Only two notebooks worth to buy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.horejsek.com/only-two-notebooks-worth-to-buy <comment><USER2> I'll save you all a click - author is a developer and recommends chromebook or a Mac based on personal experience (trackpad, keyboard cited as being amazing).

No technical comparison provided.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this even here? There are lots of good notebooks out there. I'd recommend ultrabooks. I don't even have one, only a Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1. The touchpad is one of its best component. Large, smooth and the driver supports lots of gestures.

I use the tablet mode often also. Sometimes it's better to scroll by touching the screen. Weakest part is the audio part, the manufacturer's driver is glitchy and I can't find a good replacement.

</comment><comment><USER4> I routinely switch between a Dell, an Acer and a Macbook Pro and, quite frankly, they all work for me. What the Acer lacks in display and keyboard it makes up for in weight (it's one of those cheap "Windows Cloudbooks", now with Fedora 26 and extra RAM, very couch-friendly) and battery life. What the Dell (now with Ubuntu 17.04, most of the time attached to a big screen, a Unicomp PC122 keyboard and a reasonable mouse) lacks in display quality, charm and weight, it offers in versatility (sometimes the optical drive _is_ handy after all) and the Macbook Pro is very good, but HFS+ is the crappiest filesystem I've used in over a decade (even NTFS is better). Build quality is unrivalled, however and the newer models maintain that tradition (even if the keyboard takes some time getting used to).

<comment><AUTHOR> The question is if we need to care about what is used inside. Actually I feel that when there is at least 4 GB RAM (better more) then I can do anything. I didn't cared about computing power for many years and I'm software developer who runs a lot of things during development. That's why I care about how it's pleasant to use instead of technical details. :-)

<comment><USER4> 4 gigs is a bit constrained for me - browsers these days take up a lot of memory. Processing power is also a nice to have since few things are more distracting than sluggish operations. If my tests run for 10 minutes the odds of my mind wandering elsewhere increase.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Personally I run only unit tests or tests which do something with my code and the hard work of running all kind of tests I keep for server. Well, all the hard work I do at some server, at least home. Maybe that's why I stopped thinking about that and want notebook which just work out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was surprised that as a developer the poster complained about the trackpad so much. I wish I could get a system where I didn't need a pointing device at all. It just gets in the way of typing. I also personally hate gestures on trackpads. When I use them I only expect the level of interaction that I could get 10 years ago (move, click, right click, maybe scroll) and am frequently surprised by backward scroll axis, browsers going to the previous site etc. -- due to a brush with the track pad. The sooner trackpads are removed from these devices the better. That won't work for most people, but as a developer, I could do without it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really need to sit down with a Mac for a while and figure out why the touchpad is really good.

I've got two laptops I use daily right now a Lenovo T450 and a XPS 13. It's really apparent to me the lower 'resolution' of the Lenovo's touch pad.

But with the Dell, I'm not sure how much more it can be improved.

Maybe because I don't use any gestures?

<comment><USER7> A big part of it might be the latency. I'm on an Asus ultrabook (UX430) with a pretty wide, smooth clickable touchpad, but I still don't use it much because it has a noticeable latency that makes it very frustrating to use compared to that of a Macbook. I've noticed the same problem on many laptops (Lenovo ideapad for instance, while my old Thinkpad x220's trackpad was responsive and so more usable despite being absolutely tiny).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe someone needs to tell the author that different people have different requirements.

Most of his argument is about the touchpad. I don't find the touchpad particularly relevant: Weight, battery mileage, keyboard feeling and screen quality are vastly more important for me (roughly in that order).

</comment><comment><USER9> Made the jump to Mac about a decade and haven't used anything else (unless experimenting) since then. The OS has the software I need and is built on Unix so the command line is very similar to that of Ubuntu which I use on servers.

</comment><comment><USER10> My old MacBook "pro" running Windows 10 insider's is one rad machine.</comment>


Watch Out for Ticks This Summer - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/watch-out-ticks-summer-sean-mcbeth

<comment><USER2> I already found one on me... in my yard. They are going to be nasty.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the nymph stage is particularly bad, because they are so small it is easy to miss them. Suburban areas and rural parks might actually have _more_ problems with ticks because of the lack of natural predators for the ticks' hosts.</comment></comment>


Tobacco and Psychosis: not quite a smoking gun - <AUTHOR> http://anp.sagepub.com/content/49/10/859.long <comment><USER2> _" Researchers have often overlooked the obvious – that almost all cannabis users also smoke tobacco"_

Is this actually true? It strikes me as plausible, but not presumptively obvious.

