The Post Office Should Just Become a Bank - <AUTHOR> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116374/postal-service-banking-how-usps-can-save-itself-and-help-poor <comment><USER2> This is the bones of the argument, I think:

 _Instead of banks, these mostly low-income individuals use check-cashing stores, pawnshops, payday lenders, and other unscrupulous financial services providers who gouged their customers to the tune of $89 billion in interest and fees in 2012, according to the IG report. Post offices could deliver the same services at a 90 percent discount, saving the average underserved household over $2,000 a year and still providing the USPS with $8.9 billion in new annual profits, significantly improving its troubled balance sheet._

I agree with two points: (1) embrace rather than chase away payday lenders. Part of the reason this sector is so scummy is because of the bad reputation it carries. Reputable players want to stay out of it. (2) Create simple financial services (possibly subsidised) aimed at the poor.

But... the idea that they are going to wipe out an industry, cut the revenues by 90% and make a 100% of the remaining 10% those revenue in profit is idiotic. The reason payday loans have high interest rates is because they have a high default rate and they are for small amounts/time, and therefore have high "transaction costs." It can be improved, but this kind of math is really stupid.

<comment><USER3> The fees are not based on risk, they're based on market forces. This article[0] states the median APR on payday loans is 322%. There's no way defaults are _that_ bad. The loan shops are just taking advantage of people who have no other choice, and don't know any better.

[0] [http://consumerist.com/2013/04/26/the-average-payday-loan- bo...](http://consumerist.com/2013/04/26/the-average-payday-loan-borrower- spends-more-than-half-the-year-in-debt-to-lender/)

<comment><USER4> Market forces should correct that via competition, if true.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, little problem there. It's almost impossible for non-incumbents to enter the sector now due to the huge regulatory compliance cost. Between the burden of Banking Secrecy Act and the challenge of regulatory capture, only very wealthy individuals and companies can enter the sector. And they have little incentive to do so, given the sector's schlep factor and poor reputation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is exactly the problem Russian Post is experiencing. It does offer all sorts of services ranging from money transfers (like Western union but countrywide only), payments (you can pay your utilities bill ex.), selling stuff ranging from seeds and plants to bread and sugar. The issues this is causing: immense queues, mail being delivered FROM Moscow TO Moscow (yes same city) in 7 days (yes, a week) and it is not uncommon, you are lucky if your mail makes it in 3 days.

What is amusing that same letter going to, say, Vladivostok will take roughly same 3-4 days.

Want that post from hell in your country? Go ahead, make it a bank, but it will be a bank not a post office anymore.

<comment><USER7> Germany also has this problem, but in another way: most of the queues originate from understaffing.

Our postal service also sells china-made headphones, batteries, emergency birthday gifts and other totally not postal or money-related shit. And I bet that a huge chunk of the profits originate from the side-selling business, just like gas stations where the main good (here: gas) is sold as a loss leader and the real profit is made with the stuff people buy by random...

<comment><USER6> Yes biggest part of the problem in russia is that post is understaffed, but wages are laughable nobody wants to work there, and those that do work there do not care since there is constant shortage. So quality of service is poor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Swiss post[1] office has been offering banking services for a very long time and I consider them one of the best banking service providers.

If you have only ever used a US bank you have no idea what you are missing.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostFinance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostFinance)

</comment><comment><USER9> UK post offices have been offering banking services for decades, in the form of savings accounts, current accounts and access to financial services. It has even entered the argot, with people likely to refer to the concept of cash savings as 'having a few quid in the post office'.

Please note that it hasn't saved the world, or even prevented post offices from closing. But it does provide widespread access to banking, both for people who might otherwise be un-banked and elderly people who might have trouble travelling to the nearest branch of a high-street bank.

It would seem to run against the grain for the USA, stepping in to an industry that already has strong private services and competition. As a way to provide a social good it seems to work reasonably, but isn't the Internet going to leapfrog the need for most in-person financial services anyway?

</comment><comment><USER10> The UK had something similar.

Royal Mail was the delivery of postal mail, and the counters at post offices that did post office services (sold stamps, weighed parcels, did some government forms, did 'postal orders' etc). They got split out into separate businesses to allow competition in both spaces while making sure that postal mail was treated the same on mainland UK.

Part of the PO couters service was to convert some benefit recipients "giros" into cash. The giros were subject to masssive amounts of fraud and theft. To solve this PO counters started offering "basic accounts" \- money could be paid in and benefits would be paid directly into the account. You got an ATM card with no debt facility at all.

This concept was expanded and all banks now offer something called "basic accounts" \- these allow BACS transfer but do not allow overdraf at all. They are fantastically useful.

I have no idea how they're paid for from the banks point of view. No debt and small account balances means not much bank income. UK banks didn't have much choice. They are pretty unpopular in the UK and they need to do some better PR to avoid extra regulation.

There's also a gently rumbling problem of the conflict between "protecting peoe from fraud" and "allowing people to hae their cash". One of the banks has been asking people who withdraw a few thousand pounds what it's going to be used for. Obviously this causes outrage. But then other people clear out tens of thousands of pounds from six different accounts (including the max overdraft limit of a business account) because they are he victims of fraud and the bank fraud control doesn't spot it and those people ask (while acceptig their responsibility) why the bank didn't step in.

<comment><USER11> They're paid for from the fact that the amount of service that needs to be provided is small, and that in aggregate it could be a decent amount of change that the bank can choose to invest in low risk sectors, or can turn around to offer it as a loan with interest.

In general there is money to be made amidst the fluctuations of deposits and withdrawals, so long as you have additional capital to cover it in case too many withdrawals happen at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This proposal has been kicked around for years (because the post office once did this), but seems to be starting to expand in an ugly way. _Speculative loans_ should not be an element of any USPS banking proposal - USPS should be a place to keep money and cash checks, not a new opportunity for eventually privatized graft with federal guarantees. It should just be another government debt dispenser, not the basis for some new kickback bureaucracy.

Checking accounts don't pay any interest worth discussing - the incentive for people to use them, an act that carries significant management risk (although that's been socialized through the FDIC), is because the only alternative is the mattress.

I'd gladly move my checking to the USPS if they started offering it. It's got a lot more locations than my credit union.

</comment><comment><USER13> A relatively minor move could just be to update the traditional money order to a modern, card-based form.

Traditionally the money-order served as a sort-of equivalent to the personal check, but not tied to your personal bank account (which means that they shouldn't bounce, you don't need a bank account in the first place to write one, you don't give out your bank account number by paying with it, etc.). But as personal checks get less and less commonly used, the utility of a money order as a check-like form of payment also declines. The modern personal check is the debit card, so a modern money order should probably function similarly.

<comment><USER14> "the utility of a money order as a check-like form of payment"

... is extremely high and growing over time with poor people.

People don't pay high M.O. fees because they're ignorant or stubborn but because they can't open a bank account without having the contents seized legally (child support, debt collectors, maybe on the run who knows), or more likely the bank will refuse to open an account and offer then credit (which is what a checking account is) until they pay off past due debts A, B, and C.

This becomes a problem with the "P.O. is a bank" concept because large segments of the population need an anonymous payment system of some sort and I suspect the P.O. will be extremely interested in all your demographic information especially id documents and postal addresses.

<comment><USER7> > because they can't open a bank account without having the contents seized > legally (child support, debt collectors, maybe on the run who knows)

I have experienced the latter two situations. If you have debt collectors hunting you, in Germany you can ask for a so-called "P-Konto" (Pfändungsschutzkonto, a bank account with a certain level that may not be seized by ANYONE. This amount gets higher e.g. if you have a family). If you're on the run... well, most banks let you keep your account as long as you don't manage to let it dry up, because then the notification letters will bounce.

Also, if you're on the run, remember that cards on your name may get flagged - if used, cops are silently alerted to arrest you. Or the CCTV footage might be used for mugshots, or your data mined to predict your behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> India Post offers a whole lot of financial/banking services[1] apart from usual money orders/transfers; they're very popular too.

[1][http://www.indiapost.gov.in/financial_services.aspx](http://www.indiapost.gov.in/financial_services.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER16> Taiwan Post Office has full banking service for a very long time because of the availability on the scale.

</comment><comment><USER17> No it shouldn't.

<comment><USER18> Why not?

It's getting quite difficult to live in our society if someone isn't "perfect." Perfect credit, or virtually everything is more expensive, even non-credit stuff like insurance; perfect criminal history, so you can forget getting a job at a lot of companies if you smoked pot or, FSM-forbid, are released from jail; perfect banking history; perfect social media presence; and on and on.

The free market isn't willing to address this, so how do we do it as a group?

<comment><USER19> The free market is perfectly willing to address this. It will do so by offering them less than minimum wage, once it is allowed to do so. Until then, "free market" is a misnomer.

<comment><USER20> Okay, so how does the "free market" address a growing underclass that can't afford to live outside poverty? How does the "free market" address social issues caused as a result of this poverty? Inconveniently, for the "free market", these people will not go quietly, and when things get really bad, violence will become an issue. So the "free market" incarcerates them, hoping they don't reproduce, unless they accept their slavery. Then afterwards, everyone is happy, living in paradise.

