I failed a Twitter interview - <AUTHOR> http://qandwhat.apps.runkite.com/i-failed-a-twitter-interview/ <comment><USER2> This question involves an "a-ha" moment (for the linear-time solution) and was thus banned from interviews at Google last year.

Don't use questions involving eureka moments. They reveal nothing about the candidate.

Edit: It should be noted that this question was used for a long time at Google, Microsoft, and many other places. It's a terrible question.

<comment><USER3> Is there a definition of ah-ha moment? Seems like what strikes one person as an "ah-ha" insight might be a baseline assumption of another person's thought process.

<comment><USER4> It means (I think) that the trough between the "good answer" and the "bad answer" is too big. So basically either you know it or not and can't "grow" toward a solution easily

I hate this kind of problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No offence to Twitter, but this is a seriously bad way of hiring developers. What are you trying to recruit mathematics scholars as developers? When will companies like Twitter learn not all great developers are math geniuses? I didn't even get a college education to get where I am, I failed maths in school as well, but I can code, so what does that mean? I think it means nothing in the greater scheme of things. By the sounds of it the author got a better position in the end, I'd rather be working at Amazon who are solving much better problems than Twitter ever will likely solve anyway.

If a company (no matter how great they were) tried asking me these kinds of questions, I would immediately stop the interview and thank them for the opportunity.

<comment><USER6> "this is a seriously bad way of hiring developers"

We can't reasonably assume that Twitter uses this sort of question in _all_ their developer interviews. We don't have enough data for that. Perhaps this guy was going for a role where solving problems quickly and under pressure was a key requirement. If that were the case, this is pretty much a perfect interview question.

<comment><USER7> I have hard time imagining what position, at least if we're talking about software engineering, would require solving abstract toy problems in a timeframe of less than an hour without a chance to ever go back and improve your solution. I'd say it's "did you see this problem before" kind of question. Which means Twitter probably lost a capable and smart hire because he couldn't quickly give a perfect answer to useless puzzle (unless of course he was hired to repair the roof in Twitter's office and solving this puzzle is required for Twitter to survive the rainy season). Hardly a "perfect" way.

<comment><USER8> Twitter interview puzzle creator?

<comment><USER7> You can take months to create puzzles, there's no pressure here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=ubuntu&c...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fqandwhat.apps.runkite.com%2Fi- failed-a-twitter-interview%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

It's off-line for me and asking something about installing a server.

<comment><USER10> Hi creator of runkite.com here -

We currently host development environments so seeing this on the front page was a bit crazy. We just couldn't handle the load.

Sorry about that - working on making it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _The next day I showed this question to my TA, who 's a PhD student in > theoretical computer science. After 40 minutes he was also stuck with > nothing._

That just doesn't speak well of this particular PhD. The one-pass solution is rather obvious. I hate puzzle-based interviews with passion, but this is actually a very reasonable question and it does help to tell apart people with "theoretical" computer science skills from those with a bit more practical experience.

<comment><USER12> While I do not think that the problem is hard in a sense that if you came to me and wanted it solved for you I couldn't do it. I do think that it is a horrible interview question.

I fail to see why one would ask this kind of question and what one would take away from the answer.

How does being able to solve problem like this help make Jack Dorsey richer and more respected? How does it help Twitter users have a better experience? How does it help the interviewer assess whether this dude on the other side will make his life more bearable by not shitting all over the carpet?

I think it is mostly a form of geek bullying and intellectual mastrubation for its own sake. I have a message for the people running companies where these kinds of hiring practices are taking place. You have some insane geeks on the loose and you should catch them and lock them into the darkest dungeon as they __will__ ruin your company.

<comment><USER11> It's a _test_ question, duh. You struggle with it - you clearly lack field experience. It doesn't make you an idiot, it doesn't disqualify you as a programmer, it merely tests whether you have a particular basic skill or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had two phone screenings with Amazon recently and they decided not to continue with my application.

It was depressing to me and I felt down for quite a bit, mainly because on the second phone screening I just couldn't do the coding task asked. My mind went blank and I probably sounded like a 5 year old struggling through the simplest of questions.

It's my own fault though, I just got more and more stressed over the preceding weeks reading algorithms textbooks and "CareerCup" tests I think I just burned out.

I totally understand that top companies like Amazon and Google can afford to be ruthless and choosy in their interview process, after all, they're top companies for a reason, but I guess it just wasn't for me

<comment><USER14> I applied to a couple jobs in the bay area and didn't do well. I had about the same reaction you did.

The result was that I started working really hard on side projects to see if I was really capable of working up there. That was the beginning of last year, and that pattern of work hasn't stopped. I've learned and built a lot.

About phone interviews though, I've been requesting Google Hangout interviews in place of them. And I've been a lot more comfortable I think because of the face-to-face interaction. Something to think about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really don't get these coding interviews.

I can't imagine a construction engineering company asking their applicants to do a construction calculation in an interview, and in this case, bad design can actually kill people (as opposed to a bug at twitter).

What else does it bring apart from some amusement to the interviewer?

</comment><comment><USER16> Twitter failed you with that interview. Unless the job actually does involve performing computational parlour tricks.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. Instead of "I Failed a Twitter Interview" you could have just as well called this "Twitter Failed an Interview with Me."

There's no telling why Twitter didn't make the job offer, but it's probably not because you didn't get the optimal solution to this one particular problem. More likely, Justin just didn't feel that chemistry that made him fall in love with you. Had he felt that immediate bond, he would have unconsciously overlooked any number of sub-optimal answers.

Maybe he didn't like the way you pronounced "max'm'm". More likely, and I'll put money on this, he was in the middle of doing something he thought was important when he was pulled out of it at the last minute to do an interview that some idiot forgot to remind him about, and for a position he doesn't think really needs to be filled, and in any case doing this stupid interview pales in comparison to the task he just got pulled out of, and so he was already in a funk, at which point it wouldn't matter how you answered because Justin was just plain in a rotten mood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not you, it's them. A rather brilliant acquaintance of mine did the whole fly-to-SF song and dance with them and didn't make the cut either. (He got snagged by a wonderful startup soon after though.)

What is important to understand here is that these processes are highly variable and there is an element of luck involved. It's just the nature of a human-driven process and a complicated organization.

</comment><comment><USER19> I did not read the final solution but this was a little stimulating quiz, so this is my Ruby solution:

[https://gist.github.com/antirez/7231559](https://gist.github.com/antirez/7231559)

<comment><USER19> ehm, no it is not so simple :-) I'll try better after lunch!

<comment><USER20> Thank you for posting this and demonstrating how absolutely pointless these questions are for finding qualified candidates.

For those of you who didn't notice, antirez[1] makes a data storage system called "Redis"[2]

[1]: [https://twitter.com/antirez](https://twitter.com/antirez)

[2]: [http://redis.io/](http://redis.io/)

<comment><USER19> ;-) I'm back, and I hopefully fixed it in the gist, adding a second pass (still O(N) but more complex implementation). Probably there are simpler ways, and indeed now I'm going to read the solution proposed in the blog post.

Edit: now that I read the solution, what I found is indeed the two passes solution and not the optimal one with the two pointers going in opposite directions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So glad Twitter is continuing the tradition of useless interview questions.

</comment><comment><USER22> FYI this algorithm is called the "Water filling algorithm" and is used extensively in Communications to optimize the allocation power for channels.

You can get a solution with simple Lagrangian method (which I believe is the linear solution).

[http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dtse/Chapters_PDF/Fundamentals...](http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dtse/Chapters_PDF/Fundamentals_Wireless_Communication_chapter5.pdf)

(pages 183 - 185)

</comment><comment><USER23> Did they actually call you back with a rejection? Sorry if I missed that in the article. Anyway, at the end of the day, what matters is that you solved it on your own :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I received a rejection letter the next day. Solving it on my own definitely made me feel better though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This pseudo-code seems to be with only one pass no ? Can someone find a counter-example ?

    		overall_max=0
    		index_of_overall_max=0

    		Second_max=0
    		index_of_second_max=0

    		Array_of_cumulated_Sum=0

    		Total=0

    		for i from left to right

    			if Height(i)>overall_max
    		//Water Area between new max and old max
    				Total+=overall_max*(i-index_of_overall_max+1)-(Array_of_cumulated_Sum(i)-Array_of_cumulated_Sum(index_of_overall_max))

    				overall_max=Height(i);
    				index_of_overall_max=i;

    				Second_max=0;
    				index_second_max=i+1;
    			else

    				if Height(i)>Second_max
    				//All the parts on second max is only to not miss the kept water at the end between the overall_max and another local max
    				Second_max=Height(i);
    					index_second_max=i
    				end

    			end if

    		Array_of_cumulated_Sum(i)=Array_of_cumulated_Sum(i-1)+Height(i)

    		end for
    		//At the end : water area between second max and overall max
    		Total += Second_max*(index_of_second_max-index_of_overall_max+1)-(Array_of_cumulated_Sum(index_of_second_max)-Array_of_cumulated_Sum(index_of_overall_max))

    		return Total

</comment><comment><USER25> Cheer up, kid. That Justin probably didn't even know what you were talking about. Calculus is not for everybody. :-j

</comment><comment><USER26> Once I failed at a google interview... I got 2 answers right but I couldn't answer a third math related question (because the time was over).

The recruiter asked me what was the maximum number of edges on a graph without cycles.

When I was on my way home (in a bus) I had this "a-ha" moment.

