Microsoft Bans Halo 4 Pirates, and Some Idiots Absolutely Deserved It - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/microsoft-bans-halo-4-pirates-and-some-idiots-absolutely-deserved-it-121015/ <comment><USER2> This might come as a surprise to a lot of people (namely those of you who seem shocked that torrentfreak is cheering on Microsoft), but just because someone is generally anti copyright does not mean that they don't have soft spots for certain companies or certain franchises, or that they rank spoiling a blockbuster as a pretty crappy thing to do.

<comment> simba-hiiipower i'd say it's less-so 'cheering on' or having a soft spot for them, but rather, they seem to have an understanding that, like it or not, copyright holders do have a right to enforce their property, and that not to expect otherwise is idiotic (especially when their enforcement is brought-down via denying access to services they provide).

and while i agree that its surprising given the source, they do seem to take a pretty pragmatic view on the issue. i mean we're not talking about a record industry suing a 13-year-old girl for sharing a few mp3s here.. to have done this you would have had to seriously modify your console and probably violated nearly every line in the service's terms of use in the process. xbox live is a service after all and they're under no obligation to continue offering it to those who egregiously abuse it.

<comment><USER3> Funny how standards differ, really; there'd be a lot of eyebrows raised if Apple or Google (or Microsoft, on their mobile platform) started denying use of their network services to jailbroken/rooted users.

<comment> simba-hiiipower that really isn't a fair comparison at all and i'd imagine if the article was about them suspending accounts associated with any/all hacked consoles then the tone would've been very different..

in this case, they're denying access to their service to users who both: violated the tos by messing with their devices, _and_ (more importantly) utilized that to steal a product (one that cost likely in excess of $100MM to develop).

even if you're in favour of less restrictive copyright law, or against closed systems in general, there still are, and in my opinion should-be, limits. and i wouldn't fault apple either if they locked-out jailbroken iphones that allowed users to freely download paid app-store apps (or music/videos from itunes), and i'm sure the developers of those apps (or content publishers) would agree.

<comment><USER4> To go one or two steps further:

Would it be acceptable for Sony to boot you from Playstation services if they detected you were watching a bootlegged copy of a $100m film from one of their studios?

Should Apple close your iTunes account if Fox's movie studio tells them you're watching $100m films on your Mac?

<comment> simba-hiiipower it's obviously a sticky situation and different people draw the line at different places. some would probably argue that they should; i personally wouldn't.

where i draw the line (and where i _personally_ see a clear distinction), is when the service itself is being utilized to facilitate the infringement. in the examples you cite, the services (playstation network, itunes) are not involved in the infringement, they just happen to be tied to devices on which the infringement is taking place. i think it would be a different if case people were freely streaming (paid) movies from the playstation store or itunes; i feel that's more analogous to what's happening here because the connectivity that comes with the service is tied to the product being stolen.

i guess it's sort of an odd-line to draw, but that's how i see it.

also, to clarify on my point from above, i didn't mean to imply that the cost to develop/produce the good ia necessarily a major factor, nor should the fact that it be from the same entity that runs the service; $100MM to microsoft is no-different than a couple thousand to an indie dev and, in both cases, it's in the service provider's best interest to prevent theft _directly facilitated by their network_ , and i'd say they're right to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI this has absolutely nothing to do with TorrentFreak suddenly being anti- piracy. The only thing he's mad about is that the pirates are spoiling the game's story by publishing spoilers everywhere. It's not about the act of piracy itself, just the spoilers.

From Enigmax in the comments:

"The issue of the "copying and distributing" of information isn't what i'm complaining about, it's the idiots who want to ruin everyone else's enjoyment of what would otherwise be a first class experience."

<comment><USER6> Game plot spoilers is equally valid (as distributable information) as the bits on the disc itself.

<comment><USER7> There's a difference between making information available and making it unavoidable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised that torrentfreak would take this view. Perhaps Microsoft needs better internal controls if they don't want their games to leak a month before release? Once it's leaked, you can't really blame people for playing the game and telling people about it. Information wants to be free, and all that.

What purpose does account suspension serve? People will just initiate a chargeback for their membership fees and create a new account with a new username. Or worse, switch to PS3 and forget all about Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> If you've been banned your console is useless -- you can't make a new gold account anymore.

<comment><USER10> Your console is not useless. When you are permabanned they will mess up your NAND and make your saves invalid, and you won't be able to connect to live again without modifying the keyvault on your console (on ones where this is possible). They used to just ban your console and not your account, so you could keep your account and just go buy a new console, mod it, and be playing again within a week (after the ban wave was over).

A friend of mine actually figured out how much he was paying for the console every year, about $200-$300, and then figured out how many games he had pirated (at what would be $60, roughly, a piece) and came to the conclusion that it was worth pirating all of his Xbox 360 games and face being banned every November. If you own 5 games that were purchased new, that's a console's worth of money right there. We did that for a couple of years until they started banning our accounts for the JTAG exploit.

Microsoft is unethical in what they do when they ban people on Live and corrupt their NAND, but they've probably got legal powers to do that based on the Live EULA.

<comment><USER11> Funny that you switch gears and talk about ethics after basically saying it's much cheaper to steal than to buy products and actually support the people making your entertainment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article wants to be objecting to the mass-posting of Halo 4 spoilers, but for some reason it's written with an almost anti-piracy angle. This confuses me.

<comment><USER13> I see it written as against the pirates who "give a bad name to pirates" so to speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The real news here is that Halo 4 apparently has a story worth ruining?

<comment><USER15> The Halo series actually has a large and very immersing universe surrounding its games. There is also a successful novels series follow/extending the Halo Universe. The notion that Halo 4 might have a bad story should be more a shock then it having a good story. Ofc this is all up to opinion, but the novel's extensive success should speak for themselves.

<comment><USER16> While I enjoy the novels, I think the story embedded in the game speaks for itself. Check out the massive story page on the halo.bungie.org website, there are pages and pages and pages of speculations from avid fans about this or that in the story. <http://halostory.bungie.org/>

<comment><USER15> I agree 100%. I simply brought up the novels because they speak solely to the stories success where there is a large portion of people who play the games solely for the multiplayer without giving any attention to the campaign/story aspect of the game. & as such it could be argued that just because the game is success doesn't mean there is a good story. An example of this would be the COD:MW series of games, which most ppl would say that story is horrible(i actually simi enjoy them).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So do they distinguish between pirated copies and honestly-bought copies, and ban appropriately, or do they take the blanket approach of banning anyone playing the game regardless?

<comment><USER17> seeing as it's 3 weeks before launch I don't think there are _any_ honestly- bought copies which means its blanket ban approach and it works perfectly. Which is why it's hilarious

<comment><USER6> I've seen several pictures of opened copies (could be fake, sure), and Halo 2 was shipped to retailers several weeks before release (but that was a long time ago and their policies may have changed in that regard) and had a similar problem to this.

IIRC they banned people who tried to play on Live, but not people who were signed in but playing singleplayer. At least, that seemed to be the policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why is this news? They've had this policy since Halo 2. The only reason Halo 1 didn't have it was because it wasn't a live game.

<comment><USER19> Hello,

Welcome to HN!

(apologies in advance for the patronising tone. I really need help and advice about tone in written communication. Sorry.)

In general it's a bad idea to say "Why is this news" because that adds little to the conversation. You will attract down votes for comments like that.

In general it's considered poor form to say that an item doesn't belong on HN. Alternatives are to use the voting system; use the flag system; or just ignore the bad content. You don't have access to down votes yet, and top level items don't have down vote buttons anyway, but you do have up vote rights. It's great when many people visit [new] and up vote good content.

This is a shame because you probably have a good point.

From the Welcome page:

> _A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN > don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested > in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting._

> _What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about > the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be > deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, > underlying trend, then perhaps it could be._

> _The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but > shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or > videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto > a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to > be quieter._

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> With consoles linked to the home company so strongly these days, it's relatively unsurprising that Microsoft would do something like this. I mean, it's not like you don't know that your console's connected to them, right?</comment>


Erlang OTP 20 Highlights - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/erlang-battleground/my-erlang-otp-20-highlights-fbaec087ee51 <comment><USER2> All in all a solid looking release.

