Notes from a job hunter - <AUTHOR>

I've been doing contracting for about ten years now, and here's what I've been seeing. This isn't about the good recruiters, or the bad recruiters. It's about the normal, everyday recruiters.
- Recruiters aren't looking for the best match, or even a good match. They are looking for the easiest match.
- Recruiters try to be negotiators, but have little authority to negotiate.
- What authority recruiters have is limited to their company. The hiring company doesn't save money, the worker doesn't make more money, it just goes to the middleman.
I don't even mean this against any individual recruiter. For the most part, they just seem to be doing the job the way they were taught to do it. I also get that the companies are just reacting to what employers say they want.
There's just too many conflicts of interest. These days, my initial contact with my "employer" is adversarial. I treat them just as I would a used car salesman. Is that a good way to start a relationship? <comment><USER2> For the most part, you are absolutely right and it's a shame - a damn shame! It's the system, and while broken in many ways, is essentially all there is right now. With that being said, recruiter-employer relationships are not all the same; fortunately, the rare very good recruiter is capable of navigating some of these problems faced by average recruiters, minimizing the negatives.

</comment><comment><USER3> What percentage of people actually use recruiters? I'm genuinely curious. I imagine it varies greatly by geographic location. Personally, although I have interacted with recruiters, I never found work through them nor did I ever feel the need to rely on them. I was able to find the jobs I wanted through a personal network or by simply applying to postings. So while I do feel the recruiters are a pain to deal with, isn't the alternative simply to do the work yourself? I see recruiters as a convenience service - like a mortgage or insurance broker.

</comment><comment><USER4> Contractor often connotes low status like a tradesmen in construction work. Business development (sales) is a learned and practiced skill. Can you teach yourself how to pitch your skills and expertise to a potential client like a consultant? It will raise your status.

I've found the bigger the company, the dumber they are and more insular the culture. Smaller and mid-size companies may be more receptive to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not discussing maximization, nor am I trying portray myself as anything other than what I am: just some guy with good skills looking for work.

I'm pretty much a tradesman, much like thousands of others out there.

I see so much discussion about getting the best, being the best, etc. What about that _huge_ middle which is so poorly served by the status quo?

<comment><USER4> > What about that huge middle which is so poorly served by the status quo?

Change the system or change your approach is the proposition. Even an Average Joe (myself included) can figure a work around. I try to limit low-level recruiter discussions. Prefer upfront conversations with the hiring execs.

<comment><AUTHOR> _My_ approach is fine. I'm not having trouble finding work. Your approach sounds fine, too.

That doesn't help the huge middle who only seek work every few years. Nor does it help those employers who are just trying to find someone who's good at their job.

I'm trying to change (oh so slightly) the system. Plenty of employers and hiring managers read HN.

In the best of systems, there eventually has to be some trust between the principles. The current system begins by establishing _distrust_ from the outset.

I'd think there would be plenty of people who would be interested in doing something about that.

Or maybe everyone is happy with the status quo except me.

<comment><USER2> You really do raise an interesting question, and no, you're not the only one frustrated with the recruiting status quo! And whether you're the best of the best, or just somewhere in the top 90%, there's probably an employer out there and an appropriate recruiter to match you isn't asking too much. It's the incentives inherent to the recruiting profession. To drastically improve it would require a massive overhaul and is improbable (like drastically improving literally any sales profession).

In the meantime, it's the little things that count and can eventually cause positive change. A couple quick examples come to mind:

1\. Recruiting start-ups/show HN ideas: a few successful ones are adding efficiencies, which is indirectly great for people like you. Because the successful recruiter/hiring manager/etc. can devote that extra time to making their little changes towards improving the system. Still, it's not hitting the real pain point.

2\. HN posters like you, who remind hiring professionals, that there's yet another frustrated customer - you sound like a reasonable, capable person that a recruiter would be fortunate to work with; this especially lights a fire under people's asses, so thank you!

My theory is that it'll require a serious effort by industry experts with zero expectation of financial return. It's going to have to be about the purpose, not the money, for the very (very) long-term. I shudder imagining the hardcore YC community response to this "non-profit"-esque prospect, but I don't know how else to solve it :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only way for recruiters to become viable solutions as "middlemen/middlewomen" are to learn about the technical aspects of the roles they are marketing.

So often, a good majority of them do not understand what's an ideal candidate profile vs. what's a potential candidate profile look like.

This all stems from experience and in my experience, many are lacking in that department at the moment.</comment>


How I Built and Sold My Company in 18 Months - <AUTHOR> https://campfirelabs.co/blog-1/2019/3/28/how-i-built-and-sold-my-company-in-18-months <comment><USER2> Save your time and skip this article if you want any tangible takeaways; if you want to know what the company actually DID or how it MADE MONEY, spoiler alert: this article neither mentions or links to anything of the sort.

Without this basic intro description, there's little to no value in this article to prospective readers- companies aren't created equal and lessons learned in one industry don't necessarily translate to others (this is not always true, but without context, I still stand by the lack of utility here).

<comment><USER3> [https://getsimpledata.com](https://getsimpledata.com) ?

<comment><USER2> Like I said- not only is this website not linked in the article, this website _also_ does not describe what (exactly) the company sells, how it sells, who it sells it to, or how any purchasing company would continue to bring in revenue post purchase- NONE of this being covered while talking about how the business was valued and ultimately bought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why didn't you have any representation, such as legal or a deal negotiator, on your side? Broker isn't your friend. Is there any reason why you saw 2x "earnings" as the golden ticket?

<comment><USER5> Not the OP, but I would consider 2x earnings as a reasonable discount given the youth of the company. Given a normal customer acquisition curve, most of the revenue would be coming from customers with tenure < 1 year. So a buyer could reasonably wonder how long these customers would stick around. Put another way: the LTV hadn't been demonstrated yet.

(No scare quotes needed around earnings; the article doesn't suggest that there was any reason the owner couldn't just pocket the monthly earnings.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > But no one likes contracts and I don't like conflict, so I didn't ever > transition to long term contracts. Again my lower brain (fear and the desire > to be liked) took control and I decided to stick with month-to-month > contracts. Then my upper brain came up with convincing arguments and > justified this decision by saying I had created a "customer-friendly" > pricing model.

Your upper brain was right. You did the right thing, and this is an example of where building to flip is at odds with doing the right thing for the customer. I hope we'll see more bootstrapped companies that are profitable enough to be sustainable and offer a good living for their owners and employees, but don't maximize profit or valuation at the expense of doing what's right.

<comment><USER7> This is not correct. From the perspective of the buyer long-term contracts limit liability for an extended period of time, which reduces variability in expenses and lowers overall cost. Not every buyer values the benefit equally but to say 'no one likes contracts' is simply inaccurate. It's a big deal especially in enterprise markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an interesting, feel-good read and I'm legitimately happy for the OP's success, but I do have a few nits. First this is a pretty simplistic way to value a business, using the tools we were introduced to in 2nd year management accounting. They're all useful but the reality is that different buyers have very different goals and their valuation is reflected in what they plan to do. The approach here is most aligned with purchasing as a going concern. It's the classic built a solid business that does pretty well but still requires a lot of hard work and the owners want to retire. I'm going to be focused on cashflows and growth, historic and projected. This is very different from the types of businesses we talk about on HN everyday, or a value investor looking for things like assets devalued by underperformance, etc. The point is "it's complicated".

