monolith. As if all white people have some innate starting advantage, all > black people have some disadvantage, etc. It's a brutally racist mentality > that is very common.

Dislike it all you want, but observing realities that are often shared within blocks of people (as opposed to randomly distributed across every slice of every group of population) and daring to discuss them (out loud!) in a moderately visible venue should not be seen as problematic, and certainly not as "a brutally racist mentality".

<comment><USER30> It's not discussed. It's casually accepted by many even though there is no evidence for it and evidence against it is ignored or hand waved away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I disagree with her premise that the government should fund people to have fulfilling creative careers. That's not how the world works. Creative outputs generally do not have 'efficienciecy' increases like other fields. Creative outputs are zero sum: people only have a constant amount of time to use to consume creative outputs and consumption time has already been saturated.

Efficiency upgrades for entertainment are tied to technology advancement (think the invention of TV, electronic audio devices, VR, video games), not creative output.

<comment><USER33> I disagree heavily with this. There's been a lot of improvement in the quality and variety of entertainment too over the years not just the technology used to deliver them. If restricted to media from say mid century America post TV most people would be bored stiff by the material available.

It's REALLY easy to wind up with a dismissive attitude towards the arts growing up and working in tech but never forget how much there's a feedback loop between artistic exploration and technological advances and how even a modern 'clean' design encodes a lot of artistic choice behind the scenes.

<comment><USER34> Also, art does not only have a function in terms of entertainment. Art is vital to human expression, and a very powerful tool to propose an idea or "mood".

cities would be terrible without public art for example, they would be dull, gray concrete silos of empty existance.

<comment><USER33> Oh yeah there was a lot more I'd love to say about how arts quietly improve everyone's millieu even without active conscious consumption. But I figured I'd better edit myself and not go off on a long rambling rant about the pervasive dismissal of art and the siloing of society into useful and non useful work based principally on what value can be captured, commoditized and quantified in the US in particular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> My guess is this is of interest to us because it sounds an awful lot like UBI. But, I think the key difference is that the money is connected to parents, who presumably have a standard for how it's spent. If E.J. ended up spending it on drugs or other perceived vices, there's a chance the money might be cut off. The point of UBI is that it is 100% no-strings-attached, which has a different dynamic. That dynamic is one that concerns the anti-UBI people.

<comment><USER36> People treat drug users as if this was something that they chose to do. In fact, most drug addicts are in this situation because they suffer from a tendency to drug abuse. Many of them had good jobs and lost them because of this condition. Holding up on the UBI program for everyone else because of the behavior of a few that need treatment is absurd.

<comment><USER37> Nobody is compelled to take methamphetamines or heroin, especially not the first time. Yes, physical addiction is a beastly problem beyond simply quitting cold turkey - but you sort of put yourself in that boat to begin with.

It's a bit like not knowing how to swim, and deciding to jump into the ocean. If you don't know how to swim, don't jump in the ocean.

<comment><USER38> Since we're using bad analogies I would argue its more like being offered a piece of delicious candy and its great and you continue to eat the candy and its fine.

Eventually you wake up one day and decide you've been gaining too much weight and you try to stop eating the candy but to your surprise, over the past several months or years your brain chemistry has been subtly changed and now your physical well-being and mental state is literally tied to you continuing to eat the candy.

You can't stop and if you do you're in horrible pain and can't go to work, if you don't go to work you lose your job and if you want to keep working and not be homeless you keep eating the candy.

<comment><USER37> Except most people know that heroin isn't like candy. The side effects and consequences of snorting a few lines of cocaine isn't some secret.

<comment><USER39> Most people _think_ heroin isn't like candy.

The physical dependence is the same, and there are 4 times as many deaths that can be linked to sugar as drugs per year in the US.

The only difference is that heroin is illegal and costs a lot more than candy.

<comment><USER40> Firstly, "linked to sugar" is not "squarely caused by sugar".