I doubt I'm alone when I say I'm very pleased to be able to type pids in the shell, and it'll be nice not to have to boilerplate code_change and co when I don't need them.

ct_slave rebar3 fix is definately welcome too!</comment>


Being responsive when CPU bound in Golang - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ellation.com/managing-cpu-load-in-golang-515b9356bc5 <comment><USER2> > keeping in mind that a worker count greater or equal to GOMAXPROCS, will > block the execution queue, possibly interfering with coroutines waiting for > I/O. But if you have less workers, then you guarantee there is an open slot > to process I/O, _at the cost of underutilizing a server's CPU_

Not if GOMAXPROCS==NUMCPU+1 ;)</comment>


New version of Google Chrome is available - <AUTHOR>

An update (Official Build 1798) is available for download. Simply check the About Google Chrome window.<p>Any ideas, what's been updated? Nothing yet on the Chrome blog: http://blog.chromium.org/ <comment><USER2> They fixed the ":%" bug. I assume, since I never tried it in the first version.</comment>


[video] How to Run a Tech Community - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.opendns.com/2015/09/29/how-to-run-a-tech-community/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello - I started OpenLate at our company because I couldn't find a place to code at night. It grew into a speaker series with over 2700 members. So far in 2015, about 10% of technical OpenDNS hires have been sourced through OpenLate.

I had to leave OpenDNS and OpenLate as I transitioned to working on our company full-time because it was accepted to a cool little fellowship program. However, this talk covers all the lessons that we learned about running a tech speaker series.

Of note, here is the Run Book for the meetup - it includes everything we used to run the event, including how to setup and what emails to send members. [https://opendns.app.box.com/OpenLateMeetupRunbook](https://opendns.app.box.com/OpenLateMeetupRunbook)

If you have any questions about running a meetup, I'm happy to answer them!</comment>


First proof that Facebook dark ads could swing an election - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142072-first-proof-that-facebook-dark-ads-could-swing-an-election/#.WXu0_tfF-U4.twitter <comment><USER2> Meh. No one needs proof that advertising works, especially for political campaigns. There isn't even proof mentioned at all though. They made 4 different ads and tried to target people political beliefs indirectly. It worked. Big surprise, you can guess someone's political beliefs based on other psycho/demographics.

They could've also just found a list of voters or party affiliations, paid a company to augment that list with addresses/emails/etc, then uploaded it directly to facebook and targeted only those people.

The article even refuted that the test results indicate voting habits, "we should be careful not to equate a short-term decision to share or like a post, with long-term political views"

\--

Problems with this article aside, newscientist would appear to be a reputable site by its name, but it is asbsolutley not.

The title says "dark ads". "dark" is never used in the article, and the term is pure clickbait. Dark posts are just another name for an unpublished post that is used as an ad. Not nefarious in the least bit.

"Building blocks of alien cells found on Saturn's largest moon" is the article currently featured on the homepage. Sounds like a legit sciencey article.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if you knew this, but newscientist is a long-running magazine with heavy international circulation.

<comment><USER2> This was my first time seeing the site. If it used to be good, it looks like its gone down hill to me.</comment></comment></comment>


What does an agile product roadmap look like? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jboogie/what-does-an-agile-product-roadmap-look-like-cf0dbe5be4ef <comment><USER2> To me this is a little trying to force the 'agile' buzzword where it is not relevant.

A roadmap is a plan, at a given time, of how a product is intended to develop over time. For example, for a cellular product it may show how 4G features are to be introduced, when 5G is to be introduced, etc.

Roadmaps are often visible to customers because they want to see where a product they consider committing to is going so there is often an element of marketing in them and they are 'plans' not specific project milestones.

Nothing intrinsically agile or not agile in them.

They indeed tend to change often, hence why agile development is useful.</comment>


Who Will Own Your Data If the Tech Bubble Bursts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/what-happens-to-your-data-if-the-tech-bubble-bursts/482622/?single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> If there isn't already, there really should be some legal protections in place for a situation where user data is involved.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a question anyone with a Yahoo! account should be asking.</comment>


Rational Drug Pricing - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/rational-drug-pricing_b_8188790.html?fb_action_ids=10153305568619121&fb_action_types=og.likes&ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in <comment><USER2> There's good reason to blame FDA regulations for problems with the Daraprim debacle. Even for approved, out-of-patent drugs, it's still expensive to get a new generic instance approved, and for drugs that have few users like this, it's just not worth it for a new supplier to get it.

 _Generic drugs don't need the excruciatingly drawn-out safety and efficacy studies required of new brand-name medications, but they do need to pass a bioequivalency study proving that their drug is absorbed the same way as the original. ... it's just too hard to start making a generic medication. If all you want to do is synthesize an active ingredient in powder form, and you're not too concerned about staying on the right side of the law, it costs pennies and takes however long you need to FedEx something from China. If you also want FDA approval, it costs $2 million and takes two years.

Remember, Daraprim is used by about 10,000 people per year, and before the recent Turing price markup, it cost $13.50 per pill x eighty pills per treatment. 10,000 x 80 x $13.50 = about $10 million per year, of which maybe $5 million was profit. That means you have to capture a big chunk of the Daraprim market before it's worth trying to get yourself approved to make Daraprim; the FDA is essentially telling pharma companies to "go big or go home". Nobody wanted to go big, so they all went home.

In the absence of this barrier, it would be easy for small boutique companies with a couple of chemical engineers on hand to spend a few weeks manufacturing a few thousand doses of the drug whenever it was necessary to meet demand. This is how the supplement and nootropic industries work right now, and nootropics are dirt cheap_

\- [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/24/the-problems-with- gener...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/24/the-problems-with-generic- medications-go-deeper-than-one-company/)

(and if you don't read SlateStarCodex regularly, this is a good time to start)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is completely wrong. The NIH funding is already the way it is. There was no special offer for Gilead. For people to come after the fact, and state that we know what is a reasonable profit is the height of arrogance and greed.

Gilead did something that was once considered far off - they created a CURE for Hepatitis C. Because they created a cure, we are infinitely better off in that regard - before there were 0 people getting reliably cured, now there is a number greater than 0 getting reliably cured of hepatitis C.

In 20 years, the patent will expire and whoever wants to can make this for free if they want.

I propose the following compromise. Let the government create and fund a biomedical research lab for creating new drugs. The process for drug approval should be the exact same as for everyone else. Any drug that the government's lab discovers and gets approved can be given away or whatever the government wants. Any drug not discovered by them, they should let the companies that actually discovered the drug set the prices.

This is hacker news created by YCombinator. Will a VC fund a startup whose best case return is 10x investment? Would we rather have more money/effort invested in curing disease or making "sharing economy" apps? I think companies that do save lives should have outsize rewards. For government to step in and try to change that would be killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

<comment><USER4> Even countries that have strong drug price negotiation schemes are only getting modest discounts for Hepatitis C drugs; they're willing to pay because even at full price it's more expensive for someone to slowly die of liver failure than a course of Sovaldi that will cure them in a month.

The regulatory failure is the VA system being unwilling to pay for it (assuming that's true), not the perfectly reasonably priced drug that's cheaper than alternative, less effective treatments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I often disagree with Jeff Sachs, but I find his argument here highly persuasive.

\- There is no reason the US should be giving away IP for free

\- The US Government should use its purchasing power as a check against the drug companies

\- Drug companies should be able to reap profits, but profits at a 10-20x P/E not 100x

<comment><USER6> Pfizer's PE with morning was 22.28. Gilead's was 10.21.

<comment><USER7> Would love a source on the Gilead numbers.

<comment><USER8> How about here: [http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GILD](http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GILD)

Says it's 10.20 as I enter this.

<comment><USER7> I'd thought previous poster was providing the P/E for the specific HCV drug used in the HuffPo piece. Which is what was being implied should be kept lower then 100x in this thread.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps, but I would take that metric to be ridiculous, because the company cares about it across it's entire portfolio, in this case 21 products it's currently selling ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilead_Sciences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilead_Sciences)), looks like they do some very early stage/general research, products like Tamiflu they evidently had to license to get to market (reduced profit for them), products which have expired or soon to expire patents, _and all their failures_ , past and future.

At least one of which is implied in the Wikipedia article, also see their current pipeline, some of those are going to fail, and at the end their 22 failures to date. 1 in Phase III trials ($$$, efficacy, the most expensive), 5 in Phase II (fairly expensive, I think), 5 in Phase I (certainly not "cheap").

It sure looks like they're doing the right thing with their science and medicine, their founder was motivated by having contracted deng fever, which is untreatable (besides of course supportive measure). Clearly the right thing to do is to beat them up the few times they hit it out of the ballpark with a "100x" success, that'll teach them and the other drug companies!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't necessarily agree with the specifics or the numbers in this article, but I think something like this could be reasonable. As always though, the devil is in the details.</comment>


Swarm Robotics: Beware The Swarm (videos) - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/06/05/swarm-robotics-beware-the-swarm/

<comment><USER2> Imagine swarms of solar-powered robots collecting garbage out at sea. Imagine them repairing our vessels or space stations. Imagine them transporting all our goods through underground tunnels. Imagine them mining, farming or building.

Kids, almost nothing has been invented yet.

