PopCap Games To Be Acquired For $1 Billion+ - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/22/popcap-games-to-be-acquired-for-1-billion/

<comment><USER3> These guys deserve it. They've put out great games and worked damn hard to get to where they are. Good luck!

<comment><USER4> They got bought by EA. I don't think they deserved such a terrible fate.

<comment><USER5> Why not take the money and leave to form a new studio? After all the key resource in any game development company are the people, not the IP or existing software..

<comment><USER6> Most acquisitions have golden handcuff clauses where the shares given in the acquisition vest over time, no? So if they leave early, they don't get all their money. Although maybe the upfront earnout is enough for them to not care.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, that seems very likely. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would be extremely disappointed and disheartened if it's Zynga.

<comment><USER8> Well, even if it is Zynga, the talent at Popcap will get a big payout and if Zynga proves to be as stultifying and dull an environment as it seems, then they'll eventually drift away to form new ventures. Not a great deal for gamers, but at least the Popcap folks will get paid. Good for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like Microsoft as the buyer here but here's a more interesting idea: one of the big Android vendors looking for differentiation.

They've had weak results with their ui layers so exclusive apps is the clear next step to take. This could be Amazon, Samsung, Motorola or Sony. Amazon would be my bet.

<comment><USER10> Has Amazon dipped its toes into content production before? Then again, I'm still occasionally surprised by the Kindle.

<comment><USER11> Rumor has it they're working on an Android tablet, which would probably involve some sort of content production.

[http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/23/amazons-android-tablet- co...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/23/amazons-android-tablet-coming- in-10-and-7-inch-models-with-qua/)

<comment><USER12> Would someone really buy a tablet just to be able to run exclusive games on it? A gaming tablet maybe, but a regular tablet?

Plus, with games like Bejeweled or Plants vs Zombies, it's not exactly hard to duplicate in a matter of weeks and get rid of that exclusive edge.

<comment><USER9> I think if it was Amazon it would probably be exclusive Amazon Appstore instead of exclusive Amazon Tablet. Maybe exclusive Amazon App Store plus free on Amazon devices.

(1) Amazon's central business is the store, and something like this could be a loss leader to help build the Amazon Appstore vs Google Market.

(2) 90% of the value in these companies would be lost if you lost all phone sales (hence Rovio's short term exclusive on AB2).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love their games, particularly Plants vs. Zombies all the old ones from the dawn of online flash games. So glad to see them do well.

</comment><comment><USER14> _That said, it wouldn't be EA's first big bet on a hot gaming startup_

Not to nitpick, but can a 10-year-old company still be called a startup?

</comment><comment><USER15> I just hope whoever buys them lets them continue working the way they do. I admire their product process so much.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was curious about tencent. The link gives its market cap as 378.1B - <USER2> that's HKD. In USD, it's 48.54B.

That makes more sense, because the largest market cap in the world is 368B (Exxon). 2nd is 303B (PetroChina), 3rd is... Apple, with 295B. I didn't expect that. Apple is the 3rd largest company in the world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization#2010)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting most people don't expect Apple to be the company acquiring, despite the fact they make a lot popular games for ios and mac. This is could be one of Apple misses if PopCap stop making games for Apple's platform, we know the story of Bungie. Apple is still not fully invested in the game development / gaming community. Apple already missed the opportunity to make Angry Birds it's Mario Brothers for the ios platform.

<comment><USER18> This will never happen. Ever. It just doesn't make sense if you know anything about Apple and their reluctant acceptance of gaming. Apple is also not about to go around maintaining software for other people's platforms.

> Apple already missed the opportunity to make Angry Birds it's Mario Brothers > for the ios platform.

They aren't interested in owning the killer 3rd party apps or games for the platform. If Apple was at all interested in this they would have bought Tweetie, Reeder, and a number of other apps that are ubiquitous on iOS devices.

> This is could be one of Apple misses if PopCap stop making games for Apple's > platform, we know the story of Bungie.

Bungie was a totally different situation. PopCap makes its cash from its multi platform strategy, make games that will run on anything and them port them to everything. Bungie desperately wanted Apple to buy them and become a company that it's not.

Frankly releasing Halo for the Mac even with Apple's help would have been a bad idea. It was unfortunate at the time, but everything worked out for the best. Bungie needed a bigger & simpler market for Halo, and Apple didn't need to be tied down by the demands of supporting gaming while they were still in the middle of fleshing out OS X.

<comment><USER17> Apple purchased Emagic for their 3rd party software and skill. They bought "a killer 3rd party app". They did this because they did not have much in house talent working music production software. Since then Apple philosophy is to develop and hire talent in house, because it's typically much cheaper. But with games they face the same challenge they did when they bought Emagic, they don't have any great gaming talent at Apple. Apple currently promotes Infinity Blade in it's commercial as if it's exclusive to Apple, currently it is but that's not due to contract, Chair can port it if they want to.

> PopCap makes its cash from its multi platform strategy, make games that will > run on anything and them port them to everything.

I know that, but that strategy could change with the purchase, that was my point. PopCap's team can get better or than get worse. If the get better and the new owners decided to go exclusive that could be a miss. I don't think Apple should buy Popcap, I think they should have worked a long term deal with them. Apple didn't buy Bungie because it's not fully invested in games. Just to illustrate Infinity Blade was mostly developed in a Microsoft os environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome! These guys really deserve it. Great company, great products. I have really nothing but good things to say about these guys.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can't be too many players around to play in the $1B range. In the US from gaming industry:

EA (7.5B market cap)

Activision (13B market cap)

Microsoft

Sony

Valve (I somehow think they couldn't afford it)

Tech / Social:

Zynga

Google

Facebook

Foreign? No idea here.

<comment><USER21> I would rule out: \- Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Sony, Valve

Just doesn't fit the acquisition profile for those companies IMO. The Popcap guys are smart, and for a billion dollar valuation, the acquire'er would have to have some sizable synergistic advantages afterwards.

<comment><USER22> Not Valve? I dunno, it seems _possible_ to me, but I think it's probably one of the companies trying to move into casual games, which PopCap are great at, I assume EA.

<comment><USER23> Valve would be able to make this purchase, but I don't see why they would. There is nothing for them to gain by it at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I worked with Jason Kapalka of PopCap in a previous life. He's a great guy and really passionate about what he does - I'm really glad to see it work out for him (and his colleagues, who are presumably similarly great).

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps Yahoo?</comment>


Webpack 4 Alpha Candidate Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/6064 <comment><AUTHOR> Thank you HN-landia for all the love and support of webpack. We look forward to a lot of candid/helpful feedback. You can always find us on twitter or GitHub. (@TheLarkInn)

Hope to see as many hands on this alpha preview as possible!!

\- webpack team</comment>


Paris Air Show's Slowest Plane Could Have Biggest Impact - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/06/electric-taxiing-airlines/?cid=co9091394 <comment><USER2> Does anyone have enough knowledge of commercial aviation to explain why this hasn't been done before? To an outsider, it seems like kind of an obvious feature.

<comment><USER3> Airbus 320 pilot here. This is something I've wondered myself for a long time. This same idea of a electric motor on the wheels powered by the APU(auxiliar small turbine for electricity and air presure, is the loud noise you hear when boarding the plane), is what some other pilots and myself have talked about for a long time. Just taking in to account that it makes you autonomous when pushing back and taxing, the long times you spend waiting for take of at the runway, it makes a lot of sense for this kind of planes that spend a lot of the daily time taxing on congested airports. I don't know exactly the reason why it hasn't been done before, I don't think is a weight or technology reason. It surely has seated on a TODO list for a long time, just take into account that in aviation we are way behind in aplication of the latest technology. For example we are still using single chanel radio for comunications with control( this is terribly frustrating and ineficient, it's pretty common to have comunication jams due to excess of traffics on the same frequency). Airplane computers even in new models are still 90s models (very slow but i suppose that stability is worth the boredom). There are a lot of other vintage technologies in aviation, after all every single release to production must be tested and approved by the FAA and EASA. It's the same for all major changes in systems and procedures. That makes all changes and improvements very slow and expensive.

<comment><USER4> Yep. The air transport industry is very very change (read: risk) averse.

The current APUs (except for 787) have traditionally supplied power at 28 VDC and 115 VAC due to the worries about high voltage arcs. They would rather have more current over more copper than higher voltage.

I suspect they have added significant wiring and electronics to this A320 to get this to work. I haven't been able to find out if this aircraft has even flown with this rigging much less gone through certification.

I bet they could slightly improve this system and get rid of reversers as well (active braking).

That being said, I'd imagine ATC to be very wary of the current 130hp system: there is no way you could expedite a move across an active runway at almost 80,000kg MTOW.