Secondly, sugar use is extremely widespread. Much more so than use of heroin. Few people avoid ingesting some sugar.

Even if there were 4 times as many deaths confirmed to be squarely caused by sugar, that alone shows sugar to be far safer, since it has far more than 4 times the users.

But never mind, let's look at, oh, the lethal dose (LD50) info. For sugar, that is supposedly something like 30 g/kg. The LD50 for heroin (intravenous) is something like 20 mg/kg: more than a thousand times less.

Plus there is copious sugar in your bloodstream without which you'd be in hypoglycemic shock leading to death.

<comment><USER39> > Firstly, "linked to sugar" is not "squarely caused by sugar".

Correct - the same goes for "Linked to drugs" and "squarely caused by drugs".

> that alone shows sugar to be far safer

Sugar is safer than cocaine, but that does not make it safe. I shouldn't have said the _only_ difference - sorry.

> But never mind, let's look at, oh, the lethal dose (LD50) info

This is too narrowly focused - the LD50 only refers to the immediate effects of a substance, not the long lasting effects. I'd argue that long lasting effects are more dangerous as they're less apparent.

> Plus there is copious sugar in your bloodstream without which you'd be in > hypoglycemic shock leading to death.

Yes, our bodies need sugar and create it from the food we eat. I was talking about the food we call sugar ("Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food.)

I should use "added sugar" or "refined sugar".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Boy, does reading this make me a bit frustrated/jealous. Some people are just incredibly lucky (at no fault of their own!). I would write more, but it would be more therapeutic for me than entertaining to read for you. I also found the author referencing gender/race distracting(?), this situation could happen to anyone.

If you do find this type of stuff about what the wealthy do with their wealth interesting, I highly recommend a book called `Millionaire Next Door`

<comment><USER27> I am consistently frustrated/annoyed/jealous by most of my friends whose parents paid tuition, rent, etc. I am more annoyed that I hold that opinion though; its something I wish I could let go and forget but I can't seem to do it.

<comment><USER41> I guess it's to look on the positive side. Like for me, I luckily went to college, making good career progression, and will have my loans paid off in the next 5 years with aggressive paying and money management. Many people don't even make it to whatever step 0 is of that progression list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > _That's a $22.4 million of unearned income for the children of the rich, > whereas the working class get taxed on their first dollar earned. A person > could at least argue that my parents earned the capital they live off of. > But me? I didn't actually earn it._

<comment><USER43> Nitpick, but this is not quite true. There is the Earned Income Credit, as well as various welfare payments that working class are entitled to.

<comment><USER44> For a single adult with no children EIC goes away at $15,000; that is a full time job at less than $6/hr. The 'working' class shouldn't need be dependent on welfare and assistance programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Archive url: [http://archive.is/gBd5I](http://archive.is/gBd5I)

</comment><comment><USER46> Small sample size, but I happen to know multiple people in their thirties and forties whose parents continue to fund their 'creative' lives. I can assure you they are not as happy as you think free money might make you.

<comment><USER31> Wow.

I'd love to hear a perspective from a parent funding their middle aged children's creative lives. Do they feel like they've failed to make their children self sufficient?

<comment><USER47> Probably just an ideological difference to you. If you're rich enough to support them throughout your life (& after death), why is it important that your kids are self sufficient?

Maybe they think being able to practice their creativity/art/passion would have a bigger effect on their kids' happiness than knowledge that they are self sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > I get an annual gift of $28,000, distributed, in my case, in monthly checks > mailed to my house for $2000 and $334 (to make it easier to deposit > remotely), completely tax free.

Why would this be necessary? The IRS knows this money is being distributed. What difference does it make if it comes as an annual lump sum?

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure, but I think $2000 is the maximum amount she can deposit as a check using her bank's app. In this case, "remotely" meaning she doesn't have to go to an ATM or bank teller. As for not giving it all in $28k, I don't think this is an IRS issue, but a personal preference of the benefactors.