<comment><USER21> Why, the free market already addresses these issues: commercial prison services, commercial security forces - mostly used outside of the country of origin, for now - and bail bond companies and and and... a whole industry is based around services tailored to the growing underclass.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do you hate Apple news? - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/30/do-you-hate-apple-news/

<comment><USER2> I don't hate Apple news. Or Google news. Or CrunchJooJooPad news.

What I hate is that every 2 bit blogger posts derivatives of the same piece of news. Many times this news snippet is devoid of solid facts or hard evidence, which of course causes all the armchair pundits and fanboys to begin speculating on why this news is the best/worst/biggest/whateverest announcement and how it will change life as we know it.

Layer on top of that the general karma and attention whoring that is so predominant these days, and the tiniest fart is echoed and amplified to all ends of the blog-o-sphere (another annoying term).

I've though about writing a HN-style site where similar stories would all get grouped and rolled up into common topics, with a new-submission throttle (had 5 iPad stories in the last hour? You'll have to wait 45 minutes to submit the next one).

<comment><USER3> Agreed, it's really the repetition that is somewhat annoying. Announce/launch days can be doubly annoying. The truth is, there's only so much to their products - especially the 'locked down' ones - that we don't really need THAT much information, speculation and punditry.</comment></comment>


Am I the only one who hates the new youtube.com/Google+ layout? - <AUTHOR>

I just recently saw that when I'm logged into youtube.com I get a very google+ looking youtube.com website which looks nothing like the youtube.com website when you are in incognito mode, the one which I actually find useful to use. What are your thoughts on the new website? Image: http://i.imgur.com/mkGkT.png <comment><USER2> I hate to be _that guy_ , but it looks like you drew a penis over your username.

Anyway, I nearly never ever visit YouTube's home page. I almost always reach it from elsewhere, through direct links or by clicking the YouTube icon on embedded videos.

What I hate about YouTube is how it is connected to your Google account. Why can't I have a browser tab open with Gmail without being signed into YouTube? Or what if I want to be signed in with another account?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good one. I didn't even realize, beyond just sensoring my photo/username. Anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm disappointed because yesterday I'm browsing about looking for Louis CK videos and now I can't see all the other great comedians as well. I think the interface no longer promotes exploring of new content.</comment>


California utility PG&E explores bankruptcy filing - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pg-e-us-bankruptcy-exclusive/exclusive-california-utility-pge-explores-bankruptcy-filing-sources-idUSKCN1OY225 <comment><USER2> Given the nature of its work, why is PG&E not a government entity? What are the perceived benefits of having it as a separate company if the executives are going to reap rich rewards when things are going good, but are going to declare bankruptcy (or ask taxpayers for help) when things go bad?

<comment><USER3> Private only really helps if there is competition...

Are there competitors who could buy up this California infrastructure when PG&E dies?</comment></comment>


edw519 & rms Interview with Andrew Warner from Mixergy about Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mixergy.com/why-communities/

<comment><USER2> An interesting dichotomy occurs when he mentions "optimizing" for digg versus how to optimize for hacker news. Ed (edw519, I presume) says.. no.. just... be yourself. Be sincere. Don't try to game the system.

For a super-high traffic site like digg, it becomes absolutely paramount to get your hooks into people because you don't have alot of time to make an impact. An extra marketing once-over on the submission is virtually required (not to even mention going a step above to rigging the system with some quid pro quo or dummy accounts). It makes digg largely unappealing to me from a submissions stand-point because, first, the traffic is of low quality, and secondly, it seems... uhm... unsavory.

For a lower traffic site like this with a super narrow focus, it's much easier to get noticed. And the traffic is of extremely high quality (presuming you are on topic...) You are in the new queue long enough that your story is going to live or die on its own much more than the magic title, etc.

<comment><USER3> Good point. Digg's top users spoke at one my Mixergy Forums. They were very clear about what it took to get to the top of Digg. No hesitation at all.

<comment><USER4> If I had a trick, I would have shared it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unless I'm missing something obvious - _that_ is not an _interview_.

<comment><USER2> The audio is at the bottom. The video is like an intro :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for clarifying that. I wonder if there's a better/clearer way for me to show videos in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool... nice that those silly karma points finally were useful for something.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scroll down far enough and you will find my picture on a CD jacket. That picture and the quote from pg are both from this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=202096>

<comment><USER7> Congrats, you are a celebrity! I can tell it is already going to your head with this shameless self-promotion of your picture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Sometimes it's hard _not_ to make an ascii of myself.

<comment><USER7> Oh no. That is an unfair characterization of yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is amazing how listening to people talk can then affect the way you read their comments. It is like you have a better/newfound understanding of the person they are based on their speech pattern, speed, accent, inflections etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> He talks a about meeting in person. Am I missing something? Or is it just that I'm living in the wrong place?

<comment><USER4> Startup school functions as a defacto Hacker News meetup, plus there have been some Pittsburgh ones.

<comment><USER9> Sucks to be in Europe :-)

<comment><USER3> Or maybe Europe needs their own meetups.

<comment><USER6> Free Beer for Hackers here in Innsbruck:-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Listening to this reminds of how sites like this remind me of sports talk radio, commenting on the latest play (link). Always better with more people around.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to see their faces, facebook them.

</comment><comment><USER3> edw519 & rms thanks for doing this interview. I loved the conversation.</comment>


Show HN: Keygen – A dead-simple product licensing API built for developers - <AUTHOR> https://keygen.sh/ <comment><USER2> I think it's odd to offer a service like this with no protection against cracking.

I mean, sure, I licence one of my own products with a RSAPSS signature on an environmental constraint .. but if somebody went to the effort they could just flip a single instruction to bypass it. However, I am pretty sure nobody in my target market will bother.

However, I don't think that would hold with something like this. What stops people releasing a bunch of generic bypass/crack tools against your client SDKs?

<comment><AUTHOR> To validate a license key requires an active internet connection. This is for online/web-based apps, with an emphasis on JavaScript apps built on Node, Electron, etc. Licenses are validated by making an authenticated GET request to something like [https://evilcorp.keygen.sh/v1/licenses/3qMEarbK/actions/vali...](https://evilcorp.keygen.sh/v1/licenses/3qMEarbK/actions/validate). Keygen isn't meant to be used for offline apps, as license validation requires an authenticated API request.

<comment><USER3> Did you reply to the right person? Your reply does not seem to address anything that was said.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. What prevents cracking is the fact that license keys can only be created if you are either an authenticated user of the account or authenticated with a product API token. In order to create a license crack, you would have to obtain a valid API key for that specific account. Everything with the API is done over the wire, meaning there are no public/private keys within your app to crack.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you actually understand cracking if you're claiming your protection is uncrackable. You're certainly not the first licensing company to sell that lie, if that is what you're claiming. I can explain why what you just said is easily crackable if you'd like.

Spoiler alert: nothing can stop cracking (but that's not the point of licensing): [https://wyday.com/limelm/features/why/](https://wyday.com/limelm/features/why/)

But I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt and say you didn't actually understand the question.

(Also, I'm certain I'll be downvoted for commenting on a competitor's product, but licensing companies that lie to customers is a particular pet peeve of mine).

<comment><USER5> What Ubisoft did a few years ago with Settlers VII was to put required pieces of code in the DRM; e.g. without an internet connection, the software would not function at all; it took over a year and a lot of hard work before they found a way to write their own server to serve up the required bits, and it was just for that game, not a general solution.

<comment><USER6> Then again, the servers were so poor that, for a long time, the game basically wouldn't function _with_ a connection either.

<comment><USER5> True :) It was also very badly programmed, making your PC die in agony when you'd play it, even if you had the highest end stuff on the market. Still a very fun game though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Firefox's tracking protection is preventing the "Get Early Access" button from working, just putting this warning into the console:

> The resource at "[https://mc.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe/form- > settings?u=0d...](https://mc.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe/form- > settings?u=0da915687b658ef99fb6b9075&id=8e6c7696a2&u=0da915687b658ef99fb6b9075&id=8e6c7696a2&c=dojo_request_script_callbacks.dojo_request_script0") > was blocked because tracking protection is enabled.[Learn More]

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks. I'll check out what the deal is. There have been a few other issues in Firefox.

<comment><USER8> Do people not test their sites in Firefox anymore?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did extensive testing in FF. This seems to be an issue related to privacy settings: [https://github.com/rydama/mailchimp-ajax- signup/issues/6](https://github.com/rydama/mailchimp-ajax-signup/issues/6). I will look into additional ways to allow sign ups that don't have this issue.

<comment><USER9> The fact that MailChimp got on to Firefox's privacy block list is not too surprising to me. I deal with many daily spam emails that all originate from MailChimp. No amount of checking off on their unsubscribe form that the senders are using MailChimp as a spam service actually gets some sort of invention to occur. Personally I am glad that they are being flagged since they do not do much to stop spammers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I'm the creator of Keygen and would love to answer any questions that you may have about it. I've been developing the API for over 6 months and figured I'd try and gather feedback on the product through a beta before the big launch day. I'd appreciate any feedback at all!