Well, they lost a great computer scientist in their team! :P

</comment><comment><USER27> I have my phone interview with Twitter next week.

I remember last year I got a similar question from both Twitter and Fb. It's really just a buckshot. Sometimes you'll get a problem that comes easy and sometimes you'll be sitting there dumbstruck.

Best of luck with your future interviews.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this is a terrible way to conduct a phone interview. I think about code visually, and this is a very visual question, so thinking about this entirely in my head is way harder than writing it down. I'd be worried that having a computer in front of me would give the wrong impression, if typing sounds are heard on the phone, and I wouldn't want to discount a potential great developer just because they were too nervous to ask if it were ok to grab a pen and paper. With all the ways we can communicate now, it seems archaic to ask someone to think through and explain their code over the phone.

<comment><USER28> They generally have you code on a shared pad like collabedit. It's not over the phone for that part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if Jack Dorsey could solve rhat right.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wait. I fail to understand why this counts as a reason for rejection. You attempted a solution, which the interviewer backed up (I assume if you were heading in a completely incorrect direction, he would have told you that), you showed quick thinking (connecting local maximas to the problem) as well as coding competence and basic testing knowledge.

Is this not what Twitter desires through its interviews?Because time and again I have heard that companies look and focus on people's thought processes more than their exact results.

PS: I'm a college student so I'm really keen to know how important being 100% accurate is.

</comment><comment><USER31> Algorithmic interview questions should ideally have multiple solutions of varying complexity. The "brute force" solution should be obvious to anyone competent enough. If they are able to code it up with reasonable clarity and test cases, that is a good start (think of it as the fizzbuzz level). Good candidates should be able to get to the "ideal/aha" solution with some hints. In fact, that process reveals a lot about the candidate. If the candidate doesn't "get" to the ideal solution on their own, it shouldn't be held against them IMO.

</comment><comment><USER32> For a single pass from left to right, I think you need to maintain a counter for each y-value:

[http://codepad.org/W16O9vUB](http://codepad.org/W16O9vUB)

I actually think this is a good interview question, as playing devils' advocate and coming up with testcases that will break your initial code is a key programming skill, rather than assuming it is done and moving along.

</comment><comment><USER31> In interviews and in general, it usually is a good idea to get a correct yet inefficient solution and then try to optimize it. This usually yields better insights in my experience. Here is a quadratic solution:

[https://gist.github.com/isbo/7239007](https://gist.github.com/isbo/7239007)

</comment><comment><USER33> I have coded up one pass solution in ruby, check it out!

[https://gist.github.com/pencilcheck/7252934](https://gist.github.com/pencilcheck/7252934)

A lot of solutions here doesn't seem to take account of multiple puddles, my solution does take that into account.

</comment><comment><USER34> Here is a novel solution.

      make stack
      water = 0
      for n in columns
        while stack not empty and n > stack top
          water += min(stack bottom, n) - stack top
          pop stack
        stack push n

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a really nice and elegant solution: [https://gist.github.com/orukusaki/bb189d9f69ad09e2cd5a](https://gist.github.com/orukusaki/bb189d9f69ad09e2cd5a)

</comment><comment><USER36> Here is my solution in PHP: [https://gist.github.com/paugay/7262417](https://gist.github.com/paugay/7262417)

</comment><comment><USER37> Here's my attempt, in java.

[https://gist.github.com/Joist/7229807](https://gist.github.com/Joist/7229807)

</comment><comment><USER38> How will this solution work for cases like [1,2,1], when there will be no water held?

<comment><USER37> His final solution will return 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> you could solve this with a simple state machine; there's no reason to resort to parlour tricks...

[https://gist.github.com/igor47/7228586](https://gist.github.com/igor47/7228586)

<comment><USER40> try this test case ([5,1,0,1],1)

<comment><USER39> thanks! i updated the gist ([https://gist.github.com/igor47/7228586/revisions](https://gist.github.com/igor47/7228586/revisions)), but the solution is not nearly as simple as before.

<comment><USER41> Fails for [3,0,1,0,2]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> imo, interesting and fun question. Difficult to solve on the spot but not bad when you dive into it with a cup of coffee. Always just keep it simple.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is an extremely common ACM question. This would heavily bias toward anyone who has competed in the ACM, which is probably the worst metric for hiring ever.</comment>


My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html <comment><USER2> "They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off."

That bit really jumped out at me, because it's something I've felt about computers in general for a long time. People get it into their heads that computers are hard/complicated/etc., and so they get scared of them, and so then they don't do anything with them but a strict subset they've decided they understand and wind up doing all sorts of things wrong or inefficiently. Often, in trying to protect the computer and themselves from what they've convinced themselves they don't understand, they wind up breaking it instead: they don't know what they're doing because they think they can't learn. "It's too complicated."

<comment><USER3> I was reading a book on a long train journey from Paris to Nice by train that I read usually once a year. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front. I told her it wasn't, but was in fact one of the most profound books about teaching you to think in a new way.

So I let her read it and she got about half way through and she totally got it and loved it. No harder than doing a crossword or a sudoku for the first time.

The book is: [http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little- schemer](http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-schemer)

<comment><USER2> I seriously need to get a copy of this book. I've been hearing about the Little Schemer ever since I first entered the Lisp world; and one of the authors of that edition even works on my favorite Lisp (Racket).

<comment><USER4> It's brilliant. By gradually building up to it, I started to really understand recursion, the power of lambdas and closures, etc. I also started to get Lisp and Scheme in the process. It's a great book, well worth it and if you're venturing out into the Lisp world, I strongly recommend it. If you're not into Scheme, I believe the book also contains equivalent Common Lisp code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fate of Symbolics wound up having little to do with Stallman, Greenblatt, or LMI. Sun et al. just blew away Symbolics with the economies of scale of UNIX workstations, and the advantages of LISP didn't persuade many people to go with LISP machines instead.

Similarly, Rational Software started out making ADA machines, and only survived and prospered after a total pivot away from hardware and ADA alike.

<comment><USER6> Stallman has the normal sort of blindness most zealots have for areas outside of their zealotry. I have always found it a little bit fascinating to see what a naive view of the world he really has for anything that isn't the politics of software.

Which I don't say to be unfair, although I could see those who idolize him taking it that way.

<comment><USER7> I agree with your assessment but the comment you're replying to is making an untrue assumption, he didn't say that he sunk Symbolics himself or anything close to that. He said that he hindered their plan to drive LMI out of business for some time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > At the time, TCL was being pushed heavily for this purpose. I had a very low > opinion of TCL, basically because it wasn't Lisp.

I figured this was the case[1], but hadn't actually seen it stated explicitly. His dislike usually seemed broached in hated of a commercial shepherd (Sun), or going on about (perceived or real) technical shortcomings.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3408617](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3408617)

<comment><USER9> Ousterhout did some marketing pieces and he stated a lot of random things.

[http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html](http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html)

There was some controversy around it at the time...

<comment><USER8> I didn't realize that was a very controversial paper.

If the timelines are correct though, that wouldn't have been offending rms yet:

> rms: That was not the end of the GNU projects involved with Lisp. Later on > around 1995, we were looking into starting a graphical desktop project. > [...]

>

> At the time, TCL was being pushed heavily for this purpose. I had a very low > opinion of TCL...

\--

JOs paper appears to be published 1998, 3 years later, citing papers from 1996.

[edit: formatting]

<comment><USER9> There were similar earlier claims made by Osterhout. I just picked one which demonstrated the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jjhmc3Txv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jjhmc3Txv0)

(Unfortunately, the audio isn't great.)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it's interesting how he never explicitly says that he forked Gosling Emacs (I think that's what he did, but if not please correct me!).

"Therefore, when I wrote my second implementation of Emacs, I followed the same kind of design...Now, this [GNU Emacs] was not the first Emacs that was written in C and ran on Unix. The first was written by James Gosling, ... I discovered that Gosling's Emacs did not have a real Lisp. It had a programming language that was known as 'mocklisp', which looks syntactically like Lisp, but didn't have the data structures of Lisp... I concluded I couldn't use it [it here means mocklisp, but can be confused to mean Gosling Emacs] and had to replace it all, the first step of which was to write an actual Lisp interpreter. I gradually adapted every part of the editor based on real Lisp data structures, rather than ad hoc data structures, making the data structures of the internals of the editor exposable and manipulable by the user's Lisp programs...This second Emacs program was 'free software' in the modern sense of the term"

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

<comment><USER12> Yes, he did. At that time or a bit later I worked for UniPress; the owners knew that taking any action about that beyond a polite request would untimely be harmful. But it was seriously reckless of RMS to put his GNU effort in jeopardy.

<comment><USER13> Mike (the friend at UniPress who RMS mentioned) and I were wandering around an SF convention and ran into RMS. Mike said, "Richard, I heard a rumor about your house being burnt down. Is that true?" Richard immediately shot back "Yes, but where you work, I'd have thought you'd have heard about it in advance!"

We all had a good laugh. RMS is a funny guy and quick of his feet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "There's an interesting benefit you can get from using such a powerful language as a version of Lisp as your primary extensibility language. You can implement other languages by translating them into your primary language."

This is so short-sighted hand-waving; it doesn't take into account the existing ecosystem (libraries, tools, etc.) at all. Unlike lisps and schemes, TCL is way less fragmented and has a bunch of libraries for everything. Not to mention that libtcl can be used as a cross-platform layer for files, filesystem, threads, networking, etc.