<comment><USER49> I don't understand why they don't just set up a standing order.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one with a twich about having a $2000 cheque and a $334 check, rather than 2 cheques of $1167

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > Still, when my parents told me they were going to give me about $2,000 a > month, [...] I took it, spent part of it helping my then-boyfriend pay off > his student loans and put the rest in the bank.

> When my boyfriend suddenly left me (as men in New York are occasionally > known to do), I had to pay $1,450 a month for rent on my own ($17,400 a > year) on the lease we had just started, not including utilities. I quickly > drained my own savings and found myself completely dependent on the gift > money from my parents.

Why spend your money on another when they can just leave you later? They won't give you that money back. What did he do to earn your money (parents') to pay his student loans off?

<comment><USER51> Even marriage doesn't guarantee safety from a break-up, yet most marriages split finances. Suppose you thought with all sincerity you would get married, then helping your partner makes rational sense, especially if your partner is paying interest on a loan. That's your future joint account being drained.

<comment><USER52> To be fair, the level of commitment in a marriage is much higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> [https://archive.fo/gBd5I](https://archive.fo/gBd5I)

</comment><comment><USER54> I agree with a lot of this article, but the answer here is definitely not to enable more people to go into the arts on the public dime. If you want free college, let's have it be free for everything _except_ the arts. If you want to get an MBA, or learn mechanical engineering, i'm happy to subsidize that. But I have no interest whatsoever in subsidizing your creative writing degree.

<comment><USER55> Serious question, I'm wondering, why you, personally, value _other people_ getting MBA/Engineering degrees over arts?

I really enjoy going to the theater and seeing performances of all kind, just as I like tech/business advances. I want people to enhance the arts as well as the sciences.

I acknowledge the idea of focusing on marketability and "ROI" for someone choosing their own path... However, when providing "access" to education, why encourage someone who could write the next show I want to see to instead consider crunching hard maths that they don't care about?

<comment><USER54> > Serious question, I'm wondering, why you, personally, value other people > getting MBA/Engineering degrees over arts?

Because they increase GDP, and thereby pay back their education in the form of income taxes, and increase the available wealth for everyone.

<comment><USER56> Alternatively, GDP Or no, I value their artistic output over your ability to target ads on a CRUD app.

<comment><USER54> I guess you don't care about the millions of people living in poverty, then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Previous posts of this same article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18324359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18324359) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18316647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18316647)

</comment><comment><USER31> Internal server error (HN hug of death?). Anyone got an alternate link in the meantime?

<comment><USER45> Here you go: [http://archive.is/gBd5I](http://archive.is/gBd5I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> > while I agree that society is, often, skewed to favor those SWGs (bless > their hearts), it's amazing how little time we spend discussing the largest, > most obvious barrier to new voices in the arts: money.

This is IMO the most important achievement of feminism: convincing people that sex, sexuality or race are more important in life than class or money. As they say, first you divide, and then you conquer.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why so many reposts of the __same article __in such a short period of time

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ejroller.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ejroller.com)

<comment><USER27> Somebody semi-important in the tech industry probably tweeted about it recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> site is 500ing --> [http://archive.is/gBd5I](http://archive.is/gBd5I)

</comment><comment><USER60> The ability to get your children ahead in life is what gives many parents purpose in life.

Don't go so far that you take that away.

</comment><comment><USER6> Asking where the money will come from is buying into the way the GOP frames the issue: It assumes there is a shortage of money.

The U.S. is the wealthiest, highest earning country in the history of the world, with no real peer. #2 is the U.S. last year. When the U.S. was much poorer, it provided quality, inexpensive college education. Other countries that are not as wealthy do it. There is no shortage of money.

</comment><comment><USER61> I am getting HTTP 500 when I try to open the link. Anyone else also?

</comment><comment><USER62> In all honesty, I would dislike this author much less if they received a single one-time lump sum of $500K rather than a lifetime stipend of $28k.