<comment><USER10> First of all, this looks a good idea to me.

"Traditional" license management servers (like FlexLM) are a scary piece of software for sysadmins: think of it like a black box that will shut down everything if you mess up.

This license-as-a-service makes operations very easy.

I wonder if you have in mind something about concurrent users. I mean, some software is licensed on a _concurrent_ user basis, not just per seat.

If a user logs-in twice, usually the LM revokes the license for the session that was active, and assigns a new one to the user that just logged-in.

Also, license reporting is also a good idea for answering questions like... how much do I have to pay for next year maintainance?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I realized that I guess I had misread your post, so my previous reply doesn't answer your question. Support for detecting/revoking concurrent users is a great idea and I will be sure to come back to that in the future. As of now, that will have to be done outside of Keygen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyboday have any recommendation for a self hosted licencing system?

<comment><USER12> There is this:

[http://dev.nauck-it.de/projects/license-manager](http://dev.nauck- it.de/projects/license-manager)

<comment><USER11> I found Portable.Licensing by Nauck too, but have you any experience with it?

I'm just kinda confused that there are not more self hosted libraries for this.

<comment><USER12> Haven't tried it unfortunately - back in 2005 when we looked at licensing, we came to the conclusion that we might as well do it ourselves. But having a proper open source solution would be better, easier to audit and better collaboration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What happens if the company that hosts a licensing server goes out of business?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will have a contingency plan in place that will likely involve open sourcing the API so that it can be self-hosted.

<comment><USER14> Depending on _how_ the company crashes and burns, couldn't that be prevented from getting enacted? For example, I can't imagine that investors would be too happy that the company's "biggest" asset would be given away in that situation. Same goes for (possibly) filing for bankruptcy. Wouldn't creditors have a say?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do any services exist that fill the niche of "I have built an API, and I now want to charge for it"? API tokens, billing, metrics, etc

<comment><USER16> I know Azure has API Management [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/services/api-management/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/api- management/)

It doesn't look like it has the built in monetization, but it should be fairly easy to smash a payment provider and API management together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how you can avoid users from tampering with the licence check in dynamic languages like javascript and ruby where anyone has access to the node_modules or rubygems directories.

I know this is not the focus of this particular product but since it has come up in multiple comments. How could this be solved?

<comment><USER18> It is also worth noting - how much do those cases really matter anyway? If they're going to the bother of disabling your licence checks, they probably aren't going to buy it anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this validation actually performant or secure? It seems like if you implement this on the client side, you end up using JavaScript and the client can just run code that patches the call to the server to have it always pass. Then if you implement this on the server side, then you pay a latency penalty for every request, as you have to verify the token sent to your server against the keygen.sh server.

It seems like this is either insecure or you pay an RTT latency penalty on every authenticated request. Is this correct? Is there something I'm missing here?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's assuming that you require license validation with every request though, when in reality you really only need that information periodically. If you're using Keygen alongside your own API, then that information can be cached and requested when needed.

It would be integrated the same way you would integrate something like Stripe; you request information when required, and keep your own records up to date via webhook events.

For example, a desktop app would really only need to validate a users license after they have successfully logged in after booting the app; you likely wouldn't need to validate the license again for at least 24 hours, and that's assuming you wanted to perform periodic license validations for long-running sessions.

<comment><USER19> This is a good point. I guess it depends on the characteristics of your application, and the level of control you want over verifying user activity within your application. Maybe you could only verify very important actions or something if that is all you need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm absolutely thrilled by the response so far! I didn't expect to get such a large amount of interest so fast. I already have hundreds of users interested in the early access program. I'm going to be hard at work the next couple weeks writing documentation and developing the rest of the web app (API is ready) so that we can get this ball rolling!

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been thinking about licensing recently, in the context of package managers.

How can you allow people to install and update commercial packages, without the problem that anyone can use any key?

I'm thinking particularly in terms of software which is licensed to run on 1 domain, 3 domains, 5 domains etc - but as soon as you use a CLI package installer, you don't know the domain being used.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be handling it the same way Stripe handles their libraries: [https://github.com/stripe/stripe-node#api- overview](https://github.com/stripe/stripe-node#api-overview). Account tokens are cryptographically sound enough so that it would take ages to 'find' a correct token, much less the correct token AND account. Restricting licenses by domain would need to be handled outside of Keygen; you can track the allowed machines (via fingerprinting) through the Keygen API, and then act accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If the API is publicly documented, how will you stop people from just spoofing the licensing server?

I assume you've addressed this issue, but I'd love to know how.

Edit: From reading a bit more, I understand that this service is mainly aimed at web/online apps, so piracy is a non-issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this is for online/web-based apps, with an emphasis on JavaScript apps built on Node, Electron, etc. Licenses are validated by making an authenticated GET request to something like `[https://evilcorp.keygen.sh/v1/licenses/3qMEarbK/actions/vali...](https://evilcorp.keygen.sh/v1/licenses/3qMEarbK/actions/validate`). Depending on how you manage users, you can require them to login (request an API token) before being able to access your app. Depending on if you're performing the validation server-side or client-side, you can either use a product-specific API key (private) or the license owners API token (a signed in user), respectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just a quick note yet: not sure "evilcorp" is the best of names for an example, though.

EDIT: Definitely enjoying the slightly creepy visual haxor effects, though.

<comment><USER23> I think it's a reference to Mr. Robot

<comment><USER24> Without wanting to give away the plot to Mr Robot, Evilcorp is still a pretty bad choice given what they do regarding security, or lack of such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How do libraries for PHP work?

You only need a key management service like this when you go from SaaS to on- prem/equivalent, at which point PHP is in the unenviable position of having readable source files.

It's possible to patch out license checks from any language, but PHP makes it pretty easy - what's your approach to solving this? Ioncube-style binary extensions? If so, PHP7/opcache compatibility?

<comment><AUTHOR> To validate a license key requires an active internet connection. There is no compilation or obfuscation because your app never contains any license keys directly. All of the logic is handled via the API. Validating a license would require performing a GET request to a users license validation endpoint.

<comment><USER25> OK. Just to clarify, there's no protection against a malicious user with the ability to remove these API calls from their copy of the app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. There's really no way around that being a possibility, especially if you're using web technologies.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


US judge Thomas Griesa declares Argentina in contempt of court - <AUTHOR> http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/170990/us-judge-thomas-griesa-declares-argentina-in-contempt-of-court-monetary-fine-decision-postponed

<comment><USER2> GT said the local law to pay in Buenos Aires is illegal. Actually the law is legal in Argentina, even if it breaks the contract in New York.

</comment><comment><USER3> How many other countries have New York as their banks' legal jurisdiction?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you find designers and animators? - <AUTHOR>

I am in need of someone to do some animations and graphic design for me. Anybody out there do this sort of thing or know of a good way to get it done? <comment><USER2> Have a look at <http://99designs.com></comment>


Chelsea Manning confirms health status with attorneys - <AUTHOR> https://www.chelseamanning.org/featured/chelsea-helath-status <comment><USER2> This really puts the whole Hillary Clinton email scandal into perspective, huh?

The message seems to be that if you leak classified data to the American people you get a big punishment, whereas if you leak classified data carelessly (Clinton) or for your girlfriend's book (Petraeus) the most you can expect is a slap on the wrist. That's f ed up.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, it's pretty standard for crimes to have differing punishments depending on whether they were accidental or purposeful. Sometimes they're even considered different crimes entirely (i.e., murder vs manslaughter).

(I'm not defending Chelsea's treatment here. I just think it's odd that grizzles has singled out this particular aspect of the situation as worthy of outrage.)

<comment><USER2> Petraeus did it for sex. He got a fine, and no prison time.

<comment><USER4> He also leaked far less data and had an idea of what he was leaking. Manning did far, far more damage to national security interests the law was designed to protect.

<comment><USER5> He was also in the military, which carries different expectations of behaviour, and a tougher system of account.

<comment><USER6> The system of account should be stricter the higher you go up, no?

Otherwise you seem to be making the case for civilian leaders to not have access at all to sensitive information.

(Sidebar: Because of the way this played out, this is probably going to be an impossible topic to talk about for many years. And the system is going to suffer for it.)

<comment><USER4> >The system of account should be stricter the higher you go up, no?

There's more than one dimension here. The "system of account", as you call it, should be stricter the higher up you go, and it should also be stricter if you're uniformed military.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When you write a letter to someone facing 20+ years more in prison, who has just tried to kill herself, what do you say? I'm kind of at a loss for words -- "hope you get well soon?" "hope you are out of the hospital and back to your, uh, home soon?"

[https://www.chelseamanning.org/learn-more/write-to- chelsea-m...](https://www.chelseamanning.org/learn-more/write-to-chelsea- manning)

<comment><USER8> How about not touching on that at all? Surely she hears more than enough on that already and is confronted with it when she's not reading about it also.