My second nit is more philosophical, related to this statement:

>> That's because the process of creating an attractive business for someone else to buy naturally makes it a better business to own.

I only feel this is true if your definition of a good business to own is one that you can sell at this point in time, which seems a lot like a dog chasing it's tail.

There are lots of counter examples to refute this idea, such as deferring hiring, capital replacement or any real long term investment. Amazon is such a valuable company today because of the things it did through the early 2000's that made it look so unattractive to buy.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _Had I understood these simple concepts I believe I would have made very > different decisions in building my business. I would have likely focused > less time on maximizing profit (E) and more time investing in future > earnings and value (M)_

It sounds like he's suggesting that the acquirer didn't care about how profitable the company was. I'd be curious to know if others have found more focus on revenue and less on profitability. I've definitely talked to some VCs that invested based on revenue numbers, and didn't care at all about profitability. Does this happen with acquirers too?

</comment><comment><USER10> TLDR: this person sold a money-printing machine for just 2x the yearly revenue which means that either he got shafted (a 2x price earning ratio is very low) or the buyer got shafted (company was at risk of tanking very soon, explaining the low PER).

More politely, you could say the risky asset was priced according to risk by both the seller and the seller ("hot potato")</comment>


Ask HN: Can I surf your couch? (Seattle YC meetup) - <AUTHOR>

I'll be coming into town for the meetup on Thursday, and I'm looking for a couch to crash/surf. I'll be in town Wednesday night through Sunday night, but any single day of letting me stay on your couch would be super helpful. Things I like: hiking, kayaking, poker, microbrews, Django, CSS, design, personal hygiene, not smoking, startups.
I have an eye for design, I'm great at giving user-oriented feedback, and I love talking about new projects. Need feedback on yours? I'd be happy to supply it.
I don't know if anyone else is coming into Seattle for this, but if you are, please feel free to use this topic too.
Note: Sorry for the repost! I thought I'd get to this early in the day since I'm in a time crunch. Unfortunately that time was probably bad for west coasters. <comment><USER2> I might be driving up from Oregon Thursday. I would invite you to crash my hotel but I prefer Rails and I'm not big on personal hygiene :)

Ok, seriously ... is your contact info in your profile? I'll get in touch if I'm going.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best bitcoin exchange? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen plenty of people recommend Coinbase, but I've heard some bad stories that make me believe they (and their founders) are somewhat sketchy.<p>Would anybody be able to give me an idea of the most trustworthy place to buy bitcoin? <comment><USER2> If you are in a bigger city, I recommend in-person localbitcoins.com exchanges using cash. It's quicker, and much more anonymous.</comment>


Advice for a high school student - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/hs.html I am a high school student and aspiring startup entrepreneur and am wondering what additional advice all of you have? <comment><USER2> The bit about boredom worked out a little differently for me. I remember being bored at least a few times a week as a little kid, but I'm 22 now and can't remember the last time I was bored. It was definitely before late high school, maybe about ninth grade.

About realizing the need to get things done, there's a window that a lot of people don't notice. It opens with said realization and closes when it's too late to act on it (you could say it never closes, but having kids certainly makes things harder). So a lot of people spend much of their 20s and early 30s lamenting their wasted youth without realizing that they've still got time to fix it.

</comment><comment><USER3> A truly wonderful article. Thanks. I wouldn't have been able to appreciate it as much without feeling a certain degree of pain, though. Perhaps I'm the kind that learns most through failure, but now, the resonance is so much more powerful.

While this knowledge would be extremely beneficial for any student of _any_ age, I think the primary difficulty would be in actually feeling the message, as opposed to understanding it. Everybody knows "practice makes ___," but few people act it. The ultimate challenge would be to convey that feeling. Something I'm very interested in :)</comment>


Kanye West's TIDAL Flop - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/kanye-wests-tidal-flop/ <comment><USER2> Music platforms don't just take off based on one or two successes, it's about accumulation. Plus that music is now firmly in their catalog. If they're able to play a long game, people will move over as they gather better exclusive content. I think if you revisit Tidal's success after Beyonce's Lemonade, for example, you're going to see some pretty different growth patterns.</comment>


The $250 Biohack That's Revolutionizing Life with Diabetes - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-08/the-250-biohack-that-s-revolutionizing-life-with-diabetes <comment><USER2> These systems are totally obtainable. It is only liability holding the movement back (since an accidental dose of insulin can kill). Even that is just slowing down the process. The largest difference in quality of life for those with diabetes, imho, is still better quality insulin. Humalog/Novolog are the fastest. For me personally, they begin work in about 30 mins and peak after an hour, with a tapering tail of 1-2 hours. By contrast, natural insulin works within a couple of minutes. For these devices, the largest tech bottleneck has been the CGM, since the technology for delivery and control logic is akin to a PID. Only 2 fronts remain to mechanically cure t1d: an accurate, second-by-second CGM; and a faster insulin analog. Only 1 front remains to have a mostly "hands off" but still clunky mechanical cure—the C.G.M. From there, it is simply a matter of comfort and convenience.

The quality of life difference between managed diabetes and unmanaged diabetes is astounding. Having an A1C higher than 8 or so is almost like going through life constantly tipsy, without any of the fun. Also, as is typical with any health condition, diet and lifestyle play an enormous role. For me, heavy daily exercise and good eating has made diabetes management ridiculously easy.

Lastly, "move fast and break things" emphatically does not work with insulin delivery devices. Overdoses of insulin are debilitating, can occur without the patient's knowledge, and can lead to impairment (like car/equipment accidents), unconsciousness, brain damage, or death after a short while.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is incredibly heart-warming to read, especially in light of all the negativity circulating around the tech world lately. This, and things like this, is what I want the tech sphere to enable for people. Technology that allows people to live a better life... or for some people, allowing them to live period.

Now I fully expect the top-rated comment on this story to quickly be a rant about how insane it is to use a non-FDA approved, DIY, device to manage something that is literally life or death...

<comment><USER4> > Medtronic's latest FDA-approved product can now do most of the things the > Farnsworths' system can—for $7,000

Considering the price is affordable for most people I can see why people might object to instead relying on a $250 DIY unit.

<comment><USER5> And apparently it is $250 when the pump is donated. Medically approved pumps are _expensive_. A lot of the safety control is in that pump and the protocol used to control it. It probably has two way confirmations at every step. Physical safety stops and controls. If you exclude the critical safety component (the pump) from the cost then it will be $250. That pump, with the safety controls and rigorous firmware development needed to pump insulin safely, is probably $4k-5k of the cost of the $7000 commercial pump. Also probably the reason there haven't been reports of people dying from their diy closed loop insulin pumps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Growing up, my dad had type 1 from agent orange (dioxin) exposure. Eventually had an insulin pump but it wasn't a closed feedback loop because of caloric, time-of-day and finger-pricking measurements. The strips were expensive and created biohazard litter. For the safety of others, I wish diabetics would use old strip bottles to contain used ones instead of just binning them bare, because they seem to magically leap out, get everywhere and multiply.