<comment><USER5> I think it's an oversimplification to say the reason for this innovation not happening sooner is because of risk. The Boeing 777 flies on only 2 engines which sounds far riskier but didn't stop it being approved. Also there's a race for building planes from carbon materials.

Robert Witwer, vice-president of advanced technology at Honey-well of Morristown, cited some other reasons [1]:

\- Increased congestion: "Short hauls do a lot of taxiing time, especially in a place like Newark, where you can be 20th in line"

\- Legislation: "And there are a number of airports in Europe that have tough emission standards that would make the Green Taxiing System appealing. I believe it's a game-changing technology."

\- Fuel costs: "The prospect of annual savings of $200,000 per jet from lower fuel use and less ground time has sparked interest from Airbus and airlines such as EasyJet and Alitalia. Airlines face the highest sustained prices ever for jet fuel. United Continental, the world's biggest carrier, says it burns $25,000 of fuel per minute. Jet fuel delivery in New York averaged $3.12 per gallon in 2012, more than four times as much as a decade ago."

\- Technological advances: "What's new in today's technology is the convergence of airlines' search for more efficiency and recent advances in miniaturizing electric motors to propel a plane at the 32 kilometres per hour it may need for taxiing."

[1] [http://www.wingsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&ta...](http://www.wingsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8036&Itemid=146)

<comment><USER6> It sounds risky to operate with only 2 engines, and in 1953 twin engine planes were only allowed to be within 60 minutes of a diversion airport, mostly because of the unreliability of piston engines. It was a fairly long journey to allow twin engine planes to fly the kinds of routes they are allowed today. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS)

As jet engines turned out be much more reliable than their piston counterparts, the restrictions were loosened over time, starting with waiving the 60 minute rule for tri-jets in 1964. The original concept for the 777 was actually a tri-jet design. However the 767 turned out to be very reliable as a twin-engine plane and in 1985 it became the first twin engine plane to be allowed to fly 120 minutes away from a diversion airport (ETOPS-120) and in 1989 it was allowed to fly 180 minutes away from a diversion airport (but planes had to first complete 1 year with 120 minutes before they could be certified for ETOPS-180). Since twin engine designes were suddenly much more capable than anticipated Boeing dropped the tri-jet design of the 777, and eventually came back with a twin-engine design. By 1995 there was enough experience with operating twin engine planes with the 180 minute rule in place and Boeing was able to get the 777 certified to 180 minutes from the start.

So it basically took from 1953 to 1995 to allow a brand new twin-engine plane to fly most transoceanic routes (with a 180 minute rule in place), based on increasing evidence that the jet engines themselves are fairly safe, and learning more about additional safety mechanisms and procedures required to safely operate twin engine planes at extended distances from diversion airports.

<comment><USER5> Great post, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I like the sound of the Taxibot over installing electric engines which weight 660 lbs on the wheels. It's like a Roomba for push backs :-)

I assume the bot autonomously 'docks' with the plane, then the pilot takes over control and pushes back. Then the bot autonomously returns back to its docking station by the jet bridge.

I suppose a single bot could do push backs for 3 or 4 neighboring jets, if they're just doing the push back. If it's taxing the jet all the way down the runway, I guess it's more of a 1:1 ratio, and probably a lot more complicated to work the returning units into ground traffic control, to the point where you need to work it into the overall airport design?

<comment><USER8> Taxibots need to be installed in every airport and for every jet at peak capacity.

These units go where the jets goes, and are available for exactly the utilised capacity of the airport.

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, a taxibot would be working most of the time, while this system would be sitting idle most of the time. Not just sitting sitting idle, it would be weighting on the airplane while flying.

EDIT: And this system, like the other one, would be just an alternative solution to the plane main engines, so if they were not working, not enough at peak hours, or not available at every airport, it wouldn't be such a big problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this take away from being able to warm the engines up to prevent thermal shock and/or ensure give them enough run time before takeoff to ensure they are running well?

</comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't they also have to place an electric air conditioning system on the plane as well? When they disconnect the shore power at the terminal, the air does not come back on until the engines spin up.

 _edit_ Read the comments on the article page and a reply stated the APU powers the ac. [http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Auxilia...](http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Auxiliary_power_unit.html)

<comment><USER3> Air conditioning and electricity are suplied by the APU, not only by the ground units. For engine start up you must use the air presure(the startup motor is pneumatic not electric), that's why you don't have air conditioning till the engines are running, but you can have it till the moment that you begin pushing back. Also low cost companies try to save every cent so they don't use the APU till they have to start the engines. This can be pretty unconfortable when you have more than 28C inside, but they don't care too much.

Edit: redaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if they could spin up the tires before they hit the tarmac on landing? Think about it: the landing gear tires go from 0 rpm to spinning rapidly enough to carry the plane going about 140 mph _in a fraction of a second_. That puts the tire under enormous strain, which causes them to blow out all the time. A pre-landing spin-up system might be able to save a lot of petroleum by conserving synthetic rubber.

<comment><USER13> They don't blow out "all the time," that's why you've never experienced a landing with a blow out. Any way this is a FAQ and has been investigated before:

> While I was in college at the University of Cincinnati, I was watching > television and saw a shot of an aircraft landing. There was the normal boil > of tire smoke at touchdown. I had the same thought as your reader. Thinking > that I had a great invention on my hands, I did some research in the > library. I found some U.S. Government (Air Force or Navy) documents that > addressed this issue. They were complete with photographs of a very > elaborate test sled designed to accelerate a test tire over various surfaces > and measure the effects of load and spinup time. Tests were done also of > pre-spinning the tires. Much to my surprise, tire spinup was not a > significant factor in tire wear.

> Flight crews did not like having almost 1000 lb. of spinning mass ~15 ft > below the center of gravity. The special tires made the aircraft very hard > to turn, especially at low airspeeds associated with the approach and > landing phase. The crews wanted gyroscopes in the cockpit, not under the > wings. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.

[http://archives.sensorsmag.com/articles/0300/14/index.htm](http://archives.sensorsmag.com/articles/0300/14/index.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Taxibot system, where a small tug vehicle positions itself under the plane's front wheels, would be very promising if it could be self-driving and fully automated.

And think of the cost saving when we get rid of the pilot and cockpit. And heck, let's get rid of the landing gear too, and have the plane drop into a cradle running along underneath the plane on a track to catch the plane. The cradle would also provide a lot of the acceleration of liftoff, and the cradle's liftoff track could climb a few hundred feet like a roller coaster, so maybe the plane's engines could be smaller.

<comment><USER15> We could get rid of those pesky complaining meat sacks too. I never quite understood the fiscal arguements for pilotless passenger aircraft. It's not like a single seat fighter jet where you can ditch the pressurisation gear, you've got to still keep the cargo alive no matter how much noise that they make.

<comment><USER16> > It's not like a single seat fighter jet where you can ditch the > pressurisation gear, you've got to still keep the cargo alive no matter how > much noise that they make.

Furthermore, my understanding is that modern fighter aircraft are generally limited in performance to operational envelope of the human driving it, i.e. most modern fighter airframes are capable of performance that could literally kill a human pilot. Getting rid of the pilot opens up the possibility of gaining significant manoeuvrability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Been also watching WheelTug[1] as a result of Andrew Tobias' interest (and investment) in it[2]. Sounds like they have more customers lined up, but competition already in this market should be a good thing!

[1] [http://www.wheeltug.gi/](http://www.wheeltug.gi/)

[2] [http://andrewtobias.com/column/hot- brakes/](http://andrewtobias.com/column/hot-brakes/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how much weight this adds to the plane. A full jet is often right at the edge of it's envelope and adding a few hundred pounds of electric motors could mean that they lose a row of seats. I would love it if extra leg room was an unintended consequence of electric ground propulsion.

<comment><USER19> "And that includes the 660-pound weight penalty of installing the system on an airplane."

<comment><USER20> The context makes it sound like they included the extra weight in fuel calculations, but it's not clear whether they included overall weight capacity. As the parent points out, this probably isn't worth it if they have to cut a row of paying passengers to do it.

<comment><USER21> An A320 burns about a half pound of fuel per second when taxiing. [1] So it seems plausible that the amount of weight you save on fuel could go a significant part of the way toward offsetting the weight penalty from carrying the extra motors.

I suppose if you're pushing the envelope precisely, and push back overweight, count on the taxi burn to get you down to max take-off weight, and plan to land with the legal minimum fuel reserve, then yeah, you'd still pay the full weight penalty. But I'm guessing that most airlines, as a policy, anticipate a range of possible taxi times in calculating their weight and fuel budgets, so significant weight savings should be realized.

