Ask HN: Considering relocation to Europe, options for recruiters/job hunting? - <AUTHOR> Due to life circumstances, there is an interesting option for my wife and I to consider moving to Europe.  The benefit, I am married to an EU National (she has dual citizenship -- so generally a work permit in the EU won't be a problem for me) who moved here for me.  Sometimes it is time to reciprocate.<p>We are looking at Central Europe (Germany/Switzerland/Austria/France).<p>She's in tech, more on the project/program management side and has her sources (but even some of those are dated).  We both work for companies where we could probably due intra-company transfers, but are also open to other avenues.<p>Has anyone originally based in the US had recent experience with finding resources for finding positions in Europe?  Or anyone in Europe have suggestions for finding opportunities?<p>Historically, the usual process has been finding a good recruiting firm (often based in the UK).<p>I know some of the startup avenues to explore.<p>Overall, though I'd love to hear what people can suggest about other options. <comment><USER2> In a past blog entry ([http://blog.neekanee.com/2012/11/working-overseas- finding-jo...](http://blog.neekanee.com/2012/11/working-overseas-finding-job- abroad.html)), I wrote about two companies that hire internationally: Secunia and Booking.com. There's also a couple of companies in Berlin that state in their job postings their willingness to sponsor work permits (even for non-EU citizens)- <http://www.neekanee.com/jobs-in-berlin-de?q=permit>

</comment><comment><USER3> My wife and I are sharing a similar setup and often find ourselves contemplating a move to Europe (currently we are based in SF). First one should nail down a target city. We found Berlin to be the easiest market: cheap rent, many tech startups that hire english speakers. If I had to pick a second location I'd go with London or Frankfurt. To find work in Berlin you can tab into the startup scene, there are some blogs that cover job listings (e.g. <http://berlinstartupjobs.com/>) or if you want something more traditional: monster.de. London has an interesting craigslist competitor called: gumtree.com that has some interesting job posts. And of course, like Berlin they also have curated startup job listings (e.g. <http://workinstartups.com/>). To connected to recruiters (mostly in the UK like you said) I found linkedin and even more so xing.com to be a good destination.

<comment><USER4> id go to berlin instead just because its so much cheaper. london is extremely expensive, and so is frankfurt - yet it has many startups. (in fact most other cities that will be mentionned are much more expensive than berlin).

Then again, SF is in the US, stuff cost a lot less except for housing, and you don't have the possible euro crash looking at you every week (oh yeah i know, you've the USD issues, but they aren't looking _as_ bad these days)

<comment><USER3> Frankfurt is still relatively cheap compared to London. But you are right, if you want cheap rent then Berlin is unbeatable. Also probably has a better startup scene than London at this point. (if that's what you are looking for)

<comment><USER5> maybe some years ago Berlin was much cheaper, but rents are getting more expensive everyday. Still cheaper than London though.

<comment><USER3> how much is rent running these days for a 2 bedroom (3 ZKB)?

<comment><USER5> I'd say 700€-100€. Here you can find some examples [http://www.wg- gesucht.de/en/wohnungen-in-Berlin.126.96.36.199.html...](http://www.wg- gesucht.de/en/wohnungen-in- Berlin.220.127.116.11.html?filter=bb82c942bfed6d30db8c98b7164ad5b3cb6e9ce6)

<comment><USER4> i don't really find that anything close to expensive btw :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What languages do you or your wife speak? Which country is she a national of and are you goin to locate there?

Does she have family ties back there ? Are they strong? Do you two have kids yet? Are they school age? Does your wife want to move to her home country to raise them at some point?

Firstly, if any recruiter does not ask you the above put the phone down.

Secondly those questions you really need to be able to answer long before you fly

And finally, job search through open job positions is seen as the generally last resort

My honest suggestion:

1\. Decide which country 2\. Start a blog (AnAmericanSysAdminInBerlin) about what you intend to do 3\. Ping a number of startup and established companies (follow them in twitter don't get spammy) and be clear you are an expert in xxx 4\. Prove it by working remotely on short term gigs

Basically get a short term gig or two remotely - they may become jobs, they may be one a viable in one stream, at least you will learn the ropes of a country (oh look a cron tab commented in German - I wonder which one deletes the database)

<comment><USER7> _1\. Decide which country 2. Start a blog (AnAmericanSysAdminInBerlin) about what you intend to do 3. Ping a number of startup and established companies (follow them in twitter don't get spammy) and be clear you are an expert in xxx 4. Prove it by working remotely on short term gigs_

This seems like a rather convoluted way of finding a job. May be what you mean is find an effective way to communicate that you have xxx skills and find companies that may be in need of it? Starting a blog may be one way but I have my doubts if its the optimal thing in his case.

Also, I'd actually say that OP might as well begin by applying for published jobs. You will get some baseline idea about the market or culture(do recruiters in blah region even reply? what are the responses like? etc.)

<comment><USER6> If you apply for jobs, you might get one and take months to discover the bad

If you apply for small projects, you might get several and Discover good bad and ugly much quicker

Honestly a blog is a resume these days.

<comment><USER7> _If you apply for jobs, you might get one and take months to discover the bad_

That has little to do with finding a published job. He could accept the first job via a referral and take months to discover its bad, for example.

The small projects idea is a good one. I am sure there are folks on HN from Europe that may have projects for him. The potential trap with small-project route is that a company with small projects may not necessarily have a permanent position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having moved to Berlin from Australia a little while ago, I can say many people at startups are hiring - the trick is to plug into the community in person and ask around. If you have useful technical/web dev skills, that's a big plus.

From my experience attempting to get a transfer from BigCo, most BigCo. type companies require German fluency, even in purely technical positions.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ask Eurostaff. I work with them as a freelancer. They are quick, very friendly, visit you at the place you are actually working and pay on the 28th day of a 30-day payment term. I love them for their professionalism. They have positions all over Europe with their headquarter in London, freelance and regular jobs.

<comment><USER10> Are you serious? Just a quick search on their website shows exactly 3 jobs across all of Europe in the technology sector, and that's it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think you should apply for permanent residency first. Once you get it start applying, or even better, go to your target city and rent short term housing and try to find something fast. Being local always helps, and you definitely want to advertise that you have a work permit already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Given my wife is a German national and we are married, the whole work permit process is easier. It does require registering with the local municipality and some paperwork, but nothing near other situations.

As I mentioned, our situation would likely allow for mutually transferring to the EU under our current employers. That said, in both cases you are away from the mothership and the options are a little less appealing.

The main point of the question really is trying to understand how one approaches the job market in the EU. My wife's experience is slightly dated from the last time she looked.

Thanks all for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I believe the best city for IT work in Central Europe is Munich. It leads the ranks of best cities to live in Germany, and the unemployment rate is below 5%. It is quite easy to get a decent, well paid job in one of the multinational companies that are operating here.