<comment><USER7> I'm not advocating litter, but the minuscule amount of dried blood left in the tip of a test strip is simply not a safety concern. They can and should be binned.

Proper sharps disposal is important, however. IMO all states should allow simply tossing clipped needles, but some states require sharps containers even for clipped syringes.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sourcerer – Atom plugin for quickly finding StackOverflow code snippets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NickTikhonov/sourcerer <comment><USER2> This helps to automate the dumbest and most dangerous practice of new developers.

Don't "write" code you don't understand.

<comment><USER3> You beat me to it. Honestly, never copy and paste even your own code other than as a reference -- retype it and you'll very often find your self with about cleaner implementation than the original.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just curious to see what you can accomplish with StackOverflow Driven Development.</comment>


Show HN: the technology and the game I am working on for months - <AUTHOR>

For impatient reader: http://api.alii.tv/ and http://pprevolution.com/
It is not finished yet (obviously). We are still working on new feature, bug fixes and more browser support.
The motion control API for now only works on Firefox/Windows and Firefox/Mac (of course you can copy the bundle to /Library/Internet Plugins/ so that it also works on Google Chrome/Mac). It will initiate another process to do hand detection, don't panic if you see another process called amcex in your activity monitor.
What it does? Visit http://api.alii.tv/console.html get some initial feelings. Put you hand in front of your webcam (0.5 ~ 1.5 meters is perfect), making the palm facing the webcam, you should see the blue/red dot moves with your hands. You can get readings by binding callback in the javascript, and that is it.
http://api.alii.tv/showcase/asteroid.html is a little game that utilize the API. http://pprevolution.com/ is a heavier one (Facebook Game with Flash).
Any feedback is welcome. You can drop emails to me, too: firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Clickable:

\+ <http://api.alii.tv/>

\+ <http://api.alii.tv/console.html>

\+ <http://api.alii.tv/showcase/asteroid.html>

\+ <http://pprevolution.com/></comment>


On Tooling and Static Typing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/techboi/on-tooling-and-static-typing-12bfa8f5db00 <comment><USER2> > There is no need to have API documentation open in a separate browser window > or wade through the source code in order to find out how to use a function.

Only true if function names and signatures tell you everything you need to know about how it behaves.

<comment><USER3> That's not really true - a good IDE will have navigable inline docs that pulls from both static type data as well as documentation. However, you can perform the same with static analysis of annotations and doc blocks in dynamic languages, so... it's hardly an advantage of static typing.

<comment><USER4> I believe that was an idea introduced by Smalltalk, so it was even pioneered by a dynamic language.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Node.js async processing by example (queue, waterfall, series) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexellis/async-example/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps add async.auto. Auto can do anything series and parallel can do, but with named functions and any combination of dependencies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment your suggestion would be an excellent PR. I don't want to quite rival the documentation for async itself, but give a few essential patterns. I think I will definitely mention parallel.

The main point was to share some initial examples with some contacts and colleagues who may have no idea about async processing at all.</comment></comment>


The Worst Waiter in History (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/the-worst-waiter-in-history/

<comment><USER2> Not quite as extreme, but if you want to experience something a bit like him, and are willing to travel to Ethiopia, you can. There was a story last week on NPR about a chef there who has been compared to the Soup Nazi.

I've just submitted a link to that story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9254708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9254708)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another Pointlessly Unpleasant Experience, made possible by the support of your local hipsters.

<comment><USER4> It would seem that the point was the unpleasant experience. It's not as if they didn't have the choice to leave.</comment></comment>


Everyone in the world should be taxed on their energy footprint - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/everyone-in-the-world-should-be-taxed-on-their-energy-footprint <comment><USER2> Taxes are too destructive because those who get the money usually handle it more foolishly than those who actually have to pay.

Better would be for energy utilities to be co-operatives which directly subsidize lower-consuming (or net producing) members at the expense of wasteful users.</comment>


Show HN: KnowYourWorth – Know how much people are getting paid - <AUTHOR> https://srebalaji.github.io/Know-Your-Worth/ <comment><USER2> Does this include contract workers that are always underpaid?</comment>


Online Dating in the Bay Area, Gender Ratios by City and Age – Match.com - <AUTHOR> https://public.tableau.com/profile/eddie.hernandez#!/vizhome/Match_comDatingbyCityandAge/Relocation <comment><USER2> Gay person's perspective: Even in the worst case, a straight man's dating pool is so much larger I'm envious.

Also something to consider: When 2 straight people couple off, it's only -1 from the dating pool as far as other straight people are concerned. But when a gay couple exits the dating pool, there's a loss of 2 people, heightening competition for an already tiny pool.

<comment><USER3> I don't quite follow the math. Why would only 1 person exit the pool in the one case and 2 in the other?

<comment><USER4> In the gay case, both people who left the dating pool are potential mates. In the straight case, only one potential mate left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The link seems to be linking to a comparison of several major cities, not bay area cities. The correct link appears to be: [https://public.tableau.com/profile/eddie.hernandez#!/vizhome...](https://public.tableau.com/profile/eddie.hernandez#!/vizhome/Match_comBayAreaDating/Dashboard1)

(And to compare, with where the current link is taking me: [https://public.tableau.com/profile/eddie.hernandez#!/vizhome...](https://public.tableau.com/profile/eddie.hernandez#!/vizhome/Match_comDatingbyCityandAge/Relocation))

Looks like the term Man Jose is valid to some degree within these data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I should have verified the link. Thanks.

Original source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/9mqx2l/online_dati...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/9mqx2l/online_dating_in_the_bay_area_gender_ratios_by/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On mobile it's basically unviewable.

Gotta say, I wasn't expecting Boulder to have a worse ratio

<comment><USER7> Tableau has removed the view entirely so I can't even see the broken views your talking about but regarding Boulder... It doesn't have a worse ratio (assuming you're talking about the gender ratio the bay - though this is partially because the town is still small enough that CU Boulder augments gender ratios for its age groups). But the deal is, I'm a young single Boulderite and there's no chance I would sign up for Match.com...

Conventional dating is easy in Boulder and I'm more inclined to have a "how- we-met" story of how our eyes met across a crowded coffee shop or we both got bamboozled by the joke of a hilarious vendor at the farmers market, then to tell people I chose to have software help because I'm too busy for traditional romance or am too helpless/hopeless to do it myself.

Per the title, this is only a representation of online dating. Match.com is simply a poor representation for the actual singles population here because nobody wants to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'd be interesting to know gender ratios as they exist at specific levels of attractiveness.

Since you can't really objectively measure that, the next best thing would be via something like Tinder's internal ELO score it assigns each user.

Distribution of ELO across genders would also be interesting. I've often heard statements like "the top n% of [gender] are fought over by x-y% of [gender]".

As an aside, I really loathe the fact that part of the optimal route for finding romance these days seems to be surrendering oneself to a collection of proprietary/black-box algorithms.

<comment><USER9> > As an aside, I really loathe the fact that part of the optimal route for > finding romance these days seems to be surrendering oneself to a collection > of proprietary/black-box algorithms.