<comment><USER3> I know many marijuana smokers who don't smoke tobacco. in fact, most of the marijuana vape lounges in my city forbid the use of tobacco in or in front of the premises.

I personally quit smoking cigarettes by switching to marijuana. I know a handful of people that smoke both cigarettes and marijuana, but most of the people I talk to smoke one or the other.

<comment><USER2> Same, which is why I was inclined to be skeptical of their "obvious" presumption.</comment></comment></comment>


Stepping Backwards from AngularJS to JQuery – An Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://hundredminutehack.blogspot.com/2016/08/stepping-backwards-from-angularjs-to.html <comment><USER2> _Giving up Angular did force me to think more about the DOM. Vanilla jQuery doesn 't insert itself as readily into HTML code as an Angular directive can._

And that's why you should use [http://intercoolerjs.org](http://intercoolerjs.org) for most of your stuff, and a bit of jQuery where necessary for more exotic UX needs. The people who got sick of a mess of jQuery code were right, but they went the wrong direction to fix it. We have to go back.

I know people get tired of my shilling, but intercooler really is a better way for many, and maybe most, web apps to be developed.

<comment><USER3> I am personally fully behind your shilling and try to shill on your behalf whenever possible. It's sad how little interest intercooler has managed to garner when it's a fantastic antidote to so many things that are wrong with client-side development.

I recently used a touch of intercooler on a Django project and it just felt so right. Once I'd included intercooler.js itself, everything else was done via normal http attributes. It felt clean and lightweight.

<comment><USER4> Keep shilling. I had never hard about it until now. I love the simplicity.

We need more libraries that just do one thing well instead of kitchen sink frameworks like angular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there's a better approach to handling the delete buttons that's pretty common when using jQuery. Instead of each button having it's own handler function I would specify an event handler on a single DOM element (e.g. a list container) with something like $('#itemlist').on('click', '.delete', deleteItem). When 'deleteItem' is called 'this' will be the clicked button element that could have an attribute like 'data-itemid=123' which you use to fill in the 'id' part of the service call. And from there, after a successful service call, you can usually get at the parent element you want to remove from the list and take just that out instead of refreshing the entire list.

EDIT: Had the 'on' parameters mixed up. Here's the api doc: [https://api.jquery.com/on/](https://api.jquery.com/on/)

<comment><USER6> yes, that is event delegation : [https://learn.jquery.com/events/event- delegation/](https://learn.jquery.com/events/event-delegation/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I almost went down the event delegation route. The only thing that stopped me was having stumbled upon a tactic that happened to work where I just attached individualized event handlers one at a time. I appreciate the input and will make sure to give event delegation a second look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found this interesting because it seems to have been written by a person who learned Angular before jQuery. I haven't run into that before.

Maybe I'm getting old.

<comment><USER3> I found that odd. I do worry that many people use technologies because other people working at a completely different scale or in a completely different domain have hit a ceiling which wouldn't really apply to most people. They are convinced to start with a more complex and more difficult technology that's solving problems they are unlikely to be facing any time soon.

1\. NoSQL <> traditional RDMS because of scaling/sharding

2\. Angular <> jQuery (or anything similarly lightweight) because of the issues around huge complex webapps

3\. 'Fast' languages <> 'nice' languages ( ;-) ) because of performance concerns

4\. Static typing <> Dynamic typing because of maintainability across large teams.

5\. Docker/Microservices etc <> traditional architectures because of... I really have no idea...

So I guess the degenerate case is some poor chap learning web development who decides to write their Pet Store as an angular app with a Scala API backed by Mongo and Solr deployed to a Kubernates cluster ;-)

<comment><USER8> My friend was brought in by a client after the previous contractor had spent 300+ hours coding a simple organizational website - here is who we are, here is our phone number - using node.js. I doubt the website will ever see more than 20 concurrent visitors.

<comment><USER9> Even still, that's just the completely wrong technology to use for something like this regardless of scale. It sounds like it's literally static content. Just write an HTML file directly if it's a single page, or use something like `Assemble` to get easily re-usable partial support if you have multiple pages that want to share a header and footer or something.