<comment><USER12> More info on Munich job market here: <http://www.toytowngermany.com/wiki/Jobs_in_Munich>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You should take a look at monster.com. In Luxembourg it is very active (monster.lu). If you are moving to Europe get ready to learn new languages, although english is often accepted for technical jobs, if you go consulting knowing the local language is often mandatory. In Luxembourg most ppl speak 3 or 4 languages fluently (English, French, German, other)

Most companies are very multi cultural, and force english as main language if they have workers that don't speak the official language, but be carefull as not knowing the local language might affect your daily routine outside of the job.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can check out: <http://www.overseas-exile.com/> by "ovid" of Perl fame. He used to (or still does?) work for Booking.com, which is based in Amsterdam[1]. He was pimping it pretty hard during the Perl Lightning Talks at OSCON2011. I got the impression that they were willing to sponsor people internationally (but possibly within reason).

[1]: <http://www.booking.com/jobs.html?st=top>

(FYI: HN wraps blocks of text separated by blank lines in

 tags)

</comment><comment><USER15> There is a massive demand for talent in all the cities mentioned in the thread. Places like Amsterdam and Berlin have a pretty signifant skills gap. I tend to see people who would perhaps struggle to get gigs in London get relatively senior positions elsewhere.

As for London being expensive to live, that really depends on where you live, there are some very affordable areas if you are willing to commute and the other costs of living (bar travel) seem comprable in my experience.

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER16> If you can get a visa to Switzerland then the salaries are higher and qol way higher. Life is boring thought. For some excitement I would choose Berlin. For some culture and je ne sais quoi paris. Stockholm can be considered as well. Going Mediterranean style then tell aviv.

</comment><comment><USER17> I worked for a company who do big enterprise sorts of things, who seem pretty good as agents go, and understand how to create a path from contract to permanent, if you want to: FDM.

Emphasis on "big enterprise" however.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even for me, as a South African considering my options overseas, the comments were extremely useful.

Remote work sounds like a good idea. I plan on trying that out in the new year before committing to immigration.

</comment><comment><USER19> Work remotely. If your (or anyone else reading this') skillset includes the sysadmin end of the spectrum, reply with contact details and I just might have something for you - immediately.

<comment><USER20> Not for me but for a friend who has 2 years experience in networking and system maintenance, likes to gets his hands dirty, and really enjoys learning new things (and has the resulting paper work to show for it).

My email is in my profile if you are interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone have any similar advice for relocating to Asia?

<comment><USER22> What is your nationality and which country are you aiming for?

Depending on your nationality, you might not need to a visa. Just board a plane and show up.

Asia is pretty big...and needless to say, the laws change from country to country. So, you need to decide the country first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If anyone can answer, I'd like to know how active the startup scene in London is. I've always considered moving there later on down the road.

</comment><comment><USER24> Any companies hiring RoR devs? I'm a US/EU citizen (live in SF). London or Berlin preferred, but open to anywhere in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER25> Identify the companies you want to work for and pitch them.

<comment><USER26> Like you would a tent?

<comment><USER14> No. Just schedule a presentation with them, and use your PowerPoint skills (and silver tongue) to convince them to hire you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What's your skillset/professional profile?

</comment><comment><USER28> What do you do?</comment>


First Look: How Penguin Will Reinvent Books With iPad:UK - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-first-look-how-penguin-will-reinvent-books-with-ipad/ <comment><USER2> Months ago, I attended an entrepreneurship talk at which the speaker argued that the textbook and journalism industries would die as the scarcity of these media ended.

One week ago, I attended a talk by an editor at one of the major US publishers. He said they'd been searching for a way to modernize but didn't have a response to my mention of the previous event.

Looks like the type of problem with plenty of money for new models, much like the music industry today.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Don't look now, but what's going to be the must-have _educational_ toy for next holiday season?</comment>


Weighing the options: A simpler question about pulleys and ropes. - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WeighingTheOptions.html?HN2

<comment><USER2> Coincidently I'm reading Ernst Mach's "The Science of Mechanics" at this very moment. It includes a lot of analysis of setups like this.

As for this problem: consider first the weights. Each one's downward force is 1 kg, due to gravity. There must also be exactly 1 kg's force's worth of tension in the string, because if it were less the weights would be moving down and if it were more the weights would be pulled up. Because the system (is assumed to be) not moving, we may replace the right side weight and pulley wheel with a fixed anchor for the string, in which case there would be no doubt that the spring balance displays 1 kg. Argument from symmetry says the scale would also read 1 kg if the left side were anchored and the right side free. Because the system in unmoving, it really makes no difference whether the opposite side of the scale is fixed to an anchor or balanced by a free weight: it will read 1 kg in all cases.

This is very similar to a Car Talk puzzler that their physicist consultant clarified: is it worse to be in a car going 60 mph that hits an unmovable highway overpass wall, or to be in a car going 60 mph that hits an identical car perfectly head-on that is also going 60 mph? The physicist's answer was that there is no difference: in both cases you experience an identical impulse going from 60 mph to a stop in the same time.

You may be inclined disbelieve this on the idea that the crumple zones in the car-to-car collision make for a "softer" collision, but consider this: define the point at which the bumpers of the two cars as "the origin". Assuming the cars and the collision are perfectly symmetrical, each car is going to crumple up on its respective side of the origin identically. Suppose the force starts small and ramps up gradually as the crumpling occurs; each car will be pushing the other away with the same force. An unmoving highway overpass barrier would resist with the same force.

<comment><USER3> Moving some vectors around to make it look more similar - would I like to hit a nice solid wall at 60MPH or a parked car head-on at 120MPH.

The head-on collision has twice as much energy to dissipate, and introduces all kinds of projectiles and other stuff heading in my direction. I'll take the wall over the car.

<comment><USER4> Your first paragraph is wrong. You can't switch frames like that because in a collision both cars will quickly come to rest relative to the ground, so kinetic energy in the ground frame is what matters. A car at 120 MPH has 4 times the kinetic energy of a car at 60 MPH, not 2 times, because kinetic energy increases as the square of velocity.

I'll agree with the projectile thing though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not entirely true. After colliding with a stationary car the previously moving car will retain some of its velocity. That will then dissipate over time and be less violent.

So to some extent - when simplified, to a first approximation - you really can switch frames of reference like that.

<comment><USER4> When simplified, yes, but if you start talking about projectiles then you are explicitly not simplifying things, and should also account for the effect of the ground because it's probably a larger concern than projectiles in a collision like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The scale really measures force, not mass. On the left the scale measures 9.81 Newtons applied by the weight, which is labeled 1kg because Earth gravity is assumed. The ceiling applies an equal but opposite force on the top of the scale through the suspending string, otherwise the scale would accelerate downward. On the right the force from the ceiling is replaced by force from another weight; this doesn't change the reading on the scale.

</comment><comment><USER5> POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT: I'm giving my answer below.

I'm going to say the balance reads 1kg. Since the setup on the right is in stasis, you could easily remove one of the weights and anchor the string to the ground and remain in stasis. You would then be recreating the setup on the left (equipment anchored to ceiling) except the string is just being redirected by pulleys. Since each bend in the string is 90 degrees you multiply all the forces by 1, still giving you a 1kg reading on the balance.

Thinking aloud about why 0kg and 2kg don't make sense.

0kg: the spring in the balance is going to stretch to some extent because of gravity pulling the weights down, so 0kg doesn't make sense.

2kg: I'm not sure how to disprove this one except by saying that I'm so convinced that 1kg is the right answer that 2kg doesn't make sense either.

That's my reasoning, anyway.