Something that has nothing to do with her and her current situation, something that allows her to escape her situation at least in her mind for a little bit, would probably be welcome. If I were in that situation, I believe I would appreciate that anyway.

<comment><USER7> Probably a good idea. Yan wrote about her visit and she seemed interested in current affairs/etc. (plus writes articles, including one which went out on 3 July)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is anyone surprised she's suicidal? Locked in solitary confinement, for a minimum of 8 years (probably a lot more), at the hands of an obviously vindictive government - I imagine that by now I would have tried to kill myself too.

<comment><USER10> It's still deplorable to me that you can force someone into solitary confinement for anything over a couple of days.

Well, a lot of the mechanisms of prison seem pretty counterproductive... 23 hours in the same room.

My understanding is that members of the military sign away a bunch of their rights but I don't understand how throwing somebody in jail for 20 years is a thing we came up with.

<comment><USER11> It came up as a consequence of the criminal justice system. That kind of punishment was meant for people who could not be left by themselves as they posed a very real threat to society: murderers, rapists, arsonists etc. Once the system is in place, its easy to just "add" to it. Making certain things severely punishable (e.g. the prosecution of Aaron Schwartz) just requires the lawmakers to categorize these new crimes in a certain way and not to invent the category itself.

Of course, if you go back further, punishments were invented by the ruling class to keep everyone else in line. The king could pretty much have anyone hanged if he wanted to and it took sometime before there were enough smart people in society to suggest that this was maybe not the best way to live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This part seems a little bit ironic "Though she would have preferred to keep her private information private".

Is that not why she's come into the public eye? For releasing private information that some people would have preferred to keep private?

This isn't a comment on whether her leak was the right thing to do or not, just the whole "Treat others like you want others to treat you".

<comment><USER13> Ask yourself what value to society do Chelsea create with her leak?

Then ask, what value does broadcasting her health status everywhere provide society?

Hopefully this will help inform you of the differences in these separate acts, since it seems to have blown right by you at light speed.

<comment><USER14> > Ask yourself what value to society do Chelsea create with her leak? > Then > ask, what value does broadcasting her health status everywhere provide > society?

(Not who you replied to, but...)

I believe Chelsea Manning deserves privacy for an issue such as this, but also hope that the situation will (at least) make more people contemplate the extreme nature of solitary. I would be undone fifty times by now if I were isolated by force.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk's SpaceX to Construct Spaceport in Texas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/business/elon-musks-spacex-to-construct-spaceport-in-texas.html

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of a sci-fi novel, where inhabitants of a planet too primitive to create spaceships still build a spaceport just in case someone comes :).</comment>


James Bond fails the tech test in Skyfall - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20555621 <comment><USER2> The server room scene could of been silent if the hardware was using fan-less chip-sets.

There are some silent data-centers that use no fans. The only noise would be high-frequency electrical hum. So, for a "future" concept, it works.

As far as the Fancy Graphics, its exactly where hacking is going. Metasploit Framework has an interested graphical interface program called Armitage which reproduces the command-line format into graphical imagery. Considering where the "future" is heading, most of the command-line will be shifted towards a hybrid approach of scripts run via graphical interfaces with CLI tucked in neatly.

The movie failed hard but, did have "proof of concept" pseudo-foreshadowing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bond film tech is supposed to be slightly better than what we have. In the 1963 "From Russia with Love", Bond had a car phone. In Moonraker, Drax has a hidden space station. In "Die Another Day", the fight scene use robots with lasers that are powerful enough to sear steel and drill a hole through a head - in a fraction of a second.

I'm with Double0Seven in saying that the the server uses fan-less machines.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the mean time, he is using a miniature GPS device to signal his position... with a switch... and a tiny antenna! I found that so kitch compared to the fancy annimation you see in the hacking scene!

</comment><comment><USER5> Definitely a fun read!</comment>


T-Mobile is writing the manual on how to fuck up the internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/10/9706296/t-mobile-binge-on-streaming-net-neutrality-problem-john-legere <comment><USER2> To keep this in context, T-Mobile offers some of the best plans for your money.

I'd be less concerned if T-Mobile outlined how their zero-rating policy was not discriminatory to smaller video services.

I wonder if they way they are zero-rating is similar to what Netflix proposed when Comcast started complaining about Netflix utilization on it's interconnects.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have an unlimited plan with T-Mobile. They're available for $80/mo. I think I just saw some fine print that said your traffic can be deprioritized after 20+ GB in a month. I was really worried the new Binge-On plan would downgrade me to 480p over cellular all the time, which it does, but you can apparently opt out easily.

AT&T started throttling my unlimited plan at 5GB, which coincidentally was what their current plans offered (no grandfathering here!).

I think T-Mobile's offering is _way_ better.

I share conflicted feelings about the net neutrality implications of zero rating, but it seems like their policies have become more inclusive over time. So I think it's a little early to declare the sky is falling.</comment>


What's the cheapest and quickest way to build an air ventilator for medical use? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There are a lot of dimensions to this: The Pandemic Ventilator Project [https://panvent.blogspot.com/](https://panvent.blogspot.com/) is taking this on. If you happen to have $15,000.00 lying around, buying one appears to be an option, although I bet the sell out quickly ... Building an iron lung out of wood, from Popular Mechanics magazine, Jan 1952, is also described here: [https://books.google.com/books?id=tNwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA262&sour...](https://books.google.com/books?id=tNwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA262&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false). Presumably a simple CPAP machine would help, but it 'aerosolizes' the virus, and makes it likely that any caregiver would be much more likely to get sick. Also, a CPAP machine doesn't give as much help as a real medical respirator as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just buy one if you want one. There isn't a shortage. You can't use them on yourself though, nor can you use one without training.

<comment><USER4> What exactly would require training? Is this not something that could be learned from a Youtube video? Or is learning to use one more like learning to play the violin?

<comment><USER5> I'm not a doctor but I think there's multiple types of ventilation. There's invasive and non invasive ventilation.

Invasive ventilation requires a tube inserted into you and it's very unpleasant. You are often sedated while this is done.

Sedation requires monitoring and care to supply drugs, nutrition, cleaning, exercising and stretching muscles, and many more tasks.

Noninvasive ventilation is like CPAP machines. They just cover your mouth.

I don't know why you'd use one or another but there's likely a reason the sick are being sedated for covid-19</comment></comment></comment>


Your Face To The World - <AUTHOR> http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000212.php Good article on home-page design. I'm sure we can all agree on the importance of the home page, but the article goes into depth of the why and the how of it.
Some summarized points (lots more in the article):
"A home page's impact on a company's bottom line is far greater than simple measures of e-commerce revenues.
The home page is your company's face to the world. " - Jakob Nielsen
There are only two important functions for a home page:  The home page delivers the content to [users] that they are seeking (such as the top story on CNN ) or  The home page provides strong scent to those pages that contain the content the user seeks.
What Do Customers Want?
When customers visit your home page, their attention span is limited. They are busy and want to find answers quickly.
They don't want unnecessary distractions and will immediately leave and go to another site if they cannot find what they
want on your home page. They do not want to wade through marketing messages.
When customers arrive at your home page, they expect to find what they want quickly.
After all, the promise of the Web is to provide an efficient, alternative channel that
complements other channels like bricks-and-mortar shops and corporate customer support.
When customers visit a home page (whether for the first time or as repeat visitors) they might want to
     satisfy an information need quickly
     look for contact information like a phone number or email address
     autonomously complete a task, without needing customer support
     solve a problem
    * buy a product <comment><USER2> I think it's also important on a webapp homepage a try it button (without registration). I think a lot of people want to try something before they start using it.

</comment><comment><USER3> love the usability walkthrough's. would be nice if they showed some examples of what doesn't work too.

<comment><USER4> what doesn't work: <http://clutterme.com>

<comment><USER5> Speaking personally, the front page of clutterme looks good. It's the samples that put me off. :/

<comment><USER6> I agree... are you trying to avoid giving information away with those samples?

<comment><USER4> We were, now I guess the cat is a bit out of the bag. I've touched the samples up a bit. Hope they are a bit better.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ten seconds of math - <AUTHOR> http://www.mental-math-trainer.com/ <comment><USER2> Noticed some fun SEO hacking at the bottom of the page:

<p class="hardly-visible">puzzles calculate formula mathematics maths decimal number calculating mathematician multiply measurement probability equation division measure homework units word problem solve converting resources tessellation anxiety math problem problems convert unit ratio number trigonometry perimeter divide mental multiplication calculus math quadratic triangle teselation problems pi change equations homeschool fraction tesellation converter maths problems fractions conversion math prime mathmagic Theorem calculator percent magic homework fractol volume math math tesselation math math math mathematical statistic unit geometry math polygon square math pre-algebra algebra word statistics games area math Pythagorean fractal history trapezoid maths conversion circle numbers circle </p>

<comment><USER3> They should remove that. It'll get them smacked by the google spam team eventually.