As it stands, this entire piece feels like fingernails dragging down a chalkboard screeching "I'm So virtuous and privileged but I announce my privilege so that gives me the right to express my opinions and tell you how to run capitalism better!!!"

There is something about the open-ended lifetime of life support that really turns me off. This is a weak person with low personal responsibility, childlike even. I personally would have declined this offer from my parents, I am not a child, I am an adult. It would insult me to be in this arrangement past the age of 20.

I received around $120K from my parents when I was 23. Through investing, I have turned it into $500K and never spent any of it on myself (vacations, food, rent etc). I paid for all my base needs, including my wedding,out of my salary.

From the time I received the money, I taught myself to be a software engineer and worked my way up from $55K to (now) $350K / year. It was very difficult to do that. I even tried to start several startups, which was a brutal amount of work and worked several jobs at once.

I decided I would not spend the money that was left to me, I felt that would represent a weakness in my personal character to do that. I don't intend to ever spend it, in fact my plan is to triple it in coming years trading stock options into the coming recession.

Seeing this author go off on tangents about universal basic income and providing free money to struggling artists sets me off. This is someone who has no personal accountability to themselves or to society.

I love art, but it isn't valued in the marketplace. I wanted money so I learned a valuable skill.

Don't take free money from your parents as a grown adult and turn around and give us all a lecture on how to structure society!

</comment><comment><USER63> In other words, parasite tries to bite the hand that fed her. Nice.</comment>


Response to "Subversion's Future?"  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.emptyway.com/2008/05/01/response-to-subversions-future/ <comment><USER2> I think Subversion's scalability is a red herring. Subversion is good for decent-size projects with decent-quality developers, a common situation in The Enterprise, but that's not because it scales better than a distributed system. Subversion is older, and therefore has more tools built for it already. Consider: TortoiseSVN, RapidSVN, SVN plugins for Visual Studio and other IDEs, and the various commercial SVN GUIs, project management systems, etc.

Git, bzr and Hg have some crutchware in development, but it's not as straightforward and widespread as the stuff for Subversion. It'll get there, but right now they all require some initiative from the developer, confidence on the command line, and an occasional RTFM.</comment>


Global Warming Could Cause Dangerous Increases in Humidity - <AUTHOR> https://e360.yale.edu/digest/global-warming-could-cause-dangerous-increases-in-humidity <comment><USER2> My favorite memory of visiting Houston when I was little is the bumper sticker that read - "I know hell is hot but is it humid?"</comment>


Guido van Rossum conceived Python during the week around Christmas. - <AUTHOR>

Happy 23rd B'Day Python :))
Courtesy Wikipedia: Over six years ago, in December 1989, I was looking for a "hobby" programming project that would keep me occupied during the week around Christmas. My office ... would be closed, but I had a home computer, and not much else on my hands. I decided to write an interpreter for the new scripting language I had been thinking about lately: a descendant of ABC that would appeal to Unix/C hackers. I chose Python as a working title for the project, being in a slightly irreverent mood (and a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus).
What are you planning to do this Christmas? <comment><USER2> I will probably do some more work on my own programming language project:

<http://www.radian-lang.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm still looking for a good project for this year :<. Currently, I'm just going through Project Euler for amusement.

</comment><comment><USER4> Simple DHT implementation, binary trees refresher, and finish my website generator.</comment>


Ask HN: Books on human nature that changed your interactions - <AUTHOR>

After reading 48 Laws of Power, I started seeing interactions between 1) others & myself, 2) others & others in a completely different light. There were these mental "hooks" I could analyze human interactions through.
Neil Strauss's "Rules of the Game" did something similar.
I'm currently reading Robin Baker's "Sperm Wars" and it's again showing me human interactions through a new light.
So, HN: what are the books that presented new theories / ideas on human nature that has changed the way you view / analyze human interactions? <comment><USER2> A friend of mine found this to be true for Sun Tzu's _The Art of War_.