<comment><USER6> but what you're saying is that the spring can't distinguish between the setup on the right and the setup on the left. that doesn't seem right.

if you detach one of the weights and anchor it on the other weight, the balance should read 2kg. and if you anchor weight A on the string of weight B, it would also read 2kg. as you move weight A's anchor point closer and closer to the balance, the reading remains 2kg.

what happens when the anchoring point reaches the balance?

<comment><USER5> > you're saying is that the spring can't distinguish between the setup on the > right and the setup on the left.

Correct, because according to the balance, both setups are indistinguishable.

The dark secret of spring balances is that they measure (and display) force _in only one direction_. In stasis, the net forces on the balance are exactly zero N since there are equal and opposite forces acting upon the balance (true in each setup), yet the needle moves because it is measuring the movement (stretching) of the spring inside the balance (which at one end is anchored internally to the balance casing, and the other end is anchored to the string/mass).

So, as for the setup on the right, the left-hand weight is pulling on the balance with weight 1kg (9.8N), and the right-hand weight is pulling on the balance with weight 1kg (9.8N), but since the balance only displays forces in one direction, it will display 1kg (in this case it doesn't matter which direction it is measuring because the forces are 180 degrees from each other).

<comment><USER3> I think that's reading a bit too much one-directionality into it. While true, it's the amount of force that's at issue here - not the direction. If a second 2kg weight were added to the "anchor" end of the spring balance - it would either register -1kg (if it's built to do that) or break or lock up givinging invalid or useless readings. Of course - assuming the balance isn't anchored anywhere else, this would set the whole system in motion, and it would all fall apart ratherquickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Okay, so I thought back to my physics days some more, and the real understanding of the problem lies in understanding the definition of tension. The scale is actually measuring tension in the rope.

An informal definition of tension: cut the rope at any point, and determine what force needs to be applied to the one of the cut ends to keep that part of the rope in equilibrium. That force is the tension in the rope.

So in the second example, just measure the tension in the rope.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The answers people give include, but are not limited to, 0, 1 and 2. I find people's reasoning interesting, and after the discussion on the item about the weights and the pulleys (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659326>) I'll be interested to see what people say about this, if anything.

There is a one-off experiment hidden under this submission - email me if you want to know more, or have concerns and I'll answer them. Alternatively I'll post more in a day or so.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER8> In the first picture, the weight pulls down with 1kg of force, and the ceiling pulls up with 1kg of force. If it didn't, there would be an imbalance, causing a net acceleration downwards.

In the second picture, the first weight pulls rightward with 1kg of force, and the second weight pulls leftward with 1kg of force. The situation is exactly the same as the first, except with gravity providing the second force rather than the inter-molecular bonds responsible for maintaining the rigidity of the ceiling.

</comment><comment><USER7> Free body diagrams, people.

<comment><USER9> In case you, like me don't know what free body diagrams are, then: "The only rule for drawing free-body diagrams is to depict all the forces that exist for that object in the given situation. Thus, to construct free-body diagrams, it is extremely important to know the various types of forces. If given a description of a physical situation, begin by using your understanding of the force types to identify which forces are present. Then determine the direction in which each force is acting. Finally, draw a box and add arrows for each existing force in the appropriate direction; label each force arrow according to its type. If necessary, refer to the list of forces and their description in order to understand the various force types and their appropriate symbols."

<http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/u2l2c.cfm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The scale reads zero. Or, if you pull up on it, bringing it above the "horizon" (or bringing the pulleys closer together and below the horizon) causes the scale to approach 2kg.

The force of each weight is converted to a horizontal direction.

<comment><USER10> If scale reads zero, then that means there must be no force on the scale. If there's no force acting on it, that's much the same as if it wasn't there to start with. So, if you were to remove the scale (effectively cutting the string) the weights would stay in the same place, floating in mid air.

<comment><USER3> I think he's assuming you are attaching the scale with the middle of the connecting-cable as the mass to be weighted and then pulling upwards on it..... which would make his description correct for that problem - but that's not the puzzle posted here.</comment></comment></comment>


Why criticism of Amazon isn't sticking - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/11/18129809/amazon-polling-popular-confidence <comment><USER2> What struck the most was this chart in the article: [https://cdn.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13608056/a...](https://cdn.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13608056/amazon.png)

No wonder Bezos wants to be close to DC, the government loves Amazon.... and Amazon could even figure out how to support other highly valued institutions on those charts. For example, AWS and cloud contracts for the military and police; Amazon Student and Amazon Smile for colleges and non-profits.

Amazon can figure out so many ways to intertwine its roots into people's lives, that is has a higher confidence than many branches of government. That's pretty insane of a feat to pull off. Is there any new precedent for deciding the separation of corporate and state?

What's also a bit baffling is that Amazon has managed to separate themselves from being lumped in with other "big corporate" Major Companies or tech companies (Google, Facebook) that are lower confidence institutions despite seemingly fitting both profiles.</comment>


America's health care industry will be recast by the pandemic:winners and losers - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2020/05/09/the-pandemic-will-recast-americas-health-care-industrial-complex <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/q7lep](https://archive.vn/q7lep)</comment>


Give Us Your Geniuses: Why Seeking Smart Immigrants Is a No-Brainer - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/give-us-your-geniuses-why-seeking-smart-immigrants-is-a-no-brainer/258451/

<comment><USER2> I'm a "highly skilled immigrant".

I moved to the US at the age of 17, to go to college (on full financial aid). I graduated and stuck on for a PhD in computer science. American private organizations (i.e. Williams College) have spent $200,000 on my education. The NSF (which indirectly through my advisor's grant funds my graduate education) spends $80,000+ per year on my education. ($160,000 so far, and counting)

Let's leave alone the stupid fact that my visa (F-1) is explicitly a non- immigrant visa (if I say that I have an intention to immigrate to the US someday; I can be deported or denied re-entry or visa renewal). So time spent in the US doesn't count for squat. If I hypothetically wanted to stay in the US, I would have to go to the "back of the line" and get an H1-B.

I'm from India, so unless I qualify for an EB-1 visa (i.e. I get a tenure track position at a top research university) it's 5+ years on the Green Card waiting list. During those 5+ years on the waiting list I am tied to an employer. This, obviously, decreases my negotiating situation. If I get fired, I have 2 weeks to find a new job or get deported. If I switch jobs, the green- card wait time can in some conditions be restarted. I am at the whims of a ridiculous bureaucracy at all times (the few times I've dealt with USCIS for employment authorization for internships have been a nightmare).

The H1-B is a poor option. Forget startups.

In contrast, due to my youth and education I am eligible for a work-permit not tied to any particular employer in Canada, and qualify for permanent residency in a year or two. Same with Singapore. The UK used to be the same before the Conservatives came to power and halted all immigration.

To the xenophobes, I'm not saying I have a right to enter your country. I'm just asking whether it's in your best interests to severely discourage me from entering. I probably will leave when I'm done with my PhD. No. I certainly will leave, because to state otherwise risks deportation under current immigration rules.

<comment><USER3> I recently did some informal research and found that Canada has by far the most positive public opinion towards immigration among "rich" Western countries.

Many European countries view immigration in almost entirely negative terms (largely for xenophobic reasons) and have been competing to make immigration of any kind harder.