<comment><USER4> Could Google theoretically calculate the probability that some text on a webpage is extremely hard or impossible for humans to readily see based on info from the source page about the background and text?

<comment><USER5> Not just theoretically. Very concretely.

<comment><USER4> Well I said probability because depending on how complex the background is such as photographs, video, or some weird scrolling behavior, there could be some hindrances to having a computer accurately or computationally-efficiently determine this.

<comment><USER6> Google uses filters, which run in different intervals apart from the main algorithm and have different effects for a page or the whole website. This is why spammy SEO tactics often "work for a while" \- until said computationally intensive filter catches them and often punishes the whole website. Prominent examples for these filters are Panda [0] and Penguin [1].

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Panda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Panda)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I was near the end, I pressed backspace to clear my answer, and it wound up navigating me back to HN, wiping out my results.

(I hate backspace-to-go-back. It's the worst feature in a browser. Is there a way to turn it off?)

This mental math exercise is a cool and fun concept! Good execution.

<comment><USER8> > I hate backspace-to-go-back. It's the worst feature in a browser. Is there a > way to turn it off?

I _love_ this feature. Makes browser navigation keyboard friendly.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.

<comment><USER9> What about [alt]+arrow?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought that maybe the ranking was real.. no its not

      function getRank(score) {
        // TODO we should add a real ranking one day
        var ONE_BARELY_REACHES_THIS_SCORE = 200;
        return Math.floor(100 * Math.min(Math.E * score / (ONE_BARELY_REACHES_THIS_SCORE * Math.PI), 1));
      }

<comment><USER11> WTH?? then why release it in the first place.. That's the only crucial step in this whole concept..

<comment><USER12> It can't be the crucial step since one could open javascript console and type

      foo=true;$("#question-answer").bind('keydown', function(){if(foo)$("#question-answer").val(eval($("#question").html()));$("#question-answer").keyup();foo=!foo;});

<comment><USER11> okay.. now so.. what is the crucial step in this whole thing?

is it generating random numbers with random operators i between them and evaluating whether the solution given by the user is correct and count the number of correct responses??

By crucial step i meant the logic on how he calculates the percentage of people below.. how it changes when the operators used are changed.(is it dependent on operators in the first place? ) and when the range is changed? etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> After going for several minutes I gave up.

In addition to a leader board, it needs to: \- Have a time limit and see who can get the most calculations done on that fixed time \- or, have a fixed number of calculations and see how fast people can answer them \- or, it could get faster as you progress

The calculation of the "you are better than X%" needs to be fixed because everybody in my office was better than 100%

<comment><USER14> I was thinking maybe instead of a leaderboard, graphs/analysis of raw data would be very cool, such as accuracy and answers per second and total score, and how those stats match up with the rest of the people who have played

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For me there is a set of calculations I can do without thinking and there is a set where it takes several seconds to figure the solution out. No smooth transition. Is it the same for you? If yes, this would make tuning this game pretty hard because it is either to easy or to hard.

<comment><USER16> When I turned squares on I hit a wall at 23^2 etc. I can do it, but it's 10 seconds just to do that calc. Basically anything bigger than 14.

For the rest it was more about staring at the numpad (which I never use) and typing in my answer. If I typo'd I lost several seconds as I'd not have a finger on backspace :(

<comment><USER17> Squares are actually pretty easy with a mental math trick.

n^x = (n-m)(n+m) + m^2

so for 23:

23^2 = 20*26 + 9 = 529

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice! I made something similar a while ago - [http://www.speedsums.com](http://www.speedsums.com) :)

<comment><USER19> I like how it remembers your worst answer and reminds you what's the correct answer! The victory animation was a bit terrifying though, like one of those "stare at the screen" pranks :) Cheers

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I crazy love how it auto submits your answers for you, super convenient! My dad made me do similar online mental math exercises when I was younger and I always hated how clicking "next" reduced my time. Does it take into account what your settings were when it reports your score relative to others?

<comment><USER21> Doesn't pressing Enter generally work? I'm usually surprised by how many people click a button to submit a form.

<comment><USER20> This was a long time ago, I'm sure if Enter had worked I would have used it. They could have been using poorly implemented AJAX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I got redirected to the Google Play store. If I'm on Android why can't I use the website like everyone else? Please don't assume I want to install an app.

<comment><USER23> I also got redirected... I'm on Windows Phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> People should start differentiating between mathematics and arithmetic.

<comment><USER25> Arithmetic is a (small but fundamental) subset of mathematics. I don't see anything wrong with the title.

<comment><USER26> Arithmetic != Mathematics

just as

Typing != Programming

Sure, typing is a useful skill, it's part of programming, but is it programming? - no of course not. In fact it's insulting to programmers to make the confusion.

It's the same with those of us who have taken the time to get good at mathematics - it's not arithmetic. Being good at arithmetic does not mean you are good at math, being good at math does not make you good at arithmetic.

This confusion is especially detrimental to children, many of whom will be put of mathematics because they equate it with the wrote learning and peculiar mental gymnastics of arithmetic, rather than what it is: An exploration of the beautiful and fundamental symmetries that emerge from structure and process.

<comment><USER27> Yes, but arithmetics is a branch of maths, whereas typing is not a branch of programming.

Maybe they plan to extend the site to include trig, algebra, calculus, etc. problems?

<comment><USER26> Not really. Mental arithmetic is the ability to move numbers around in your head, it really is equivalent to being able to type as a programmer. Mental arithmetic is to number theory as being able to type is to programming. That you do not understand this, shows that you too have been damaged by the standard teaching of maths within education - pre university level.

<comment><USER27> > Not really.

Yes, really. "Arithmetic is the branch of mathematics dealing with integers or, more generally, numerical computation" \-- [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Arithmetic.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Arithmetic.html)

> Mental arithmetic is to number theory as being able to type is to > programming.

To paraphrase you, number theory != mathematics. (But number theory ⊂ mathematics, just as arithmetic ⊂ mathematics.)

> That you do not understand this, shows that you too have been damaged by the > standard teaching of maths within education - pre university level.

That's a bit rude, and also inaccurate.

<comment><USER28> I think this is one of the many cases where you emerge out the top of an ideath to come right back to where you started at the bottom, but for different reasons.

I grade school many are taught that math === arithmetic. Then they get to interesting stuff in high school and college and realize arithmetic was just a tiny part of the story. So many at that phase are emphatic about refuting what they were told early on about arithmetic _being_ math. Then when you calm down from that notion, you can get back to realizing that while arithmetic is only a small part of math, it is still very much a part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> On Debian (and, I'm sure other distributions of GNU/Linux) the 'bsdgames' package contains a simple program called 'arithmetic' which poses similar challenges, albeit reduced to the most elementary operations: addition and substraction. Call as

        arithmetic  -o '+-x/'

in order to add multiplication and division.

I find it a handy supplement to 'gtypist' in order to train touch-typing of numbers.

On a side-note: I'm surprised at how scarce such software is - pitiful as it may be. But then, the advancement of the human intellect isn't at the forefront of our cultural conscious, is it?

</comment><comment><USER30> This feels like a lot more than 10 seconds. You tricked me.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just for anyone who feels pleased with their mental maths and thinks they might be able to take on their calculator head-to-head:

window.setInterval(function(){$('#question- answer').val(eval($('#question').html().replace("×"," _" ).replace("÷","/").replace(/(._)²/,"Math.pow($1,2)").replace(/√(.*)/,"Math.sqrt($1)"))).trigger("keyup")},10)

<comment><USER32> your paste lost an asterisk * in the first replace statement

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's boring at some point. You should make a countdown instead: you have, say, 1 minute to answer as much questions as you can (with an possible skip button).

<comment><USER34> At first I actually thought that's what the game would be. I was pleasantly surprised that it was more like juggling, by the end when I had 1-2 seconds per problem, I was far more interested. Something about keeping up the "combo" but testing my arithmetic was quite pleasurable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It'd be pretty cool if this actually had leaderboards, perhaps one leaderboard per set of options, limited to clusters so as to minimize the amount of leaderboards. Such as "arithmetic, multiplication+division, arithmetic and mutliplication+division, free for all" Was pretty upset to see that the result for scoring 5xx was the same as my next run of 7920

<comment><USER35> A leaderboard wouldn't be meaningful -- Client-side code isn't secure, and people could set scores to whatever they like. Or, just for fun, I played with the page a bit via dev tools, added in a script to automatically calculate the answer, put it in the input, and trigger the keyup event to run their submit function... worked great.

There is nothing wrong with client-side tools. I have a few on my site that get decent usage. But unless you put some security and validation on the server-side, any data coming back is not trustworthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For me there are certain mental calculations that take longer to process than others. 2 + 2 is super easy. 7+8 is not as immediate. I need a program like this that learns which calculation take me longer, even if it's just slightly longer, and then drills and drills my weak points over and over again. That would be a real mental math trainer.

<comment><USER37> With a bit of tweaking, Anki [0] or another Spaced Repetition Software program will do just that. You can configure it to categorize your answers by how fast you answered them. Then it will make the easy ones less frequent.