[1] [http://www.mit.edu/~hamsa/pubs/KhadilkarBalakrishnanGNC2011....](http://www.mit.edu/~hamsa/pubs/KhadilkarBalakrishnanGNC2011.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _" The companies claim the result is a potential savings of more than 150 gallons during a multi-flight day for an airplane like the A320 or Boeing's 737. Overall an airplane equipped with the EGTS could cut fuel consumption by four percent over the course of a year."_

Another step to help reduce the costs of air travel. Follows the trend of airlines and manufacturers choosing to provide more efficient air travel vs faster air travel to consumers: [https://medium.com/lift-and- drag/7885a299bca2](https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/7885a299bca2)

It's a pretty funny trend since, as both articles suggest, speed is the cooler/sexier technology. Goes to show that it isn't always the cooler inventions that have the greatest impact.

</comment><comment><USER23> As we've agreed, this is not a new or novel idea, but it does illustrate why the patent system is broken. A quick, cursory search yields a patent from 1994 for the exact same thing. " Preferably, a motor (27, 44) powered by the auxiliary power unit of the aircraft is used to drive the wheels of the landing gear."

[https://www.google.com/patents/EP0756556B1?cl=en&dq=electric...](https://www.google.com/patents/EP0756556B1?cl=en&dq=electric+taxi+aircraft&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pPrFUYG3J6HH0wGJyoGoCQ&ved=0CEgQ6AEwAzgK)

Search Google Patents for "electric taxi airplane". Even so, there are many subsequent patents on the same overall concept. A broken system.

<comment><USER24> Is there any evidence that patent issues are what has kept this idea on the sidelines until now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the Concorde was the worst offender when it comes to taxing to the runway, if I remember correctly, because its jet engines were hugely inefficient at low speeds, it would burn almost 2 tonnes of fuel just to get to the runway

<comment><USER26> At 2 tonnes I suspect they would have had someone tow them to the runway rather than run their engines.

<comment><USER25> That's what I thought - if it uses so much fuel, towing it to the runway should always be cheaper, under any circumstances, right?

This is mentioned here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Engines) and there is a source for that as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That was the next logical steps after Boeing electrifying most of the 787 functions (I'm still wondering why Airbus didn't go with bleedless engines for the 350).

<comment><USER28> My impression was that Airbus quite consciously decided to be a bit more conservative with the A350 after seeing all the problems Boeing had with the 787 switching to a zillion new technologies, _all at once_...

<comment><USER27> Airbus had also said that the Boeing was using too much carbon fibre on the 787, saying that it was too new a technology, but they ended up using more of it on the A350.

I bet all the newer airplanes will switch to bleedless engines in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Could they also use he motors to spin the wheels up to speed right before landing? I always see a puff of smoke when the wheels first touch the runway. I imagine that wears down the tires pretty quickly?</comment>


Ask HN: How to prepare for technical interviews? - <AUTHOR>

I'm good at my day to day job but I suck at whiteboard style interviews. I'd like to hear form any HN'ers who have gone from Level Zero to pro at acing tech interviews. How you prepared , what resources you used and how long it took. <comment><USER2> Whiteboard tests are an excellent way to tests someone's ability to:

\- write using their hands

\- face one direction and talk in another

\- talk while coding

\- estimate insertion space

\- write in horizontally straight lines

\- avoid getting ink on their sleeves

The best places I've interviewed at game me a machine, a problem, and some quiet time to solve it.

However for others, I bring pencil and grid paper, and ask to sit beside people and solve the problem with them looking over my shoulder.

<comment><USER3> I could not have said it better, white-boarding is about as far away from a persons coding routine as it gets. Not to mention we all rely on REPL and the debugger from time to time to save us from simple mistakes, there is no iterative process on the whiteboard. Interviewers that insist on white- boarding should be viewed as companies that don't "get it" and you should focus your time elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> I've never had a white board interview where the interviewer cared about syntax or simple mistakes. I always 'code' in a mixture of pseudo code, math notation and diagrams depending on what makes sense and no one has ever complained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Practice. There is nothing else that can prepare you better. Assume that you will fail the first 5 interviews and use them to learn. After a while, you get the hang of it and learn how to fake it for the real thing.

And remember, you do your best when you don't care about the job. If you do care, your nervousness and desire to impress will be perceived as incompetence. And at that point, you're just sabotaging yourself.

<comment><USER6> I hear the second point all the time and I can agree with it from my personal experience, but what would be a good way to "not care"? For me, when I know I'm interviewing with a company that I'm excited about, it seems a lot harder to actually "not care" about it than just saying it.

<comment><USER7> The best way to not care is to actually not care---to have another interview lined up with a company you're just as excited about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some advice from when I studied for these no more than two months ago: 1\. Cracking the Code - get ahold of it and read through it. It 'll give you all the topics that you should study through and some tricks that are helpful in implementations. You'll still need to use other resources in order to know the topics in depth, like I don't think it goes too in depth into dynamic programming, but the book does have a large amount of questions and solutions. 2\. oj.leetcode.com - This is just a website kind of like how interviewstreet was, and something around 180 problems that are interview style problems. You should be fine if you can do the almost all of the medium or easy level problems and maybe some of the hard ones. For these, I'd definitely get out a notebook and write out solutions and then throw type them up, to get a feel for how whiteboarding is going to be. 3\. If you've got friends who are in the same position, actual mock interviews in person are an enormous help. I had a couple friends get together, and one of us would do one problem at a time while the rest evaluated them - basically acted like the interviewer.

With regards to timeline, I think I started preparing for my first phone interview a week early. The first couple of days were definitely slow, but with 3 days left, I studied for a couple hours each day before. For my first onsite, I found out about oj.leetcode.com about two weeks before and just did those problems almost non-stop for the two weeks leading up. Five days before the onsite, I rounded up some friends and we started doing whiteboard problems for a couple hours each day.

I guess preparation time varies by person. I did a little bit of competitive programming before this, so I would say I had a little bit of a head start. However, before this, I probably couldn't program a binary search off the top of my head, or approach dynamic programming problems, but now, I can probably handle a decent amount of algorithmimc interview problems. I can't say I'm pro, but I'm apparently good enough.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure you've heard it before, but Cracking the Coding Interview is still a great resource. Do the problems on a whiteboard or on paper. The sections on soft skills and interview prep are also gold.

Additionally, site likes Top Coder and Hacker Rank are great for brushing up on your algorithms and problem solving.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is very important to understand that you can't expect that your mind will work properly during an interview. So if you can't do it in your sleep then it isn't good enough. There are only two ways to reach this stage, either it becomes second nature to you or you memorize everything. If you still want to proceed then you can try these steps:

Firstly you need to learn to code small 10-20 line programs in your head (everything including proper syntax etc, if you printed a copy of your mental image it would compile), without that you get crippled just from being unable to properly reason about your code.

Secondly you need to build up an intuition for data structures and algorithms so that you can easily come up with solutions on the fly. Very few do this, some even thinks that it is impossible and assumes that the questions only test memorization.

As an alternative to the second step you can memorize a ton of algorithms and continue going to interviews till you get a question you have memorized. This is what people usually do which isn't strange since this is how most pass their CS exams.

The first step is easy, just stop using your favorite IDE and use something simple like notepad. When you are comfortable with writing code in notepad then you are ready for interview programming.

The second step is harder and will take years. The easiest way to get better at this is to try to solve problems without help. You can start by reading up on different data structures/algorithms on wikipedia and then try to implement them in your favorite language. You can do competitive programming in parallel to practice speed and try out your implementations on tests which are much better at finding bugs than any interviewer.

The alternative second step can take any amount of time depending on how lucky you are. Minimum is to memorize FizzBuzz by writing it over and over in notepad till you get it right 20 times in a row. This can be done in a day even if you are an idiot. From there you can continue adding solutions to problems till you get the job you want. Then just forget everything and come back complaining once you want another job. This already happened once for fresh CS graduates since they forgot what they crammed for their tests so now they need to cram again and again for every interview.

</comment><comment><USER4> The problem most people have with whiteboard interviews is that they have no strategy in mind before they start. They just step up to the whiteboard and hope inspiration will strike. My recommendation is to read Polya's How to Solve It. Then just follow the steps it presents once you get in front of the whiteboard. This way even if you don't immediately know how to solve the problem they present you at least have somewhere reasonable to start and a general map to follow.

</comment><comment><USER11> Whiteboard interviews are complete bullshit. I know that not everyone is lucky enough to work for companies that know that, but you should try.

Slightly more related to your question: once you get to a certain point, you shouldn't still be doing whiteboard interviews. Your resume and completed projects should tell the interviewers that you can code, or you should be moving to management (if that's your thing). I never even ask technical questions of someone who has good references from a few companies.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. At multiple interviews I was asked to do code challenges or solve FizzBuzz exercises. I replied something along the lines of _" I built a commercial product all by myself. Here is the website so you can play with it. Here are some code samples."_.

And the answer I got always left me speechless: _" Well, I don't really know what code you used or if you actually wrote it. So we're just going to fizzbuzz you to make sure you're good. We do this with everybody"_.