<comment><USER8> It was 5-10 pages. Static content. Yeah, even if they had 10k concurrent users node.js would have been the wrong technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Next time, try dropping jQuery, too, and just using vanilla JavaScript. Just for fun. Simple DOM manipulation is now as simple in vanilla JavaScript as jQuery, with the only big advantage jQuery has now is if you're animating. You may find you're not missing much. You'd have to get used to slightly more involved Ajax syntax, unless you can target only new browsers, in which case the `fetch` API is just as convenient as jQuery's Ajax.

Heck, if you can can transpile to ES6 or if you're only targeting new browsers, you could probably even drop the Handlebars in factor of template literals without losing too much convenience.

<comment><USER11> > ...with the only big advantage jQuery has now is if you're animating.

While you can probably get away with using $.animate for very simple animations, you'll run into jQuery's animation performance problems before too long.

See: \- [http://wilsonpage.co.uk/preventing-layout- thrashing/](http://wilsonpage.co.uk/preventing-layout-thrashing/) \- [http://velocityjs.org/](http://velocityjs.org/)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, but then you just add velocityjs (as you reference). But I'm really referring to simple animations here, for anything complex I'd use Canvas or possibly SVG (although SVG can also have performance issues).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Caveat: novice programmer here.

Even Angular is still difficult for me to grok and sometimes I wonder if stuff that comes out of Google "suffers" (for me) from Google having unlimited resources and employing superior engineers? Would Google have a difficult time empathizing with "average" programmers with limited resources?

<comment><USER13> Angular is difficult to grok because it makes computer programming second class and limited to what you can cram into HTML tags.

Angular isnt really a Google product - Misko Hevery and another guy (both Google SW Engineers) developed in their free time.

Dart is a Google product and I would say is much easier to grok than Angular.

<comment><USER14> > Angular is difficult to grok because it makes computer programming second > class and limited to what you can cram into HTML tags.

...say what? I've done a lot of work with Angular, and a lot of work without it, and it's possible that I might agree with what you're saying here if I understood it, but I don't. Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER13> I'm just saying that everything that Angular makes convenient via the hints it throws in HTML is handled behind the scenes by calling Javascript libraries.

I would much rather the QooxDoo approach of writing apps in pure Javascript and using Javascript libraries instead of the HTML/JS/CSS soup that Angular tries to serve up to me as convenience.

It might be more convenient for someone who cant write computer programs. But for me it insults my ability to read, extend and use well-documented APIs.

<comment><USER14> > I'm just saying that everything that Angular makes convenient via the hints > it throws in HTML is handled behind the scenes by calling Javascript > libraries.

Well, of course, but I'm not sure why this would be an issue. Earlier, less well implemented versions of Angular sometimes produced headaches this way. Current versions really don't. Considering the amount of boilerplate I find this saves me having to write and maintain - thus freeing me to spend effort on those parts of my application which are essentially complex, not just accidentally so - I find Angular a pretty clear win there.

Of course, maybe I just can't write computer programs, and my now almost two- decade-long professional career doing so is simply a preposterously unlikely fluke. Who knows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can use event delegation for button handling : `$(document).on('click', '.button-list', my_function);`

[https://learn.jquery.com/events/event- delegation/](https://learn.jquery.com/events/event-delegation/)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for posting this. It's sad how few people seem to know about event delegation...

</comment></comment><comment> c-smile Just in case. I've written these while ago:

Routing, view, controllers in 60 lines of code + jQuery: [https://github.com/c-smile/spapp](https://github.com/c-smile/spapp)

Template-less repeatable sections / lists in 100 lines of code + jQuery: [https://github.com/c-smile/repeatable](https://github.com/c-smile/repeatable).

</comment><comment><USER16> Amazed at how Angular has created a generation of programmers that accept 2-way data binding and MVC as "the only way" to develop web apps.

JQuery encourages more fluent, purely functional reasoning, and one-way data binding of immutable data objects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Functional, yes. I can't think of too many cases where JQuery has every prevented me from mutating anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Step forward to ScalaJS and dont look back?