I found something akin, not so much "interactions" as in understanding the "why" about many human things, in reading Richard Dawkin's _The Selfish Gene_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Plato's "The Sophist".

Saint-Simon's memoirs.

Neither really for theories as such, the latter for reflections on the the behavior observed.

Since wturner mentions "Blood Rite" let me throw in Vico's "New Science"

</comment><comment><USER4> That 48 Laws of Power book is BS. C.f. pg's How To Make Wealth essay or else Dee Hock's essay on leadership:

<http://futurepositive.synearth.net/leader-follower/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is 48 laws of power BS? There are rules in the book that contradict each other, but it provides a framework for recognizing patterns of human behavior and analyzing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War.</comment>


Nice cheat sheet collection - <AUTHOR> http://devcheatsheet.com/

<comment><USER2> I am the founder of DevCheatSheet. Pleasantly surprised to see my site on Hacker News again. Thanks bemmu!

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about the site. Also, let me know if you have any feedback.

To answer some of the common questions/feedback:

* So far I have been focused on adding content, but now the site needs some sort of filtering to identify the relative value of each cheat sheet and easily find what you are looking for. I am still exploring different options for this including: page-rank type popularity scores, HN-style up/down voting, or traditional user star ratings.

* Every cheat sheet is manually reviewed. I don't add every single page that calls itself a cheat sheet. There is definitely a wide range of quality, but this is somewhat inevitable given this is user-generated content aggregated from around the web. This is not necessarily a bad thing: for example, an obscure topic might only have one single low-quality cheat sheet, but this is still useful and better than no results.

<comment><USER3> Quick FYI - I ran across several broken links. Xenu Link Sleuth is free and handy for generating a broken links report.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the tip. I will definitely check that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like a good ol' fashioned HN/Reddit up/down system would be a welcomed addition there...

</comment><comment><USER5> Would be a much more useful site if it had some sort of editorial standard, rather than "let's find as many pages that people call cheat sheets and shove them together in a huge directory".

<comment><USER6> Looks like a nice passive-income site idea, using OPC (other people's content) to drive affiliate and ad clicks. I'm betting they're looking for everything they can find that can possibly be called a cheat sheet.

<comment><USER7> Yes, and anyone can do it. The more the better. Then I'll create a cheat sheet for sites that index cheat sheets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Annoyingly, they sort their sheets by first-one-added = last-on-list.

The best cheat sheet for javascript, and the #1 hit on google for "javascript cheat sheet", is the very last one on the last page of their list:

[http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/javascript-cheat- shee...](http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/javascript-cheat-sheet/)

In fact, none of the _first_ page of javascript "cheat sheets" are cheat sheets in the conventional sense of the word.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks - here's another one that I use often that's similar: <http://cheat- sheets.org>

Always super-helpful whenever you decide to pick up something new

<comment><USER10> I just stumbled onto this tonight from the Github cofounder's website. Looks cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And there is also <http://cheat.errtheblog.com/>. Good thing about this one is, it is accessible from your command line.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is good but agree with corin_ that there's no way to tell which ones are good references and which aren't.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great...Thanks~</comment>


Adding a co founder in 140 characters or less - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2010/04/22/adding-a-co-founder-in-140-characters-or-less/

<comment><USER2> For those of you who are too lazy to read the whole article, here are the 140 characters:

      @joe I expect this co-founder position to be worth ~30% equity.
      My goal is to incorporate in about a month, let's see how it goes by then.