This didn't happen just once. It was actually the vast majority. The no- whiteboard approach seems to work only with early-stage startups. Once a company starts settling, say hello to mindless bureaucracy.

<comment><USER12> It's not mindless to make sure a candidate can actually produce some code. You'd be surprised how often people are hopelessly fucking incompetent at actual coding.

I'm used to getting these alpha dog; VP-of-whatever from big investment banks (I work in finance), with a laundry list of stuff they have done. Sure ok, good for you, now write up a skeleton class for a linked list in _any language of your choice_... what's that, you're stuck? You can't remember the keywords for defining a new class in the language you've labeled yourself as an EXPERT in? really?

<comment><USER5> When you hire a lawyer, do you test him with imaginary laws? If not, why are you doing it with engineers?

Engineers solve problems. That's it. They use tools, they try things and they provide solutions. Asking an engineer to solve an imaginary problem on the spot is idiotic. You may have glided through school memorizing stuff and barfing them during exams. But engineers didn't. They understood how things work and why.

So when you ask an engineer to write a skeleton class for a linked list, his answer will always be _" Why? What problem are you trying to solve?"_. They don't have it memorized. They build it as they go along, based on the specified requirements.

Unlike you, most engineers are friendly people. And not as aggressive. All they want to do is build something or help you do it. You on the other hand seem to have some envy problems. The _" AHA! Not so smart now, mr VP of whatever..."_ attitude is exactly what's wrong with the tech industry.

Leave it to a bureaucrat to fuck things up.

<comment><USER13> Are you talking about memorizing what a linked list is, or someone else's code? I don't understand what is imaginary about such a ubiquitous construct.

<comment><USER14> I think the GP considered it an "imaginary problem" in that if you really needed a linked list for something, you would probably just make use of an existing library rather than write it yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The best technical interview prep (IMHO) is to go on lots of warmup interviews. In other words, apply to lots of companies, and start with the interviews at places you _might_ not actually want to work. Gradually build up to the high-pressure interview at your dream employer. Once you're in that room you'll be well practiced and ready for anything.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ask friends for mock interviews.

<comment><USER17> this. I think there was a show HN in the past few months that offered this service?

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure any random person that has contact info in HN would mock interview you for practice.</comment></comment></comment>


Centralized control for image upload – image size, format, thumbnails and more - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/centralized_control_for_image_upload_image_size_format_thumbnail_generation_tagging_and_more

<comment><AUTHOR> This post introduces Cloudinary's upload presets that allow you to control your asset upload options using an interactive UI or an API. You can update image uploading settings live for your web sites and mobile apps with different thumbnail sizes, tagging, photo moderation and more. Sample code included for Ruby on Rails, PHP and Node.js.</comment>


Balanced Payments (YC W11) Raises $1.4M To Provide A Platform For P2P Markets - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/16/balanced-marketplace-payments/

<comment><USER2> Less than two weeks ago, this scathing comment showed up on HN about BalancedPayments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4744982>

Did Balanced ever respond? The comments here about the founders are quite opposite.

<comment><USER3> As a side note, that particular thread has some excellent comments about chargebacks, risk detection etc.,

Gem of a discussion on that thread apart from the scathing attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know what it is about YC payment companies, but they are all awesome. Would you believe me if I said that these guys are nicer and friendlier than Stripe?

Congrats guys! We're definitely looking forward to moving to Balanced.

<comment><USER5> Thanks irollboozers! Looking forward to having you on board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We're using Balanced @ our startup - Really great integration, and support is crazy fast. Keep it up guys!

</comment><comment><USER7> As a dev and a user, I love that these guys are creating a better payments platform. Here's to the all the marketplaces that before Balanced were just twinkles in their founders' eyes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Afaict, the really new thing Balanced is doing that I haven't seen anywhere else is programmatically authorizing merchant accounts. Is anyone else doing that?

<comment><USER5> > Afaict, the really new thing Balanced is doing that I haven't seen anywhere > else is programmatically authorizing merchant accounts.

There's three main things marketplaces have expressed that they like about Balanced: 1\. Compliance. This includes PCI and the ability to underwrite merchants through the API 2\. Payouts. Depositing money in a merchant's bank account the next business day and having full control over _when_ you issue the deposit. With this launch, we made it easier for marketplaces to use us just for payouts—something we saw existing customers doing 3\. Taxes. We handle the tax reporting for the merchants

There's no one else that provides any of the three above.

<comment><USER8> Extremely valuable competencies for marketplace payments - excited to see you guys grow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bug report: I just went to your home page and got the message "Put money in your seller's bank account by: UNDEFINED NAN/NAN".

<comment><USER10> Cheers Scott, fix on the way :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Happy to see this! I've had nothing but great, helpful experiences with the folks over at Balanced.

</comment><comment><USER12> Guys, a typo on your "overview" page:

... and 2.9% = 30¢ when you successfully ....

This should be 2.9% + 30¢ I believe.

<comment><USER13> Whoops. Thanks for that! Fixed.

<comment><USER12> Great! Love the product btw, I really think it solves a clear pain point. One feature request: give the option to send checks (through the API preferably) vs. an ACH. An ACH is not always feasible.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! We've definitely explored this option. Part of being an open company is that we publicly discuss our roadmap, I'd love it if you just +1'ed via our github tracker so you can get updated about our progress in that direction.

If we have enough interest on this feature, we'll reopen the issue and track its progress publicly:

<https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/69>

<comment><USER14> I just tried clicking the blog link from the bottom of this page <https://www.balancedpayments.com/community> and got this error:

SSL Error

This is probably not the site you are looking for! You attempted to reach blog.balancedpayments.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as secure.static.tumblr.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of blog.balancedpayments.com. You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site.

<comment><USER13> This has been fixed! Thanks for reporting:)

<comment><USER14> No prob. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Balanced is awesome. Really helpful people!

</comment><comment><USER16> What's your bitcoin strategy?

It seems like bitcoin could really complement this type of business: The escrow service would be very useful to people wishing to pay in bitcoin. And at the same time, Balanced could benefit from the significantly lower fees and zero risk of fraud that bitcoin payments offer.

<comment><USER5> We haven't seen much demand for supporting bitcoin. If you would like us to support bitcoin, could you create a GitHub issue, so we can track interest?

<https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues>

We use GitHub to track feature requests like international support: <https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/23>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great and innovate product. Keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER8> Excellent to see Balanced getting love for the great product they've built! Congrats guys!!

</comment><comment><USER18> balanced ftw! I love the fact that I can send ACH payments immediately.

</comment><comment><USER19> You may want to change in the blog URL https -> http

<comment><USER13> Ah thanks! Love your attention to detail here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You guys planning on integrating with Dwolla?

<comment><USER5> We haven't seen much demand for supporting Dwolla. However, could you create an issue on GitHub if you would like us to support Dwolla? <https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues></comment></comment>


Space Frigates - <AUTHOR> https://www.spacefrigates.com <comment><USER3> If you're interested in a free game that has had this core functionality (online multiplayer Asteroids) since 1995 - <USER2> [https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum/) (edit: replaced with Steam link)

There has been a dedicated community of thousands of players, many of which have been playing well over a decade. Plenty of videos on youtube under either "Subspace" or more recently "Continuum".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_\(video_game\))

Also - a plug for my favorite Zone: HZ. www.rshl.org.

<comment><USER4> Extreme Games is my favorite (large CTF game with a bunch of different bases). Unfortunately it wasn't one of the default zones on the client last I checked and you had to go into the client's server view to add it. Really is one of the best zones. Much more interesting than Trench Wars.

If anybody played Infantry, the EOL zone was based on Extreme Games. Though it would blow my mind if anyone knows what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER3> EGFL has created some of the tensest gaming experiences in decades with teammates from across the globe. Regular 8 or 9 hour games that were hotly contested.

Lag-attaching as a strategy is an incredible example of how innovative gamers were given latency restraints. :) Shout out to Explosive, my first EG Squad.

<comment><USER5> I dont remember that many drawn out games in EGFL. Longest one i know of was imp vs mut, which was 12+ hours long. Lag attaching was a dirty bug which just added fun :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ani-ani Some playing tips:

\- Never keep any controls pressed down. Consider each single keypress as a discrete action that consumes energy. The more conservative you are with keypresses, the more energy you keep.

\- Because it's busy, you have to accelerate right after spawning, otherwise you're in the hellzone and people will actually spawn inside you, causing instant death.

\- The down arrow will brake/stop your ship, no matter which direction you're pointing. This is handy when you approach the edge of the map.

\- Try cruising along the edge of the map at a leisurely pace, avoid the center, and pwn slowly.

<comment><USER6> I figured. Game registers a single keypress as multiple (Firefox / macOS). Keypresses register late (I can notice this especially with brake). Nearly unplayable for me.