(Also, for your ethical consideration, imagine them killing people on the battle field, but don't stop imagining there)</comment>


How much would you pay for a Spotify for news? - <AUTHOR> http://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/maybe-its-time-readers-real-news-band-together <comment><USER2> Nothing. I prefer free news the same way I prefer torrent for music.</comment>


Differentiable Programming for Image Processing and Deep Learning in Halide [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://people.csail.mit.edu/tzumao/gradient_halide/gradient_halide.pdf <comment><USER2> Very glad to see that Halide keeps being developed, despite remaining a bit of a niche language (for now).

Anything that makes squeezing out more performance from our computers while writing more elegant code at the same time deserves more attention.

I wonder if any of the techniques used in Halide can be (somewhat) generalized to domains outside of image processing?

EDIT: Ah, I see that the paper basically answers my questions, as it sees applications in ML contexts. Also, theat new demosaicking algorithm looks great, wonder if will make it's way to DarkTable any time soon?

The page of the paper[0] also has presentation slides[1] which (to me at least) feel a bit more accessible. Hope the accompanying presentation will be on YouTube soon.

[0] [http://gradient.halide.ai/](http://gradient.halide.ai/)

[1] [https://people.csail.mit.edu/tzumao/gradient_halide/gradient...](https://people.csail.mit.edu/tzumao/gradient_halide/gradient_halide_slides.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that TVM ([https://github.com/dmlc/tvm](https://github.com/dmlc/tvm)) is a similar system (the IR is a fork of the Halide IR, but substantially improved), and is much more suited to deep learning, with tools like:

       - TOPI, a library of optimized routines for common deep learning operations
       - Importers for TensorFlow, ONNX (PyTorch/Caffe2), Keras, MXNet, DarkNet and other frameworks.
       - AutoTVM for automatically finding fast schedules for arbitrary devices, much faster than random search or the automatic schedules generated by e.g. Halide.
       - Various mobile GPU runtimes (OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan, etc), compared to Halide
       - Large community contributing optimized runtimes (e.g. Intel + Amazon contributing CPU improvements, improved  schedules/declarations, etc)

Highly recommend checking it out.

<comment><USER4> I find it in poor taste to be plugging TVM on a post about Halide, given TVM's history of lifting code from Halide without attribution (well beyond the "improved" fork of the IR).

<comment><USER2> I have not heard about that before, could you elaborate/point to other discussions on the internet that do the elaborating?

(BTW, based on your user-name: do you happen to be Andrew Adams?)

<comment><USER4> I am indeed Andrew. I'd rather not elaborate - it wasn't a huge amount of code, they added attribution when we complained about it, and they've been very careful to credit us appropriately since then. I shouldn't have even mentioned it but the TVM shilling in a Halide post struck a nerve.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


President Morsi overthrown in Egypt - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/07/20137319828176718.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Bassem Youssef should be given the Nobel Peace Prize.</comment>


Subtract One – An Analog Inspired Web Audio Synthesizer - <AUTHOR> https://subtract.one <comment><AUTHOR> subtract one is an analog inspired, subtractive, monophonic synthesizer, powered by 3 oscillators a filter and two envelope generators, controlling the amplitude and the filter. It's written in JavaScript, using the Web Audio API.</comment>


Document-level locking and compression come to MongoDB - <AUTHOR> http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/release-notes/2.8/

<comment><USER2> Keep in mind that document-level locking will be available only for WiredTiger storage engine and not default one (MMAPv1). MMAPv1 will support only collection level locking. The same story goes for compression. Also only available in WiredTiger. Question remains - how stable will WiredTiger be in 2.8...

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't checked WiredTiger storage driver nor it's source but I think it's safe to say that the in-place updates are not possible with Wired Tiger (even without compression) and most future storages.

People must be careful not to heavily update big documents with these.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would say that document-level locking is a big deal for MongoDB. When I was working at a company running MongoDB, we were running into latency issues when multiple larger documents would be updated or created. Coupled with the fact that we were using AWS and provisioning even 1000 IOPS was expensive and limited compared to IOPS available to SSDs. On top of all of that we weren't using the fire-and-forget default for writing data. We were requesting write receipts.

Document-level locking will likely result in much better performance for MongoDB.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see WiredTiger getting some love. LevelDB gets all the credit these days (and LMDB to a [much] lesser extent).

<comment><USER5> What is WiredTiger? I checked the github, but couldn't find any high level information other than it uses a LSM much like LevelDB. What advantages/tradeoffs have they made in WiredTiger vs. LevelDB?

<comment><USER6> TFA links to [http://www.wiredtiger.com/](http://www.wiredtiger.com/) which have some bold claims and jolly graphs -- and a link to: [https://github.com/wiredtiger/wiredtiger](https://github.com/wiredtiger/wiredtiger)

I hadn't heard of wiredtiger either. Looks interesting. Anyone know how it compares to LMDB[1]? Both in terms of features and maturity? Apparently made by the people that gave the world the Sleepycat Berkley DB.

[1] [http://symas.com/mdb/](http://symas.com/mdb/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> MongoDB seems to be going through the same phases that MySQL did about 10 years ago with the 3.x series. It's interesting to see the progression and I look forward to these improvements but there seems to be so many other choices out there, although at the small level, not nearly as easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great news! I also like the new 50 replica limit.

I gave up on MongoDB after 2.6 but it sounds like they're finally maturing to a true production ready datastore.

</comment><comment><USER9> mangoDB ([https://github.com/dcramer/MangoDB](https://github.com/dcramer/MangoDB)) has significantly faster writes than MongoDB.

On a serious note, Postgres 9.3 with the JSON data type is quite comparable to MongoDB these days.

<comment><USER4> The most appealing feature of many NoSQL databases, for me, is their ability to automatically shard and replicate data across multiple instances. It is possible to do this with relational databases such as Postgresql, but it is not easy from my experience. Also failover and balancing sharded data are not things that are easy with relational databases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow. Great news!</comment>


Actions have consequences (or: why I'm not fixing Intel's bugs any more) - <AUTHOR> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/32778.html <comment> mkr-hn As much as I appreciate having Intel hardware that works on Linux, I think this is a perfectly reasonable stance.

</comment><comment><USER2> >any comments arguing this point will be replaced with the phrase "Fart fart fart"

As is common, strong moral convictions get paired with an impenetrable shield against contradictory evidence.</comment>


Google asks Times Square, "What is a browser?" [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

<comment><USER2> I'm wondering why Google would make and post this video. Doesn't it just prove that they are entering a market that not only is completely misunderstood, but also shouldn't matter to the average person?

I use and like Chrome, but understand that the average person doesn't and shouldn't have to care about what browser they use.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you about Google having to realize they're entering a market that is completely misunderstood, but I don't think the issue "shouldn't" matter to the average person - and perhaps that is their point. The Internet has become a part of daily life for millions of people who don't have a clue how any of it works. Now, that is a testament to how useful it has become, and how well designed some of the interfaces are: they can send and receive data from the other side of the world virtually instantly - in a way that is entirely transparent to the average user.

The danger in that is that you have hundreds of people using that system to send sensitive data without really understanding how it works. It's like putting someone in a car without basic safety training - sure, if they've seen someone use the controls, they can pick it up pretty quickly. But there's a lot of really important things they don't realize. If people don't know what a browser is, they probably don't know how important it is to keep it updated. They probably don't know about phishing scams, or why giving your email password away is dangerous.

<comment><USER2> I see and appreciate your point, but i disagree that this is the reason for Google to enter the market and educate the people. People shouldn't have to worry about phishing scams, etc. That should all be managed for them. When you go to put gas in your car, you don't worry about what is in the mixture, or what station you buy it from, where they sourced it, etc.etc. it is just as complicated if not more so, and yet the system just works. We need to find a way to manage these challenges for the user, and I don't believe a new browser is the way to do it. I don't have the answer to how this should be handled, but I think the idea that we can 'train' non-technical people to understand and then care about this is naive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not surprised given 40% of people surveyed were NOT able to identify the location of their heart.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with the 'Office Politicians'? - <AUTHOR>

I'm sure most of us have had our fair share of office politics in some form or the other.
I'm also sure that most of us have come across that 'one piece of work of a slimeball'.
So how do/did you deal with that one office politician that one time? <comment><USER2> Depends of position.

If dealing with peer or higher-level "politicians" - I refuse to play their game, even if beneficiary to me at the time. While I simultaneously point out any transgressions of theirs. Sooner than later they screw up - since focusing on politics instead of your work is actually pretty hard work.

If dealing with subordinates. I perform "face thy accusor" ritual. It also helps not to get engaged into any of their schemes - thus preserving one's integrity.

Oh and both approaches require that you be valuable to the team - else you will get ground and ejected :)

<comment><USER3> WRT to "be valuable to the team", it also matters how good/non-political your superiors are. I've been _the_ key employee at a couple of small companies where political games at peer or above levels resulted in my getting purged ... and the company then having an hard and ugly death in pretty short order.