I used it to memorize the times table up to 20x20.

[0] [http://ankisrs.net](http://ankisrs.net)

<comment><USER38> Is that stack available for times-tables ready to install and use, if not can you share it? Thanks.

<comment><USER37> I just generated a text file with a quick shell script and imported the output into Anki. I have neither anymore, but the text file just looked like

        1,1,1
        1,2,2
        2,1,1
        2,2,4
        3,1,3

...etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This just showed me the need for a numeric keypad. Half of the time I spent was looking for the right keys or correcting mistypes - normally I think I'm pretty good getting $ and * every time without looking.

I think the change in performance here has something to do with never returning to the home row; I'm just completely lost on laptops.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does it speed up or end eventually? I stored up 150 seconds left before I decided to quit (score of 2529).

<comment><USER41> For a moment I had the idea it was speeding up, but later on I felt like it was just an illusion. Got to 5661 before stopping.

<comment><USER42> yeah... it never ends if you're too fast.. lame...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Pretty cool, zombie mode morning with addition only and number limit of 30: "You scored 504. You are better than 100 %"

I am sure this will be easily beat by all the caffeinated people pretty soon.

Updated: this is actually easier with all the other options enabled because you get easy things like sqrt([4, 16, 25]), x * [0,1], and x / [1, 2] a lot. I was actually over 30 seconds on timer when I hit 18^2 question. "You scored 576. You are better than 100 %"

Updated 2: I tried raising number limit to max (1000) and suddenly life on hard mode. I got through 272/16 and 930/31, but third question 127 * 49 killed me. "You scored 64. You are better than 27 %"

<comment><USER44> 333 was also better than 100% for the same settings...

<comment><USER45> [https://github.com/michaeljakob/10-seconds- math/blob/master/...](https://github.com/michaeljakob/10-seconds- math/blob/master/js/main.js#L144-L149)

No real ranking data is being used in this calculation

<comment><USER45> What I meant to way was that you're not being ranked amongst your peers. Saying that you're "better than 100%" or any other percentage is just a result of the assumption that a really good score is 200.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've played with many of these. And this one is pretty good. One thing that I'd like to see is a "verbal" option in these types of apps. I have trouble "hearing" math and keeping it in my head. I envision an app speaking the problem, then you have to type in the answer. It requires both math and keeping the problem in your head. Lastly, a verbal or speaking option maps to many real world scenarios.

<comment><USER47> >I have trouble "hearing" math and keeping it in my head.

I have the exact same problem. Interestingly, it's a problem for me both in my native language and in several other languages I learned to fluency. So clearly, the "hears numbers" part of my brain is deficient.

I've actually practiced to try to overcome this, and made no progress.

On the other hand, I'm quite good at visual calculations, and also at remembering numbers when I see them. So if I bother writing down a phone number, I can easily remember it for a long time.

But hearing it? Nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I actually made a mental math game for Android not long ago. The concept is different though - it's about choosing the operations to reach a target number. I would appreciate any feedback!

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.woodenclos...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.woodencloset.mathmachine.android)

<comment><USER38> I have this on my phone, my 5 and 9 year olds like it!

I find the hard level pretty hard - it would be good IMO if you could change the mode to include negatives (maybe roots and squares [+other powers?], like here) and to expand the number range to. I seem to remember someone mentioning (probably on here) that they played a mental maths game where you had to give an operation on a number, you didn't say the answer but the next person had to add an operation, there was always a range (age adjusted) that the answer had to fit within: was that game the inspiration or was it just a novel idea for you?

Like the game anyway, thanks.

<comment><USER48> Thanks for the feedback! If the hard level is pretty hard, wouldn't adding more operations make it even harder? I kept the number range small because I felt it would be too hard to do mentally otherwise, but I'm definitely open to extending it. The idea was novel for me but I was quite certain it has been done before in one way or another.

<comment><USER38> It would probably make the hard level even harder (assuming unique solutions then definitely) but for the lower levels it would provide a wide range of play styles and so more replayability - I'd probably be more inclined to play intermediate with wider ranges and/or other operations than to play hard in "simple" mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> In my opinion giving that much freedom (all those settings) to user is not good and ruins the gameplay. I'd prefer such game to start simple and increase difficulty by itself. I find this one almost perfect: [http://games.usvsth3m.com/maths/](http://games.usvsth3m.com/maths/) although it lacks more levels.

</comment><comment><USER50> Champion of addition

setInterval(function() {document.getElementById('question-answer').value = Number(document.getElementById('question').innerHTML.split(' ')[0]) + Number(document.getElementById('question').innerHTML.split(' ')[2]); $('#question-answer').trigger(jQuery.Event( 'keyup', 16 ));},500)

</comment><comment><USER51> As a farmer, I am deeply offended by this game.

</comment><comment><USER52> Was not disappointed. Was half expecting a 3 page long article about some epiphany over 10 seconds of math contemplation.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady I like this. Duolingo does something similar for language practice. After you've completed lessons you can do a timed practice session where it will ask you to translate words you've already learnt. It counts down and the quicker you get it correct the more time gets added to your countdown.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> New features! \- difficulty increases over time \- motivations on correct answers \- slightly adjusted question difficulty \- sliders are disabled while scoring :)

Feel free to test it and let me know :D [http://www.mental-math- trainer.com/](http://www.mental-math-trainer.com/)

</comment><comment><USER53> Something similar on android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mental.care.ac...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mental.care.activities) I haven't updated it a while, but feel free to try it

</comment><comment><USER54> Too bad it's things like this that make average people think math is little more than arithmetic.

<comment><USER55> I'll quote one of my math professors: "At this level, nobody knows how to subtract!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Scored 47232 before giving up...

For those who are still struggling with mental arithmetic, or kids just learning, this seems like it would be a great way to practice --- there is a a certain addictive quality to it, like "flappy bird".

</comment><comment><USER57> Where can one learn about techniques for getting faster at mental arithmetic?

</comment><comment><USER58> OT: I ended up being mostly fascinated with the FB and Twitter share buttons

<comment><USER38> Why? I can't see anything interesting about them, they seem stock?

<comment><USER58> Play the game, and then let it fail so you lose, then look at the FB and Twitter share buttons under your score :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> The number limit should be more granular, or even it would be nice to be able to "pin" one number... i'm thinking of studying times tables for my children! other than that, very nice

<comment><USER60> Agreed, great tool, would love to be able to set for my kids to focus on certain times tables. Really cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Good game, it has that silly 'flappy bird' style appeal that it is difficult to keep going - they should reduce the additional time given per question to go more in that direction.

</comment><comment><USER62> math score: 243 In just 10 seconds [http://mental-math- trainer.com](http://mental-math-trainer.com)

i know the guy who made this game for iOS

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brain-tuner- free/id391266485...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brain-tuner- free/id391266485?mt=8)

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brain- tuner-x/id287360582?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brain- tuner-x/id287360582?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER63> Suck at arithmentic. But this took me 20 seconds to write.

setInterval(function(){ $("#question- answer").val(eval($("#question").text())).trigger("keyup") }, 2001);

</comment><comment><USER64> This is pretty cool but, is it a game? I can't see how solving math problems under a time limit can be useful for anything besides a math exam or some other academic test.

<comment><USER65> My experience has been that mental math training, while not _directly_ useful, generally seems to improve the way my brain works and enhances my analytic thinking.

This effect is a lot more tangible with longer, multi-step problems. In college (physics major) I made a point of doing every integral in my head if I could, and over time I found that my mental 'scratch space' seemed to be getting longer - that I could hold more in my short-term memory at once.

I've also observed that being a person who is 'good at math' approximately correlates with being a person who does math in your head.

[Related observation: that students strongly segregate into "good at math" vs not, as though many people are completely incapable of a mode of thought that comes naturally to others. I think it's trainable, and people who never do any math, especially in their heads, are specifically _not_ training it.]

These are entirely anecdotal and I'd love to find more concrete data, but, right now I would absolutely vouch for mental math training.

<comment><USER54> General problem solving and critical thinking is good mental training. Timed arithmetic drills are neither, and I really should hope that arithmetic doesn't count as "critical thinking" for the majority of the audience on HN.

<comment><USER66> I have to agree - for all the talk of "mental training", is there any actual evidence that arithmetic drills will actually help with problem-solving and critical-thinking?

<comment><USER65> My point in the parent post was that I have a lot of anecdotal reason to believe this. Enough to be pretty confident I could find actual evidence, but I haven't looked very hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> And here's a reverse-math extension. (and No funny SEO) :)

I think clicking is easier than typing.

[http://reverse-math.makkajai.com](http://reverse-math.makkajai.com)

</comment><comment><USER68> A mate of mine is behind - [http://numbertap.com/](http://numbertap.com/)

Similar concept but with cross platform multiplayer.

</comment><comment><USER69> My score: 4785 :) (all options, number limit = 50)

</comment><comment><USER70> I wonder if there would be any difference in the results if the numbers were stacked vertically instead of horizontally

</comment><comment><USER71> Minor bug I noticed: When the timer hit zero it went back up to 1 second and then down to 0.