<comment><USER15> At the time he said it, and about the time of the decision he was making, what you say about the TCL ecosystem was not necessarily true. I was using TCL/TK in '95, and it was clunky then. I have the same misgivings about LUA now, but it seems a better choice for embedding than TCL at the moment.

I keep returning to the "I'd like an embedded scripting language in my C environment" year after year, and there is nothing that has made me pull the trigger yet. TCL is a non-starter for me; LUA is dubious; GUILE is a non- starter with GPL licenseing. Java is clunky and heavyweight, but maybe plausible, though it's more common to JNI C into your Java main. I think it'd be nice to have an embeddable Javascript like v8 that can attach to C underpinnings, but don't know if there is one. Maybe duktape?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The original Emacs did not have Lisp in it. The lower level language, the non-interpreted language — was PDP-10 Assembler. The interpreter we wrote in that actually wasn't written for Emacs, it was written for TECO. It was our text editor, and was an extremely ugly programming language, as ugly as could possibly be. The reason was that it wasn't designed to be a programming language, it was designed to be an editor and command language. There were commands like '5l', meaning 'move five lines', or 'i' and then a string and then an ESC to insert that string. You would type a string that was a series of commands, which was called a command string. You would end it with ESC ESC, and it would get executed."

Funny this makes it sound like the emacs predecessor was closer to vim in editing style then modern emacs

</comment><comment><USER17> Bravo, RMS.

I wish I could work on an OS written in Lisp, or in an equivalently expressive language. It's so damn important to have a really user-friendly system easily customizable by non-programmers. Actually, programmers should be routinely put out of their jobs, essentially the same way programmers put others out of theirs. :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> After reading this article, I read up on the history of Lisp Machines, and the conflict between Richard Greenblatt and Russell Noftsker. Interestingly, Noftsker was himself forced out of Symbolics after a battle with their CEO. Karma, I guess.</comment>


The Kansas Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/magazine/the-kansas-experiment.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Kansas is a beautiful state but like most of the middle of the country its population spread, lack of "entrepreneurship-role-models" in most communities and talent flight hurt its chances of developing strong business culture even in an easy-to-do business environment.

I grew up in KC, MO and went to school on the state line. Many of the most promising students from my school and other schools would go out of state for college - and most that left haven't come back yet.

The fact that Denver, Kansas City, MO and Omaha all flank the state and contain more developed business centers also makes company development unlikely.

Looking at this shows how little concentration there is of companies in the whole mid-to-upper Midwest section.

[http://www.geolounge.com/fortune-500-list-by-state- for-2015/](http://www.geolounge.com/fortune-500-list-by-state-for-2015/)

I wonder what has made Minnesota so successful.

<comment><USER3> Here's a nice example of a regional success story from MN. The area around Winona (a town on the Mississippi river between the Twin Cities and Rochester) has a growing cluster of businesses that work with composites. [http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/08/07/composites- winona](http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/08/07/composites-winona)

Kansas wants this kind of development but doesn't want to put priority on environmental protection, outdoor recreation or the arts. All are important to the Winona story - as is the presence of a state university in the town.

I'm an 'expat' Kansan who now lives in MN so I have a deep appreciation for the difference between the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The legislators' assumption was that lowering the tax rate (eventually to zero) would bring business to the state. Ignoring arguments about the validity and applicability of the Laffer curve, what made them think businesses would want to set up shop there when several other states have the same benefit?

Businesses have to attract talent, and underfunding services and schools doesn't make for an attractive state. It is painful to watch how easily the people in charge slide into believing that one simple solution will fix everything. Even the best of ideas and intentions end badly when taken to an idealogical extreme.

<comment><USER5> Without going into whether this belief is well founded (personally I don't think it is), its a combination of two factors: an assumption that there is a pool of potential business owners already in the state who are deterred by higher taxes, and a desire to be like Delaware (or internationally, Ireland), where low taxes and favorable regulatory structure are such that many large, inter-state or multinational corporations headquarter themselves there.

The first point, as you suggested, is pretty questionable. As you pointed out, it's worth noting that the current wave of entrepreneurship has headquartered itself in California, New York, and Massachusetts, some of the highest tax areas in the country.

<comment><USER6> There's a tech boom going on in the Seattle area (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Adobe, Boeing, etc.), which has no income tax.

<comment><USER4> It seems like it's going on there more because it is conducive to talented/idea people being there in a big group rather than about tax structure.

Boeing though just built a new facility in another state because of union issues (apparently).

Bottom line is that it's a part of the business decision, but not the only part and maybe not even the biggest part.

<comment><USER3> Boeing has a new assembly site in South Carolina opened in 2011.

This is especially ironic (and painful) for Kansas since Boeing had been a major employer in the Wichita area for decades. It sold its Wichita Commercial Airplanes division to Spirit AeroSystems in the mid-2000s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would someone in tune with the fiscally conservative mindset be willing to offer an explanation for the apparent fascination with cutting taxes and downsizing government? Specifically, what are the proposed benefits for the average citizen?

<comment><USER2> When I took a job in Dallas my hourly rate was less than that of my job in Kansas City, MO. But my take home pay was higher for working the same amount of hours. Why? MO took 7% out of my salary for state taxes.

For a family making $50,000 (simplified) that's worth $3,500/year and everything else in Texas provided by the government seemed equal - the roads were nice, schools were good, crime wasn't noticable... So $3,500 a year for no noted improvement in life? That can help pay for college for children, buy a car or nice new technology, or increase retirement savings or charitable expenditures.

<comment><USER8> What about cost of living? And Dallas has much higher property taxes from what I've heard.

<comment><USER2> I'm not familiar with property taxes. Dallas is a collection of cities and counties all around one center - its sprawling so I bet taxes vary.

My anecdotal experience between the two cities is that Dallas is more expensive in the downtown area than KC but once you get into the suburbs the massive amount of development in Dallas brings prices down quickly so suburban living costs are similar.

<comment><USER9> Localities in the Dallas area charge 2-3% of the market value of the property[1]. KC charges ~%0.3 of the market value (1.59% of the "assessed value" which is defined as 19% of the market value for residential properties)[2]. So, yeah, the property taxes are much higher in Dallas.

[1] [http://www.davedowns.com/dallas-property- tax.htm](http://www.davedowns.com/dallas-property-tax.htm) [2] [http://kcmo.gov/finance/property-taxes-2/](http://kcmo.gov/finance/property- taxes-2/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The single minded focus on taxes to recruit businesses strikes me as severely misguided. Sure, found a business here in Kansas where you save on paying high taxes on your business. Pay it all back when your child makes the mistake of enrolling in the University of Kansas system. Perhaps this isn't the specific case in Kansas, maybe the Kansas system has lowered costs, but I have a feeling you pay it back in some form when you finally, in some way start to imbibe on a now underfunded public entity.

<comment><USER11> The University of Kansas has one of the lowest tuition prices in the country for a state uni. The problem is the overall education you get from the public schools and that there are very few locations to get job, when comparing pay nationally, with decent pay.

</comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel I gave up on my home state barely a year ago. When I graduated from Wichita State there wasn't much in the way of actual software developer jobs in the city or even up north near Topeka. It was fairly depressing to have to accept a job out of state since despite all its flaws it's my home. But since I can't find real work back home and the fact it seems the state Republican party is hell bent to run out any business that doesn't follow its status quo (especially companies who are LGBT friendly/inclusive) I won't be coming back other than to bury my parents.

Maybe someday I'll come back to my home state but only when the madness in the state capital has ran its course and actual competent politicians are at the helm. Until then I'll be working up here in Minneapolis Minnesota (even though I hate the traffic and the winter weather... BLEH!).

</comment><comment><USER12> I listened to the Planet Money episode last week (of the same title and subject from last year).

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/22/358105415/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/22/358105415/episode-577-sam- brownback-s-kansas-experiment)</comment>


Facebook Wants Access to Your Banking Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/banks-data-sharing-facebook,37556.html <comment><USER2> This is from August 6th 2018? Well over half a year ago (It's still scary)

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't matter if it is old. It is something we should be concerned about.

</comment><comment><USER4> Any update on this? That's insane they could just request your banking info. Can other websites do this?

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't trust banks, I trust Facebook less.

</comment><comment><USER6> Offer a 30 year fixed mortgage at prime minus 1%, and we'll talk!</comment>


Android re-engineered for PC. Meet Remix OS. - <AUTHOR> http://www.jide.com/remixos-for-pc <comment><USER3> Previous discussions:

140 days ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10886979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10886979)

144 days ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10861334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10861334)

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I love the idea, but please double check the EULA before using - [1] is eyeopening.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10888760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10888760)

</comment><comment><USER5> I just don't really get why I'd want Android on my desktop/laptop. I can't imagine the interface being anything but clunky.

<comment><USER6> If you run a small business and don't need a full blown windows setup - <USER2> want to figure out linux it's perfect. We have folks who come in and do work and all they need is chrome.

You can imagine slightly more complex work requirements, but remix (and chromebooks) fit the bill perfectly. And most importantly, they are cheap to setup and manage.

<comment><USER7> With more and more businesses using stuff in-browser, I have been wondering for a while if people will bother to continue paying for Windows seats

<comment><USER8> Say hello to ChromeOS, that has been aimed at this very issue for some years.

Never mind that moving forward, ChromeOS will be able to run Android apps.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. Why in the hell would one want to change their current non-google device into a 'playstore' portal ????? I just don't see it.