:-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Its always sticky around the numbers. People like to talk around it for a long time being uncomfortable to address it head-on. Its probably best to avoid conflicts and waste of time on the front end.</comment>


Which web hosting do you recommend(Linux, data-logging, programming,USA)  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> <http://www.linode.com/> <http://www.slicehost.com/> <http://www.webfaction.com/></comment>


Ask HN: Best developer machine; and what to learn to become employable? - <AUTHOR>

Hi.
I intend to learn web development on my own during and after the summer. Mainly because there aren't any bootcamps over here in Ireland with a proven track record.
While I would love to learn web development, I am afraid it will hinder me to do back-end work, if that is something I end up finding interesting in the future.
My question is basically, what exactly should I learn to become employable in Europe? Preferably England or Switzerland. I have no degree, and I would be creating a portfolio from scratch. Exactly how low are the requirements?
At the moment I intend to learn: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, HTML5 CSS3, Javascript, jQuery.
Is that really enough? <comment><USER2> Machine doesn't matter, but I recommend Linux or Mac as most of the tools are built with, and are easier to work with on unix-like machines. Invest in an SSD as well, as running a dev server as well as tools do hit hard on the disk.

As for languages, master vanilla HTML, CSS and JS. It's handy especially if you have to work around stuff, or just want to do bare-metal code instead of high-level. But you should have a standard stack in order to finish stuff quickly. The usual choices would be:

\- UI: Bootstrap or Foundation

\- Rails + Ember

\- Express (Node) | Flask(Python) + Backbone | React | Angular

\- You could also roll your own combination and be proficient with it.

Portfolio? Don't bother. Just run a Blog and Tweet about it. Join meetups in your local area and be visible. Get involved in open source by doing bug reporting or documentation. Eventually, you'd end up knowing a lot, and actually help in code. Use those as your credentials, as they are more credible because others can vouch for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can learn those during the summer, then I'd say you're so gifted that you can work where you'd like.

<comment><USER4> The threshold for having learned something is subjective, at least in the context of software development.

If the intent is just to attain a basic understanding that enables one to complete projects and pass muster as an intern/junior developer, then it's likely possible with enough effort.

If the intent is to do a "deep dive" on each topic, or even attaining mastery during the course of a summer, then that's another matter entirely.

On that note, the concept of mastery is similarly subjective. Even the lowest definition of mastery for a single one of those topics lie far beyond the timescale of a single summer, at least for most people, and especially if they lack previous experience. Fortunately, very few people are masters of anything.

<comment><USER5> > If the intent is just to attain a basic understanding that enables one to > complete projects and pass muster as an intern/junior developer, then it's > likely possible with enough effort.

For me personally, that's the understanding. Enough to get a job as an intern or junior dev.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Get the best MacBook or MacBook Pro you can afford. It obviously runs OS X (Unix) but you can also run Linux in a virtual machine and boot into Windows if necessary; you can also run Windows in a virtual machine if necessary.

Not only is the hardware topnotch, you won't have to worry about graphics driver compatibility, power management, wi-fi support and all of the other stuff that can make running Linux as your primary operating system… challenging.

Don't worry so much about creating a portfolio; pick a project you're passionate about and do that. Or pick an open source project and start making useful contributions.

I would add Sass (or some other CSS preprocessor) to your list: [http://sass- lang.com](http://sass-lang.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> I am not sure Ruby On Rails stuff is the optimal choice if you want to work in Switzerland (for the local company). You either work at Google in Zürich or at some bank or manufacture. Hence you'd better look at Java Enterprize, IBM solutions, learn German / French, get some credibility (degree). With RoR / no degree / no proficiency in local language you'll have more chances at startups, international tech companies. It means Berlin, Amsterdam, cities in England.

</comment><comment><USER8> Get a Mac - as others have pointed out OS X is a *nix variant so you can set up a dev environment that is similar to what most production environments are.

I use fink, vi, TextMate and NetBeans w/ mariadb, nginx, php, python, java.

Learn git and how to use some basic command line stuff like grep and find.

If you're learning the front end stuff, learn a framework like Bootstrap too.

Get yourself a cheap (USD 5 / month) VPS node, set it up and figure out how to deploy also.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm am also in Ireland what is the price range for these bootcamps? I am studying software development part time (open uni) would it be worth getting into a bootcamp?

</comment><comment><USER10> Mastering any one of those things would get you a job.</comment>