And there are zillions of well sourced accounts where the key technical people at companies big and not so big lost political battles and then their jobs or ability to accomplish anything and the company then suffering or worse.

A lot of this comes down to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

" _In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely._ "

I'm _really_ bad at even detecting these games until it's too late, and of course it's hard for anyone who's focused on the goals of the company to fight those who are focused on their position within it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My experience has been that you should help everyone in your office, regardless of their motivation. Take the opportunity to speak your mind whenever possible, but don't resort to bickering.

At the end of the day, other people in your office will see them for what they really are and appreciate your candor.

If you're ABOVE said politician, it's as simple as either bringing them into your office for a few private chats and explaining that you know what they're doing and you see through it... then letting them go if they don't fix it.

</comment><comment><USER5> The missing factor in all the books about software development success is "how to deal with politics".

No factor has more impact on the outcome of software projects than politics.

</comment><comment><USER6> From my experiences, I believe whatever we call "politics", at least at this level, is just "ways people get along with each other" Sometimes technical people will use "politics" to mean an obviously fake person who says things they don't mean, but it can also mean somebody who is sensitive to how to say things and when. And it's not easy to spot the difference.

I'd just treat everybody the same.

If anything, if you have a good "schmoozer" put him in a PM role or something. Use those skills to help the team perform better (if this is a possibility). If you can't do that, and you have some sort of antagonistic relationship with the office politician? If you're a blunt person like me, the best thing to do is to steer clear. People with highly developed social skills can be very dangerous to deal with unless your skills are close to the same level.</comment>


SaaSquatch Radio Ep4 Casey Armstrong – Full Stack Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/saasquatch-radio-episode-4-casey-armstrong-full-stack-marketing/

<comment><AUTHOR> Content Breakdown

0:30 – Introduction

2:10 – Full Stack Marketing

3:44 – T-Shaped Marketing Funnel

5:30 – Using Twitter Ads and Conference Hashtags to Reach Your Target Market

7:10 – Onboarding Tactics and Leaky Funnel Problems

8:50 – Getting Users to Their 'Aha' Moment to Create Word-of-Mouth Virality

9:30 – Creating Human Interaction Inside Your Product

10:20 – How to Target Your Competitors' Customers

13:25 – Takeaways – Get Out There and Do It!

Essential Quotes

"Get your users to the 'Aha' moment right away."

"Take advantage of marketing channels your competitors' aren't using."

"Find ways to engage with your competitors' customers."

Read more: [http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/saasquatch-radio- episode-4...](http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/saasquatch-radio- episode-4-casey-armstrong-full-stack-marketing/)</comment>


Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Is Holding a Hillary Fundraiser - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/03/14/theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-is-holding-a-hillary-fundraiser-with-chelsea-clinton/ <comment><AUTHOR> so i guess solving problems for medical innovation or regulatory hurdles through old political means (hackings maybe?) always in their playbook?</comment>


Make it free or fail – a real world test (launch day) - <AUTHOR> http://kanebennett.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/make-it-free-or-fail-%E2%80%93-a-real-world-test-launch-day/

<comment><USER2> I'm kind of with you on this. I'm not sure that certain segments of the software world have done themselves any favors by giving businesses and consumers the idea that software should always be free. No other industry works this way, where the core product is given away for free and the actual income must be garnered through donations/advertising/?.

Developing a product for fun is one thing, but taking the extra several months/years to polish it and make it saleable, along with setting up the necessary infrastructure to do so, is something that requires some possibility of profit. Without this possibility, most developers won't bother, and we end up with a ton of half-completed software projects that may have been something good if seen through to the end.

I see this as especially a problem with developer tools/languages, which are experiencing serious fragmentation and "language of the month" symptoms on the free side of the market, while also experiencing significant consolidation among the big players on the for-profit side of the market. A symptom of this dysfunction is that the biggest platform (for all intents and purposes, it is a "platform") in the world right now, the browser, only uses a single language - Javascript. I can't think of any platform in the past 40 years that only allowed the use of a single language.

Just to clarify: trial software and any business model that allows potential customers to try out software before buying is a perfectly legitimate business model. Giving away software for free, getting a bunch of users, and then dumping the project because you can't afford to support it anymore, is not. Such a model is a recipe for chaos and an industry in constant turmoil.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't see how this experiment will work. By making this announcement, Kane has skewed the results in favour of the free model.

The "control" group will consist almost entirely of keen early adopters and well-wishers, with a handful of people who stumble upon the software without seeing this blog post or anything related to it. Everyone else will wait for the freemium period to start.</comment>


Microsoft Announces Windows 10 China Government Edition - <AUTHOR> https://www.onmsft.com/news/microsoft-announces-windows-10-china-government-edition <comment><USER2> I feel like unless the PRC is really honest and puts secure encryption on everything with no backdoors they are going to have a fiasco as bad or worse than the CIA leaks. People will find the back door and simply hack/ransom all of their government computers.</comment>


Ask HN: Why aren't I getting responses to my Who Is Hiring applications? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
I've applied for dozens of jobs in the Who Is Hiring Jan 2018 thread, like I do every month. As always, I am ignored 95% of the time, with the other 5% of jobs responding "nice stuff, we'll keep in touch". The sentiment is nice, but obviously doesn't pay the bills.
The reason I'm asking is because I consider myself pretty talented. I do fullstack dev and I also design. (If you're curious you can see my resume here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VijR1MF6xDNzH9IPrsv2UxLeC8sZ8nSF2Eux7lkuYQ8/edit and my design work here: www.beaver.digital).
Are other applicants just ridiculously more skilled than I am? Or am I doing/assuming something wrong? What has been the experience of others?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Remove this from your resume entirely:

 _My work experience is limited because of my involvement with Fractals. I am a highly trained and experienced software engineer—please don't take my limited experience as a reflection of skill._

Remove the word "interests" from the section titled Skills/interests. Remove repetitive and vague phrases. You say over and over that you have _substantial experience_ in various things. It is a meaningless phrase to start with, made worse by overuse.

Move the education section to the end of the document. You currently have it at the top. It isn't irrelevant, but it isn't the first thing people should see either.

Remove this: _Passionate about learning and using technology to solve problems._ It is not useful on a resume. Replace that line with one specifying in a nutshell what your qualifications are, such as _Programmer and designer specialized in Fractals._

<comment><USER3> Agree with all of Doreen's comments plus "Fluent in server-side technologies such as non-relational databases; NodeJS, etc" \- sounds vague. Don't use 'etc.'. I would consider removing all this and having a SUMMARY section and KEY EXPERIENCE section and expanding on specifics in the work experience section. Try a few different formats.

I think the format of you current work experience section could be greatly improved - the dates could come first - at the moment they appear to wrap over on to the next line - not good for a designer!

There are a number of other ways the CV could be greatly improved.

Once you've sorted your CV then I would consider where you are applying. You should perhaps consider applying through agencies or directly for advertised jobs. Also use tools like GlassDoor and Stack jobs.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Through agencies or directly for advertised jobs, as opposed to what? Those are the only things I would consider. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have read about 120,000 resumes.

"Fluent" "Proficient" "Substantial" "Professional experience" are all "filler" words/phrases that add no value, remove them.

A resume should be clear about:

1: exactly what sort of job are you wanting? "Seeking full time salaried JavaScript/Java developer". Be clear so that the reader knows if you fit that job that they have in mind whilst they are reading your resume. 2: What are your current, primary technical skills that you have substantial skill with - do NOT list every technology your have written a few lines of code with. Focus.

There's no right or wrong about this, but I don't like ultra short resumes. If you spent time getting educated or working on large projects then this is your opportunity to sell me on yourself. I feel like short resumes mean you haven't done much or are not very good at articulating technical topics.

It makes no sense to me that someone would have a dry, ultra short, black and white resume which includes a link at the bottom to the folio of an apparently entirely different person. Why not have screenshots and discussions of your projects in your resume.

Where is the phone number? Hopefully you are not applying for jobs by sending a link to this online document. When you apply for a job, email the resume document in PDF or Word format and make sure it includes a phone number. As a recruiter I am far too busy to be bothered emailing people who provide only an email address as their primary mechanism of contact. 999/1000 resumes include a phone number.

<comment><USER5> " As a recruiter I am far too busy to be bothered emailing people who provide only an email address as their primary mechanism of contact. 999/1000 resumes include a phone number."

I find this one especially funny, being constantly spammed by unsollicitated recruiters asking for a phone number to "discuss opportunities". My answer is usually "if you have a good offer, write down the specifics without hiding stuff and sent it by email. As a developper with a good full time job and a social life, I am far too busy to be bothered on the phone for no good reason."