<comment><USER8> I would consider doing so to an XP machine.

But i would use Android-x86.

[http://www.android-x86.org/](http://www.android-x86.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems as if this is where mainstream Android is going, anyway. They may find a market in "retrofit" installations on PCs since I doubt Google would make an official PC release. But hardware like Pixel C is is going to be a better way to blend mobile and desktop computing.

I'll probably try it on an old laptop.

</comment><comment><USER11> As Jide is a Chinese company based in Beijing, and as their OS is closed- source, I cannot see the means by which they can honor their statements on user privacy. I believe they simply don't possess such prerogative.

<comment><USER12> To be fair, many would now have the same concerns about US-based companies.

<comment><USER11> An entirely legitimate concern if you're in an EU member state or a place with superior protections.

While the EU may look at the US and think of how they have much better protections, both the EU and the US can look at China and see a difference of magnitudes. The standard EULA for companies operating in China already speaks volumes.</comment></comment></comment>


We think with our bodies, not just our brains - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/01/13/dont_just_stand_there_think/?page=full

<comment><USER2> _"If we had wheels, or moved along the ground on our bellies like snakes," Lakoff argues, "math might be very different."_

What a nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's sad to me is that almost every schematic of the brain leaves out the most crucial interface - the spinal cord. Don't underestimate these concepts. Design should afford use because of how embodied our "rational" minds are. Even better if you create an emotional attachment.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great book on the subject:

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Body-Shapes-Way- Think/dp/026216239...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Body-Shapes-Way- Think/dp/0262162393)

How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence

by Rolf Pfeifer, Josh C. Bongard

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So would I be more efficient with one of those treadmill/computer terminal contraptions?

<comment><USER5> Those contraptions come with "Warning: Chick repellent" label.

<comment><AUTHOR> So do I.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i do think with my body when it comes to women.</comment>


The Future of DEV (dev.to) - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/devteam/the-future-of-dev-160n <comment><USER2> I've been hoping to see them take this direction for a while. They've fostered a great environment and built out a robust platform for "drop-in" communities. I also like that it seems like they're trying to scale out and ratchet up the amount of advanced content.</comment>


How to Change Anyone's Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-change-anyones-mind-11582301073 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.is/EsaX7](https://archive.is/EsaX7)

<comment><USER2> the real man, right here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Stop posting paywall articles. This is sooo annoying on the mobile!

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand your irritation: on my mobile phone I just tried the link I posted ([https://archive.is/EsaX7](https://archive.is/EsaX7)) that bypasses the paywall and it works fine, just like on my laptop.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Building Products - <AUTHOR> I am noob and want to learn building products. Please suggest some books or courses. <comment><USER2> Check out [http://www.indiehackers.com](http://www.indiehackers.com).

See what some of those guys started out with learning... some have no programming knowledge, some learned later and suggest to you the books they've read... there are many different kinds of people. Even guys who hate programming and do the entrepreneur stuff.

I've spoken with the CEO of [https://RunCloud.io](https://RunCloud.io) who knows a bit of code but loves the entrepreneurial aspect of it more.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the best way to do it is to start building. Reading about it can give you inspiration but it won't build it for you. I think learning by failing is one of the most best ways to learn fast.</comment>


Interviewing for the anxious programmer - <AUTHOR> http://aneccodeal.blogspot.com/2014/02/interviewing-for-anxious-programmer.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks a lot for writing this.

I don't get full blown panic attacks, but I get extremely stressed out as well during tech interviews. I think I'm a pretty good coder/computer scientist - I've released tons of open source stuff, spoken at conferences, solved many Project Euler challenges, published papers, taught people how to code, etc - but my success rate is still abysmally slow in interviews because of that.

For me, it's a mix of the stress of feeling judged, having to "impress" someone in a very short timeframe solving a problem they know perfectly and that I have never seen before, the fact that I am naturally introverted and shy, etc.

A friend of mine who works at a large tech company in Seattle told me he took Xanax before his interviews. Another friend working for a big tech company in the valley told me he'd chug a couple beers before his. Yet another friend working for a fairly large "startup" in SF recommended that I smoke a joint before my interviews.

Our industry is weird.

<comment><USER3> I feel like I'd be unable to code if I smoked a joint. I've never tried it though. I'd love to hear about people's experiences doing something like that though.

<comment> mal-2 I haven't had the same experience as jaredmcateer. I often find myself more focused when I'm high - it's easier to achieve that flow state and to think creatively. Cannabis can be very helpful for seeing big ideas and thinking in modes that are different from your everyday way of thinking.

That being said, I've only been high for personal programming projects, I wouldn't be likely to smoke before an interview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for sharing. I usually sit on the other side of the table -- interviewing. And I also know how it feels. I have gotten a mild panic and completely blank mind during tests before. Something as simple arithmetic and my brain just spins in a tight loop "Hmm 45+13=... 45+13=..." stuff like that.

So things I do to help out with that. I try not to give quick or trickly puzzles as questions. I try not to make it adversarial (like "I am testing you") I try to make it collaborative "let's solve this problem". Often that is an actual problem being solved or solved in the past. No digging holes with 5 worker vs 4 workers (we are not a utilities company) or, no geometry of manhole covers (we don't maintain our own sewer system here, someone else does). I try to give hints or switch topics and talk about something else, not everyone is knowledgeable in all areas.

Not sure of those above would be helpful but would you or anyone else here want to advise an interviewer as to what would help? How would you interview yourself or what would you do to make it easier and less painful?

<comment><USER5> 1\. RTFR (read the...resume) if you don't. The value of a resume _is_ somewhat limited, but you can gain a lot of insight about a candidate by what is said, what isn't said and how his/her experience is presented. A lot of interviewers don't RTFR or skim it right before the interview.

2\. Request code samples. A lot of companies ask for Github links but don't bother to take the time to review and discuss the candidate's code.

3\. Ask for examples of work product (public facing if possible), and ask detailed questions about them. This is a great filter. A candidate should be excited to talk about his work and should be able to go into technical depth about what was involved.

4\. Provide a practical programming task before the interview. This should reflect the type of work that the candidate will actually perform as an employee. Let the candidate complete the task when and where they like. Don't provide a task that would require more than 1-3 hours of the candidate's time as estimated by how long you think the task _should_ take. Set the expectation with the candidate that you'll be reviewing the deliverable before he comes in for the interview and that you'll be discussing it with him when he comes in.

5\. Ask _practical_ technical questions. If the candidate is going to be asked to work on an app with a MySQL database, you don't need to ask many questions about basic stuff (like joins, foreign keys etc.) to get a sense of whether they are a poser. Focus on high level concepts, not on questions that pressure the candidate to make a decision on the spot that would be contemplated in a less intense environment in the real world.

If you cannot weed out unqualified candidates doing the above it suggests that you require a demonstration of competencies that will never realistically be obtained reliably in 1 or 3 interviews. If this is your situation you should consider requiring a trial or contract-to-hire arrangement.

<comment><USER4> Thank you, those are very good. I am always ecstatic to see code samples. Very few people have them from our candidate pool, so those that do stand out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the issues I have is with this style of interviewing, period. This has no relation to the way I actually work. I don't write production-quality enterprise application software at a whiteboard in front of a group of judges. I don't hear the problem and immediately start writing code. Instead, I think the problem over, perhaps google around about it, perhaps discuss it with my colleagues. I spend more of my time as a developer planning, prototyping and designing solutions than writing code. If you think it through carefully first, you can write the code quickly in the end. Just not on a whiteboard in front of a group of critical judges.

<comment><USER7> It really is kind of silly. I naively started interviewing this way, basically copying big G and others who do these kinds of interviews. The problem was I was filtering for the type of programmer who enjoys these discrete, quirky, contrived puzzles, not real engineers who understand resource constraints, writing production quality scalable software, and fierce debugging. Now I find a candidate whose work impresses me, put him on a project for 2 weeks, and hire at that point if we're happy. So much better.

<comment><USER8> The important thing to remember about the big G or MS style is, they have a massive stream of extremely qualified potential hires, who want to work there far more than the company needs them. The company needs an assembly line just to handle the large numbers of applicants.

There is a classic anecdote about the manager who handled a large stack of resumes by randomly throwing half into the garbage, and remarking "I don't hire unlucky people"[1]. I can't find the original source, and it's probably not true, but it is closer to what they are doing than actually evaluating people for a job.

[1] [http://benpowell.org/i-dont-hire-unlucky- people/](http://benpowell.org/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm pretty terrible at interviews and probably bombed more than my fair share. It's frustrating but I forget sometimes that the person on the other side knows next to nothing about me, and all they'll learn is what I show them. Being the type to undersell and over-deliver it really ends up biting me in the end.

Those personality traits can't really be unlearned, but I think it helps if you go in with a nothing-to-lose attitude and explain as much as you can - maybe something you say will connect with the interviewer.

I think the other problem here is something I blogged about before: programming is (for me) a tacit skill ([http://doxsey.net/blog/tacit- knowledge](http://doxsey.net/blog/tacit-knowledge)). I have no idea how I do it and I can't really explain it in the abstract. It'll look real rough in the start (like I have no idea what I'm doing), but 3 days later I'll probably have a solution.

In other words, I can probably do the job, but I can't really prove it in the interview.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find it curious how people who are as smart and technical as programmers are, can come up with testing/interview methodologies that so clearly deviate from the actual day to day activities of what that position will probably require.