I actually love that online dating is now the optimal method of finding romance. The only reason that wasn't the case before is because we didn't even have that option. You're still free to try the older methods, but online dating is far more efficient in my experience. The dating pool is effectively global and you can be as selective and honest as you want without the awkwardness that comes with dating someone in a close circle of yours.

<comment><USER8> Oh, I agree entirely. My only qualm is that in terms of online dating, people have essentially no choice but to submit themselves to systems where the inner workings are either not known or poorly designed. Yet, it's what everyone uses, and to abstain is to drastically reduce one's exposure.

The way Tinder seems to work for example, the broader an appeal you have, the higher your score. That can really suck for LGBTQ people depending on what gender they're looking for matches with.

An openly bisexual male for example, will be met with a huge score penalty due to all the left swipes from women that he isn't concerned with in the first place. Most could be vastly less attractive, or in some geographies even bigoted. The women he is looking for however, have a lower chance of seeing him because of the score hit. It's perverse incentivization all around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure NYC looks better than these cities, but I'm not sure by how much if the stats are through the lens of a dating app rather than the overall population.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can anybody weigh in on why Boulder is so skewed? I was expecting San Francisco to have the most imbalance because of the tech-dominated economy, but it looks like it's relatively more balanced than any of these other cities.

That this doesn't line up with my expectations makes me question the data. I kinda doubt these ratios are actually representative of the overall population of these cities.

A quick google search turned up this page which claims to be using Census data and shows a fairly even gender ratio (scroll down to view the Population Pyramid): [http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-francisco- pop...](http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-francisco-population/)

Maybe the point of the OP's data is to show men that subscription fees may be a poor value if relatively few women are using the platform in their cities.

<comment><USER12> Online dating is a small subset of real world dating, so doesn't have any connection with gender ratio etc. E.g. in SF women are more readily using online dating to hunt for better prospects, since more of them are there.

<comment><USER13> "small subset" may be no longer the case, I can't find the chart I was looking for, but I believe last time I checked it was around 40% of all relationships. The numbers may be even higher in 2018.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder what the ratios are on other apps. Do specific apps have different gender and age cohorts? Probably.

<comment><USER15> My perception is that few millennials and younger even bother with dating sites anymore. Dating apps, _yes_ , but not legacy dating sites like Match.com.

I haven't bothered with dating for a few years, but my brief experience with Match.com is that you're basically paying them to provide you with a bunch of fake profiles that superficially look higher quality than one might find on OkCupid or Tinder. Even when it came to OkCupid, there was virtually nobody on it, and I was living in a metropolitan area.

My guess would be the gender ratios wouldn't look _that_ different for other sites and apps, though Match.com clearly skews a little older because it's people 25 or older who are going to remember that it even exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Head to the DC area if you want to flip the ratio.

<comment><USER17> I've never lived in that part of the country. What is it about that area (government jobs, other industries) that make it imbalanced toward women?

<comment><USER18> while more women are graduating from college, vastly more are graduating with social sciences and polysci degrees. If you would like a well-paying stable job with a degree in one of those two, government is an awfully nice choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this something unique to the bay area? Does this reflect the overall gender ratios in the area?

<comment><USER20> At the last census the Bay Area was 50.4% female and SF in particular was 49.3% female, so no this does not reflect overall gender ratios.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> NYC, DC, Vancouver are all places where there are more females than males. If you are a guy it's way better odds. If you are in the Bay area, maybe find a company with a balance as well (hard to do).

</comment><comment><USER22> SF also had a skewed gender ratio during the 1849 gold rush. History repeats itself.

</comment><comment><USER23> The link seems to be broken?

</comment><comment><USER24> What, dudes just give up after 60? something seems off

</comment><comment><USER25> Without context on how this data was gathered it's mostly meaningless.

<comment><USER26> > Without context this is meaningless.

In the context of the match.com dating app, in these cities, in these age brackets, the gender ratios are as shown. There you go. Meaning!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dating in these cities as a single man in your 20s and 30s is good for the soul. It forces you to actually develop a personality, figure out how to be fun to be around. Have something interesting going on for you besides working at startup x or being Senior Frontend Engineer at Uber #775.

Women in a city like SF expect more from you, they're not that impressed with money or the fact that you have a stable job. Some look at it as a disadvantage, but is actually an upside. Some men come out of the experience jaded and bitter, blaming "the 49ers" and the ratio. Others take it as an opportunity to step it up and have more to offer to a potential partner. You attract who you are.

Disclaimer: huge generalizations above, take with a pound of salt.

<comment><USER27> This is really just trying way too hard to make the best of a shit situation. I know what you're saying, but consider the implications that this argument has for women in the bay area. So as a straight man, fierce competition presumably "forces you to develop a personality" (I think this is actually a pretty dangerous thought in that it suggests that single guys are lacking something in their personality which would net them a girlfriend).

So after all this self improvement, it's so that you can meet women who don't have the same driving forces, and actually have quite the opposite -- they can just choose not to date you because you have a funny haircut or they aren't sure and don't feel like following up. That mismatch of effort is a great way to drive resentment on both sides.

I'm not trying to place blame here. All I'm saying is: if you're a single straight male in the bay area, it's probably just the gender ratio of your social circle and social habits. Don't turn blame inwards towards perceived personality defects. In a different city or different friend group you might get drastically different results

<comment><USER28> I do turn inward when I think of things like "why I'm single": personality, my social circle is almost entirely co-workers, I spend a most of my time working or playing video games, I work out a little but not enough, etc. The reality is that I can change these habits if I really want to change the outcome. It feels bad sometimes, but it's the reality whether its "right" or "wrong".

<comment><USER13> Few things make people as uncomfortable as telling them "hey, maybe your victim mentality isn't helping you and you actually do have a shot at this, you just need to work harder than others". Life's not fair, I guess? If you don't want it that bad, then plenty of other, much more motivated men, will work for it.

It's a little like entrepreneurship and complaining that your parents aren't millionaires and can't seed fund your first venture, so why even bother.

<comment><USER9> Reading that genuinely made me feel uncomfortable but I'm glad you wrote it, I think I needed to hear that. Something about imagining all the other men who are much more motivated than me really gives me a deep desire to prove myself.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Micro VCs Are Coming - <AUTHOR> http://mattermark.com/the-micro-vcs-are-coming/ <comment><USER2> How is this different from VCs who focus on seed stage? There are a number of such funds out there and some have been very very successful, I don't understand this "Micro VCs are coming" thing if the definition is really just "VCs who focus on Seed stage" because they've been here for a while.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps it's because 99% of VCs I've talked to who claim (on their website, in person, or otherwise) to focus on the seed stage or early stage, change their mind when you actually go pitch to them. Like asking about users, traction, and so on. If I had those already, I would _by definition_ not be early stage.

True early stage investors focus on technology, team, demos, prototypes, and so on. Probably team more than anything else.

<comment><USER4> Your definition of "true early stage investors" seems to favor those who would shut out anyone without connections or Ivy-league pedigrees. Maybe investors have found that traction is more important than the founder's biography blurbs. Seems like it's totally reasonable for a company to be in an early stage and have actual users. For those without a golden ticket, this may be the only way to attract investment, since they can't rely on the investor's definition of "team" as a criteria.