I can't understand this belief that phone is faster and more convenient. Real- time interactions are disruptive, and if you don't agree on a timeframe (using async communication like email...), Most of the time the phone call will be made at a wrong time, causing frustration for everyone.

So, not giving a phone number before some fruitful written exchange is a great way to check if a recruiter care enough about efficiency and other people's time. If not, well, too bad.

<comment><USER6> They don't do this for speed. IMHO, they do it to get the information they cannot (successfully or legally) request in writing: age, race, sex, salary, your enthusiasm about getting a new job etc. Sometimes they just want a sales call not dissimilar to your bank/cable provider/insurance/etc, which is always funny for me: one thing is to sell some cable package or an insurance policy for your pet, but do people really change their job because of what a stranger said on the phone?

<comment><USER4> I, a recruiter, do it to see if you are suitable for a job.

Hey there its Andrew Stuart here, I have a job on at the moment that looks like it might be a fit for what you're doing, are you considering new jobs at the moment? No? OK thanks for taking the call.

I honestly cannot imagine what recruiter under any circumstances, has the time or motivation to call people up for any other reason.

The plain and simple reason that we don't use email to drive the recruiting process is that it's a stupid way to operate - no one gets back to you iof you send an email, whether or not they are in fact looking for work. If you need to get the job done you call people.

There's no sinister ulterior motivate. Sheesh.

""Hey there, filthy recruiter here. Heh heh heh. Tell me now....... what religion are you!!!!! Hmmmmm..... what sex are you!!!???? Ohhhh!!!! Well, I'll file that VERY useful piece of information away thanks you, glad you gave it up so easily.. Hee hee hee.""

Doesn't happen.

<comment><USER6> Just like the GP, I routinely get e-mails asking to schedule a call with a recruiter. If these recruiters did not use e-mail like you, then neither of us would be getting these e-mails, right?

And, replying to your edit, most people can actually tell if they are speaking to a man or a woman and some can even detect accents so they don't need to ask (like they would have to if they were using text communication).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imho we should have something like an once-every-two-months thread in which we publish an anonymous version of our CV and can get constructive feedback.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hm I have interviewed hundreds of people and looked at hundreds of resumes...

The thing that stands out to me is that you say since 2013 you've been the founder and sole employee at Fractals, and if I'm reading correctly, it's at least $200K in revenue a year.

I didn't check out the business, and I don't know how much profit you're making. But I wonder how you divide your time between that and a "normal" job?

As far as the "Who's Hiring" threads, they are mostly 9-5 jobs (or more).

I don't know why people aren't contacting you, but I will say I have looked at a lot of resumes, and that's not a common thing to see. I think it should be a positive sign, but it might also be a signal that your interest is split. It's expensive to hire someone, so maybe they think you might leave if your business takes off (and maybe they wonder why you even want to work at a normal job if you have that much revenue).

Honestly, a lot of companies don't want to hire generalists... they want to hire specialists. I imagine startups should want to hire generalists more.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, and I can attest to one company that I really wanted to work for not hiring me specifically for that very reason (interest being split). Fractals is mostly passive income, but revenue != profit; and doing it full time would not give me much of a chance to meet interesting people in software, or—well, focus on software, which is my main area of interest.

I do agree with you that I should aim the resume towards more of a single specialization instead of an "I do it all" approach—so I will revisit that. Thank you so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it is fantastic that the HN community is taking the time to provide constructive feedback and recommendations. Kudos to all those replying in this thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, did not expect to get any replies whatsoever. What I'm getting instead is extremely enlightening and will cause me to rethink my approach completely. Very lucky to have the opportunity to participate in such a great community.

<comment><USER9> Also, having your resume as an example, these comments can probably be applied to others with similar questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> would love for the help for me to translate to others :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't put education first. At quick glance it looks like you majored in business so the reviewer would think that you have little experience in web development. I would put work experience, then skills and then education on the bottom. Move up Fractals up top and rephrase this:

> revenues of multiple 6 figures annually.

With revenues of $100,000+ or similar. An actual number would stick out more.

Also as someone else has noted, get rid of the apologetic footnote.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't disagree more. Most resumes have education at the top. If you spent 3/4/5 years getting a university education then you should be putting that up in lights. I really don't like reading a resume, thinking I am reading the resume of a person who is self educated, only to find that down the bottom somewhere. almost in an ashamed manner, they have hidden their formal qualifications.

If anything, add some context to the education to explain a bit about what the degree entailed.

<comment><USER11> Having hired many people, let me tell you how I use the "education": if you attended the same school as I did I look yo up in the alumni directory. If you attend the same school as one of my colleagues (and Ihappen to know where they went to school which I mostly do t) I have them look you up. Other than that I ignore it. Experience is what matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The one thing I can recommend making your resume more visually appealing.

In its current state it's a very bare document and to me looks more like a bullet outline of a resume. This could mean you come off as not having put a lot of effort into making it. Obviously don't overdo it, but making it look like a professional document will give you a much better starting point. When I opened the link, I had to come back to the Ask HN post to see if you had stripped the styling from your resume.

You clearly have a wealth of experience in a number of fields, don't let the formatting let you down. Your resume is supposed to advertise you and make you sound appealing. I agree with tlb's suggestion to get rid of the 'limited work experience' footnote, it's not doing you any favours.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I hadn't visited the formatting since college so I suppose it's time to give it another look :-). Appreciate the tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My suggestion: be prouder of the fractal lens and Beaver design companies. Both are impressive. Get rid of the "limited work experience" footnote at the bottom -- you have plenty for someone 3.5 years out of college.

<comment><USER14> I with this. You could replace the whole resume with "I built [https://beaver.digital/](https://beaver.digital/) and [https://www.getfractals.com/"](https://www.getfractals.com/") and I think it would be 10x better.

You've done great work, but the resume doesn't highlight it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha. Thank you! I appreciate that. I'll revisit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Your CV is very unattractive. I would even say ugly. Learn Latex and make a good looking one. You also need to write more for each position you have held. "Web application development (ReactJS & VueJS). Java API development." Doesn't cut it. Instead, write a paragraph describing your role in detail and exactly what you did there.

Your site has blinking headlines, which imho looks very amateurish. Also, skilled web designers are a dime to a dozen. Skilled programmers on the other hand are much rarer.

Good luck with your job hunt! Not giving up is the key!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Thank you—I will definitely revisit the design. :).

Is it true that skilled designers are rarer than skilled developers? Having done both I'd say they both present their own unique challenges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Your skills section says you know everything, but your resume basically contradicts / trolls itself. Get rid of these red flags first. Work experience should be at the top. Heck, I'm sure you've done some software development work even as a solopreneur; others here have made similar points. Job hunting is essentially marketing yourself (in this case your relevant skills and experience) for a specific audience (engineering manager that wants to see what things you've built, HR that wants to look for tech buzzwords).

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it, thank you. Maybe part of the problem is I just haven't seen many 'good' resumes. If you google 'resume examples'—most of the examples are pretty laughable. I'll rethink it in the light you've presented. Thank you!

<comment><USER17> My advice, go to toptal's website and click on one of the little profile pictures. The resumes are comprehensive and have a professional format.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect. thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I spent a bit of work on my resume which i made open source: [http://leepenkman.appspot.com/](http://leepenkman.appspot.com/)

Your website www.getfractals.com and [https://beaver.digital/](https://beaver.digital/) looks beautiful and works well, with your C.V. your marketing yourself just as you would market a company, make your C.V. hip like your websites

Also do as many comments suggest here, reorder things, i think your website and fractal experience is a huge selling point, My games probably got me a job here at Weta doing visual effects, Also Weta is hiring [https://careers.wetafx.co.nz/jobs?search=&sort=recent](https://careers.wetafx.co.nz/jobs?search=&sort=recent)

Your experience developing fractals would be useful e.g. in writing Shaders here in Visual effects i'm sure.

I agree you should try and tailor to a specific job e.g. that might mean removing things about hardware/fabrication if its not relevant to a job and adding other things that are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thank you so much, very helpful. Working at somewhere like Weta looks like it'd be extremely fun but I can't seem to find a job on the site that matches my skillset. I'll stay on the look out, though. :-) thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My experience has been that when you are looking for a job working for other people after being self-employed is that the boss thinks you were "self- employed" \- you have to get over this idea (in the mind of the hiring manager) that being self-employed is just a euphemism for being unemployed.

Some things you can do:

Write about technical projects you did for your company... write them up a little like they were different jobs, formatting wise. At least in the sysadmin world it really helps to make sure you include the keywords for the tools you used in those projects.

Remove the apology for the lack of experience... if you can list good projects you did for fractals, you won't need to apologize or plead, it will show what you were doing.