[https://www.scala-js.org/](https://www.scala-js.org/)</comment>


The end of petrol and diesel cars? All vehicles will be electric by 2025 - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/05/14/petrol-cars-will-vanish-2025-says-us-report/ <comment><AUTHOR> Pie in the sky thinking. Where's my flying car, dude?</comment>


Musk: SpaceX to Attempt Falcon 9 First Stage Water Landing - <AUTHOR> http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/03/28/musk-spacex-to-attempt-falcon-9-first-stage-water-landing/? <comment><USER2> Q. Can you provide more details on Dragon Version 2?

Musk: Significant upgrades, powerful side mounted thruster pods. Quite big windows for astronauts to see outside. Landing legs that pop out of the bottom. It look like kind of a real alien spaceship. Started with landing on water because it was the easiest thing to do and we didn't really know what we were doing. Didn't want to take any unnecessary risks. Now want to push the envelope on the technology.

Plan to unveil Dragon Version 2 later this year.

\- - - - - - - - -

Fuck. Yes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Exciting times. By mid-next-year spacex might make space travel an order of magnitude cheaper ($60mio vs $200k, aka launch vehicle cost vs fuel cost). It will lead to a paradigm shift as to what can feasibly be sent to space. Who knows it might even lead to a satelite startup craze. All in hopefully only 1 1/2 years.. Go spacex!

<comment><USER4> There are limits to how much stuff you can put into space and many of the more useful orbits are getting fairly saturated. However, cost is what prevents people from using most orbits so there is a lot of room up there.

<comment><USER5> First, the spatial safety margins given to satellites don't really depend on the volume of the craft, so enabling much cheaper per-kg-to-LEO can greatly increase the amount of stuff up there in the same number of crafts. Second, I'm sure there are all sorts of clever ways to dramatically increase what we can fit up there if it were useful. Cheaper lift costs make it both cheaper and more valuable to clear space junk, etc. The amount of raw space up there is massive, something like millions of cubic miles _per satellite_.

(Surface area of Earth is 200 million square miles, times an easily accessible LEO altitude range between 120 and 170 miles, gives 1 million cubic miles for each of the 8000 satellites, operational or otherwise, currently in orbit.)

<comment><USER4> It's not just the satilite's you need to worry about try and put 10x the crap into orbit and suddenly the 300,000 pieces smaller than 1 cm below 2000 km altitude becomes 3 million. (It's paint flakes etc.) Which dramatically increases the amount of shielding required to survive the sand blasting and further increasing tiny junk up there and eventually the required shielding may become untenable.

Now, at some point clearing space junk is going to be worthwhile, but I think we are still a long way from that point.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. My understanding is that the amount of space junk produced per satellite launched is purposefully much lower now than in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool, so they are not just trying for a first stage powered landing, that's the big ticket item but they also slipped a powered Dragon landing in there too - two of three stages closing in fast on reusable recovery. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER7>
        > Q. What was the problem with the thrusters on Dragon?
        > Musk: There was a "very tiny change"

Sounds like software development!

</comment><comment><USER8> That is an interesting approach, basically assuming that the first stage is "lost" and try to land it. If you do land it win! if not, well you didn't need to anyway.

Does anyone know if the landing will be parachute assisted like the solid rocket boosters of the shuttle?

<comment><USER9> SpaceX tried parachute recovery of first stages with earlier launches. Apparently it trashed the stage pretty good every time, so that they consider it a failed technique. (They've never released photos of a recovered part, so far as I know, which I think is evidence of embarrassment.)

With their Grasshopper work, I expect they'll try to save the mass and effort involved with parachutes and just do propulsive recovery. (Parachutes are surprisingly hard, and adding a second system of any sort is probably more than twice the work--and raises the probability of failure.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bug fixing rockets in space!

Q. What was the problem with the thrusters on Dragon?

Musk: There was a "very tiny change" to three of the check valves on the oxidizer tank. Different from the previous ones that flew, and they got stuck. Was able to write some new software in real time that was uploaded with Dragon to increase pressure upstream from check valve and release it. The spacecraft version of the Heimlich maneuver. Once they got unstuck, they worked very well.

Had difficulty communicating with the spacecraft because it was drifting. Worked with the Air Force to get higher powered dishes to communicate with Dragon and upload the software.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if they are contracting with Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos's space company). They've been focusing on powered return from the beginning of their program.