<comment><USER3> Sure, traction _is_ an excellent indicator of a company's potential to succeed. I don't dispute that. And I respect you if you are in investor who is looking for companies with traction. However, in this case though, please don't call yourself "early stage". This wastes everyones' time. You get people pitching to you that don't meet your baseline criteria. Those people waste time with you instead of other truly early-stage investors who are actually likely to open their wallets and throw a few bucks at a couple founders so they can quit their day job and get working on their idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> isla-de-encanta startups in pre-seed are like poor underfed people. micro VCs are like nice people who invite you for Saturday lunch, bath and change of clothes. They did not change your life but on Sunday you might look good enough to raise from a bigger VC.

</comment><comment> atom-morgan I was hoping the whole "accredited investor" requirement was going away.

<comment><USER5> That would be an absolute unmitigated disaster. VCs with ample resources capable of doing thorough due diligence still manage to get hoodwinked by frauds and con artists. I shudder to think about how many more UBeams will come out of the woodwork to scam my grandmother out of her retirement savings should those requirements be lifted.

<comment><USER6> You don't think people should have the freedom to invest their money in whatever they want to? Or is that a privilege that only wealthy people should enjoy?

<comment><USER5> The reality is that it is impossible for everyone to be an expert in everything. At some point, certain fields, medicine and finance for example, become so complex that it is impossible for a lay-person to make an informed decision. Historically, when lay-people are given the freedom to "use their money however they want" within these fields, hucksters and frauds have quite successfully conned them because it is impossible for a lay-person to tell the difference between a legitimate opportunity and a scam; they don't have the expertise, experience, and even the time to perform the due-diligence needed to make an informed decision. While these regulations are certainly a blunt instrument, and they do prevent a very small segment of the lay-population who could make an informed decision from doing so, the alternative is far worse.

<comment><USER7> Taken as whole, this explanation doesn't make complete sense.

States routinely run opportunities/scams that target the "lay population". Why don't these regulations address actual harm, rather than hypothetical harm?

<comment><USER8> I think they did address actual harm. It is only hypothetical now because it has already been addressed. States do routinely "run opportunities/scams" that also likely do actual harm (assuming you're referring to lotteries here). They probably shouldn't do that. But that they do doesn't suggest that they have just given up all their justification to prevent other harm through regulation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Claims Using The Site Will Make You Feel Better - <AUTHOR> http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/04/facebook-claims-using-the-site-will-make-you-feel-better/

<comment><USER2> Not exactly. It claims that people that feel better use the site more. Quite a large difference.

Correlation != Causation.</comment>


Qualcomm says Apple would be nothing without its technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/qualcomm-says-apple-would-be-nothing-without-its-technology-2017-04-10 <comment><USER2> I haven't read up on Intel's anti-trust cases, and even though I know they've done many of the things Qualcomm has done so far, I think Qualcomm is a much nastier company. Some proof for that is that multiple governments have already fined it or are about to fine it a billion dollar a piece.

If you've read some of my previous comments on Intel, you know I'm not a fan of the company (precisely because of the nasty monopolistic behavior it tends to employ as well). But Qualcomm scares me, and it makes me wonder whether I even want them to break Intel's monopoly in the PC market, only to be abused by an even worse company.

Granted, a new monopoly isn't necessarily the only outcome, and perhaps a more ideal (but also relatively realistic) situation would be something like Intel holding 40% of the PC market (as it retreats to more profitable up-markets), AMD holding 35% of the market (thanks to Ryzen and high value/buck), and Qualcomm 25% of the market (think low-budget high-volume $100 laptops in China, India and Africa).

Anyways, read-up on the things Qualcomm has done, especially the KFTC anti- trust case against Qualcomm. I actually read through the whole pdf file from KFTC recently, but they seem to have taken all anti-trust papers down from the past three years, likely because companies like Qualcomm complained that those papers would "hurt their image". However there is still another anti-trust case paper against Qualcomm from 2012, but I haven't read that one yet.

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/qualcomm-blocked-samsung- from-s...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/qualcomm-blocked-samsung-from-selling- exynos-chips-kftc/)

[https://www.cnet.com/news/qualcomm-hit-with-850m-fine-in- sou...](https://www.cnet.com/news/qualcomm-hit-with-850m-fine-in-south-korea- antitrust-probe/)

[http://www.ftc.go.kr/eng/bbs.do](http://www.ftc.go.kr/eng/bbs.do)

</comment><comment><USER3> Heights of irony for Apple to complain about unfair practices, when it not only acts as a gate keeper to it's platform via the app store, but also takes a 30% cut on revenues - neither ever done before.

And then there's Qualcomm, which is truly monopolistic. They deserve each other</comment>


Demo of iPhone Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/26/demo-of-iphone-earth/

<comment><USER2> I can see it now: "every time I tilt my iPhone to avoid the glare/reflection on the non-matte screen, I end up looking at something different."

</comment><comment><USER3> Sort of cool, but would people use it?

</comment><comment><USER4> That's a lot of sweaty thumb action to get the map to zoom. I would think some sort of text entry would be quicker for most folks. Pretty and cool though, which I guess is what we expect from Apple products (form over function)

 _ducks_</comment>


Learn From Your Mistakes (In 5 Minutes) - <AUTHOR> http://nbashaw.tumblr.com/post/3565529179/learn-from-your-mistakes-in-5-minutes

<comment><USER2> I wish I had a video of what I was doing a year ago!

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome</comment>


The Panama Papers prove it: we can afford a universal basic income - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/07/panama-papers-taxes-universal-basic-income-public-services <comment><USER2> This article is pure polemical, without any justification for its claims (not even a back-of-the-envelope estimate of what kind increase in taxes would result from ending offshore tax evasion). Outrage is not a substitute for mathematics or economics.

I personally support UBI, but we need to ensure that it's sustainable.

<comment><USER3> Well, what is really needed is a tax on international transactions... the moving of anything in, and currency out of the country. That would make evasion and funds shifting far less attractive. Beyond that would be what would be for some a very high base tax rate, universally... something close to 50%. I just have a problem with more than half of what you make going to taxes.

From there, funds should be dispersed into accounts... A portion would go to every tax paying citizen (filing income tax required for prior year) as a UBI. Everyone would get the same amount, every week.

Of the rest part would be distributed to states based on land size. Part would go to states based on population. The rest would be towards any federal spending...

In that, the budget would have to fit the means based on a percent of tax collected first... that would shift incentives a bit.

A UBI would also allow for _many_ state and federal welfare programs and subsidies to be nuked. A larger portion multiplier could be applied to citizens over 65, then again at 70... To put those going into retirement years in a better position, displacing Social Security.

<comment><USER4> Taxing international transactions like international commerce and small things like travel? I don't think that would be good. We've been spending the better part of the last seven decades eliminating barriers to international transactions because of the problems tariffs caused... This would be a step backwards in that direction.

<comment><USER3> It can be incredibly easy and transparent... I'm not saying you can't order something internationally, only that it's taxed at the transaction... that's pretty close to how VAT systems work. Only that the tax is at the currency exchange, not the goods, to prevent cheating the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "A larger income, to ensure that no American fell into absolute abject poverty – say, $12,000 a year – would cost around $3.6tn. That is a big number, but one that once again seems far more reasonable when considered through the lens of the Panama Papers and the scandal of global tax evasion"

Regardless of what you think about UBI, the Panama Papers do not prove it could or could not work.