<comment><USER7> Same here, even when I'm alone in the arena. Unplayable. Feel like the packet has to go to the server and back before I see a response in my local craft.

Edit:

Pinging 13 times I got: rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 125.981/217.330/322.054/63.585 ms

>200ms ping average, 64ms median deviation, yeah I bet the packets have to go to the server before it responds and that explains everything. The weird thing is that it was still an issue while I was alone on the server so it can't have been overloaded.

To my own website that's 37.490/39.462/41.610/1.199 ms, so it's not my connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm suddenly reminded of this game I played the hell out of back in the day: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_Nova](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_Nova)

<comment><USER8> Endless Sky is a well-polished FOSS version of the same thing.

[https://endless-sky.github.io](https://endless-sky.github.io)

<comment><USER9> Was just about to mention this game. Glad other people still play it, an absolutely incredible game and open source project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry all, wasn't expecting the traffic.... spinning up some more servers now...

<comment><USER8> While the servers are down, do you have a demo video you could post?

<comment><USER11> They're up!

<comment><USER12> It's still down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPilot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPilot)

<comment><USER14> Was about to suggest that myself (but searched and found you already had). I've not looked in recently so I don't know how much development is going on, but I wasted many a bit of time playing this and its variants with a group of friends while at Uni two decades ago.

Key-words for those searching: cross-platform, open source, multi-player, fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone remember Netrek ? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netrek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netrek)

<comment><USER16> Heh, yes. It played WAY WAY WAY smoother in the late 80s than space frigates plays on my 3+ GHz desktop.

At the time netrek was near unplayable on my 386. But I got the optional 387 FPU and a S3-801 (that had hardware support for vectors) and suddenly netrek, xpilot, and similar vector games played great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wanting something to be good and usable based on its name being exciting to you isn't the same as it actually being good or usable. It's astonishing that this was upvoted by 179 people. There are already hundreds of multiplayer .io browser games that are actually playable. Some of them are space games, microgravity.io for instance.

Why is no one giving their honest opinion on Space Frigates, which can only possibly be negative? I suppose there is a culture of fear in HN comment sections, people are afraid of pointing out when something is obvious amateur hour garbage because they don't want to get spanked with downvotes or a shadowban for hurting someone's feelings. Is this really necessary? Why protect someone's feelings? Sometimes people need to hear what they don't really want to hear, otherwise you're just enabling their delusion and they never improve themselves.

</comment><comment><USER18> Unplayably superjerky in Australia, Firefox 72.0.2, OSX.

<comment><USER19> Video game difficulty levels:

1\. I'm too young to die

2\. Hey, not too rough

3\. Hurt me plenty

4\. Ultra-Violence

5\. Nightmare!

6\. NBN

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> 503 error now. Hug of death. What was it? Sounds like a game from some of the comments...

</comment><comment><USER10> Sorry all, wasn't expecting all the traffic. :-)

</comment><comment><USER21> I love this. This reminds me a lot of my first experience with teeworlds[1], which came pre-installed with LXLE (a sort of hipster Lubuntu derivative). In both cases my emotions transitioned from "oh, another one of _these_ games", to delight as I realized the ships around me were controlled by other players, to being thoroughly amused by the wonky physics. I love lightweight games where it's super low friction to launch, interact with other players, and sign off.

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

</comment><comment><USER22> Twitter of the dev...

[https://twitter.com/spacefrigates](https://twitter.com/spacefrigates)

</comment><comment><USER23> Used to play a game like this on Amiga. Think it was called Spacewar and you could play against a friend via modem.

</comment><comment><USER24> This brings back unpleasant reminders of my early gaming days, my middle gaming days and my later gaming days, in which I am sitting at the controls struggling to move in a voluntary manner. Fortunately there are other folk there who are kind enough to put me out of my misery, speedily.

</comment><comment><USER25> I like the conservation of angular momentum, a nod to physics realism relatively uncommon in classic space shooters. The "brakes" (down arrow key) seem like they should follow the same rules, though, that you should start moving backward if you fire them too much.

<comment><USER10> Yes, you are correct! Nice catch!

I left the brakes as is for now because the game was very difficult with out them.

However, to retain the level of realism that I was hoping for I plan to rework the brakes such that they show the ship slows to a stop properly.

For example, the onboard computer should calculate the actual thrusters needed to stop the ship for the player.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Linking turn to fire makes the game no fun. I kind of like the idea of limited resources, but this makes all the ships degenerate into spinning drifters that occasionally in a spread. There's no skill at that point.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice game! How do you refuel or collect debris? Is that discarded when another player dies?

Edit: Nvm. It seems I wasn't noticing debris being generated by shooting it instantly.

<comment><USER10> Yep, when ships explode they drop debris which can be picked up for energy. How much energy you get depends on how much energy the ship had when they exploded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Oops. Using "Alt" for a key isn't good here, as on Firefox it pops open the top menu bar (eg File, Edit, ...), changing the window height too.

</comment><comment><USER29> The "ALT"-key will toggle the context menu in Vivaldi, and thus steal the focus from the game when activating the shield. ;)

</comment><comment><USER30> Opened this on mobile safari, wondering why I can only see players and movement while drag-scrolling the screen...

</comment><comment><USER31> I made this in 3D: [http://aeonalpha.com](http://aeonalpha.com)

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://airmash.online/](https://airmash.online/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Feels like this needs some latency reduction. Client-side prediction and server-side input replay. Etc.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting mechanics. You can't spam the controls. Well, you can, but you won't do well.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's unplayable on my computer.

</comment><comment><USER36> "503 Service Unavailable"

\- I guess enough people here thought it was worth a try

<comment><USER10> Yea, sorry about that.

If you want to give it another try now that traffic has died down the performance is a lot better.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is the fact that steering is almost impossible a bug or a feature?

<comment><USER38> It's space. There isn't really steering; you have to use thrust to modify your vector.

<comment><USER17> Computers can take input and handle it however the programmer wants in order to replicate ordinary steering. This is true in both games and in actual space.

Why is everyone in this comment section seemingly unable to say anything negative about Space Frigates? This deserves its own 2 hour documentary.

I'm tempted to submit a random .io game and see how people react.

<comment><USER10> Hi!

Yes, you are correct. In fact, this has been something I have gone back on forth on myself.

I do actually have an "on board computer" That sits between what the player tried to do and what the ship actually does.

For example, the on board computer will only allow the pilot to fire the rotational thrusters to a certain max angular momentum.

I've also experimented with having the on board computer automatically stop rotation by firing the opposite rotational thruster for the pilot automatically.

The thing is, it was a pain because whatever we that degree turn was was never just right.

So, when you tried to fire at another ship you would often rotate a little too much or a little not enough.

Having it the way it is now we're the pilot has to manually control angular velocity gives the. More precise control.

So that is why that is the way it currently is. But, many people have had the same feedback...

What I am thinking about doing is having a control on the HUD where pilots can choose manual versus automatic and also set the amount of predefined degree of rotation they want when in automatic.

I think that might be the best of all worlds?

<comment><USER37> My issue is just "I'm not going to spend the time to figure this out." I know how to use vim, I know how to drive a manual transmission car, I learned those things, it is possible.

But if you ask me to apply even a fraction of the effort spent learning vim or stick shift to learning a lo-fi space shooter, my question is "why" and my answer is "no thanks." It's not that it's impossible, it's that the juice is not worth the squeeze, at least for me.

<comment><USER10> That's fair and I appreciate the feedback.

I admit that the controls are not intuitive for somebody who has never played the game.

I do enjoy the controls and find that they make the game very challenging but I do understand that it will drive away many potential players.

I think that the "why" will eventually be that there will be a lot more content. My long term visual is to grow the game into more than a simple shooter. I eventually plan to have larger ships with more components to control.

I hope that as the game progresses the content will justify more of a learning curve. For example, many people have taken the time to learn Dwarf Fortress because it is an awesome game with tons of content.

But I'm a long, long way from that.

So, to your point, I may need to make the controls more intuitive until the content justifies a larger learning curve.

Thanks for the feedback,

Dave

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What tech stach are you using? This is really cool.

<comment><USER17> Can you explain why you think this is cool?

<comment><USER39> I find multiplayer websocket games cool. Can you explain why you want to know?

<comment><USER17> It's unplayable and barely functional. Do you actually like it, or you just like the idea of what it could be?

There has been a multiplayer websocket .io game renaissance ongoing since 2016. Hundreds of multiplayer websocket games have been released in that time and they're all objectively better than this, tech stack included. People like you are acting like this never happened, and I don't know how you could actually be unaware of it. Some multiplayer websocket games such as slither.io are a worldwide phenomenon on par with Pokémon Go in terms of popularity.