FF 33.1 on Mac if that matters.

</comment><comment><USER72> Square roots should be improved, just ranges from squares of 0 to 6.

</comment><comment><USER73> With default settings:

You scored 666 You are better than 100 %

<comment><USER74> At default settings, only boredom makes me run out of time. [Actually, waiting a full minute or so for time to run out was too boring, too. I changed settings before that]

Addition up to 1000 is reasonably fun, but also feels like it would be doable for a really long time with a physical keyboard and at full attention (I got 3328).

That also is a weak point of games like this. IMO, games are good if you can play them without attending to them or when they provide interesting problems. Games with dull problems that require your attention fail. A prime example of the first game type is Tetris; I use to say that your spinal cord can play it. Examples of the second type are Sokoban and (a million times so) DROD ([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_Rooms_of_Death](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_Rooms_of_Death))

With all operations checked and numbers up to 1000, I find I need more time, and scoring seems brutal (only 16 points after 2 or 3 correct amswers?)

I also find it a bug that you get subtractions with negative numbers as answers.

Finally, is it a bug or a feature that starting a game gets you the same problem and partial answer that the last game finished with? It helps in doing a post-mortem, but can make it really hard to get that first answer right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> "You scored: 315. You are better than 100%". Why do I think their countdown timer needs some work on MobileSafari? :)

</comment><comment><USER76> got bored at 855 and let it run out, and it would seem I've bested 100% of you

<comment><USER77> Got same result 16 min later, needs floating points :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> 352 with all options and limit 1000. Anyone do better? :)

</comment><comment><USER79> [http://imgur.com/J2CNCmV](http://imgur.com/J2CNCmV) ...</comment>


Stitch Fix to Lay off About 1,400 Employees in California - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/stitch-fix-to-lay-off-about-1-400-employees-in-california-11591053525 <comment><USER2> This is more interesting than all the other layoff stories in that they're axing 1,400 California jobs but adding 2,000 in lower-cost locations like Dallas, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Austin.

It's like offshoring -- but off-Californiaing.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if they gave the employees the option to relocate with out of calofornia salary. Not sure if that's legal but it would have been worth giving them an option, some might as well take it, everything's too expensive in cali, one cannot easily start a family there

<comment><USER4> They gave them the option to stay on if they relocate. Doesn't say they keep their CA salary though.

>" Most of the layoffs will take place in September and those affected will have the opportunity to relocate and stay with the San Francisco-based company."

<comment><USER5> The two Stitch Fix stylists that I've known both worked remotely and I got the impression that most of them did.

Is that not true? If it is true, how do you relocate a remote worker?

<comment><USER6> "We are going to cut your salary in half. You should move to a cheaper city to make up for it."

<comment><USER7> > "We are going to cut your salary in half. You should move to a cheaper city > to make up for it."

To think that less than 4 months ago People were ridiculing Andrew Yang and other proponents of UBI. I admit having it be, initially anyway, State sanctioned bothers me a great deal; but the fact is gainful employment is no longer a reliable aspect of modern Life for many in Society. This will continue to cut deeper and deeper, and for anyone not paying attention these protests and riots in the US have a much deeper sense of resentment than just Police Brutality against black males. And it's felt throughout the spectrum of underemployed, highly indebted underclass. Its like the bottled and pent up anger from the Occupy movement coming back.

In many ways this reminds me of the London Riots of 2011, when London police killed a young black male named Mark Duggan [1] and it exposed a myriad of sociological, and socio-economic issues that quite frankly still remain to this day.

1: [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/three-riot- lesson...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/three-riot-lessons-from- londons-2011-experience)

<comment><USER8> Context matters. The current economic climate is in no way representative of normalcy as we just shut down a large chunk of it indefinitely.

That aside, the idea that you can finance life in the highest cost living areas of the USA as a "stylist" (picking items for a clothing subscription) is lunacy. Clearly that work can be done anywhere and it's only a matter of time till it's pushed to the lowest cost areas. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of such labor goes to near zero as they attempt to start "paying" people with publicity instead.

<comment><USER9> The job of a stylist will largely be automated away with AI. There will be a few needed to keep training the machines but it's a career path akin to the horse and buggy maker.

<comment><USER10> I'm not convinced of this. We could easily have used software to procedurally generate outfits from a selection of components since the 1980s. Why hasn't this already happened?

<comment><USER11> The same reason that Jobs (and Ive) were the arbiters of what Apple shipped for many years; you can't program taste or style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note: These are stylists and not engineers.

I've tried StitchFix twice and found their stylists pretty lacking in terms of value they add. They don't listen to your requests and I'm sure most of them just have templates of stuff they send out w/o looking at what you liked / disliked. I'm fairly certain it's a role that can be very easily filled regardless of the Zipcode.

In fact, I was pretty convinced until now that the stylists were just algorithms but it looks like I was wrong.

<comment><USER13> > I was pretty convinced until now that the stylists were just algorithms but > it looks like I was wrong

Katrina Lake talks a little about the way they've structured this during her How I Built This interview[1]. They seem to have a pretty large engineering / data science org, and it feels like the stylists are effectively human curators of algorithmic recommendations.

1\. [https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759594143/stitch-fix- katrina-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759594143/stitch-fix-katrina-lake)

<comment><USER14> " _Today (Sep 2019), it has about three million customers and brings in more than a billion dollars in annual revenue._ "

Wow!

<comment><USER15> It always amazes me what people will pay for that seems to have zero utility from my perspective.

<comment><USER16> In the face of a billion dollars of revenue, what do you think is more likely: 1) everyone using stichfix gets "zero" utility from it or 2) You don't understand the thing you also have an opinion about for some reason?

For some people, buying clothes is a really stressful and difficult psychological process. You really don't know anyone who does not like shopping for clothes and would be willing to buy away that stress from a personal shopper/algorithm ?

Maybe you personally don't find value in that, or your tastes don't agree with Stichfix's style, but it seems quite understandable to me that many people would want this.

<comment><USER15> Of course people are getting utility from it. But I was stating if I was presented with StitchFix as an investment opportunity, I wouldn't be able to imagine how it would be valuable to people, so I might pass on it. I'm not denigrating anyone who does get utility from it.

<comment><USER17> That seems to be a systemic problem in tech. Most VCs are dudes and they can't see the value in startups that do things men are less interested in, making it harder to get funding to solve problems women have. Might be why some folks are (rightfully) sensitive about the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is just a wave of low cost shoring. I work for a SV company and we are "offshoring" all our support from Midwest to Canada. I can see this trajectory play out for Stitch Fix and other companies. Pretty stylists here are commodity jobs and plenty available in Canada. Best part is that it is an English speaking nation as well

<comment><USER19> > all our support from Midwest to Canada

Is Canada lower cost than Midwest?

<comment><USER18> Yes, because of Canadian dollar

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another story about this, which isn't paywalled: [https://www.msn.com/en- us/money/companies/stitch-fix-is-layi...](https://www.msn.com/en- us/money/companies/stitch-fix-is-laying-off-1400-employees-in-california-and- plans-to-hire-in-lower-cost-us-cities/ar-BB14TMxx)

</comment><comment><USER21> recent somewhat related article discussion:

Remote work means anyone can take your job [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337857)

<comment><USER22> They can if your skills aren't unique.

<comment><USER23> There's not too many of us with truly unique skills. And even those can usually be covered by different combinations of employees.

<comment><USER22> Unique in this context doesn't mean absolute uniqueness, it means your skills aren't widely available.

The world needs experienced Go developers for an example. Being able to hire one remotely may increase the available pool of Go developers you can hire, but it doesn't make them cheaper. That's because hiring remotely also increases the number of employers chasing the same few Go devs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is fairly surprising since most ecommerce businesses have been doing well because of coronavirus shelter-in-place rules across the country.

<comment><USER25> Speaking as a Stitchfix customer (and nerdy engineer who loves their service and hates shopping for clothes), I semi-permanently paused my subscription a couple of weeks ago. I haven't left my house in two months, so there's not much point in buying new clothes.

<comment><USER24> I know of at least 1 luxury clothing startup that is doing extremely well due to the increased online activity. Maybe it's just stichfix's market segment?

<comment><USER26> Which one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [https://archive.md/zQh5e](https://archive.md/zQh5e)

</comment><comment><USER28> Kind of interesting they picked Austin as a low cost alternative. I get it's a tech hub, but surely there are other cities less expensive?

<comment><USER25> Austin is ridiculously expensive by Texas standards. Super cheap by California standards.

<comment><USER29> Lots of Texas is cheaper, but executives don't want to drive three hours in a rental car after their flight.

<comment><USER30> Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are cheaper than Austin and do not require a 3h drive from the airport.