One way of thinking about it, depending on what sort of job you are applying for, is that you are trying to re-cast your experience at your company as employee work. I mean, I technically have been an employee of prgmr.com for the last decade. That's absolutely true, and the IRS can verify, even though I have also been majority owner for most of that time. Most technical jobs don't actually care that you are 'entrepreneurial' \- they care about your technical abilities, so recast on that, if you are applying for an employee job.

Fundamentally? that's the problem with trying to get employee work after working for yourself. You need to convince your boss you actually were doing something during your period of self employment - that you weren't just unemployed.

The next problem, of course, is convincing the boss that you will focus on their company and not yours, but in my experience, that comes up after they are already interested. You need to be prepared for the question, though; I've definitely bombed some interviews because I was not.

</comment><comment><USER20> Expand on the line items under work experience and reduce the skills/interest. You need info on what you did during the position.

> Web application development (ReactJS & VueJS). Java API development.

^^ Doesn't really tell me much about what you did. Java API? What framework? Did you design the Interface or just implement it? Details!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting—my general belief always was that those kind of details would be disclosed later in the interview process (as to not 'crowd out' the resume). But that makes sense–I guess I'll have to give that belief a revisiting. Thank you!

<comment><USER20> For Resumes, this is what I've been told by multiple people.

\- One page for cold or warm leads, such as whose hiring threads or online application. Two pages at most, for familiar leads (such as 2nd day interviews), such as "hey, we're looking for someone like you, if you shoot me your resume I can pass it on". The difference here is detail on positions.

\- Keep education short and to the point. School, degree, program, and anything of note. GPA if it matters (say Business and Accounting) or is of note (3.5+)

\- Highlight competent skills. Angular JS implies Javascript. Only list stuff that you are fine jumping into doing. I can do networking, but at a Jr. level. It's not on highlighted on my resume. Nobody cares about something you can kinda do well. You're not being hired on that.

\- Buzzwords, in moderation, are your friend. People, myself included, will scan until something pops out.

\- Focus on work experience. Describe what you did at the role. Describe your responsibilities. Describe your performance and accomplishments. Describe why you remained employed. Think of this as the 30 seconds to pickup someone at a bar. Give information, but leave room for them to be able to ask you about yourself. This is what you will be interviewed off of. When you are talking to someone- they have seen your resume and think you can work for them- they are trying to figure out if you have what they need. If your resume doesn't appear to be what they are looking for, they will move on. "Java?" "API Development?" "Spring Framework?"

"Increased application performance by 20% in some cases while rewriting ORM" will not only be impressive, but the person reading will want to know more, like how and what you did. The previous statement shows an impressive accomplishment, while implying you know what you are doing and you can bring it to them, and also brings a tangible number. Follow ups could be, "What did you do to increase performance?" "How did you rewrite the ORM?" "How did you measure the performance increase?" "What cases did you see a performance increase?"

"Build a Java API" leaves too much to question and doesn't tell much about what you did. There is too much to follow up on, and there is a good chance that they won't waste the effort. A better line would be "Implemented a high performance Java API using the Spring framework on top of an existing application for internal customers." That gives more information, some details, and leaves room for the interviewer to ask questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's because the "talent shortage in tech" meme is a lie.

Nobody wants a competent employee in 2018. They want badass, unicorn, ninja rockstars!

There's nothing "wrong" with you. It's just that the minimum bar is higher than you imagined. Keep hustling and you can clear it.

Suggested reading: _Average is over_ , by Tyler Cowen

<comment><USER19> I think the standards on HN are higher (for the same money) and in general, the standards for remote work are higher (again, for the same money.) -

From interviewing people for sit-down in-person contracting positions at big companies in silicon valley proper? Finding someone who is just competent is quite difficult, even when offering much better money than 'startups' tend to offer.

As for the unicorn ninja rockstar thing, I'm pretty sure that's just startup talk for "We want someone enthusiastic and confident" \- which usually means they have to lower their expectations in other areas (which is part of why they shoot for early career folks;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing I find is that you're description of your work-experiences is very curt. I know you want to keep it long enough not to bore the recruiter/manager types, but you may as well brag a bit more in depth so that they may expect the amazing things you are wiling to do for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> These are just my opinion, but when I'm looking at resumes I want to see what the applicant has done. Tangible, real accomplishments.

Describe what you've done with your skills. What have you machined? What hardware did you design? What did you weld? At the companies you worked at, what specifically did you do? A feature for the website? Which one?

If you're applying for a programming role, don't lead with your seemingly not- directly-related BA. Put it at the bottom.

Basically, after reading your resume I don't feel I know anything about what you've actually done. That's my biggest problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> That gives me a lot of insight—thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You need to write a convincing and enthusiastic email (cover letter). Highlight things from your resume which are most relevant for that job. Do you have a github account? List it and push some code, anything you have, even exercises and toy projects. In your resume's experience section write in more detail about what exactly you did. Did you use redux with react? What TDD software or tools? Which parts did you actually code, the login page, the whole UI, or something else? What have you learned? Which Java framework did you use amd so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't the problem that nobody really reads resumes that come in without a referral. Sad, but true.

<comment><AUTHOR> My experience would suggest that this is true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> After reading the resume, I'm not sure what you have done or could do to help.

For example, "Fluent in Javascript ES6. Proficient in Java, other common languages, and several web frameworks," tells nothing about what you actually did to benefit an employer or use a technology.

</comment><comment><USER26> Add a link to your LinkedIn profile. I just searched for you, and came up with a over a dozen guys with the same name, many with a similar background.

</comment><comment><USER27> Last time I sprayed my resume I got zero responses. Then 3 months later I got offered 5 interviews. Sometimes recruiters are just slow.

</comment><comment><USER28> Keep in mind that HN is just a small window to the whole IT world. Look at other, less narrowed places.

</comment><comment><USER29> Two points stand out to me:

1\. You have a very broad and varied background, with experience doing a lot of different things. This is a Good Thing in general, BUT... a lot of companies just don't know how to use (or hire) somebody like you. Usually they have a req for a (very) specific position, and a list of (very, maybe overly) specific skills and experience they are expecting to find in the "right candidate". It's hard for them to translate from your resume to their way of thinking.

It's an indictment of the company more than you, but you have to accommodate reality. My advice would be to pick some "thing" that is going to be your specialty (front end development with React, backend development with Java, hardware stuff, whatever) and make that the clear focus of your resume, with everything else mentioned as just sort of an "extra" or "bonus". Hell, go so far as to even put a "Bonus Skills" section on your resume and say "In addition to the above, you'll also be getting somebody who can do: <foo>, <bar>, <baz>, <etc>".

Note that if you take this approach it's probably even more true that you may want to tailor your resume to match the position your applying for.

2\. Your work on Fractals. It's not clear from your resume how important that is to you and how much of your time it takes up. A potential employer may be wondering if they're getting somebody who's going to be more focused on their own thing, than their work for $EMPLOYER. I don't have a definite answer for how to deal with that, even though I've had to deal with the exact same issue. All I can say is, try to find a way to make it clear that you truly have full- time availability (assuming you actually do) and will be committing to work at $EMPLOYER full-time despite the presence of Fractals. OR, if you really don't want to work full-time, say so outright. Just note that not a lot of companies want to hire part-time people. If you really want to go that route, you might have more success setting up shop as a freelancer and do corp-to-corp contracting.

Edit:

It just occurred to me that, while most resume experts in this day and age recommend against having an "objective" on your resume, you might well benefit from that. Imagine this:

 _Objective: full-time employment as a front-end web development specialist using React, Javascript and related technologies._

That would serve two ends: by putting "full-time" in there explicitly it could help assuage concerns about your availability w/r/t Fractals, and the rest helps nail down exactly what it is you're looking to do. Then tune the rest of your resume to provide support for the idea that you are, indeed, qualified to do "front-end web development specialist using React, Javascript and related technologies" (or whatever you put down in the objective).</comment>


Show HN: Extract btc information for trustless recovery - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/UwSoftWare/trustless_btc_recovery <comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a follow up on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15852100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15852100). We are creating a service to help everyone who has lost their bitcoin password. Till now our clients had to go through the terminal for extracting information (Thanks pywallet for intermediate solution). But we created a GUI script to aid the extraction. This is also done trustless. So we never have access to the funds. I'm asking hackernews to help and confirm the code (Technically it is working, also the trustless part. But that should be confirmed! As my reputation is zero ATM).

<comment><USER2> I have some visitors in a Dutch magazine for lost btc. Any referral fee?

<comment><AUTHOR> pm? firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER2> send. So you can remove your email ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Site Dedicated to Learn AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://learnangularjs.net

<comment><USER2> This site seems kind of... low on content?