The UK has even recently made it harder for foreign graduates of UK universities to get work visas - a policy which I find to be MINDBOGGLINGLY stupid. Aren't those the EXACT kind of people that you'd want to stay in your country?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well this is interesting. Third story from the top is about how Reddit is kickbanning a bunch of sites (e.g. the Atlantic) for nasty SEO, then a5seo submits an Atlantic story, his history is full of submits by the Atlantic, and he has steady stream of submissions with zero comments. Joke? Art? An SEOer not paying attention?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I think OP owes us some explanation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the OP. So here's the deal... I read The Atlantic daily. I actually wrote a script to check their feed and score the stories via the sharedcount API and email me the best-of-the-best.

If something is interesting to me and I believe it would be useful to other startup hackers like me, I submit it. It's that simple.

If there's something to be gained from doing this (aside from hopefully spurring an interesting discussion on HN), I'm not smart enough to figure out what it is.

The people who are anti The Atlantic should re-read the posting guidelines which describe as on-topic, "Anything that good hackers would find interesting."

Interested in behavioral economics? Government policy that affects startups? Human psychology that we should accommodate in our apps? Technology trends? Yeah, I'm sorry to say but The Atlantic, Salon, Wired, etc. are some of the best at covering that stuff.

If this content is no longer welcome on HN, we need to get a LOT more precise about the Guidelines.

<comment><USER5> Look, I like the Atlantic too, but your username looks a bit weird - SEO rubs a lot of people on HN the wrong way.

<comment><AUTHOR> > SEO rubs a lot of people on HN the wrong way.

It's too bad. The bottom line is that what SEO means/does is pretty wide ranging, and my idea of it (making content usable/understable for bots) is very different from the dismissive circus caricature conjured by the masses.

But my bet is that I'll win the meaning battle in the long term. patio11 and randfish are good examples of people who are moving the perception toward reality.

For all of the people on HN who bitch about how MBA types have idiotic stereotypes of programmers, it might be worth considering the view from our own glass house.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For us in Africa the more stupid the US is about immigrants the better because you educate us on your money then send us back to build our countries.

</comment><comment><USER7> One problem is that the "admit geniuses" folks keep tying that to "admit everyone". The former has wide-spread support while the latter has wide-spread opposition.</comment>


Learn to stop using shiny new things and love MySQL - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.pinterest.com/post/116038532184/learn-to-stop-using-shiny-new-things-and-love

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why the author claims MySQL won't do replication to a read- slave out of the box?

Sure it's not just turned on, but it's not _that_ hard to setup the built in replication in that scenario.

For reference though, I'd recommend percona cluster over mysql built in replication. No need to juggle read/write slaves then.</comment>


Ask HN: is there a Hacker News API (other than the unofficial one)? - <AUTHOR>

I wanted to make an HN-related program and I thought , "Wouldn't it'd be cool if Hacker News had an API?" <comment><USER2> There's an HNSearch API (you know, the thing that powers the search bar at the bottom of each page). See <http://www.hnsearch.com/api></comment>


Lenin Was a Mushroom - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom <comment><USER2> > "...has often been used as proof of the gullibility of the masses"

Spot on! gullibility is a very serious issue, it's a lot easier to blindly follow than to question, to research, to form an opinion. True for humanity in general, not specific to Russia.

On the other hand, if you think about it, gullibility may not be an issue at all, but a psychological defense. When times are tough we tend to be more gullible, and it brings us comfort to hear what we want to hear, or listen to confident speakers who briefly "make sense".

</comment><comment><USER3> Last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18421843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18421843)

2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874839)

2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952927)</comment>


Why a Machine Defeating a Human Does Not Signal the Apocalypse - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/why-a-machine-defeating-a-human-does-not-signal-the-apocalypse/ <comment><USER2> The United States of America has to embrace the Americas; we all need to get onto the same page politically and economically.</comment>


Toy Models to explore the classical mechanics – Tadashi Tokieda (IAS 2014) - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/2v3ANzWkPVI <comment><USER2> I ran across his 'toys' due to numberphile, this guy is great.

[https://www.msri.org/web/msri/public/tadashis- toys](https://www.msri.org/web/msri/public/tadashis-toys)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very cool playlist. One would fall in love with mathematics and physics with these "astonishing" toys.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Open source site converts code of various langs into tweet sized images - <AUTHOR> http://codepix.io <comment><USER2> Just tried it, it's pretty easy to use. I would suggest making the List more prominent. Also, maybe a button to directly tweet out the image?

One UX Note - I didn't know that what I posted would be publicly listed in the List (didn't matter for me, but some people might accidentally post keys or credentials or something)</comment>


Shell script mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelbeat.org/programming/shell_script_mistakes.html <comment><USER2> The single biggest shell script mistake is not handling whitespace in file names correctly, and it's almost impossible to do correctly if you have weird file names: embedded newlines, leading and trailing spaces, embedded tabs. Embedded quotes can be tricky too, especially if you're writing a script that generates a script.

That bit, writing a script that generates a script, happens surprisingly often in bash. It's cheaper to pipe a stream to sed that converts it into a shell command than it is to iterate over all the lines, and individually pluck out the arguments for the commands you want to execute. Leaving the script as something that outputs shell commands also lets you inspect what it does before committing to it (by piping it to bash).

<comment><USER3> The problem with file name is the main reason I use zsh.

        for fic in **/*(.); do
            doSomethingWith $fic
        done

will take way more time than using find, but will work even with files with stranges chars.

<comment><USER4> and another reason to use zsh is the incredibly nice looping syntax, for example, this is the same as

      for fic (**/*(.)) doSomethingWith $fic

I find the fact that it fits in a single line makes me much more likely to use it in everyday shell use.. though I'd still revert to bash for scripting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find that after a shell script gets to be over 3 or so lines, it's easier to switch over to python or perl. Do others feel the same?

<comment><USER6> I don't agree with this. I love Perl, it's up there as one of my favourite languages (despite it's many short comings), but in my opinion shell scripts make more sense if you're writing scripts which depend upon a number of additional programs as the bulk of it's processing.

For me, the point at which Perl makes more sense is if your script requires more internal logic than it does depends on spawning other programs.

For example, if I'm writing a routine to auto snapshot ZFS / Btrfs volumes and delete any over a certain age, the script would be dependant on your file system CLI tools. So it makes more sense to have an 80+ line shell script than it does to write that in Perl / Python.

However if I was writing a routine which requires users inputting details, where those details need to be sanity checked and then stored some where (such as a database), then the core logic of that program resides within your script (where you'd have to read inputs, do your sanity checks and then write to the database). So a Perl or Python script makes more sense.

Obviously you can do either of those examples in each of those languages (crudely speaking as I know shell scripts aren't technically a programming language); but that's just a basic example of where I personally draw the line.

I also think this is one of those occasions where it doesn't massively matter which approach you take just so long as the code works and is maintainable (though I draw the line at one maintenance script I saw last year. It was a Python script where every other line was _os.system_. It just struck me as rather pointless starting a Python interpreter if you're just going to use it like a shell script - you might as well do the whole lot in the shell to begin with).