In light of all that, I'm asking why you think this is cool because it doesn't make sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> z-cam 503

</comment><comment><USER40> feels like authoritative server with no client side prediction?

<comment><USER10> Hi!

It does have client side prediction. What it is lacking is a working sync when the updates come back from the server.

I've tried and tried to get that part right but it has been difficult.

I recently found the Lance engine and may just port to that since they seem to have figured it out.

You can follow my progress at: [https://blog.spacefrigates.com](https://blog.spacefrigates.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> safari gave me a seizure. Otherwise, fun!

</comment><comment><USER42> So nice!!

</comment><comment><USER42> So nice :)

<comment><USER10> Thank you!

You can follow along with my progress at: [https://blog.spacefrigates.com](https://blog.spacefrigates.com)</comment></comment>


OpenBR: Open-Source Biometric Recognition - <AUTHOR> http://openbiometrics.org/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting. I would love to see something open source like this for voice recognition. So many companies are heading to voice control full tilt, and I don't really want it unless I can know exactly what it's doing with my voice recordings. I realize Amazon has the DIY echo tutorial, but it still is a black box between sending the recording and receiving the result.

<comment><USER3> > I would love to see something open source like this for voice recognition.

have you looked into CMU Sphinx? [0]

I've seen a few tutorials around the net for Amazon Alexa-like functionality using CMU Sphinx, although i'm sure none of it is as polished right out of the box.

[0]: [http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/](http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER4> Why, thank ya! Bookmarked.</comment></comment></comment>


A Tour Through the "Big Data" Zoo - <AUTHOR> http://imply.io/post/2015/11/04/big-data-zoo.html <comment><USER2> Great overview of the state of the art for newcomers to the big data space.</comment>


Django Model Lifecycle Hooks – Inspired by Rails Callbacks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rsinger86/django-lifecycle <comment><USER2> Very cool!

At my current place of employment, I have been trying to push Django signals for a little while now as a good way to drive our metrics.

One of the chief concerns about signals however, is that they're fairly isolated, and it's not always obvious what gets triggered when (for example) save() is called. This is, of course, one of the drawbacks to loose coupling.

Something like @hook would be a good response to those who have this concern, because the hook code is attached to the model directly, meaning when you wonder to yourself, "What happens when I call save()?", you need look no further than the model itself.

I'll pitch this to my colleagues and see what they have to say!

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool :)

Yeah, my team hasn't found many cases where signals are preferable to overridding save(). The implementation of @hook is really just a wrapper around that approach - with the aim of a friendly, declarative interface.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all -

Just wanted to share a little package I made to add lifecycle event hooks to Django models. I often find this style of hooking into events easier to reason about than Django's built-in Signals.

Feedback is welcomed and appreciated.</comment>


HackerOne raises $40M in their C-round of funding - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackerone.com/blog/The-best-security-initiative-you-can-take-in-2017 <comment><USER2> Im pulling for the H1 gang. Bug bounties are a critical security component for any business: They are the only way to catch unknowns and known unknowns. If your business doesnt have some form of bounty program, you are whistling past grave yards.

Working with h1 is great because they can help you avoid running a program that creates problems during your launch, manage submissions, handle international payouts, etc. Cant say enough positive things about these folks.

<comment><USER3> Just wanted to chime in and say that working with them as a hacker is also a great experience. They put a ton of emphasis on the community with publicly disclosed reports ([https://hackerone.com/hacktivity/popular](https://hackerone.com/hacktivity/popular)), statistics on response efficiency (e.g. [https://hackerone.com/uber](https://hackerone.com/uber)), and a great support/mediation team ([https://support.hackerone.com/hc/en- us/articles/210782803-Ho...](https://support.hackerone.com/hc/en- us/articles/210782803-How-does-hacker-mediation-work-)). In addition, they also have a really admirable stance on transparency and it seems like they always share as much information as they can (e.g. [https://www.hackerone.com/blog/fair-and-transparent- hacker-i...](https://www.hackerone.com/blog/fair-and-transparent-hacker- invitations)).

I've personally learned a ton from working on bug bounties through HackerOne and am unbelievably excited to see them continue to grow.

<comment><USER4> I had the exact opposite experience. I filed a vuln report for a company that promised guaranteed bug bounties, complete with a polished PoC. I received no response at all. I contacted HackerOne, who pinged the company a couple times, didn't get a response either, apologized to me and that was it.

The company remained on HackerOne and continued to promise bug bounties (and occasionally even paid some). Meanwhile, since the company hadn't responded to my report, I was not even able to disclose it within the platform.

I wrote it off as a learning experience and concluded that HackerOne was clearly focused on getting companies on board while not really caring about hackers. Business-wise, it's probably a clever practice (because getting companies on board is hard while finding hackers is easy), but I certainly am not very excited about them...

Edit: Said company is still on HackerOne, still offering their bug bounty, with links in the description now pointing to 404s since they changed their product line in the meantime. QED.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I'm definitely really surprised to hear that just because it is in such stark contrast to my own experience. If you don't mind me asking, how long ago was this? From my own experience, they're continually improving (they just added the response efficiency stats last may) and are putting a ton of effort into growing the hacker community.

<comment><USER4> The original report was roughly a year ago. I've checked that the company is still on their web site with 404-ing signup links roughly 30 minutes ago. I see response efficiency stats, but I don't know how they handle still-open reports. If they only consider reports that have received a response, a company that resolves a couple of reports quickly while ignoring hundreds of others will still have great stats.

Support simply told me to self-close the report because the company seemed inactive, without removing the company from their web site.

I get that they can't force them to pay or triage all issues, but the very least they could do would be letting researchers publish reports if ignored for over 90 days, and remove companies that are inactive. However, HackerOne wants to be able to show off a huge customer list, so they keep them on board, and what the companies want is king, so they don't allow disclosure unless the company allows it. (They also mix bug bounties managed by them with other bug bounties, to make it seem like they have more customers than they really do.)

<comment><USER3> Wow, very surprised to hear that. I definitely recommend taking Marten up on his offer and sending him an email (this behavior—of the CEO reaching out to hackers—is much more in line with my own experiences with them).

Good luck with everything!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's their official blog post on the announcement: [https://www.hackerone.com/blog/The-best-security- initiative-...](https://www.hackerone.com/blog/The-best-security-initiative- you-can-take-in-2017)

</comment><comment><USER5> Good overview of HackerOne in The Verge: [http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/8/14534738/hackerone- bounty-4...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/8/14534738/hackerone- bounty-40-million-funding-us-army-vulnerabilities)

</comment><comment><USER6> As a researcher, I am incredibly, incredibly excited to see H1 grow and more companies come online. I pay a good portion of my rent through bug bounties and I have to admit the gamification and ease of working with H1 makes it fantastic for someone like me.</comment>


Apple Stock Just Crashed To A New Low - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-stock-new-low-2013-3?op=1 <comment><USER2> When newspapers are running headlines about how some stock is going to double in value, it's time to get as far away as possible.

Besides, if you're in technology, you shouldn't be investing in tech companies. Since most of us are technologists, if we're ever out of a job for the long term, it'll probably because of a downturn in the technology industry. If our savings are in tech companies, our savings will be down too.

<comment> wes-exp _if you're in technology, you shouldn't be investing in tech companies_

Warren Buffett avoided investing in technology companies during the dot-com tech bubble because he didn't understand them. So according to the most legendary investor of all time, understanding what you invest in is crucial.

To exclude investing in tech companies because your income comes from tech companies might be a good strategy to diversify and mitigate against short- term market fluctuations. But it's an incredibly stupid strategy if you're shooting for growth and willing to accept some level of risk. Because your tech expertise gives you the best chance of actually investing intelligently in tech.

<comment><USER3> I think you're missing the point. Yes, if you're willing to "accept risk" then obviously tech can be part of any portfolio.

But the grandparent post was making a point about risk analysis that you seem to have missed. Because we are (presumably) already employed in the tech sector, _we are already exposed to risk in that sector, even with nothing in our portfolios_. A tech downturn is going to impact us disproportionately already, so adding exposure in our investment portfolios is adding extra risk in a way that it is not for a more typical investor.

That doesn't mean "don't invest in technology", but it does mean that you need to be more careful about how you reason about it and not just brush the decision off as your willingness to "accept some level of risk."

<comment> wes-exp FWIW, I get (and got) the point. Restating the gp's arguments doesn't somehow make them more true. But let me clarify my own point.

Suppose that industry X is the best industry to be in from a long term income and investment point of view, but that it's volatile in the short term. If the volatility is dangerous to you and you can't accept that level of risk, then diversification of your income and investments is wise.

However, if you have sufficient risk tolerance, e.g., enough money in the bank and time on your hands to survive through the fluctuations, then it is still better to be all-in on industry X for your overall growth. Because it performs better over the long term.