Am I missing something?</comment>


Is training DL models in the cloud too expensive? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone here have experience training models with Google's Cloud ML?  We're currently training a model based off Food-2000 that takes about 5 days using a single K80 on a local machine.  I'd like to estimate doing this faster using Google Cloud ML.
My estimates use the pricing located here: https://cloud.google.com/ml-engine/pricing#machine_types_for_custom_cluster_configurations
Cost = (ML training units * cost per unit / 60) * job duration in minutes
The "ML training units" for a standard_gpu is 3 and for a complex_model_m_gpu is 12.  I'm assuming a standard_gpu is equivalent to a single GPU on the K80 (which has two GPUs).  So my assumption's that a complex_model_m_gpu is 4x more expensive because it's equivalent to 2 x K80s.
The "cost per unit" in the US is $0.49 per hour.  And since I'm training with 2 x K80s in the cloud now, my training should be closer to 2.5 days which is 60 hours.
Cost = 12 * $0.59 * 60 = $425.  Given that a K80 costs $4,000 on Amazon, it would take 18.8 training runs to match the price of 2 x K80s.  But we ran multiple experiments to fine tune our model to this point so likely went way past 18.8 training runs total.  Maybe running in the cloud is too expensive? <comment><USER2> Here the value proposition is time for money and it depends on which is constraining the business. Reducing the training from 5 to 2.5 days might make a difference to the business. Or the time to market may be determined by the speed at which the marketing department can contract for a new campaign and that might be on the scale of months rather than a few days. It might also be the that going from 5 days to 2.5 days is not enough of a speedup to go from one iteration a week to two iterations a week due to setup and overhead and so business velocity remains the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> my only comment would be that your TF model will not automatically employ the second GPU. You need to architect your model, using TF routines, to use more than 1 GPU.</comment>


Stripe or Brainstrom? Which is better for freelancing startup? - <AUTHOR> We at forhyre.com a freelancing kind of startup(Currently in pre-alpha) and we need the suitable gateway for converting the currencies,tax etc.
We are thinking of Paypal + Stripe but heard lots of good stuff about Brainstrom.  So which is better for a freelancing site?<p>The two are pretty similar. Stripe happens to be enjoying media attention as a darling disruptor while Braintree suffers a bit from association with PayPal, the Evil company that's been doing business for 20 years and has a good foothold in online payments. <comment><USER2> Stripe is better than Braintree in every single way.

There's no contest.

Braintree gets competitive when you've got more "custom" needs and large transaction volumes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it plausible for freelancing framework like us (In description) ? We'll be making transactions around $1000 constantly.</comment></comment>


How renting became the new homeownership - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/24/how-renting-became-the-new-homeownership/?postshare=2491435164438288 <comment><USER3> Homeownership is the rational choice when (1) you expect to live in the same place for a long time; (2) the value of a home is either stable or rising, and is expected to continue like that for a long time; and (3) you have assurance that if you need to liquify your assets on short notice, you'll be able to sell your home or take out a second mortgage easily.

None of that is true for most people under 45 now. Lifetime employment has all but disappeared. The 2008 financial crisis has shaken people's faith in housing as a safe investment. You don't want to tie up a large percentage of your net worth in an illiquid asset that doesn't gain much value, especially if you need to be able to pick up your stuff and move across the country at any time. Therefore, renting is the rational choice for us.

The problem is what to do when you're old. If you happen to own a 5-bedroom house, you can rent out a part of it or sell it and move to a smaller house. In either case, you'll have enough income to enjoy a comfy retirement. Owning a home, in that sense, is like having a massive savings account.

Renters can get the same benefit if they save up a lot of money or invest smartly, but that takes more discipline than just making mortgage payments each month. I wonder how many renters are actually aware of this difference, versus just spending their extra disposable income on fancy clothes, booze, and gadgets.

<comment><USER4> >Renters can get the same benefit if they save up a lot of money or invest smartly, but that takes more discipline than just making mortgage payments each month. I wonder how many renters are actually aware of this difference, versus just spending their extra disposable income on fancy clothes, booze, and gadgets.

I'd be interested to hear what Americans think of a policy we have in Australia called mandatory superannuation. It essentially forces people to put around 12% of their income into pension funds (they can choose which fund, or possibly even self-manage it in some cases) that they can't touch until they're retired, meaning that people who rent their whole lives and save nothing can still have hundreds of thousands in savings to support them when they retire.

<comment><USER5> I'm a US Citizen living in Australia.

I find the mandatory superannuation very refreshing and surprised the US doesn't implement something. I feel if everyone saves 10% of their income for the rest of their working life, it leaves you with something around retirement.

The closest in the US is the company you work for can match upto 4%.

So financial advice in USA is put away maximum into 401k/Superannuation that your company will match because if not, you are losing that free money.

As a current renter, the mandatory superannuation law allows me to make a rational choice to rent when it suits me. Renting allows me the flexibility and freedom to go where the work is. At least have the option to go where the work is. If I owned a home, I wouldn't feel as free.

I plan on buying when it makes sense, but right now, I do not see any benefit of tying up most of my wealth into home ownership.

I look at renting as a utility of life. I need to live somewhere and it costs me x dollars. In retirement, I plan to have x dollars in retirement money to pay for my rent then too.

On the other hand, I'm in IT. I don't ever plan to retire. Because when I retire, I'll be doing the same thing...coding at home. Might as well get paid for it. :)

<comment><USER6> > The closest in the US is the company you work for can match up to 4%.

Is there actual regulation that limits how much a company can match? This [1] refers to 6% as a common practice, not a limit imposed on employers.

At two universities where I've worked, the university's contribution to a 403b (401k for non-profits) didn't require any contribution by the employee. At one the university's contribution was 6.25%, at the other it was 5% for employees under 40 and 10% for those 40 and older.

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

<comment><USER7> Most companies only want to do a safe harbor match (roughly 3%-6%, depending on how it's set up) on their 401(k) plans...otherwise the auditing (annual testing requirements) requirements are a real pain.

[http://www.guidestoneretirement.org/ToolsandEducation/safeha...](http://www.guidestoneretirement.org/ToolsandEducation/safeharbor.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this is an overcorrection in the market. My wife and I purchased a house, that we couldn't afford, and lost it when the market turned. We lost most of our savings and have fought for years to get back out of debt.

We've both agreed that for us renting is the way we are going to go. I hated homeownership.

<comment><USER9> What is the biggest problem when it comes to home-ownership? Mortgage? Lack of agency?

<comment><USER10> \- Maintenance

\- Cost of rental more closely tracks income/economic situation, you're also free to go to a place that costs more or less depending on your situation (whereas in homeownership you're locked to a place and the cost is fixed for decades)

\- You're less free to go where the jobs are (opportunity cost)

"Oh but you're not building equity" then your problem is in financial education.

The problem is not homeownership per se, it is of locking yourself into a long-term financial commitment for an overpriced asset _that you can 't afford_ (even if today you can afford the mortgage payments)

<comment><USER11> But you can always sell the house, or rent it to others and move to cheaper neighborhood (and rent there yourself).

To me, renting means losing money, while buying (or mortgage) seems like an investment. After all, even if potential ROI is not that high for you, think about further generations - your kids will be the owners of your house - <USER2> again, they can sell whenever they need.

<comment><USER12> You cannot always sell the house. The market may have fallen, or rates may have risen in a way that makes your home less affordable. Also, prematurely paying off your mortgage might have punishing penalties, and also there are frictional costs to selling.

You cannot always necessarily rent to others. You may have strata / HOA rules that prevent renting.

Buying with cash has an opportunity cost on your money. A mortgage is renting money. Whether you rent a home or you rent money, either way you're paying rent. You also have other "lost money" costs as an owner: maintenance costs (and labour), property taxes, possibly condo fees, etc. So when you consider the "losing money" aspect of owning, you're losing the interest payments, and you're losing some other fees... but the part of your mortgage payment that is excess of interest is not lost money (it's savings).

On other other hand, there are advantages to owning. In particular, if you want to make a highly leveraged wager (5x being common), you can do that in real estate. If you win at the wager, you can win a lot of money. (Of course a casino lets you win a lot of money too, with extreme leverage, but the housing market has no "house" extracting a vig, pun not intended). Also, many countries have tax incentives for ownership. For example, US effective interest rates are somewhat lower than the contractual rate, because the government gives you some of it back at tax time (I think.... I'm not an ardent student of the US housing rules).

In short, a statement like "you've always got options as an owner" or "renting is losing while buying is an investment" is so oversimplified as to be incredibly damaging.

The math is tractable for a modestly smart person, but it does take some dedication.

<comment><USER13> I was one of those people who couldn't just "sell the house". My builder went bankrupt, the remaining land was sold by Bank Of America for pennies on the dollar, and I was ~$100K underwater. Doing the math (based on historical yearly real estate appreciation), it was cheaper to have 3-5 years of bad credit than 10-15 years of payments just to bring the house to neutral equity. My HOA wouldn't allow me to rent our townhouse out because several people bought them as investments, so we had reached "rental capacity" before the subdivision was even complete.