The US Federal Budget is $3.8 trillion. There is no way tax not being paid in Panama is coming even close to the $3.6 tn they mention.

This article is just click bait.

<comment><USER6> > The US Federal Budget is $3.8 trillion. There is no way tax not being paid > in Panama is coming even close to the $3.6 tn they mention.

1\. The 3.6tn figure is for the whole world. The US will only be a chunk of that, although probably a large chunk.

2\. Why do you not consider these numbers plausible? On what factual basis can you dispute that the US is not in fact missing out on, say, 20-40% of their possible tax income because of tax evasion?

<comment><USER7> There are a little over 300,000,000 people in the USA.

$12,000 × >300,000,000 = >$3,600,000,000,000

There are a little over 7 billion people on earth:

$12,000 × >7,000,000,000 = >$84,000,000,000,000,000

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Assets in cash are a stock not a flow. What happens when it runs out? It's surely not sustainable to do this.

I'd hardly use the phrasing that it 'proves it'.

</comment><comment><USER9> A variant on UBI that I would like to see explored is to make the payments conditional on doing some kind of community service. Something like cleaning a park or volunteering at a school or something. Maybe a 1-3 hour / week commitment. Not as a way to save money so much as to strengthen communities and give people a way to contribute.

<comment><USER10> Oh like UBI but with all the disadvantages of not being universal.

<comment><USER9> There are also disadvantages to being universal. Let's not pretend that the criticisms of ubi are invalid.

<comment><USER10> Sure, but let's be clear that a conditional basic income is very different to a universal basic income, not just some minor tweak on the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I fail to see what the proof is. Apart from plenty of opinion, this article fails to present any numbers from the Panama Papers that would prove that we could pay a basic income year after year.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article is retarded on almost every level. I generally detest the Guardian but at least respect them for intellectual consistency. This is just plain atrocious thinking.

1\. The fact that rich people from Russia and China hide their wealth in Panama means nothing about the US. There are actually no Americans on that list ([http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/panama-papers/why-are- ameri...](http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/panama-papers/why-are-americans- not-included-panama-papers-n551081)).

2\. The whole point of UBI is that it can come from savings on OTHER programs - such as welfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc. Therefore we don't just take the number of citizens of a country as the _new_ cost - but we also have to subtract savings from eliminating the other programs (and their administration).

</comment><comment><USER13> Totally illogical, how do tax loopholes for the rich get affected by giving everyone a basic income? The middle class will pay more tax and give it to the poor. The super rich will continue paying no tax...

The worse thing is the article is titled "proof". Where is this proof? It be nice if the rich did pay for a universal basic income.

</comment><comment><USER14> The opportunistic Guardian strikes again.

</comment><comment><USER15> When did self-sufficiency lose its luster as a virtue?</comment>


The Mathematical Mind with Cedric Villani (BBC Radio Programme) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054pj6y

<comment><AUTHOR> The is a BBC Radio Four programme called "Start the Week", which is a panel discussion show.

This episode is described:

> On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe finds out what goes on inside the mind of a > mathematician. Cédric Villani explains the obsession and inspiration which > led him to being awarded the Fields Medal, 'the mathematicians' Nobel Prize' > in 2010. Zia Haider Rahman combines pure maths, investment banking and human > rights in his exploration of how abstract theory can impact on real life. > Vicky Neale reveals the beauty of prime numbers, while the director Morgan > Matthews finds love in his film x+y at the International Mathematics > Olympiad.

The math content is probably low - they're probably going to talk about personality and purpose rather than math- but it's noce to see some kind of coverage of math on mainstream radio.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And BBC Radio Four's "book of the week" (serialised book readings" is Villani's "The Most Beautiful Equation in the World".

[http://bbc.in/1KJSh33](http://bbc.in/1KJSh33)

> The Most Beautiful Equation in the World Book of the Week, Birth of a > Theorem Episode 1 of 5

> Rock-star mathematician Cédric Villani's magical mystery tour through the > world of mathematics.

> He describes the journey which sees him wrestling with and taming a new > theorem that will win him the most coveted prize in his field.

> Along the way he encounters obstacles and setbacks, losses of faith and even > brushes with madness. His story is one of courage and partnership, elation > and despair.

> His account unlocks what goes on inside the head of a mathematician and > captures where inspiration comes from. Blending science with history, > biography with myth, Villani conjures up a cast of mathematical greats > including the omnipresent Einstein and Villani's personal hero, John Nash.

"Rock star"?. Don't let that put you off. Julian Rhind-Tutt's reading is straight.</comment>


Perks of Being a Sociopath - <AUTHOR> https://www.ryanckulp.com/perks-of-being-a-sociopath/ <comment><USER2> I never understood the meaning of not being a sociopath when most of successful people, achieved great things based on that. I'm not a sociopath and never will be but sometimes I envy those people.</comment>


Ask HN: Demand for editing as a service - <AUTHOR>

Would you ever consider using Editing-as-a-Service? Think an online pool of university trained writers/editors who would take on small editing jobs.<p>Price schedule would vary by the following factors: [1]length measured by word count, [2] urgency/deadline and [3] level of editing assistance required from simple proofing and grammar check(cheap) to full consultative rewrite (expensive) <comment><USER2> I once thought about the simple idea of a place where people could go to improve their writing for comment boxes like this one. Something like a peer to peer writer's workshop where "I am thinking about posting this, what do you think?" would be the basic question. "Here are some changes you might consider", would be the basic answer.

Monetization would have to come from the exhaust fumes...something better than adwords let us hope, but the same general mechanic of not charging for the service directly.

Anyway, mechanical turk editing is another approach. I just think its a depressing race toward the bottom of the income ladder for staff and a slimy race toward upselling for the management. Better to gamify the process.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds interesting, and something I might be willing to promote to the authors at LiberWriter.com

There are already services like that, though if you Google around, so there'll be some competition.

It's also going to be hard to keep quality/times consistent across a pool of diverse workers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Beginners Guide to Internet Security and Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonido.com/blog/index.php/2014/01/18/beginners-guide-to-internet-security-and-privacy/ With the boost in internet connectivity and free wifi-spots popping up at every nook and corner, the vast world wide web has become your playground. Increased connectivity means that you spend most of your time connected to the internet. But, have you ever wondered how safe you are, especially if you are connected to a public network like a WiFi Hotspot? <comment><USER2> Hushmail is NOT secure or private [1] . The sentence "even an employee with access to their servers can't get the actual data of the email" is false. Do not use.

Edit: Adblock Plus allows certain "acceptable ads" (read: companies pay Adblock Plus to get whitelisted) and this feature is turn on by default. Use the fork Adblock Edge [2]

[1] [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e- mai/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/)

[2] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock- edge/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of "misinformation" in this post. I wouldn't recommend three of the four "tools" mentioned and would recommend Tor only after ensuring that the user has a clear understanding of its strengths and weaknesses.