<comment><USER7>
        *(though I draw the line at one maintenance script I saw last year. It was
        a Python script where every other line was os.system. It just struck
        me as rather pointless starting a Python interpreter if you're just
        going to use it like a shell script - you might as well do the whole lot in the shell to begin with).*

FWIW, one of my favorite features of Perl syntax is that you can do things like this. A lot of my quick-and-dirty sysadmin scripts end up being Perl scripts with lots of backticks. It's handy for when they grow (as they often do) into more full-featured scripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This example

      for $file in *;do wc -l $file;done

could be reduced to

      for $file in *; { wc -c $file ;}

in some POSIX-like shells.

Is the for loop even necessary?

        echo wc -l * |sh

But...

[http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/argmax/](http://www.in- ulm.de/~mascheck/various/argmax/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a great page in the same vein - bash specific, but quite a bit more comprehensive.

[http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls)

</comment><comment><USER10> I recommend the shell script static analyzer ShellCheck: [https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck](https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck)

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the subtle shell script mistake which I was unaware was that if a shell script is modified, currently running instances of the script might fail [1].

1\. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2285403](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2285403)

</comment><comment><USER12> Let's not forget unit testing. After all a shell script is code and code should be unit tested.

[https://code.google.com/p/shunit2/](https://code.google.com/p/shunit2/)

<comment><USER13> I prefer [http://bmizerany.github.io/roundup/](http://bmizerany.github.io/roundup/) . It works in fewer shells, but when you know which shell(s) you are targeting, that doesn't matter. It is far less magic than shunit2--writing the tests actually feels like writing shell.</comment></comment>


How Facebook uses Erlang for real-time chat - <AUTHOR> http://gregosuri.com/how-facebook-uses-erlang-for-real-time-chat

<comment><USER2> That was a fantastic read. This is indeed old news in terms of technology choices, but it was great to hear how they rolled the product out.

I almost didn't read this article due to the "isn't this a bit old" comments here, but, am very glad I did.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't used Erlang but I wonder if people will start blaming Erlang as "not stable" since Facebook chat is so unstable... the same way people said Ruby on Rails couldn't scale because Twitter was haven't problems scaling.

<comment><USER4> I hope not, because it's hard to blame only Erlang.

First of all, they rolled their own epoll-based server for the whole chat system.

Then, instead of using a 'sane' comet/long-poll implementation based on JSONP (to avoid limitations of same-domain requests), it seems that they used a scheme where the chat nodes have a fake subdomain like '<http://N.subdomain.facebook.com/...>. I don't know how efficient this is supposed to be, but I haven't seen that too often.

Of course, it's wholly possible their Erlang implementation of the chat system is the reason why it fails. Personally, I have never had much trouble with their chat, although I haven't used it much either.

<comment><USER5> The reason that they use N.subdomain.facebook.com is so they can avoid the default "2 http requests per domain" rule in older browsers.

<comment><USER4> I know that. What I don't get is why they chose that over JSONP, which solves the exact same problem by using <script> tags and a callback function.

Their solution seems to work well, anyway.

<comment><USER6> The jsonp method causes older browsers to use a ton of memory if you leave the browser window open for a long period of time. You'll see that there's a whole bunch of script tags in the dom that aren't cleaned up. Given the way people use facebook & how many old browsers still exist, this is probably the reason facebook decided against it.

<comment><USER7> jsonp also causes unsightly "loading" indicators in most browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this a bit old and why does it go to posterous when it's taken from facebook.com?

<comment><USER9> It's very old, and the posterous owner thinks its fine to blatantly copy entire articles by merely providing "From: <http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=14218138919> as the only indication that it wasn't original.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Er... why didn't they just use XMPP? I haven't used facebook chat much, but the times that I have used it, it has proven to be a lot more unreliable compared to gTalk.

<comment><USER4> Having evaluated some XMPP solutions (over BOSH), one of the problems I have had with it was about the openness of the protocol. You need to tweak the server a whole lot if you want to close down what your users can do and from where they can do it; it becomes complex to synchronize all the data from the backend of the site: who ignores who, privacy settings, friend lists, etc.

Another problem that I had encountered was about BOSH. From what I had read in the RFCs, the BOSH session is based on random seed that you hash over and over in SHA (say 200 times). The server then just has to SHA your message to find the hash of the previous message. This, coupled with the basic session identifiers effectively makes it relatively complex to have the chat working over multiple windows or tabs.

There might be other reasons, but those are the obvious ones to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> FWIW, Their Facebook chat seems to be constantly wrong. Unless it's just my account. "50 users online", then you click on it, and it changes its mind and says 7 users.

</comment><comment><USER11> blogspam, actual URL is <http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=14218138919></comment>


Ask HN: Is Twitter broken today? - <AUTHOR> Timeline and search aren't showing anything newer than 45 mins. UK <comment><USER2> Can confirm that several people are experiencing issues with feed updates

</comment><comment><USER3> Experiencing issues from South Africa</comment>


Microsoft: Windows 7 "looks and feels" like Mac OS X - <AUTHOR> http://www.tgdaily.com/software-features/44630-microsoft-windows-7-qlooks-and-feelsq-like-mac-os-x <comment><USER2> Seeing as Windows Vista already uses a giant Aqua bubble for its start menu, and 7's major change is a dock, it's fairly hard to deny.</comment>


Twitter, the Zombie Land - <AUTHOR> http://d.pr/gmug

<comment><USER2> Isn't this a solved problem? Stop following people who generate noise?</comment>


U.S. senators threaten Facebook, Apple with encryption regulation - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-encryption-facebook/u-s-senators-threaten-facebook-apple-with-encryption-regulation-idUSKBN1YE2CK <comment><USER2> I'm normally not sympathetic toward Facebook, but if the US Senate tries to mess with encryption I hope Zuckerberg permabans every elected official in the US from Facebook, from the POTUS on down to the Board of Education in Butt Pimple, Alaska. Authorities are too used to being able to spy on electronic communications, they keep using the same excuses (child molesters and terrorism), and I'm getting sick of it.

The standard ought to be "judicial warrant or GTFO". IIRC, that's how it is for paper mail, and I think that's how it should be for all other communications.</comment>


Alternative address to Google - <AUTHOR> http://1249765489/

<comment><USER2> Google has a pretty significant ip block. You can find these quite easily, with a NSlookup, or even a ping.

</comment><comment><USER3> The point here is that the address

[http://1249765489/](http://1249765489/)

is a fully valid URL with a fully valid IP address. Few people know this is a way to write IP addresses that works well in for example browsers.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://466453.com](http://466453.com)

<comment><USER5> isn't that g-o-o-g-l-e on a phone keypad? :D</comment></comment>


In Defence of J.K. Rowling - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@wqorwell/in-defence-of-j-k-rowling-bf3bf37cee06 <comment><USER2> This seems like someone whose life this doesn't affect wondering why everyone can't just "sit above it all" and approach the topic without emotion, as if it isn't calling their identity and humanity into question and completely emotionally exhausting them

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say the biggest issue here is that anyone cares what a hack has to say. Public court records show she stole the HP crap stories.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good one. She's still a TERF.

The biggest problem with JK Rowling is nobody asked her.

Nobody ever asked her what her opinion was of trans people.