<comment><USER29> I'm sure you're right, but I'd like to better understand how a city surrounded by sparsely inhabited wasteland could have a shortage of anything of which those other cities have plenty. Austin is practically a suburb of San Antonio anyway, and has no obvious qualities that aren't shared by ten other cities and big towns in Texas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Pure horse shit, about "lower cost areas". I suspect there is a right wing shill hiding somewhere here. The founder's appearance on Shark Tank has the smell of it. Why else would you go for such a ridiculous headline.

</comment><comment><USER32> I hope this doesn't impact my first box just ordered last night.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm surprised they had that many stylists — most of this could be done by AI and a handful of tastemakers.

Unless by stylist they also mean customer care, which they probably do as this article mentions hiring 2k people in lower cost US cities.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/stitch-fix-is-laying- off-140...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/stitch-fix-is-laying-off-1400-in- california-18percent-of-workforce.html)

<comment><USER34> My understanding is that it in large part was done without AI because a lot of the input requests are too complex to summarize in any form other than language.

"I work in an semi-casual office but I want to try adding some new colors to my wardrobe to spice things up. Next month I'm going to a wedding and I need a new bracelet and a pair of gold earrings for that. I don't need any more scarves this fall but I'd love a nice knitted hat in cool colors. Stripes don't flatter me."

And I could go on for a while longer talking about a wide range of clothing choices. Could you give options for all of that? Yes, with some work. Would that be a good user interface that keeps a wide range customers returning? I doubt it.

Plus their user base just prefers at least the illusion of having an individual stylist, so you receive a detailed note with each package talking about the ways that the clothing choices fit your style, wardrobe, body type, and activities.

<comment><USER35> You are right about the input requests being too complex. From this microservices presentation[0], they do use machine learning to generate recommendations which are then curated further by the stylists, specifically for this reason.

But I've always wondered about the grouping and parity between stylist and customer. IIRC, they say it in the presentation but they do not say how much bucketing happens. Is Person of archetype-A grouped with 100 other people and given to Stylist A? 1000 other people? Or do they only do additional curation if you reject so many items and write so many input request words?

Also, is there a good track record for such a request like "I need a pair gold earrings" working? and working specifically because of human curation and not pattern matching on color and item description?

0\. [https://youtu.be/E8-e-3fRHBw?t=332](https://youtu.be/E8-e-3fRHBw?t=332)</comment></comment></comment>


Google abandons Berlin campus plans after two years of resistance - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/google-abandons-berlin-base-after-two-years-of-resistance <comment><USER2> This would have been a fantastic opportunity for the Berlin IT scene. But ideological stupidity and extremism have won. Apparently there were threats of violence against Google employees.

I still fail to understand their "points" against having a startup campus on their badly written website: [https://fuckoffgoogle.de/#g-entrification](https://fuckoffgoogle.de/#g-entrification) They don't seem to know what they are protesting against.

What is so great about Kreuzberg? Every time I have to travel over Kotti I am scared, this place is a shithole.

<comment><USER2> (The violence threat is only a rumour, I could not find a reliable source)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Google awareness seems to be very strong in Berlin. We visited last year and saw a lot of materials for this campaign.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, I remember reading about this before and how upset some locals were. On one side it's good to see that money can't buy everything.</comment>


Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Technical Details: What's New - <AUTHOR> http://www.redhat.com/rhel/server/details/

<comment><USER2> There are some extremely impressive changes being made within redhat 6. This distro I assume will be what represents redhat for the next 4-5 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Btrfs is in there as a tech beta too, which provides better snapshotting than lvm and ext34 does.</comment>


The Mythical DevOps Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://alediaferia.com/2020/07/27/the-mythical-devops-engineer/ <comment><USER2> While I officially have the title of DevOps Engineer, I virtually always introduce myself as only as Engineer---not in the least because part of my job is interacting with clients and I'm not excited to explain to them what DevOps means. I have a somewhat unusual background in that I came to DevOps from a background in traditional systems administration (e.g. Windows MSP, network engineering, Linux sysadmin), and a later career background in security. As a result I tend towards old-school. For flavor, I once held a title in "Compilation Engineering," not meaning engineering the compilers, but managing the clusters that ran them. My concerns tend to be radically different from those with a software engineering background, even within a "DevOps team". I have occasionally said that there are many "DEVops," a few "devOPS," and almost nothing in between.

I think there's some good content in this article but also a certain amount of, I'm not sure what to call it. Inexperience?

I can agree that in an ideal world having people with the title of DevOps Engineer or especially a DevOps team is an antipattern. However, in most organizations I have worked in there has been a clear need to hire people specifically for DevOps and a good component of the work has been, at least initially, limited to those individuals. The basic reason is that most software engineers, even very experienced ones, are generally quite weak in the areas of operations, network engineering, conventional system administration, and compliance. I don't necessarily blame them as these are areas that are addressed poorly or not at all in most academic programs, and are not generally viewed as skills which are behooving of a software engineer. The result is that individuals need to be hired specifically for DevOps roles in order to get that skillset.

Further, except in perhaps some of the most fortunate startups, DevOps is virtually always transformational---that is, it is being put in place to either replace a previous process (e.g. development in one division and operations in another) or to create process for the first time (e.g. a startup which has had testing and deployments done manually by developers). This is another factor that makes designed DevOps contributors valuable, because the bottom line is that DevOps needs to be forced on the organization to some extent. It can often take an outsider to drive significant change in business processes.

Finally, as much as DevOps is bandied about, I am not convinced that most _developers_ are actually interested in working in an "ideal" DevOps environment. I have spent most of my career as an IT person supporting developers, whether that was called DevOps or just being the person in IT the developers emailed. In most of these roles I have done a lot of things that the developers just weren't willing to, and even as a "DevOps Engineer" I continue to view "keeping out of the developer's way" as a primary goal. This means, for example, that I usually handle most of the tool development around local (developer workstation) and automated build and test because the developers just don't want to---ironically, in the eyes of many developers, I think DevOps means the developers being as uninvolved in operations as possible.

They're turning to DevOps because they want to get rid of the workload associated with herding a traditional IT organization, not because they want to do it all themselves! I don't really blame them either as, as I said, not many developers really have the skillset to excel with this kind of thing, nor (and this is more opinion) the inclination to obtain that skillset. There just aren't that many people out there who care about getting the Kubernetes cluster to self-heal right or finding the weird performance/stability problem in the software-defined network, which is why DevOps tends to be split-brained between "automating operations" and "paying someone else so we don't have to think about it," which is the general goal to which most cloud providers aspire.

Ultimately, the goal of all DevOps organizations ought to be to eliminate themselves by getting things to be so painless and automated that developers will do it all themselves. But basically no organization signs up for DevOps with the idea that they are adding workload to the developers, and so at least initially a dedicated DevOps capacity needs to exist from a practical perspective. The issues of skillset and desired work characteristics mean that that capacity tends to stick around. As much as DevOps is bandied about as two great tastes that taste great together, the reality may very well be that all DevOps really means is getting the IT resources and the development resources to talk to each other more often and do enough cross-training to be able to understand the other's problems, and honestly I think that's fine.

But then I say that as someone who intentionally does not describe myself as a software engineer because I frankly don't enjoy writing software that much... and yet part of my job always ends up being troubleshooting the product, adding tracing and monitoring integrations, etc. I can't complain too much because I do need the familiarity with the code base to be able to address developer requests well. Similarly, the developers need the familiarity with my work to be able to understand how it impacts them and how to engineer for effective deployment and management, but I wouldn't wish my configuration management and network diagrams on them.

Or I could sum up the entire thing more shortly: DevOps as an ideal is founded on the concept that there exists a set of people who want to be evenly responsible for both the development _and_ the operations. I have not so far met more than one or two of these people, certainly not enough to staff a company with. Barring such miraculous hiring, viewing DevOps as getting your development people and operations people to work effectively together is just fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't the idea of DevOps to put Dev and Ops engineers (two distinct roles) in one team?

So instead of the Dev team working on code and testing it, and then throwing it over a silo wal to the Ops team to run it in production, now they collaborated from the start to in the end ship good quality code?

When was it decided this meant one person had to know two jobs?

<comment><USER4> When HR decided that it was the same thing as a systems engineer.

Just like one needs to take care with architecture roles, because for lots of companies it is just project management with another name.

<comment><USER5> I applied for an architecture role once. It sounded interesting in email. Once I got to the phone screen part, they gave me a huge sales pitch, then told me I'd be working in Word and Powerpoint all day. "This is not a hands on position."

Uh, no thanks. That's not architecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work in a large cloud provider.

> Are they hiring for a single role or a whole team?

YES.

That's right, while the teams might have different responsibilities, but some remain constant. like provisioning infrastructure, going oncall and solving tickets, writing your actual software and think about and design the next iteration.

The expectation for team members is that one should be able to do all that, not at once obviously, but when needed will rise to the task.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a great article. It is really sad how "DevOps" has become just another way to label the Ops team, or the developer tools team, or the release managers, without trying to break any silos between the teams...

</comment><comment><USER8> Get good enough at any role and the expectations should and will be broad. That would be the "crossing" part of "crossing the T." Why exactly does this article keep saying "DevOps?"</comment>