I guess you can't expect excellent quality for $30 an article, though (and "advertisement" might be a more appropriate term).</comment>


What's Wrong with 19 Year Old Developers - <AUTHOR> http://mattballdesign.com/blog/2008/02/20/the-forgotten-delicious/

<comment> daniel-cussen He could have made the text a little bigger, but he has a point about guys our age having trouble sticking to things. Of course, the implication is to make less ambitious projects that will get completed within attention span.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm 17, and I agree wholeheartedly. I think I've started at least 7 or 8 projects but have yet to follow through with any of them. I also believe that another reason for that is that when you're young, you dream a lot about many things. Yeaaah.

Then theres the "life" factor... (geek = no life? not necessarily true) but really there isn't an unlimited quantity of daylight hours to code. Rather, there is an unlimited quantity of nighttime hours.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is nothing wrong with starting many projects. If anything, that IS a major strength of a good hacker!

The harder question is when do you know which project to run with? That might have as much to do with luck and maturity.

Zuckerberg almost dropped the facebook; youtube guys had very poor response to first version of youtube but they kept going.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was once a 19 year old dev... i turn 21 next month :( ... on the flip side, i'm finally sticking to _one_ project.</comment>


A 17-year-old invented an ingenious way to instantly stop bleeding - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/17-old-invented-ingenious-way-132200709.html#

<comment><USER2> > FDA approval pending

It feels like to me that this is always the hardest part, so there's really not much to see here until that passes.

> Autoplay video

Fuck off, Yahoo

</comment><comment><USER3> I read in the comments that something similar to this has already been invented.

<comment><USER4> Quikclot?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would be interested to know what the infection potential would be; if it seals the wound, would that potentially seal in any infectious agents? Presumably you'd irrigate prior to usage, but it's still an interesting question. Also, would the algae involved act similar to an agar, thus providing more opportunity for infection. I wonder if the gel could be treated with an antibacterial agent.. Interesting invention!

<comment><USER6> > I wonder if the gel could be treated with an antibacterial agent

This is probably your best case unless there's a method to dispense antibiotics intravenously or orally as a prophylactic in parallel. You'd need to ensure whatever the gel is treated with couldn't cause allergic reactions; allergies to amoxicillin and sulfa family antibiotics are not insignificant in the human population.

<comment><USER7> Neosporin is a typical topical antibiotic gel. People are allergic to (various ingredients of) it.

In situations where blood loss is significant, I think infection is a back burner concern, probably to the extent you worry about it later.</comment></comment></comment>


Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With Lasers - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680870885500701.html <comment><USER2> _Its rebirth as a bug killer came thanks to Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who now runs Intellectual Ventures LLC., a company that collects patents and funds inventions._

It does a lot more of the first than the second. I wish they'd just leave it alone as the results will probably be a non-practical, gee-wiz laser gizmo that makes no sense to deploy anywhere and a raft of vague patents that freeze innovation in the field preventing the inventions that might actually help.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a Swede, I'd be as excited as anyone to get rid of mosquitoes. That said, I doubt they would make a significant dent in the mosquito population but it seems like another example of a technological "fix" without considering the wider effects: Which species depend on mosquitoes as food, and what will happen when they can't eat anymore?

<comment><USER4> Oh my, yes. Then we would truly have a silent spring, wouldn't we? Perhaps if we wrote a book of some sort, that would stir up people to save the mosquitoes.

Probably we can say the laser causes egg shell thickness depletion, Nobody who knows enough statistics to laugh at us will be heard, if we create enough public outcry.

I don't share your concern that this will cause an ecological problem. I do share your concern that it's a little silly, if you truly want to have an effect on mosquito populations in mosquito heavy areas.

If only there were a substance that's so safe, you can eat it by the gallon, that actually took care of the mosquito problem without needing to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads, to do it. Surely if such a substance existed, we wouldn't let millions die from malaria, while we played with lasers. This is impressive, technologically, but it's like ... I don't know, 'using a laser to kill a mosquito', I guess.

<comment><USER5> I wish I could better inform the six people who upmodded you, because you've clearly been lost to the conspiracy theorists.

Read some facts first: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it was used on a massive scale to fight malaria, the side effects might be pretty extreme.

But if it's used on a small scale, to keep people's backyards mosquito free, this could be really awesome.

<comment><USER7> I think this is the best example I have _ever_ seen of "Black people have to die so that white people can feel comfortable".

Seriously. Look at what you're saying. Too dangerous to protect African children from wasting death, but perfectly safe to prevent casual nuisance at your next barbecue? (Psst: what is the size of the average American backyard relative to the average African dwelling?)

<comment><USER6> Actually, look at what you're saying. When did I mention anything about race? I am saying that I don't think this would work on a massive scale because it would destabilize ecosystems, but when used in smaller areas that wouldn't be a risk.

This isn't 4chan.

<comment><USER7> _When did I mention anything about race?_

When you mentioned malaria. Its a disease that white people don't get, largely because we eliminated it in our countries prior to getting religion on that environmentalism thing. After that, we collectively decided that while our kids were worth cracking a few eggs to make an omlette, African kids were not.

Take a look at this graph here, particularly the one in the top left corner:

[http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/images/graphs/us_malaria_old_map....](http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/images/graphs/us_malaria_old_map.gif)

That shaded land mass, 60% of the continental US? That used to be Malaria Country. In 2009, there isn't a spec of the US that is Malaria Country. The reason: we bombed the shit out of the mosquitoes, pure and simple, and we kept doing it until malaria wasn't a problem anymore. If there was a malaria flareup in a US suburb this year, we would do a bit of obligatory handwriting and then promptly bomb the shit out of it.

(You think we'd make white people put up with expensive, ineffective countermeasures like treated crib nets? I'd like to hear that planning meeting: "Well, we've run the numbers, and have decided that by spending a few million on bed nets, crib nets, and outdoor abatement programs, only about five of your kids, plus or minus three or so, will die in the next year due to malaria in our township. Remember to be really conscientious about putting up your nets -- not that they're going to save everyone, because they can't, but remembering the nets every night gives your child the maximum chance of survival until the school year starts. Why don't we just bomb the shit out of the bugs, you ask? Oh, well, we considered doing that but are concerned the local birdwatchers will be upset.")

Over a million African children died last year of malaria. Five hundred million people caught the disease. But when it is Africans dying, and not us, then we get all sorts of picky about how much ecological damage is being done.

(Incidentally, not much. But given the choice between 1 million Africans a year and Very Bad Environmental Things that presumably happened in the US between 1880 and 1950 when we were spraying DDT like it was going out of style, I think we have a moral imperative to choose Very Bad Environmental Things.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, I've wanted to see this for many years. (I suspect many people who followed the 'Strategic Defense'/'Star Wars' programs, and suffered from flying insects, had the same thought.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I am afraid that this might have more of a negative result oppose to a positive one. Mosquitoes are part of the food chain...

<comment><USER10> Yup - but humans changed its habitat. There are now more pools of still water (damns, etc...) because of human intervention than before.</comment></comment>


A proactive approach to more secure code - <AUTHOR> https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/16/a-proactive-approach-to-more-secure-code/ <comment><USER2> They are claiming up to 70% of the vulnerabilities can be avoided in a language like rust, I think a good chunk of the other 30% can be avoided using a language with a type system like rust's. I'm continually amazed at how much an expressive type system can help minimize bugs

<comment><USER3> We've also seen dramatic changes in the amount of defects found after migrating most of an app to TypeScript in strict mode.