She literally, out of nowhere, started blasting out her opinions about a group of people that have nothing to do with her. Nobody provoked her. She just started with occasional retweets, graduated to tweets, and now writes whole essays about the subject.

Being calm and well-reasoned and doing some research isn't really an excuse. A lot of people who have opinions that harm other people based on their race or identity can come up with research and sound educated, or even be educated.

People make racist arguments about Black people in America based on things like crime statistics, and they even sound educated and intelligent while doing so.

In my view, all the research she cites is used as a retroactive justification for her underlying and unjustified fear of trans people. The evidence of that is that she talked about being a sexual assault survivor in her anti-trans manifesto. Again, not related to being trans, just TERF bathroom fear rhetoric.

Rejecting her bullshit is not an example society of going off the deep end into some oppressive world that rejects well-reasoned debate. She's not being oppressed by the government or censored. We are all free to call her what _we believe_ she is: a TERF who won't shut the fuck up about trans people who have nothing to do with her and her privileged billionaire life.

(And as a disclosure, I have read her entire essay, the first one she posted a few weeks back. I read that whole stupid thing. I'm not speaking out of ignorance on the subject. You really can't argue with her because you'd be arguing with someone who isn't speaking in good faith.)

<comment><USER5> Honest question: what the fuck is TERF? I opened wikipedia, and I'm none the wiser: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF)

> an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Coined in 2008,[1] the > term was originally applied to a minority of feminists espousing sentiments > that other feminists consider transphobic, such as the rejection of the > assertion that trans women are women, the exclusion of trans women from > women's spaces, and opposition to transgender rights legislation. The > meaning has since expanded to refer more broadly to people with trans- > exclusive views who may have no involvement with radical feminism

So is it just women who hate trans folks, or?

<comment><USER2> Someone who considers trangender women undeserving of feminist support</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to communicate adaptability to employers? - <AUTHOR>

In looking for software engineering work over the last few months, I've found many openings for which I would be qualified, if given 2-4 weeks of training. In this economic climate, though, employers can find someone who is already experienced in the exact ways that they want, and they tend to go with the "safe bet".
I suspect many HNers are similarly frustrated.
As an aspiring generalist, I've explored many avenues in computer science. If I get the chance to sit face-to-face with someone, I am 100% able to communicate my often deep knowledge about all sorts of technical subjects--especially machine learning and functional programming. But I have no "proof" of my expertise on these subjects, and therein lies my conundrum.
How can I communicate that, although I may not "look good on paper", I learn and adapt to new situations and technologies very quickly, and am worth interviewing? <comment><USER3> If I were you I might offer to work for free for a while: "I want a chance to prove myself. Give me a hard task that nobody on your team has time to do right now. I'll come in, sign an NDA, and show you what I can do. If you like my work we can take it from there."

That's how I got my first commercial programming work.

</comment><comment><USER4> Offer to come in for a day and work with the team. More and more agile teams are interviewing this way and it would be the best way to show that you can understand what they are doing and make helpful suggestions or even write some code on day one. (of course make sure that you think you can do this)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great suggestion--thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Open source projects are a good way - in some circles, at least - <USER2> demonstrating that you know how to get stuff done.

</comment><comment><USER6> Consider relocating for a time to a location where work is less scarce than wherever you currently live. That might not be easy at the moment however.</comment>


WonderSwipe, the not-browser that rethinks mobile search, 10-100x faster - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/wonderswipe <comment><AUTHOR> Direct app store link: [https://itunes.apple.com/app/wonderswipe- research/id13367409...](https://itunes.apple.com/app/wonderswipe- research/id1336740934?mt=8)

Medium post for why: [https://medium.com/wonderswipe/rethink-mobile- search-10-100x...](https://medium.com/wonderswipe/rethink-mobile- search-10-100x-faster-introducing-wonderswipe-6f2ff0d0e667)

Would really appreciate thoughts from other devs and web searchers alike.</comment>


Why Stack Exchange Doesn't Corral Workers into an Office - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2015/02/24/stack-exchange-remote-employees

<comment><USER2> They do a nice job of representing why stacks remote / on site policy works. Sometimes being remote is very isolated.</comment>


How AI happens: the fitness function is the *economy itself* - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/aaronwhite/status/527524203508285441

<comment><USER2> What if the economy is the AI?</comment>


Canada's UFOs: The Search for the Unknown – Library and Archives Canada - <AUTHOR> https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/unusual/ufo/Pages/default.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> Related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995159)</comment>


China to Ban Sale of Fossil Fuel Cars in Electric Vehicle Push - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-09-09/china-to-ban-sale-of-fossil-fuel-cars-in-electric-vehicle-push <comment><USER2> Here is the non-amp link: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-09/china- to-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-09/china-to-ban-sale- of-fossil-fuel-cars-in-electric-vehicle-push)

</comment><comment><USER3> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15208565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15208565)</comment>


The full list of 600 free online courses from 190 universities - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/190-universities-just-launched-600-free-online-courses-heres-the-full-list-3d9ad7895f57 <comment><USER2> How many of these courses: Do not require signing up? Either have no videos or equivalent texts for every video? Are self paced?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this only US based or wordlwide?</comment>


Swift: The joy of sequences - <AUTHOR> http://ericasadun.com/2016/06/08/swift-the-joy-of-sequences/ <comment><USER2> > meaning you can build functions like this:

Is it just me, or is that code example incredibly byzantine? I know I'm only a Swift dilettante, but that struck me as the kind of code we want to actively avoid building.

The conceptual grouping, the syntactic grouping and the line layout grouping seem to be carrying three contradictory messages about structure, requiring careful parsing to grok.

<comment><USER3> That's the biggest problem with adoption of academic-style (Haskell, OCaml etc.) functional programming languages.

The proponents believe that 'shorter = more readable'.

And if they would try to make it more readable it would start looking like Scala and C# (hence their popularity).

<comment><USER4> Don't blame Haskell, OCaml, etc. here. 90% of that syntax that is in the example is Swift specific and I agree it is cluttered and ugly. Swift would do better to stop trying to be like C/C++ and be more like ML (you can tell the language wants to be like ML, but I'm guessing there are internal politics to make it more C/C++-like for adoption reasons. There's even (or there were) a few design documents hinting at intentionally being C like).

<comment><USER5> I don't think the OP was "blaming" Haskell and OCaml as much as he was blaming the people trying to add Haskell and features and syntax to Swift and C++.

Haskell syntax works great for Haskell, because the whole language has consistent syntax for things like lazy evaluation and lambda functions. The problem is when people try to tack on those features to Swift or C++ and make it work with the ugly syntax from those languages, it ends up making it even uglier.

To me, the sample code looks like a bastardized mix of C++ and Haskell, and it's pretty hard to figure out what it's doing, even in the toy code samples.

<comment><USER4> Great point. Thank you for bringing out the distinction in OP's post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfold in Swift? Seems like a good step. It's a bit annoying to use raw unfold but it's easy enough to build utilities on top of it to capture common cases. Get the primitives right and everything else becomes easy.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not very familiar with Swift. If I'm understanding right, the `prefix` function being defined is equivalent to LINQ's `TakeWhile` [0]. If so, the C# version seems much easier to read to me:

        public static IEnumerable<T> TakeWhile<T>(
            this IEnumerable<T> source,
            Func<T, bool> predicate) {

            foreach(T value in source) {
                if (predicate(value))
                    yield return value;
                else
                    yield break;
            }
        }

Of course, there's a bunch of compiler magic going on here that's basically creating a state machine, which seems to be explicit in the Swift version. Are there any similar features in Swift to C#'s `yield`? If not, are any on the road map?