I walked away, lost my $30K downpayment, 2 years of equity at $2K month in mortgage payments, and have ~3 years of bad credit. With only that negative mark on my credit, I still have a 680 credit score.

I'm never willing to bet again that I'll be in the same location for 15-30 years. I'd rather rent and take what you'd consider "equity" and invest it in something I can get out of in less than 60 seconds (ETFs).

EDIT: Mortgage underwriting guidelines now limit a new mortgage until after 3 years of a foreclosure, not the traditional 7. Why _wouldn 't_ someone walk away if it would take more than 3 years to reach neutral equity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think for many people renting is the only sane choice with the volatility of the job market. You can't be tied to a house that is any significant portion of your income once finding work forces you to move.

The sad part is that today, more than ever, where you live shouldn't matter for many office jobs. But it does matter - to employers.

</comment><comment><USER15> TL;DR - investment companies are scarfing up lots in incomplete subdivisions to build rental homes and they aren't just renting them to whomever has the money

I live in one of those subdivisions that failed to complete before the housing bust. About two years ago an investment group purchased the remaining eleven lots and built homes strictly for the purpose of renting. HOA rules did pay off as they had to keep to architectural rules and even minimum square footage; 2400+

After talking to their builder, turned out it was two investment groups that tend to work together, he was working on three separate subdivisions at one time. All homes are rented by management companies, full background checks, the likes. Being able to rent one, even this far out from Atlanta (think 25 miles) apparently is very desirable and not as simple as showing up with the money. After a few years they either sell out right or do a limited rent to own.

The surprise to me is that there is still substantial turnover in renters. Used to be the rule was stay out of the sub 1k a month rent; the homes near me are 1200-1500 a month; but out of eleven rentals I figure maybe half have had the same families for the first year.

So while I see some subdivision have new building starting and even some that never got the first house down I look close for the signs. Big home builders will be building to sell to homeowners, if the builder doesn't display his name except on permits its likely for rent.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Y-axis is truncated on the first graph! So misleading!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_graph#Truncated_gra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misleading_graph#Truncated_graph)

<comment><USER17> The graph shows exactly what it is designed to show in an effective way, and they explain it clearly in the text.

It's one of the clearest and least misleading graphs I can imagine. Starting the Y-axis at 0 would only be less effective at making the point. The Wikipedia section that you link recognises this.

Every graph is misleading if you assume it has properties that are not there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Part of the reason for the 2008 market crash was the 'subprime home loan' debacle, where lending policies encouraged persons who should not have owned a home to nevertheless buy one and take on a mortgage. This policy (to increase home ownership) failed, and the market corrected. We are back to where we were in 1993 with respect to home ownership because the attempt to increase ownership artificially failed, spectacularly.

</comment><comment><USER19> Rule of thumb: If you are sure you are going to be living in the same place for more than 7-10 years, buy. Otherwise rent.

Remember that, instead of buying, you can rent and invest the difference. If you made a spreadsheet with all fees and costs, you'll come up with 7-10 years as the breakeven point.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd assume that the laws of supply and demand will eventually correct this. Interesting that the laws of leverage (i.e. it magnifies gain and loss) have punished plenty of homeowners, and that will probably make the correction take a long time to come around.

But that's no comfort for the generations that miss out.

</comment><comment><USER21> It feels like a lot of people in the Washington Post comments ought to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad.</comment>


Looks like Apple had their domain hijacked - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/CXCJN

<comment><USER2> Old news. [http://superuser.com/questions/37954/how-to-use-command- line...](http://superuser.com/questions/37954/how-to-use-command-line-whois- for-spam-infected-domains-like-apple-com) Also there are a lot posts today about this issue, this is just noise.</comment>


How Open Is Facebook, Really? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_open_is_facebook_really.php

<comment><USER2> "history shows that it ends in hubris (e.g. AOL, Microsoft). Facebook doesn't control social networking yet, far from it. But it's feasible that they will in future, if/when MySpace is vanquished."</comment>


Show HN: Lua/LuaJIT with C/C++/Java/JavaScript syntax - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mingodad/ljs <comment><USER2> Saying C/C++/Java/JavaScript makes me think you've created 4 different syntax frontends for LuaJIT, when there is really only one here.

It seems to me that you're really trying to express a concept that could be referred to as "C-like syntax" or "JavaScript-like syntax," with the latter probably being more accurate. It would certainly be less confusing than repeating "C/C++/Java/JavaScript syntax" over and over.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here if you have any question.

Also if you have done any enhancement to Lua/LuaJIT and want help or talk about it I'm glad to hear from you.

There is an parser/transpiler using lemon/re2c that can transpile almost any Lua source to LJS see here [https://github.com/mingodad/ljs/tree/master/lua2ljs](https://github.com/mingodad/ljs/tree/master/lua2ljs) .

Here are some non trivial projects converted to LJS:

ljsjit at [https://github.com/mingodad/ljsjit](https://github.com/mingodad/ljsjit)

ljs-5.1 at [https://github.com/mingodad/ljs-5.1](https://github.com/mingodad/ljs-5.1)

ZeroBraneStudio port at [https://github.com/mingodad/ZeroBraneStudioLJS](https://github.com/mingodad/ZeroBraneStudioLJS)

raptorjit-ljs at [https://github.com/mingodad/raptorjit- ljs](https://github.com/mingodad/raptorjit-ljs)

snabb-ljs at [https://github.com/mingodad/snabb- ljs](https://github.com/mingodad/snabb-ljs)

premake5-ljs at [https://github.com/mingodad/premake- core/tree/ljs](https://github.com/mingodad/premake-core/tree/ljs)

The next steps that I have in mind now is to add the remaining syntax sugar like:

-C/C++/Java/Javascript for loop

-Switch statement

-Class statement

-const declarations

\- type checking (actually [https://fascinatedbox.github.io/lily/](https://fascinatedbox.github.io/lily/) has those and it seems a good one to port/add)

-Understand and make it easier for other people understand the implementation of LuaJIT.

<comment><USER3> I only poked into the source code on github a bit, so I might be entirely wrong, but from what I understand, the original Lua runtimes (stock Lua, Luajit, etc) were modified for a new syntax? If so, what's the motivation for this approach? Since you already have an lua2ljs transpiler, wouldn't it be easier to use this knowledge to instead have an ljs2lua transpiler and just reuse all existing Lua implementations? Similar to how moonscript works?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point but I prefer less code to mantain move around, as you pointed out it's only a moderate modification of the Lua lexer/parser and not need anything else ~200KB ljs, ~500KB LjsJIT interperter and there you go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like a lot of things about Lua, the focus on embedded use and keeping the implementation nimble among others. LuaJIT is very impressive, but it's already drowning in its own complexity.

I spent the last two years more or less full time trying out ways of making interpreters of similar complexity go faster without making the same mistake.

One method that seems really promising so far is AOT tracing [0], making guarantees and removing redundant code ahead of time based on incomplete semantic models. It's different from a full compiler in that it only tries to improve the situation and will back out and leave code alone where the semantic model is insufficient. And since it acts as a transformation on VM code, it's fairly transparent and easy to debug. The complexity of the models is a three way compromise between faster tracing, faster code and implementation complexity.

Once the VM code is reasonably optimal, further compiling to C by generating the interpreter code inline becomes even more attractive. Which also leads to native executables as a bonus feature.

[0] [https://gitlab.com/sifoo/snigl#tracing](https://gitlab.com/sifoo/snigl#tracing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello Andreas ! It's an interesting approach for jit, I did looked at your link and one of the reasons to reshape Lua with a C/C++/Java/Javascript syntax was code reuse and learning curve, at first looking at the syntax of snigl it seems that you'll need to rewrite a lot of software to make the language usable and convince people that the learning curve and small comunity will be worth at the end.

Best wishes !

<comment><USER4> Just noting that JIT means speculating from what you've seen so far, what I'm doing is proving invariants and removing redundancy at compile time. Which means more predictable performance, since the code stays the same once it starts running; and a less complex implementation, since there's no need to de-optimize anything.

The reason I'm tracing is that it's the only way I've found to prove anything of value in such a formless language; even Lisp knows which arguments belong to which function call, in Forth that depends on what came before.

And it fits well with an interpreted language, since a slow compile often defeats the purpose of compiling in the first place. The tracing I've implemented so far is instant in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing this.This is what I want use for embedded in C projects,the same syntax.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks like JS, and JS does not look like C/C++/Java

<comment><USER7> I suspect OP is referring to things like the braces, do/while, etc, that are common to all of those, and not in Lua.</comment></comment>