<comment><USER2> Typescript makes writing large codebases in js actually possible. But it's still missing a few things and there's not much they can do about it. Pattern matching, and real support for sum types (not just having a 'type' field w/ a string) would be at the top of my list I think. Working with type parameters can also get a bit unweidly, and bounding them with the 'extends' keyword is a pain in the ass. IMO of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this an influential body inside MS? Sounds like good news for the Rust community that a team like this recommends that a bigco like MS explores Rust.

<comment><AUTHOR> MS is already exploring Rust via Azure IoT Edge, VSCode search engine, Actix, Firefox for HoloLens.

So it is positive that security group is also pushing for it, alongside .NET and Core Guidelines for C++.

Now how much politic weight they are able to carry, remains an open question. If WinDev was more sympathetic towards DevDiv probably Longhorn would have actually happened, as proven by Singularity and Midori.

<comment><USER5> Singularity and Midori relied on GC for memory safety, and that was a huge problem for Longhorn/Vista because it was very difficult to write code that would work reliably when memory is critically low.

Rust is a completely different story. Sure, Rust's standard library treats OOM is fatal, which is the right thing for almost all application code, but it's not difficult to create Rust libraries that treat OOM as a recoverable error, or that don't allocate at all.

If the Singularity group had invented Rust instead of Sing# things might have turned out differently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yet according to MSR Midori had no issues powering a portion of Bing in production.

Multiple OSes have been written in GC enabled system languages.

Having a GC doesn't mean all memory is required to be GC allocated on the heap, usually the same mechanisms of a language like C++ are also available, e.g. Modula-3, System C#, D and so forth.

Joe Duffy clearly states in one of his Midori talks that WinDev did not believe in Midori, even with it running in front of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who wants to see some rust in action, here are some OSS tool written in Rust and very efficient:

RipGrep[0]: Replace Grep and it is blazing fast

bat[1]: Replace cat with better display and colours

exa[2]: Replace ls with many more options

[0]: [https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep)

[1]: [https://github.com/sharkdp/bat](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat)

[2]: [https://github.com/ogham/exa](https://github.com/ogham/exa)

I do not have any affiliation with them, I just use them a lot

Edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER7> So 70% of the vulnerabilities are still caused by lack of memory-safety, and that doesn't even account for all the defects that don't end up in a vulnerability. Imagine how much more safety and correctness there would be, if not only those 70% didn't exist, but no time had to be spent to fix them and rather concentrate onto avoiding the other 30%.

<comment><AUTHOR> Morris worm is 30 years old now, what allowed it is still pretty much 2019 regular C code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This would be a massive boost to the rust community as a whole as many would have a look at it!

</comment><comment><USER9> Replacing a safe language, C#, with an unsafer but faster language, Rust, is of course fine, but then they shouldn't label it wrong.

</comment><comment><USER10> This isn't an advisory, it's just a blog post. We're meant not to editorialize titles, and this one was a doozy; the appropriate title is "A proactive approach to more secure code".

<comment><USER11> I've noticed that happening a lot lately. It's frustrating because the blog post is interesting on its own merits and doesn't need to have a click bait title inserted.

<comment><USER12> See the recent front-page post about "England selects new face of fifty-pound bill" or something of the sort. The title of the linked BBC article included that Alan Turing had been chosen, yet the poster chose to make it click-bait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In other words, Windows is about to become slower.

<comment><USER14> Depends on which memory safe language they use and how (plus this blog post isn't by the Windows team or about Windows specifically). The biggest thing that slows Windows is lock contention, back-compat, and abstraction layers. Those problems all remain regardless of language choice.</comment></comment>


Price lists for the 115 biggest US hospitals now online - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1518545/price-lists-for-the-115-biggest-us-hospitals-new-transparency-law/ <comment><AUTHOR> Who wants to work on making a startup out of this?</comment>


Security Vulnerability in popular mobile app, what do? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I discovered a security vulnerability in a fairly popular mobile app. So i submitted a bug report and - surprise, surprise - no reaction.
The app in question fails to validate the ssl certificates of the app services server it communicates with. This means man in the middle attacks are possible.
If you don't know what that means: this is one step before not using SSL at all. Without SSL, everyone intercepting your traffic can read it. With SSL, but without certificate validation (the app accepts any certificate presented to it), you have to pretend to be the server (intercept the traffic to it; there are several ways to do this and it depends on weather you are using g3, wifi or what ever. But running your own DNS or DHCP server with custom features on an open wlan is certainly one of them) and get to see what the client sends. You can forward the clients requests to the real server, if you like, but the client will have no idea it is not communicating with the real server either way.
I'd say this is worth fixing and my first knee-jerk reaction would have been to just spill the beans. But maybe someone has some good advice how to go forward with this. <comment><USER2> The "Standard" responsible disclosure technique is as follows:

1\. Discover vulnerability 2\. Inform vendor, tell them they'll have x weeks before general disclosure 3\. After x weeks, post it to the relevant place on seclists.org

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey I can try to help you out with this. Contact emil-at-thenextweb.com</comment>


Typescript wins over Dart on Stackoverflow - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/typescript?sort=active

<comment><AUTHOR> There are more questions about Typescript [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/typescript?sort=ac...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/typescript?sort=active) than Dart <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dart?sort=active>.

It's true than Stackoverflow is a little bit biased towards MS, but Dart is a platform not just a language, so there's more room for questions there.

<comment><USER2> Maybe that means that people are having more problems with Typescript...?</comment></comment>


The convincing science of light therapy - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/does-light-therapy-work.html <comment><USER2> If you fall for that, you can also fall for HumanCharger® [https://www.humancharger.com](https://www.humancharger.com)

Yes, you saw correctly. Lights you put into your ears and they affect your brain. Transcranial bright light should do something to you.

The hypothesis is interesting and there is tiny amount of 'scientific research behind it', but just barely. The scientists involved were also founders in the company and the quality is not high but I think most of them believe it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, that skin is photo sensitive shouldn't be too surprising one would think and for indications like psoriasis it can indeed help to apply uv light (non ionizing). That latter is an immune reaction that produces too much skin cells and the stressor from light can significantly reduce this for a lot of patients.

Given, it doesn't really heal the disease, but I believe people suffering from skin lesions will take anything to lessen the symptoms. While not deadly, it is a significant penalty to life quality.

As for light beyond the uv spectrum which the article focuses on I don't know of any effects. Infrared light heats you up of course, but I am skeptical about the rest of the visible spectrum.

UV-light ages your skin, that is why dermatologists try to restrict application of UV-light to patients after they received a certain dosage. I heavily doubt any form of light exposure can actually reduce aging effects.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nothing mentioned in this article is convincing. The author is not even trying to be convincing, she seems skeptical.

> I'm not sure if it's "working," but I'm also not sure that it isn't.

<comment><USER5> It's ad copy for the several-hundred-dollar products at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Augustus Pleasonton[1] must be dancing in his grave (although his money was on blue light being best.)

(I learnt about him from "Banvard's Folly" by Paul Collins, a book I highly recommend if you can find it.)

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