[0] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb534804%28v=vs.110...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb534804%28v=vs.110%29.aspx)

<comment><USER8> Beyond being a little more explicit about the generator semantics, it's just _noisier_. "Self.Iterator.Element" is a lot of noise compared to "T".

At the moment, I feel these sequence extensions are just allowing people to write toy programs with slightly less boilerplate, and are accomplishing little as far as improving our ability to produce useful software.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A new database of surface appearance measurements - <AUTHOR> http://rgl.epfl.ch/materials <comment><AUTHOR> The material database provides broad coverage of common and more specialized materials, including isotropic and anisotropic BRDFs of metals, paper, car paints, organic samples, fabrics, etc. Each material is available in a spectral version that covers the 360(UV) - 1000nm (NIR) range with ~4nm sample spacing, as well as a RGB version for compatibility with renderers that do not support color spectra. The representation is extremely compact, requiring approximately 16KiB and 544KiB per channel for isotropic and anisotropic materials, respectively. Furthermore, it provides a natural importance sampling operation that does not require numerical fits or complex additional data structures. Technical details on the underlying parameterization and measurement methodology are available in the paper

An Adaptive Parameterization for Efficient Material Acquisition and Rendering ([http://rgl.epfl.ch/publications/Dupuy2018Adaptive](http://rgl.epfl.ch/publications/Dupuy2018Adaptive))</comment>


Android Ice Cream Sandwich PSD startkit - <AUTHOR> http://www.androiddesign.info I've put together some PSD templates based on the newly published Android Design guidelines. Someone might find them useful, feel free to download. <comment><USER2> Google should really provide layout drop-in replacements (XML, Nine-patch, bitmap tiles, selectors, per-element-PSDs) for 2.x Android releases, and some system to support the grid they started in ICS (48dp element height, 4dp/8dp spacing,...).

Offtopic: I like how the OP uses Roboto for the site :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you can apply the 48dp grid to older android apps as well. The grid is not about android version, it's about screen sizes and resolution in my view.

<comment><USER2> Yes it works, "dp" are meant to be of the same physical size on all devices (even though there are badly implemented firmwares where it differs). What I mean is - these best-practice sizes should somehow be implemented (On ICS, buttons seem to have a min-width of >= 48dp per default - but there also ought to be layout helpers for spacing etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love this kind of thing and I think this is a good implementation.

I may have misunderstood it but don't the android design guidelines specifically recommend against using a bottom justified tabs control for 4.0?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why didn't Google release some standard design resources anyway?

<comment><USER5> There's a graphical layout editor in the Android SDK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> teehan+lax's Android PSD template is definitely worth grabbing too: [http://www.teehanlax.com/downloads/android-gui-psd-high- dens...](http://www.teehanlax.com/downloads/android-gui-psd-high-density/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Surely they are, but not for Android 4.0.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what would you do with $750k that you just inherited? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER5> Retire. $750K is $30K in passive income for the rest of your life (assuming you already have a residence).

Welcome to complete financial freedom to do whatever you want in life [0]. You don't necessarily need any more money to be happy [1], and the point of getting _filthy_ rich is to attain freedom of time [2], which you can get if you just live cheaper [1 again. Seriously, read this].

So really, this question should be: what would you do with your life if you could do anything you wanted? That, I'm afraid, is a much more subjective and philosophical question that the margins of this comment are too small to contain a satisfactory answer to.

0\. Unless you have substantial current debts. If so, pay those off first.

1\. [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich- from-...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to- hero-in-one-blog-post/)

2\. [http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest- Entrepreneurs/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest- Entrepreneurs/dp/1591842719)

<comment><USER6> Daily expenses in 10 years will be much more higher than now. 30K will deflate over the years.

I would buy a house, then put it to rent.

<comment><USER7> As you suggest inflation would significantly reduce your available buying power.

That said I'd guess you could live pretty cheaply if you owned your house outright and were frugal.

<comment><USER6> You can have a house for renting. There's all kind of renting options, some of them are more economic viable, for example, tourist renting gives you a lot more money than permanent one and you can make for a decent living even buy a new house if you do it well, but of course, this only happens if you are in a popular tourist destination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should take 10% of the take-home value and blow it on something incredibly expensive, awesome, and ostentatious.

Whatever it is, after the fact you should feel guilty and wasteful when you are done. This will keep you from blowing the other 90% bit at a time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not ask Hacker News.

Find a financial planner who can advise you on, the tax implications of a sudden windfall (federal estate tax, IRA contribution limitations, etc., etc., etc.), how to account for your living expenses + inflation, and how to overall preserve and/or grow your net amount.

Then you'll know how much you really have to "spend", and over how long of a period.

Then, if you're so inclined, come back and ask HN "What would you do with the net $XXX K that you just inherited?"

</comment><comment><USER10> Continue as-is - put the money aside and do nothing different at all - <USER2> you educate yourself enough to answer your own question. Until you educate yourself to that point, you are asking for others to siphon off that $ for themselves.

The age-old adage "a fool and his money are soon parted" has some relevance here. History is replete with examples of people winning the lottery and then spending it recklessly.

Asking the question is a good starting point - it shows you are aware of the possibility of making bad decisions about it (rather than a naive "it doesn't matter what I do with it" attitude). Now you must accept that there is no simple answer, the burden is on you to educate yourself and find the answers yourself.

It's not the easy answer you might have been hoping for, I know. Instead it is, as I said, a special kind of burden. But one I bet many people would like to take from you ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> As someone who was lucky enough to be in similar situation three times ($30k, $80k, $200k, at each time - a lot of money for me)

1\. There are a few books on the subject on Amazon - written especially for inheritors and by people who professionally help them manage their wealth - <USER3> and check them out.

2\. Whatever you decide to do with money, keep a journal. I've got a google spreadsheet open, and once in a while I note down all my assets plus all the decisions I make in regards to them. This has two benefits - one is that it removes a bit of emotion from the decision-making process when you have to write it down. It forces you to use logical arguments. Second benefit is that you'll be able to get back to your decisions from a couple years back, and either see whether they still hold true, or see why you made a mistake you did. For example, I bought Nokia shares a year ago. I noted down the reasons for that (WP7 and Lumia being undervalued), and now I see the reasons no longer hold true (Nokia no longer has Lumia)- I'll need to find new reasons to keep my shares, or sell those shares.

<comment><USER11> Also, I'd say - disregard anyone who says "20% for this, and 30% for that" without knowing your situation. It all depends on your risk tolerance, your age, your monthly expenditures and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 750,000 $1 hookerbots, or 1 $750,000 hookerbot.

Unless you're ridiculously lucky this is probably the single biggest pile of cash you'll ever have so if there's nothing you particularly want to do right now then take your time and think about where you want to be in 5/10/15/20 years.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd buy a house for myself.

I'd buy 1 low-end rental property (dip my toes in with 1 before finding out I don't like land-lording).