I'm kind of assuming here, for the sake of argument, that you maintain the same income+investment industry mix over time rather than changing it up periodically and trying to beat fluctuations. But, I hope this makes my point more clear.

<comment><USER3> It's clear, but it's still wrong: your risk tolerance analysis appears to include "money in the bank ... to survive through the fluctuations" of the market, but _not_ to survive a simultaneous loss of your job. Which, because it is in the same sector as your investment portfolio, _is very likely to be correlated with those downward fluctuations_.

Stated again, and for the third time: for technical professionals, investment of personal assets in the tech industry carries _higher risk_ than it does for fund managers and other general investors. If you aren't investing with that in mind, you're fundamentally doing it wrong. This isn't a question of "risk tolerance", it's a question of correct mathematics.

<comment> wes-exp For the second time you treat me like an idiot and assume that I'm missing the obvious and excluding the income aspect. I'm not. Let me come out and state it triple explicitly so it's clear to you:

I see the income aspect. I realize that a loss of income is costly. I realize that income performance is correlated to the industry it's in and hence correlated with stocks in the same industry. That's the whole basis for the discussion and I see that. Jesus!

I see that, and I still disagree.

This is where both approaches can be right and this is the whole point I have been trying to make. For the sake of argument, suppose you have a trillion dollars in the bank and therefore infinite risk tolerance. Suppose also that your income is 100k. At this point, temporary loss of your income, which can also be reduced by unemployment pay, is wholly inconsequential compared to maximizing your gains in the stock market. If the tech sector pays back at 20% y/y (average) and the next best sector only pays back 5%, absolutely it's better to be in the tech sector even though your income comes from that. My example is unrealistic, but it serves a point: mathematically, it works. So the question is then how much risk (i.e. volatility) can you take in pursuit of maximizing returns? If you have a lot of assets, plenty. If you have no assets and therefore no risk tolerance, obviously diversifying your income from your investments is a good idea. But crucially, whether or not same- sector income/investment is a good idea all depends on how much risk (i.e. volatility) you can take.

Would you suggest Steve Jobs shouldn't have held Apple stock? I think it worked out pretty well for him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In March 2012, the San Jose Mercury had headlines like "No end in sight to Apple growth? Even after paying for dividend and stock buyback, tech giant's shares are likely to keep rising" and "Regular folks rewarded for patience with Apple stock riches".

Articles like those should be scary to anyone around during the tech bubble. Back in March 2000, Cisco was the world's most valuable company and everyone was buying the stock because of all the cheerleading articles. Now Cisco is #52 most valuable company and the stock has been flat for a decade. Looking at AAPL and CSCO stock charts shifted by about 10 years is very interesting.

This reads like I think Apple will do the same thing as Cisco, so let me be clear that I have no idea what Apple stock will do. I just want to provide some history about the Cisco stock trajectory for those readers who were in elementary school at the time :-)

(By the time I'd found the articles I was looking for, this had dropped off HN's front page, so I may be wasting my time writing this.)

</comment><comment><USER5> They say crash, I'd say correction. AAPL has shot up by over 6,000% in the past ten years. And this recent move hasn't even dropped it below the price it commanded prior to Steve Jobs' passing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why all the "terrible iPhone 5 sales" being touted in the newspapers when they were sold out of it for months, and the latest mobile ad data suggesting it's gobbling up marketshare like there's no tomorrow?

</comment><comment><USER7> The headline is misleading. A 52 week low is more accurate. A new low implies that the stock is in the sub $2.00 range. Of course this is nitpicking but "Crashed To A New Low" is rather sensational.

</comment><comment><USER8> Henry Blodget is a well known known for being an Apple Troll. It seems this guy have a personal vendetta against Apple. The "issues" with Apple he listed and the explanations are full of the same unsubstantiated rumors that have been regurtitated by the incestuous tech journalists and analysts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> As recently as mid-October, the stock was billed to be getting close to $1000.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/16/analysis-apple- sto...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/16/analysis-apple-stock-headed- for-1000-per-share)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/gurufocus/2012/10/05/apple- stock...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/gurufocus/2012/10/05/apple-stock-may-be- worth-1000-a-share-to-peter-lynch/)

<comment><USER9> And in a rational world it would be. It's P/E ratio is crazy low compared to Google and Amazon just in raw terms. But the market is an irrational place, it only looks sane in aggregate and over longer time periods.

The rational part of me says it will be over 1k within a year, regardless of how irrational I know that thought to be :-)

<comment><USER10> Apple's P/E isn't comparable to Amazon's. The two companies execute radically different strategies. Amazon relentlessly spends profits to capture market share; Apple is famous for being the profit share leader in the markets it sells in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The bloggers, financial news sites and even the mainstream media need a story to go on, so last year it was Apple. Also analysts need to make a name for themselves so AAPl at $1001 is a sure thing to make it in the news and maybe stay there.

But the media tires so they start the cycle of destroying what they built up and build up a new thing (now it's Google.) When Apple was valued at $600 Billion it was clear that the law of big numbers was going to kick in really soon</comment>


The Great Reset: Why tomorrow may not be better than today - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/the-great-reset.html

<comment><USER2> English needs a new one, one that means "a word spelled correctly enough to pass spell checkers, but incorrect semantically".

The author of the article mentions the "assent of Islamic fundamentalism". I think he means "ascent", but who can really really tell?

<comment><USER3> That word already exists: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article makes it sound like laissez-faire capitalism is the problem, and yet simultaneously places blame on Goldman Sachs, which happens to have intimate, corrupt ties with the Federal Reserve and and the US government. I think the problem is actually not capitalism, but government, because government is corrupted by special interests (like Goldman Sachs) and thus the law is heavily abused for the good of those who have done the most corrupting at the expense of everyone else.

I believe the more fundamental problem is that there even exist central institutions with enormous amounts of power, like the Federal Reserve or the US government. Even if such institutions start out benevolent, they will inevitably be corrupted, because the temptation is so great. The only way to remove the corruption is to decentralize everything that gets corrupted, making corruption impossible. Consider that democracy is an example of decentralization. Bitcoin, the web, and the internet are further examples.

<comment><USER5> The cycle of "it's not big business, it's the government" and "it's not the government, it's big business" leads absolutely nowhere, as evidenced by hundreds of years of zero progress with problems like those brought up in this article.

The real problem is culture. It's people. It's not some subset of people that you aren't a part of and should be ashamed of themselves. It's everyone. Corruption isn't created by the "greed of capitalism" or the "power of big guvmint", it's perpetrated by people; self-centered, unskeptical, uninformed, closeminded, dirty people around the world who are just as human as you or I; you can't blame problems on a particular idea like capitalism or lobbying or this or that political party and say "yea, we just need less of that in the world and everything will get better".

We need smarter, more sensible people. That is the only, only, only solution. And it's not achieved through current public education, by the way.

<comment><USER6> The problem is not culture, the problem is criminality. When banks sold MBS and CDOs with AAA ratings claiming they were solid investments which they knew were not and in some cases they were shorting them, that was fraud. When rating agencies, governments, central banks and regulatory authorities helped them, that was conspiracy to defraud. When LEOs looked the other way that was conspiracy too. The whole system is rotten, there can be no reset without removing all these criminals from our societies, unfortunately historically this only happens when the victims of the crimes become angry enough to remove the criminals from power by force of arms or the system collapses in on itself like the USSR, neither of which is a good solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It will probably be ugly and I'm not convinced there is a next-thing that will pull America out. Demographics look bad, we've nuked or productive capacity and the culture has rapidly decayed in the last twenty years. There is graft and fraud well marbled throughout the entire corporate and government superstructure.

I realize I'm a paranoid nut job, but I think Gold, Guns and Startups is the right straddle: Gold and Guns for the obvious reasons, Startups because, hey, things could work out (they usually do) and because owning common stock or bonds puts you too far away from the value creation, introducing those troublesome layers of graft and fraud.

<comment><USER8> Productive capacity nuked? Really? <http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s[1][id]=INDPRO>

<comment><USER7> Yeah, really, even conceding the inventory rebuild/weak dollar rally in that chart. I don't think that the aggregate numbers produced by the Fed are always useful when looking at the economy: the composition of the aggregates is usually so diverse as to render the aggregate meaningless. GDP is a canonical example.

The U.S. retains industrial capacity in high end and military areas, but that isn't going to help average people produce items that are valuable to one another and to people in other places, which is the core way to build wealth. We've masked this fact with debt for the last 30 years, and now it appears that that game is over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I dislike this article because of its fatalistic tone. The opinions of the average guy on the street haven't changed. They still want a society where people get paid decently for working, where there is a social safety net, where anyone can go to the doctor without going bankrupt. NONE of these opinions have changed in the American people. Nor has the work dynamic fundamentally changed. America still produces tons of shit.