There's definitely value in asking a candidate questions face to face as there are times when problems need to be discussed, but clearly there's a non- trivial segment of the programmer population that has trouble performing under this type of atypical situation.

Why not also have a sort of "written test" portion of an interview where the candidate doesn't have to stress out about performing in front of people they don't know? It would certainly help reduce the flagging of false negatives.

EDIT: by "written test" I mean something like a test where the questions are on a piece of paper or text file, and the interviewee just answers it on there, without another human sitting there and staring at them. The interviewee can always be asked to explain his/her answers afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER11> > By then I realized that these episodes were panic attacks. I read up on the > topic and basically went through a lot of cognitive self-therapy and after a > year or so I was able to drive without issues and life was good again.

My advice (not that you asked for it, but I feel strongly that you should consider it): seek help from a qualified professional, like a psychologist. You don't deserve to suffer like this and it is not something that you should be trying to solve on your own. You may not believe that someone like this could help you, but consider how much better you would feel if they did.

<comment><USER12> (author of the article here) Probably you're right, but knowing people in the psych field and having read several books on the topic ("Monkey Brain" comes to mind) it's also a very hit-or-miss process. Often you can go to a therapist for years without much improvement.

<comment><USER13> One irony of mental health services is that the people who most need the help are often not in a position to use the services optimally; it is perfectly valid to break up with your therapist if they're not helpful. In fact, it should be encouraged, but doing so can be _really_ stressful.

This is not to tar the professionals with some kind of pseudo-Scientology crackpottery; they exist somewhere in the n-dimensional space of competence, authority, ability, &c. as everybody else; but that there can be dissonance between the treater and the treated is not a reason to give up on the whole idea.

<comment><USER8> Another irony is, the act of seeking mental health services can, in some cases, be used against you in future medical, legal, and employment situations. This might also explain why so many people, while being supportive of professional mental health services, seek alternatives.

<comment><USER14> This

this is both ridiculous and, unfortunately, true. If it is a concern for you, you can ask that your therapist not take notes, then there is nothing physical to subpoena.

<comment><USER8> I have not heard that suggestion before. I have heard to not use your medical insurance, or credit cards, and avoid a formal diagnosis. I believe the service provider is required by law to keep records for their legal liability, but that will depend on the laws covering your area (e.g. state and federal laws for US).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've spent time on both sides of the interviewing table and I think there are some misconceptions in this thread. Generally an on site interview is the last in a series of steps for the candidate. They've already passed the early screening process and the company is investing serious resources in the recruiting process at this stage. Almost everything in an on site interview comes down to fit.

The point of whiteboard exercises isn't to see how pretty your writing is or to make you stumble on brainteasers. It's to see how you think. The real key is to think out loud as you go through the problem. How are you approaching it? Have you seen a similar problem before? Can you find an easier version of the problem and try to get some intuition (ex 2d vs 3d)? What do you do when you get stuck? Asking questions to clarify things is usually encouraged. If you're nervous I'd recommend practice with thinking out loud while you solve problems. There are plenty of books full of interview level problems. Grab one and work through them while saying everything you think. Once you're used to that do more with a friend pretending to be an interviewer. If you find yourself getting stuck a lot I'd recommend reading How to Solve It by Polya.

Sometimes you'll be asked to write code on a whiteboard. This is really unnatural. The interviewers also know that it's really unnatural. Unlike gcc whiteboard compiler is very forgiving. Usually people are looking for a couple of key things. Have you handled all of the corner cases? What about invalid inputs? Do you use reasonable variable names? Is your algorithm horribly inefficient?

There probably are companies that give brainteasers type questions too much weight. They heard places like Google and Facebook use them so they will too. I'd treat this as a red flag and not want to work there.

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of better options for interviewing. Any problems given have to be relatively trivial due to time constraints. I've had interviews where you sit and write a test or code at the start and the next step goes over your answers. The problem with this is that you have to leave the candidate doing nothing for 30-60 minutes while someone goes over what they wrote. Tests you do on your own also have limited value. They're mostly useful as a low pass filter. They weed out the really bad candidates but can't tell you much more than that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Amen.

Speaking as someone who has suffered in a similar way and subsequently gone on to interview developers myself, may I state: interview / test conditions will invalidate everything that you think you can discover about a candidate.

Live coding tests, logic problems, whiteboard exercises; all of those things will definitely rule out some genuinely great candidates. In an industry where jobs seem to outnumber competent applicants, I genuinely think softer, subtler interviews represent a much better approach.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is painful to read. Not because of the poster's anxiety but because of his unwillingness to refuse these types of interviews completely.

If you have a reasonable amount of experience and a track record of actually delivering working software that people use in the real world you don't need to subject yourself to this nonsense. Sure refusing these types of interviews means you won't be considered for certain jobs at certain companies but do you really want to work for a company that is so foolish as to run candidates through a series of standardized tests and ask them to do a bunch of tasks under a microscope that are completely unrelated to the job you'd be performing? A lot of the companies that employ these ridiculous interview tactics are staffed by people who have deluded themselves into believing that their lightly used web app requires elite programmers.

There are plenty of good opportunities for half decent devs at companies not staffed by people who want you to spend 8 hours whiteboarding algorithms but won't take time out of their day to read your resume, review your code samples and ask you relevant questions about your experience.

<comment><USER12> As the author, I feel like I have to actually defend the interviewers because they generally weren't as bad as you describe. It's not that they shouldn't ask questions or shouldn't even ask you to whiteboard an algorithm (though I think it would actually be better to give you a REPL and have you code with that), I think the issue is that some people (myself included) have developed certain phobias that make that sort of thing potentially difficult. It might be better to ask candidates to code something up prior to coming in and then go over the code together in the interview.

<comment><USER5> "It might be better to ask candidates to code something up prior to coming in and then go over the code together in the interview."

That is entirely reasonable and a lot of employers do this. So why bother with the ones who want you to demonstrate whiteboard chops that don't have any relevance to the daily work you'd be doing?

Remember... the interview isn't just for the employer. It's your only opportunity to determine if you're interested in working for the company. If the interview is a one way street and doesn't give you the opportunity to learn anything meaningful about the work you're really going to be doing, how would you feel good about joining the company even if you ace their inane whiteboarding exercises?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In my case, just old-fashioned honest work and writing programs to show beforehand substantially reduces anxiety. I feel a lot more confident when I can honestly say "I wrote this and that" and talk about the solutions used.

If I was that guy, I'd try more general health solutions like exercise, bicycle, going for a walk regulary. Fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER18> The thing that bothers me about it it not really the interviews...it's the fact that you're going to have to spent 8 hours a day everyday, for years with these people. Think about that.</comment>


The Terrible Cost Of Patents - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/terrible-cost-patents/

<comment><USER2> Is there anything in this article that hasn't been said a dozen times already? Go get some new thoughts.

<comment><USER3> Wasn't it all said in '91? [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/int-p...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/int- prop/lpf-against-software-patents.html)

<comment><USER4> >most major programs will require licenses for dozens of patents, and this will make them infeasible.

And everything turned out worse than expected... :(</comment></comment></comment>


The HP-35 Design: A Case Study in Innovation (2011) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2011/12/102746048-05-01-acc.pdf? <comment><USER2> My dad had this calculator in the 70s. He was an engineer for the local power utility and told me that before getting the HP-35 he would submit calculations at the computer center and get his results back about a week later. With the calculator he could run his computations immediately, at his desk. It was life changing, at least in the context of his work.

It was one of the more expensive small things he owned so he never left it at his desk, carrying it around in his jacket pocket (engineers wore suits to work in the 70s). He told me he also got a reputation for this, since it was such a unique thing to be carrying around.

<comment><USER3> Same thing with my dad, but at university level as he could write engineering programs to help with homework and avoid booking time on the mainframe.

Btw: Would you please ask your father what type of calculations he ran on his calc as a power systems engineer? Fortran would've been around for state- estimation and contingency analysis by that time if he was in transmission. For distribution I could see him doing fault analysis or calculating line parameters. If he was on the generation side I'm not really sure what he'd be calculating (not my area). Of course utilities were fully vertically integrated during that time frame, so he could have done a mixture.

<comment><USER2> I'll ask the next time I talk to him. I know he worked on high voltage transmission.

<comment><USER3> Awesome...same as me. I'd love to hear how they did things in more resource constrained times.

I also have a hobby interest in HP calcs (own a 15-c), so double interest here. Not sure if you're a blogger, but that is some legitimate history with the early usage of handheld computing to aid science & engineering. A blog post would be great, but I'd settle on a reply here.

<comment><USER2> I'm a past blogger, but I haven't kept up with it for a while.

Here's what my dad wrote when I asked him:

The work often involved transmission line impedance calculations. These and other power calculations required a great many translations of rectangular to polar coordinates and back again. We had an Oliveti vacuum tube machine in the office that would only do this one operation in one direction or the other. Otherwise it was back to slide rule, pencil and paper. We had an IBM 360 in the basement that would do grid system power modeling. These calculations required 24 hours to get an answer.

Mom got me an HP-35 for Christmas. It was like touching an alien spacecraft technology.