With that much cash, inflation becomes a big issue. You don't want to let the money sit in a regular checking or savings account. I'd hire an adviser on where to park the rest of the money to protect against inflation with minimal risk.

I wouldn't try to convert all of the money to real assets. The liquidity of paper is nice.

I would continue to work. It's a lot of money but I wouldn't call it set for life.

I would avoid high risk investments. ie no start ups.

Disclaimer: I am risk averse.

</comment><comment><USER14> 20% - buy property: a house, condo etc

20% - invest in self: runway for a startup, education etc

20% - invest long term: index funds etc

20% - invest short term

15% - take care of current wants: car etc

5% - help others

</comment><comment><USER15> Start a business or buy a business so that you can make that $750K into millions. The barrier to entry in many businesses is startup-capital. So I would look for businesses that have that barrier and start one OR you can buy a business and expand it. Many examples include: you can buy a hotel, restaurant, real estate, and many more. A good place to look for businesses is craigslist (believe it or not).

It all depends what kind of entrepreneurial spirit you have. I know that if I had $200k right now, in a year or two, I could make that into millions (this will involved lots of hard work). If you are not willing to do work then you can buy "absentee business" where the owner does not have to be there.

You can also become an "Angel investor" in a startup. But there are many startups and very very few make it big, so big risk if you do not know what you are getting into.

Just my thoughts, it all depends how hungry you are and how hard you are willing to work.

<comment><USER16> How did you inherit that much money?

I hope nobody died, but in that case you have my heartfelt sympathy! Do not think about the money now. Stay with your family and ignore that you have a little more cash in your bank account for a while. Take care!

I agree with @mattgerboth, but I'd invest things first in order to raise the health and living quality of myself and my family to normal (no luxury).

This part is up to you, but I'd save 40-50% in order to buy the stuff required that you need after you've bought that 0.5-1mm$ company for half of it's price (everything is possible with hard work, don't just accept the first offer blindly). When you know that the company is making profit, just help the company manage itself, because too much management is what usually makes things worse. You could also hire somebody who is knowledgeable in that area unlike those SAP Business Analytics bullshitters...

Regarding family. You've not told anything about it or yourself. Don't you care to let us know about it, or do you want to remain as incognito as possible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This post seems very relevant: [http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html)

Basically people with money don't become poor through extravagant spending. Most of the time it's through "investments" that turn out to be bad investments.

</comment><comment><USER18> 750k is a bonus to you and you should spend it wisely as in use it to lighten your burden in a long run.

30% - Emergency Fund 40% - Investment Fund (Low & High Risk) 10% - <USER4> Fund (Your children's education) 10% - Penny Fund (Use to cover your exceeded monthly expenses) 5% - Health Fund (Use to improve your health. Eg. Get a gym membership, eat health food, medical checkup) 2.5% - Entertainment Fund (Use to spice up your relationship with your wife, children or anyone important) 1% - Charity Fund (Do not give it all in one go. Give genuine tips and lend a little help to those out the streets) 1.5% - Do whatever you want to do with it.

Anyway this is just an example of how I would spend the money if it's given to me

</comment><comment><USER19> In my opinion, this is the question that separates the entrepreneurs from the wantrepreneurs. It's easy to talk the big talk when it comes to startups: how you hire people, how you lead teams, what development methodology you use, etc. When it comes down to it, however, any business is a vehicle for turning money into more money, and your startup is no exception.

Wantrepreneurs think in vague terms about what they would like their company to be. Entrepreneurs think in concrete terms about the money and time commitments it would take to make that happen.

I suggest you randomly pose this question to people: the answers are often very telling.

</comment><comment><USER20> Buy a rental property. 4 sublets paying $1800 per month is $7200 per month. Minus expenses, and that should net a $5000 or so a month. Enough to quit the job and hack on my ideas :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Durable goods, that $750k took a lifetime to build. The least you can do is see it last another lifetime to hand off to someone else.

Things that will decrease your monthly out of pocket expenses. E.g. if you have a home, solar panels, and a solar hot water heater. Extra bonus if you convert to solar powered hydronic heating.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/buyitforlife](http://www.reddit.com/r/buyitforlife)

</comment><comment><USER22> [http://memecrunch.com/image/51c88a54afa96f4d20000001.jpg](http://memecrunch.com/image/51c88a54afa96f4d20000001.jpg)

<comment><USER23> Exactly :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are some good suggestions here already (starting with 'talk to a financial advisor'), so I'll just throw a few different ones out:

* Pay down all debts, especially high-APR ones

* Give X% to charity

* Put $XX,000 in savings as an emergency fund

* Travel a bit

* Save it for starting/supporting a family

* Help out a friend or two in need

</comment><comment><USER25> What is the form of the asset? I assume you did not get $750k in cash, but likely it is in stocks, bonds, real estate, or ...?

First and foremost, if your goal? Is it to increase your wealth, to live large for short but fun time, etc?

Your situation and goals will impact what you can/should do.

</comment><comment><USER26> Save $500,000 as rainy day fund. Take $150,000 for personal living expenses (runway). Use $50,000 in $5,000 chunks for interesting stock investments. The last $50,000 in personal business expenses in getting something up and running (used wisely, sparingly, and when you have to.

</comment><comment><USER27> Move to Cambodia and build a free school for the children there

</comment><comment><USER28> create a very lean startup and test as many possibilities as possible, while also taking the time to learn the technologies that might align with your business

</comment><comment><USER29> Buy an island. Live there with friends. Forget about the world.

[http://www.privateislandsonline.com/](http://www.privateislandsonline.com/)

<comment><USER29> Why downvote? I was genuinely serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Set up a fab lab. It's missing over here.

</comment><comment><USER31> Buy property.

<comment><USER32> $750,000 could net you $100,000 a year in income. Let's say $90,000 a year if you have an expensive property manager. You can start here: [http://biggerpockets.com](http://biggerpockets.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> First I'd watch Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown: Spain, then I'd move to Granada and marry into a large family.

</comment><comment><USER34> give it to my wife. she knows how to do.

</comment><comment><USER35> Buy $750,000 bitcons.</comment>


Ask HN: Which companies are using .NET? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN, I have been looking at who is hiring threads as I am open to new opportunities and looking for jobs, but I can't find anything related to .NET, it seems like all jobs these days are looking for React, Javascript (Typescript), Python, Kubernetes and similar.
I found like 2 jobs with .NET core by going through around 500. I have been a .NET developer for about 5 years now and it does feel a bit discouraging when searching for new jobs.
Is this just HN bias where everyone is working with sexy new technologies? :) <comment><USER2> Most big companies uses it for their internal applications. Most of them contract external consultant or companies to develop and maintain these applications. So thousands of consultancies also uses it. These consultancies also integrate a lot of 3rd party commercial components. The component development companies that develops components also uses .net.

How many startups that uses it? Probably not as many as there ought to be and definitely not enough if you ask Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes it is an historical HN bias. It has improved over the years as HN has broadened its user base and YC has "followed the money." But HN is still driven by the Silicon Valley bubble and Microsoft's unforgivable sin will always be it's not a Silicon Valley company and did not make the usual lot of VC's rich (it made it's employees rich instead).</comment>