But the opinions of the American leadership elite have changed. A dysfunctional one-party system is the problem, and the result is a consensus view - among the Washington elite only - that the rich need to get richer and everyone else needs to get poorer. It doesn't have to be this way. But change isn't going to come from inside the Beltway.

This can change, and will, eventually. The question is how far will Americans let these crooks go before demanding something better.

<comment><USER10> I don't think this article is fatalistic any more than an environmentalist thinks our planet is going to hell or any other activist thinks there is a very serious issue that needs attention.

Mark Sigal provides a lot of food for thought. Though a lot of Americans feel that we're in a serious repression or depression, the complexities of the financial crisis make it difficult for many people to even begin to understand or support a proper solution. With so many of our brightest grads being sucked directly into Wall Street firms, it's not surprising that the convoluted and opaque characteristics of risky financial instruments would cause the average and even above-average citizen to have difficulty knowing how to vote for an effective fix.

We're better off for having talented writers, journalists, and filmmakers do their utmost to discuss these topics.</comment></comment>


Getting a Clear Picture of a Computer Network's Security - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/getting-a-clear-picture-of-a-computer-networks-security/ <comment><USER2> what do i have to do to get the nytimes to run ads for my products like this?</comment>


How Browsers Work: Behind the scenes of modern web browsers - <AUTHOR> https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/ <comment><USER2> This is from 2011. I'm not an expert, but things might have changed since the publication of the article.

That said, I remember reading this when it came out and it was very enlightening.</comment>


Apple announces education event in New York City next Thursday, Jan. 19 - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/01/11/apple_announces_education_event_in_new_york_city_next_wednesday_jan_19.html

<comment><USER2> An "education event" sounds pretty sinister. I can't help but think of <http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F03.html></comment>


Meet the busser who's worked at the same pancake house for 54 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-othea-loggan-0831-story.html <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/xbUSC](http://archive.is/xbUSC)

<comment><USER3> Thanks.

Being in the EU, here's what I get:

        Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European
        countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at
        options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU
        market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that
        will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm cautious about over sentimentalizing Loggan, or on the other side getting angry about his situation. He seems like a person who could be a pretty good manager, but just never wanted to take that step up. It's easy to pillory the restaurant, it's managers, or even the entire premise of the service industry itself based on this story, but I would err on the side of it being an anecdote than something to rally upon.

<comment><USER5> Sure, because everyone over 40 is supposed to be a manager?

What makes you think this man is or is not typical? (I'd err on the former side, "lifers" are common in many industries including restaurants.)

<comment><USER6> He might not have the skills to be a manager, but I'd like to think after the time he's been there he could be doing a role that better uses his experience in exchange for more money/benefits than someone who started today. Hell, maybe he'd enjoy just doing something a bit less physical (says in TFA that he gets cramps in his hands).

As you say, not everyone should become a manager. That doesn't mean seniority isn't a thing though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If he were manager for 54 years at the same restaurant, would the sentiment be much different?

Just thinking out loud, it seems like a lot of the 'point' of this article is that he intentionally stopped progressing in his work, but it seems to me like a lot of people do that in a lot of ways, just not usually as a busser.

</comment><comment><USER8> You can tell that he's come to terms with his situation in life and lost any ambition. How hard did he have to work mentally to reach contentment? It's admirable but incredibly sad that him and many others like him didn't have much opportunity to explore their talents. It makes me think our goal as collective human society should be not to automate way people like this, but to let them live out their lives, ensure they will have what they need until they die, and look towards not repeating the mistakes of the past to have our upcoming generations have the opportunity to figure out what they are good at.

</comment><comment><USER9> If the guy loved what he was doing, then that's more than the majority of people can say about their jobs. Money definitely does not make people any happier.

<comment><USER10> You likely did not read the article... there is nothing in it that would imply he loved his job. He stayed at his job because of complacency and security. Not because he loved bussing tables.

<comment><USER9> Please don't assume what I did or did not do. Security sounds like something someone can love. Certainly many people look for that in jobs.

<comment><USER11> It's fair for us to assume you didn't actually read it, as much as you may plead for us to think otherwise.

This clearly isn't a simple story of 'happy man in a humble job'.

I mean, the man still buys lottery tickets for a start...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."

Is this their attempt at GDPR compliance?

<comment><USER13> It's not an attempt– it is GDPR compliance. What about the page you're seeing is not in compliance?

<comment><USER14> The page it self might be compliant (not recording IPs/session cookies/etc) but the law still applies on any data collected on EU citizens that might be visiting abroad.

That's why a GeoIP block is not a real fix.

<comment><USER15> They're a US entity operating under US law. If you are in the US, US law is what applies, not EU law.

They also don't have European operations, so it's not like the EU has any means to compel them to act even if it wanted to.

You'd certainly be laughed out of a US courtroom (rightfully) if you are trying to force a domestic business to comply with arbitrary foreign regulations in a country they have no involvement with.

<comment><USER16> It's worth noting that the important part here is the "have no involvement with" part, which the geographical blocking helps establish.

A US entity operating under US law with no physical presence in a foreign jurisdiction but actively courting business with citizens in that foreign jurisdiction has to be a lot more careful. For example, if one of their foreign customers sues them in a foreign court, wins, and gets a damages award there is a decent chance in many states that the US court would recognize and enforce that judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "...and still makes minimum wage".

<comment><USER18> ...with tips. The article mentions this comes to about $14/hour for Loggan.

Almost every restaurant server in America makes _below_ the minimum wage, this is allowed by law since their tips almost always take them back above the minimum.

[https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm](https://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm)

<comment><USER19> > Almost every restaurant server in America makes below the minimum wage, this > is allowed by law since their tips almost always take them back above the > minimum.

[https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm](https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/002.htm)

If an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do not equal the Federal minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference.

So, every server by law does not make below minimum wage. (If this is always enforced, not sure)

<comment><USER20> You will hear cases of the tips+$2.13 not making the minimum wage, but it's very rare. Americans generally tip quite well.

<comment><USER21> This happens more frequently than most realize because of illegal tip sharing arrangements imposed by employers, who take a portion of the tips earned by the employees.

Some tip pools among regularly tipped employees are okay; what is unlawful is the house or managers taking tips from tipped employees, either for themselves or to pay kitchen staff, etc.

A rider buried in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 makes this practice illegal. Department of Labor regulations had already prohibited this, but now we have a statute. Further regulations are to be implemented that may complicate things. Let's see.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AB-626 California Retail Food Code: microenterprise home kitchen operations - <AUTHOR> https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB626 <comment><AUTHOR> I was just thinking about building the "Etsy for food." This bill sounds like it will essentially legalize in CA selling food made in the home kitchen through a 3rd party marketplace in the same vein as Uber/Airbnb/Etsy.

Huge opportunity to turn every kitchen into a take out restaurant IMO!</comment>


How to buy a Mac - <AUTHOR> http://jseliger.com/2010/11/01/how-to-buy-a-mac/ <comment><USER2> The article has pretty good advice, I got a core due pretty late in the cycle and they refreshed a month or who after I got it. I did not have a choice though as it was part of a package for doing some consulting work. If I would have been purchasing it. I would have waited for the refresh but given the circumstances I did not really have a choice in the matter.</comment>


Dear Ross Ulbricht (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/dear-ross-ulbricht-a-letter-on-his-32nd-birthday/ <comment><USER2> Ulbricht wasn't interested in the human rights of his murder victims, though.</comment>


Privacy concerns cause 'PJ' to close Groklaw - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/privacy-concerns-cause-pj-to-close-groklaw-7000019645/

<comment><USER2> This seems a bit odd - isn't this the 2nd time that she said she was bowing out? The last time I thought it was going to be taken over by a group of students and their lecturers - what happened there?

And if the NSA's activities make it Groklaw too dangerous for sources, surely it is irresponsible to let someone else take over?

<comment><USER3> Read the her final article. Her reasons are more complex and personal than security and privacy. It's very real and poignant, and another element of the chilling effect of surveillance.

You don't have to be at risk of arrest to suffer the consequences of surveillance. Being listened to has wide reaching cultural and societal consequences.

<comment><USER4> To be honest, I found the final article more confusing than anything else. It was certainly well written, but it didn't make much of a connection for me between the recent news coverage, or even the email privacy bit at the beginning of her post, and choosing to shutter a public blog devoted to discussions of legal topics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I asked Jones about someone else continuing Groklaw and she told me, she'd > be happy "If anyone wants to do it, if it was someone like that, but no one > will. It's so much work. It's too big to be a part-time thing."

> Sadly, she's right. I'm a workaholic myself and I'm known for producing many > stories in a short amount of time. I couldn't maintain her level of quality > journalism for a month much less the more than ten years Jones kept Groklaw > going.

zdnet or TheGuardian could hire her, and make that her beat.</comment>