Later on around 1976, I operated a consulting and substation design business. In this activity I needed to do hand calculations of short circuit current for industrial customers again using the HP-35. The HP-35 was an important tool and a real game changer for electrical engineering work.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reply! It was a very interesting read for sure. The polar->rectangular conversions can be done with an $15 Casio FX-115ES from Walmart pretty easily although RPN is much nicer than scrolling around a bunch when the equations get long. He might already know that, or find it interesting. I've never heard of an Oliveti vacuum tube machine, but will look it up. The IBM 360 machine he mentioned is probably not that different to what we do today (I bet the software has only changed in minor placed). The biggest difference is it's moved to Nix or Windows and off the mainframe and we can simulate massive scale problems in seconds. Of course that means we steadily increase the scope of the problem until you get a process that takes 24 hours ;). I'm impressed with anyone who can use a slide-rule for anything more complex than multiplication. Props to your dad btw. I love my job and it's fascinating to see how past engineers managed to essentially do the same things with tools that seem archaic today. I guess this is similar to modern day software engineers on HN getting really excited bout the Xerox Alto Smalltalk machine & the Symbolics Lisp Machines. The past is neat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very well written and makes me realize what a pioneer company HP was at that time. It was the Apple of its time. Best anecdote:

> Stanford Engineering Dean Fred Terman, the person responsible for bringing > Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard together to start HP was one of the first. He > was overwhelmed, looking for an umbilical cord connected to a big computer > doing the precision calculations.

</comment><comment><USER5> I bought a used one in the 80's and found it an amazing device: simple yet powerful. A Turing Complete pocket computer. It should be noted that HP did NOT invent reverse polish notation, and the HP-35 allegedly borrowed a lot of ideas from the Olivetti Programma 101 computer, arguably the first desktop computer.

Still, the HP-35 was an amazing packaging of existing but relatively new ideas (at least as actual products). This kind of thing is what made Apple big: take different new but existing ideas and combine and package them well by keeping the good and tossing the bad or low-use features. Steve Jobs had a nose for how to use new ideas invented by others by carefully picking, choosing, and associating features. What you leave out is often more important than what you put in.

I've also read that HP was hesitant to advertise such devices as "computers" because that carried export restrictions per military concerns. Calling it a "calculator" got around that. The convention of defining "computer" as something Turing Complete came later I believe.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting article. My dad, an engineer, had the successor to this model, the HP-45. It was an amazing machine for it's time. Because of it, I fell in love with RPN and refused to use anything else. When I went to college I got an HP-48sx. I think it was the zenith of scientific calculators with so much functionality crammed into it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really enjoyed that.</comment>


World Leaders at Davos Call for Global Rules on Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/technology/world-economic-forum-data-controls.html <comment><USER2> Paywalled. Mirror?

[https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/davos-leaders- say...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/davos-leaders-say-they- love-globalization-but-they-truly-love-taxing-american-companies)</comment>


With a single wiretap order, US authorities listened in on 3.3M phone calls - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/one-federal-wiretap-order-recorded-millions-phone-calls/ <comment><USER2> "...supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

As technologists, one of the most important innovations we can work on for the civility of the information age is a framework for the proper application of that clause and others like it.

When data is digital, how do we develop an understanding of this sort of particularization such the right to be free from capricious intrusion is preserved?

<comment><USER3> Ultimately, as long as our judges insist on rubber-stamping legal atrocities like this, no technological solution will be possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The order was signed to help authorities track 26 individuals"

"The federal wiretap resulted in the interception of 3,292,385 cell phone conversations or messages over 60 days"

3,292,385 / 26 / 60 = 2110.5 calls/messages per person per day.

That wasn't really explained in the article but I'd be interested in knowing how that could happen.

<comment><USER5> It wasn't 26 people being surveilled, it was many people (hundreds or thousands) being surveilled in an attempt to track the 26 individuals.

<comment><USER6> It sounds like they stingrayed or otherwise captured an entire node (on some system / a few systems covering a specific area) and then attempted to sieve out what they were actually looking for... instead of actually going after a surgically targeted filter.

Even in the Jason Borne movies they didn't slurp up this much data!

<comment><USER7> The directors and script writers weren't nearly imaginative enough (or clued in?) to dream up the surveillance infrastructure the US has been deploying and iterating on for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Around the year 2000 or so I was on a contract to help a small phone company improve their internet infrastructure. I was shocked to learn how easy any technician could listen in on a call.

Imagine a world in which everything is IoT.

<comment><USER9> Yeah i worked at a voip company around 2003 or so and we captured and saved every call for two weeks for troubleshooting purposes.

And we had a contract at at least one embassy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 702 is still in order, so they unconstitutionally and illegally still do a fulltake of everything electronic without any minimalization or filtering. TB's per day. This article is just a small distraction from the real problem. Trump should have stopped 702 by long already.</comment>


Ask HN: I am writing a book. What would you want to see in it? - <AUTHOR> ASK HN: I am writing a book on Serverless Architectures (https://www.manning.com/books/serverless-architectures-on-aws?a_aid=serverless-architectures-on-aws&a_bid=145280de). It's going well but I want it to be the best book of its kind.<p>I need your collective wisdom HN. What kind of topics should it cover? What do you want to see in this book? And, what would make you recommend it to a friend? <comment><USER2> I stopped buying technology books years ago because—too often—they focused on the latest and greatest ("covers the latest .NET Framework, updated for v1.1!"), and therefore are rendered obsolete within months.

Write about the "why's" instead. In other words, try to answer the big picture questions about serverless architectures without getting bogged down in the minutiae of what is state of the art in early 2016. Try to picture what someone in the year 2018 or 2020 would want to know about them, and write about that.

<comment><USER3> This. Trends change so fast that even if you write the best book of it's kind it may be irrelevant in the next year. Talk about why this paradigm is fundamentally different. Now that developers have to worry less about server provisioning, capacity constraints etc. why is that important? What flexibility and capabilities do we have now that we didn't before?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points.

We have dedicated many pages (and will dedicate more) explaining how/why serverless is different. Why we think it's superior (in some instances) to traditional technologies and how it can alleviate the burden that comes with managing traditional infrastructure (and current methods of implementing back ends for web applications).

The book is covering AWS and technologies such as Lambda, and API Gateway. These have already evolved as we began to write the book. I want to focus more on patterns and applications but we also need to introduce readers to these patterns and show how to actually put them together - so it's an interesting question of finding balance.

<comment><USER4> Don't just tell people why it is different. Tell people why it is the same. What is timeless about it? How do I implement the Gang of Four's singleton pattern? [well maybe that's not a good place to start].

How about composability as an organizing theme?

Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Success stories sell. Imagine the book as a meet-up where 2 dozen of the world's leading practitioners are all comparing notes, sharing breakthroughs, & thoughts on best practices.

My hunch is that collecting the stories from several individuals will yield some tremendously interesting ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent idea. Thoughts on best practice and real-life success stories can really illustrate a point. We can definitely dedicate space to that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: As a consumer why should i use bitcoin? - <AUTHOR>

Here is my overwhelming concern: I don't want to spend $100 one day and find that worth $200 next day. Similarly I don't want to hold $100 and find it valued $50 next day. How would you convince me? <comment><USER2> For now I doubt many people have only bitcoins and have at least some cash. For point 1, you can always leave some money on an exchange site and then as soon as you spend bitcoins somewhere, you buy them back on Gox. For point 2, I wouldn't spend my bitcoins until they increased again. For the time being I would say bitcoin is more of a payment system and a store of value, not a currency.</comment>


What I learned today: Take a break - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturebent.com/2011/06/what-i-learned-today-take-a-break/ Im starting a new series of short, daily posts as part of my contribution to VentureBent.  Therefore, starting today I will be posting about what I learn while living and breathing the NYC tech scene. <comment><USER2> What I learned today: Even the most mundane common sense ideas can reach the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> Taking a break and stepping back is vital not only for your mental stability, but also to stay in touch with all the "normal" things that are happening around you.</comment>


How long do neutrons live? Physicists close in on decades-old puzzle - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01203-9 <comment><USER2> I've read about this topic before and when I saw the link I hoped that there was news, but there isn't. If you count how many neutrons remain, you get a different answer than if you count how many protons are created, the effect is a good deal larger than the accuracy of the measurements, and it seems the logical answer is that sometimes a neutron decays into ... something else. That would be new physics and would be extremely cool. We still have no idea what dark matter is, it could be the first real lead.

</comment><comment><USER3> Timely for me - I've been down the rabbit hole lately of understanding how the elements are formed and got as far as stellar nucleosynthesis, s-process which involves neutron capture making a heavier isotope and then apparently the neutron turns into a proton through a process called beta decay. (So I'm all about the lifetime of neutrons right now!)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process)

<comment><USER4> [http://pdg.lbl.gov/2018/reviews/contents_sports.html](http://pdg.lbl.gov/2018/reviews/contents_sports.html)

<comment><USER3> Maybe next "semester"! :) I love the misleading URL - those particle physicists have a sense of humor.

<comment><USER4> If you haven't seen this series: [https://archive.org/details/The_Mechanical_Universe_and_Beyo...](https://archive.org/details/The_Mechanical_Universe_and_Beyond_51_Atoms_to_Quarks) (it's a bit outdated, but the part around 23 minutes is still mind-blowing to me, especially in the context of the video)

<comment><USER3> This was what I was watching most recently .. Nucleosynthesis the origin of elements in our Solar System Jim Connelly University [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6tFWA9FyGE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6tFWA9FyGE)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I'll watch those. I think you might also like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_ldatF3-aI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_ldatF3-aI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This made me curious how long a photon lives.

"according to the photons frame of reference, Heeck found that its lifetime would be a rather short three years; however, from our frame of reference, light would live about one billion billion (10^18) years"

[https://futurism.com/science-explained-long-can-photons- live...](https://futurism.com/science-explained-long-can-photons-live-will- ever-die)

<comment><USER6> Note that this article is assuming, for purposes of argument, that photons actually have mass, equal to the current upper limit for possible photon mass based on experiments. But the experiments are all consistent with the current theoretical belief that photons have zero mass; and if they have zero mass, the concept of "lifetime" for a photon (and indeed the concept of "photons frame of reference") is not even well-defined.

<comment><USER7> If they are moving with the speed of light no time passes for photons so 'lifetime' has no real meaning either.

<comment><USER6> _> If they are moving with the speed of light no time passes for photons_

No, the concept of "time passing" for an object moving at the speed of light has no meaning. That's why "lifetime" has no meaning for a photon if it has zero mass.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't c have to be infinite for "no time to pass", since light is still traversing space at a finite speed?

<comment><USER6> _> Wouldn't c have to be infinite for "no time to pass"_

You're using a different notion of "time passing". Yes, we, observing photons, certainly observe them to take a finite time to cover a finite distance. But that is not the same as the concept of "time passing" for the photons themselves, for example according to a clock that the photons carried along with them; that is the concept that has no meaning.

<comment><USER8> If the photons were a conscious subject, would that mean, from their point of view, they are everywhere (everywhere being defined as the entire path the photon will take from its genesis to its final destruction or absorption), all at once? Because if no time is passing for them, doesn't that mean no space is being traversed either?

<comment><USER9> The flip side of time dilation is Lorentz contraction. As you approach the speed of light objects in your direction of motion will become shortened from your frame of reference.

For example, there are particles from cosmic rays that should not be able to make it to the surface without decaying. However, they're detected all the time. Two valid ways to think of this are:

1\. From the Earth's frame of reference time moves more slowly for the particle. This slows down the process of decaying.

2\. From the particle's frame of reference the Earth's atmosphere is considerably shorter so it doesn't need to travel as far.

Things get a bit hairy to talk about once you actually reach the speed of light. One way to think of it might be from the photon's frame of reference its entire path has become infinitely short so it had no distance to travel at all.

<comment><USER8> > One way to think of it might be from the photon's frame of reference its > entire path has become infinitely short so it had no distance to travel at > all.

From the photons frame of reference, then, they do not _move at all?_

And the environment that photon "experiences", being the path in the universe that it traverses from our point of view; is the past, present, and future (from our point of view) all in instant simultaneity for the photon?

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately when talking about physics, sloppy human languages and our tendency to anthropomorphize when describing very non-human-like things cause a lot of communication/learning problems. Concepts like "experiencing an environment" and "time" don't make sense for the photon, which is sort of equivalent to "moving at c" because experiencing something like "time" _requires_ interactions (events) at different places in spacetime.

Saying "neutrino has a very small mass" is roughly equivalent to saying "neutrinos _very_ rarely experience an oscillation event (changing into a different flavor)". The distance between the rare events _is_ the "time" it experiences. These are so far apart in spacetime for the neutrino it's experience of time (the way it evolves over spacetime) is extremely slow. More massive particles _are_ "more massive" because they frequently interact with the Higgs field. More interaction events means their experience of time happens faster.

The photon (and anything else with 0 mass) only experiences two events: it's creation and destruction. It moves at c _because_ it's never being slowed down by experiencing interactions.

For a _very_ good explanation of this (with helpful animations) this[1] short playlist (6 ep) of PBS Spacetime episodes.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNCLrXgf8e6n...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNCLrXgf8e6nC_xEzxdx4nmY)

edit: TL;DR - When speed-of-light particles pause to interact with things (thus moving < c)slowing it down), we say that particle "has mass". Mass is a measure of how frequently those interactions occur (aka how much "time" it experiences).

<comment><USER6> _> The photon (and anything else with 0 mass) only experiences two events: it's creation and destruction._

This is not correct. The worldline of a photon contains events between its creation and its destruction. The spacetime interval between any such pair of events is zero, but that does not mean the events aren't there.

<comment><USER10> That's interesting... could you provide an example of such an event?

<comment><USER6> If you flash a laser at a detector on the Moon, there is a whole continuum of events between the source (the laser) and the destination (the detector on the Moon). The spacetime interval between the source and destination events is zero, but there is still a whole continuum of events between them (all the events the photon passes through between the source and the detector).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does one contain neutrons in a "bottle"?

<comment><USER12> Magnetic fields and lots of cooling.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/47444](https://www.nature.com/articles/47444)

<comment><USER13> Ah, but how do you capture a neutral particle with a magnetic field?

(As I understand, they're a _little_ bit magnetic because their constituent quarks are charged.)

<comment><USER6> _> As I understand, they're a little bit magnetic because their constituent quarks are charged._

More than a little bit. The neutron's magnetic moment is about 2/3 the magnitude of the proton's, and of opposite sign.

<comment><USER14> Hmmm, if neutron's are of the opposite sign, is this what keeps the electrons repelled enough stay on the "outside" in orbit?

<comment><USER15> No. The gross structure of an atom is only determined by the electrostatic interaction between the charge of the electrons and of the protons in the nucleus. The interaction between the magnetic moments of the electrons and of the nucleus (which is due to both protons and neutrons) leads to hyperfine structure on a much smaller energy scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do neutrons bound with a proton 'live' substantially longer?

<comment><USER17> Because that's a lower energy state. The deuteron binding energy is 2.2 MeV, i.e. the mass of a deuteron is 2.2 MeV below the sum of the masses of a proton + neutron. If the neutron inside would decay into a proton, you would have a diproton (^2He). Very unstable, essentially no binding energy, so it's mass is very close to 2 protons, which is still above the deuteron mass. So the neutron can not decay spontaneously. There is not enough energy available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "We're on the way to pinning this down," ok, but that can be said about anything we haven't pinned down yet

<comment><USER19> I think it's kinda like an intermittent bug in some application. You don't even know if it's an actual problem or just a user with a bad internet connection. That is, until you find out that it only happens after a period of inactivity.

Suddenly you are "on the way to pinning this down." Instead of "Flailing madly in the dark with wild theories."

<comment><USER20> _I think it 's kinda like an intermittent bug in some application._

Like a "stable" civilization?

Sometimes I wonder if clouds of autonomous self replicators, such as our planet and our civilization, aren't viewed as atavistic exponential pests by godlike alien beings who control the entire resources of a civilization in one entity.</comment></comment></comment>


A high-carb diet may explain why Okinawans live so long - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190116-a-high-carb-diet-may-explain-why-okinawans-live-so-long <comment><USER2> Being on a paleo diet for a while, I'm quite convenience that high carb diets in the USA is causing all the metabolic diseases here. I've lost 25 lbs and my stomach is much better, I'm now close to a "normal" BMI.</comment>


Canada's Headed for a HealthCare.gov Disaster of Its Own - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/tom-cochran/canada-government-website-failure_b_13790426.html <comment><USER2> I love that "Apply now to become a senator" is the most prominent link on their front page. (Canadian senators aren't elected -- they're appointed by the prime minister. Mostly from long-time political connections, but in principle one can apply, and the PM could like the cut of your jib.)

Anyway, "Apply now to become a senator" has to be 5 orders of magnitude lower conversion rate than "Get a passport", down at the bottom.</comment>


Drug engineered from bananas shows promise in fighting deadly viruses - <AUTHOR> http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/23230-drug-engineered-from-bananas-shows-promise-in-fighting-deadly-viruses <comment><AUTHOR> I really think this is very interesting in that this would be a truly broad spectrum anti-viral agent. Maybe this is the start of a class of compounds like antibiotics, but for treating viral infections. Could be amazingly tranformative of our ability to treat disease.</comment>


Gobot 0.10 released – Golang framework for robotics and IoT - <AUTHOR> http://gobot.io/blog/2015/10/27/gobot-0.10-less-is-more/ <comment><USER2> Gobot is also a name for one of the malware families :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a comparison with ROS somewhere online?</comment>


FSF Heroes - <AUTHOR> https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-heroes/ <comment><USER2> I just got an email from the FSF with this. I was skeptical, but it really does point out problems with trusting kids' privacy rights to closed source commercial systems.

<comment><USER3> The mess here is a bit deeper than that:

* PPRA gives us rights to inspect school curricula. We can't, since they're locked up at Pearson.

* FEPRA gives us rights to inspect and correct student records. We can't, since they're locked up at Pearson.

* FOIA state equivalents have historically given us access to most of everything else. We can't, since they're locked up at Pearson.

See a pattern?

This is devastating to education research, educational policy-making, and general progress in education. FSF isn't 100% right about the fix, but we do need something like an AGPL or CC-BY-SA broader rights framework for education.

(And yes, Pearson is just a stand-in for the broader ed-tech industry).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth the trip for the kitten gun at 1:39.</comment>


Gyrocar - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrocar <comment><USER2> How can this not mention the Gyro-X [0]??

I remember reading about it as a kid in the late 1960s. I still remember it saying that the owner could play with other motorists' heads by leaning the car _out_ in turns.

[0] [http://www.gizmag.com/gyro-x-gyroscopic-car- restoration/2642...](http://www.gizmag.com/gyro-x-gyroscopic-car- restoration/26427/)

<comment><USER3> Well, it _is_ wikipedia. You could add it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's also a Gyrotrain [http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/louis-brennans- gyro-car/](http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/louis-brennans-gyro-car/) and this much more detailed wikipedia article [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail)

<comment><USER4> There's a nice model of a gyro monorail shown in the video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGYXJjRfgTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGYXJjRfgTM)

I may be possible to do the same with Lego Mindstorms - certainly you can make self-balancing two-wheel robots: [http://robotsquare.com/2014/07/01/tutorial- ev3-self-balancin...](http://robotsquare.com/2014/07/01/tutorial-ev3-self- balancing-robot/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My question is this: Why have two wheels at the bottom, and two complicated spinning wheels in the center, when you can simply have 4 wheels at the bottom? :)

<comment><USER6> Things that come to mind: less rolling resistance with 2 wheels, faster turning since you can lean, simpler mechanics in some aspects (no need for a differential), easier to build narrow vehicles with better aerodynamics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This company [1] seems to be working on a modern version of this, but it seems like their website hasn't been updated since 2012. Anyone know of the status this projects or others alike?

[1] [http://www.thrustcycle.com/](http://www.thrustcycle.com/)

<comment><USER6> There is also this: [http://litmotors.com/](http://litmotors.com/)

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra I was thinking of gyro-powered space launch assistance not unlike railgun. An inexpensive way to give rocket with all the fuel 150 mph on the start.

<comment><USER7> But then you need to build the rocket to have reinforced attachment points for the rail sled and be strong enough to withstand the lateral forces during the rail launch, with the attendant cost in increased weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More info here (one of the wikipedia sources):

[https://web.archive.org/web/20060720074622/http://www.wolsel...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060720074622/http://www.wolseley.dircon.co.uk/gyro.html)</comment>


Bitcoin almost reached $1000 - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/mtgox/btcusd/

<comment><USER2> It already reached $1000: last week on btcchina (world's largest bitcoin exchange) [http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=75](http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=75)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know, but not on Mt Gox or any of the western exchanges. BTCChina is not really relevant imho, since we can't go there and sell our bitcoins. Plus, their rate is usually completely out of sync with the other exchanges.</comment></comment>


How Cheap a Product Can You Have And Still Have Salespeople? - <AUTHOR> http://saastr.com/2013/08/15/smb-sales-reps-how-low-can-you-and-your-acv-go/

<comment><USER2> It might not look like it, but this is one of the most important things to hit HN this month (for those of you who have SaaS businesses). I sort of wish I had written it. The math comports with the experience of myself and consulting clients (with the obligatory "It's handwavy, break out your own Excel spreadsheet to see if it makes sense" proviso), and "You can use hybrid high- touch/low-touch sales processes on accounts in the $80 to $250 a month range" is one of the best kept secret weapons in SaaS right now.

In particular, note that bit about the "$99 a month" thing. I once had the educational opportunity to work in the same room as a sales guy who was working a very similar queue of inbound leads, and was mentally scoring his conversations while doing my gig. I'm pretty sure that he added north of $1,000 in monthly recurring revenue _in a single day_. At any non-broken SaaS company, all guesses for churn would mean "Holy cow he is generating a _stupefyingly_ high ROI. He's going to be cash flow positive after doing this for like 6 weeks and then be a total gravy machine even if he's as good at the discussion about his commission check as he is on these phone calls."

<comment><USER3> Quick question: Do businesses expect phone support if one is selling/onboarding by phone? My gut is that they would, but wondering if I'm missing something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can go as low as 60ct. At least that's the amount of money I pay for a scoop of icecream at the local ice cream place, and they have multiple people doing sales, as well as manufacture, distribution and payment processing.

Technically, an ice cream palor has all the components a PaaS business has, but they have incredible conversion rates due to highly qualified leads, and their turn around time for a single sale is within less than a minute.

Now when you go to an ice cream parlor, a lot of the information is implicit. You're going to get some ice cream, these are the flavours we have, these are the flavours you like, and this is the price of one scoop. The sales person doesn't have to explain to you why you should buy ice cream, which is why these "sales conversations" boil down to "I want one scoop chocholate and one scoop lemon".

Odds are that you can do that in your SaaS business to. Of course, what you're selling isn't commoditized like ice cream. You'll need to do some explaining, and there are things that will come up again and again. Now the laziest way to answer these questions is the veritable FAQ. But the moment I switch to your FAQ, buying is put off for a while. Hell, I might even decide it's too much of a hassle to buy anything from you.

The most effective way seems to be to put those questions into your funnel before a customer gets to talk to your inhouse sales team. In fact, explain everything about it, and then offer a free call on how to tailor your solution to their business. That way, all questions about the merit of ice cream, the price of ice cream, aso. are out of the way, and the sales conversation is stripped down to "So what kind of ice cream? Want sprinkles?"

If you use your sales people for what they're worth, I believe you can press the price down even further.</comment>


Ask HN: Real world examples of interaction between Python and Go? - <AUTHOR> My manager allows me to use some of my time on personal projects so I started a library for an internal tool. More as a learning project that anything else, but now, it seems is useful for other people.
The thing is, the library is completely written in Go and I would like to use it as a Python library.
I found a few blog posts but I cannot find real world examples of libraries written in Go but been use from Python and I feel a little lost.
Anyone knows public repos like this? <comment><USER2> Sadly the experiment I did isn't public. My memory is I compiled the Go thing to a shared library, and exposed a C API, and then used cffi to talk to the C API (based on [https://blog.filippo.io/building-python-modules-with- go-1-5/](https://blog.filippo.io/building-python-modules-with-go-1-5/), except cffi instead of Python C API).

Go objects needed to be managed C style: internally Go thing had a map between integer identifier and object, and Python just got the integer identifier and had to manually tell Go code to deallocate.

<comment><USER3> I was recently trying to do something similar and looked/tried go as a solution but I ran into some initial issues around my own confidence that the shared lib would work and that I wouldn't eventually really mess up the deallocation step.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I'd recommend it, yeah...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. In fact, I'm thinking in dropping the idea and port it, but I'm not confident with my Python skills and there are plenty of concurrency stuff in the library.

Well, I guess is time to learn Python</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pg, Blank and Ries on MVPs - <AUTHOR> http://vlaskovits.com/2010/12/graham-blank-ries-mvps/ <comment><USER2> When I clicked on the link, It shows up a page saying my computer appears to be affected and asks to solve a captcha with below message: To access the website: Enter the distorted words below.Enter the words you hear below, or alternatively try a visual.

is that just me ? if not some one with enough karma downvote it please.

<comment><USER3> Worked perfectly here.

It's pretty short, really. In case more people are affected by the same problem:

\---===--- Graham, Blank and Ries on MVPs

by Patrick on 28. Dec, 2010 in Customer Development, Lean Startups

Three very smart people talking about the same thing from three slightly different angles:

A Quantum of Utility

        We advise startups to launch when they've added a quantum of utility: when there is at least some set of users who would be excited to hear about it, because they can now do something they couldn't do before.

        -Paul Graham

Minimum Feature Set

        The reality is that the minimum feature set is 1) a tactic to reduce wasted engineering hours (code left on the floor) and 2) to get the product in the hands of early visionary customers as soon as possible.

        -Steve Blank

Minimum Viable Product

        …that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.

        -Eric Ries

To riff on the above, Brant Cooper and I would only remind you that when thinking about Minimum Viable Products:

        …viable is not limited by an external determination of success, but rather is framed by the entrepreneur's objective (user scale, specific functionality, payment) as measured by specific "currency" (usage, problem solved, money).

        -The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development</comment></comment>


How to Get Free Labor for Your Startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jproco/how-to-get-free-labor-for-your-startup-a4875f22974d <comment> ndusan-hn Interesting way could be using the approach suggested in the book "Slicing pie" by Mike Moyer

You can find in on Amazon: [https://www.amazon.com/Slicing-Pie-Company- Without-Funds-ebo...](https://www.amazon.com/Slicing-Pie-Company-Without- Funds-ebook/dp/B0096EFHBI)</comment>


The Cost of Training NLP Models: A Concise Overview - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.08900 <comment><USER2> I don't understand how the conversion from FLOPs to dollars is done. A footnote says that "These $ figures come with substantial error bars, but we believe they are in the right ballpark." Where are the estimates themselves coming from? Cost of cloud computing? Cooling and power consumption estimates? I feel the article would benefit from adding a sentence fragment in the abstract or introduction that specifies this as I have no idea what I'm looking at right now.

</comment><comment> chroem- I think the biggest advancement that could come out of the ML space right now is the equivalent of Big O notation for ML. Our current algorithms suck, and the first step to making them suck less is to precisely measure just how much they suck.

<comment><USER3> It's similar to our viewpoint as well. Currently, it's easy to see gains because we're mainly going from highly manual processes to 1st generation AI applications. Future generation AI applications will mostly be optimization and squeezing out very tiny performance gains. We want to be able to highlight eventually how much things will cost and whether it's even worth spending so much for a tiny amount of gain.

There's so much hype right now that silly money is just being thrown at new tech without fully understanding the value you're getting.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Possible to build enhanced SMTP? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious since there are not many new net protocol being establish lately since SMTP, NNTP, HTTP etc. Seems like most work in last many years is concentrated on enhancing HTTP.<p>Why not an enhanced SMTP protocol that is compatible with SMTP, but with realtime capability for a unified text based messaging platform that replaces email, chat and sms/mms? <comment><USER2> The first thing that comes to mind is XMPP.

<comment><USER3> XMPP needs an implementation/rework that has an S in its name.</comment></comment>