[http://www.blueorigin.com/updates/updates-2011-11-17-video-o...](http://www.blueorigin.com/updates/updates-2011-11-17-video- of-the-short-hop-flight.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool about the fact that there's increase in cargo capacity by 60%, but doesn't the grasshopper project will eventually reduce capacity to something like 1/10? (Can't find the quote right now but I swore I seen something like this)

</comment><comment><USER13> Are there any videos of this press conference ?

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know what "sequestration" means?

<comment><USER14> If you're living in the States, I'm guessing you've been living under a rock the last few months.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_sequestration>

Short summary: Dysfunctional Congress set up automatic harsh spending cuts to force compromise. Shockingly, they couldn't compromise, so they went into effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So cool - Agile Aerospace.

Does anyone know (or guess) where the first stage will splash down?

And when the first stage returns to dry land - where will it come down? Azores?</comment>


Ask HN: How to start a CA? - <AUTHOR>

What would it take to run a CA business/service? I know the technical details, but I think it would be hard to convince major client vendors to trust a new CA. Even if the new CA gets Chrome and Firefox's trust, there are slower updating clients out there, who may not trust this CA just because Google and Mozilla did. There could also be more requirements, obligations, expectations than just gaining clients' trust.<p>Ref: source of thought https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7557823 <comment><USER2> Running a commercial CA is not for amateurs or those with a weak stomach. It's a LOT of work, and costs a LOT of money. The operational security requirements are VERY high in order gain the trust of your customers. The physical security alone is prohibitively expensive for most companies. Man traps, secure server rooms (REALLY secure), biometrics, etc. Additionally, there are the technical security requirements. Smartcards, hardware security modules (HSMs) for key storage, and so on.

In order to gain the trust of the browser manufacturers, your PKI has to be certified by a recognized standards body. This is not easy, and it is not cheap. Every aspect of your operation and infrastructure needs to be documented, and you have to stick to it. No relaxing on the rules.

Practically speaking, you're talking about an expense on the order of a 7-figure expense to get things up and running, with additional costs for certification, etc.

SOURCE: I've worked on the largest PKI in the world (Fed. Gov't) as well as the largest commercial CAs for the last 14 years.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the terrific insight. Had no idea that it was like running Fort Knox. With that sort of investment, no wonder the pressure to amortise capital costs pushes the prices up.

<comment><USER2> Well, you also have to remember that the marginal costs of issuing a cert are next to nothing. Once you've spent your money getting everything built out and certified, issuing a single certificate is almost pure profit! That's especially true for run-of-the-mill SSL certificates. Obviously, if you're an enterprise and you want a full, hosted PKI solution there are additional costs and work involved. But, for the commercial certs you buy one at a time from Verisign, et al, the marginal cost is very low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Read the link, agreed it is a great idea.

The problems are not technical, but that of trust. How do you get a reliable mechanism for trust that resists social engineering?

Maybe the Hacker News community could be a starting point? Some combination of karma, longevity, vouching via LinkedIn, etc? Problem is that almost everything that I think of can be gamed. Maybe some other readers have a more comprehensive grasp of how to go about making such a CA solid and reliable.

<comment><USER4> Agreed that trust is the biggest problem. Specifically, how do you convince major browser vendors they should ship with the root cert for your CA. If that doesn't happen, it drastically limits the practicality.

<comment><USER3> pharaohgeek's response is an eyeopener.

You could provide an easy to use guide for people to install your root certificate into their browser. Then it becomes a matter of making sure that your CA issued certificates are not abused. I think that is a huge risk if you can't make sure that spammers, etc can't get hold of your certificates.</comment></comment></comment>


Paul Graham, we need your advice - <AUTHOR> We have developed a technology that significantly reduces energy consumption and has a transformative impact on the world. It can be used in all areas where engines or rotation are used: electric vehicles, e-planes, e-ships, power and wind generators. We have two working prototypes that validate our technology.
Our technology is particularly effective when applied to EVs. It reduces energy consumption from the battery and extends the range of an electric car to more than 700 miles on a single charge.
Our product for EVs is a magneto-mechanical battery. It provides the electric vehicle with 70% additional mechanical energy. As a result, the consumption of electrical energy from the car battery is reduced by 70%. On average, an EV consumes about 16 kWh of energy per 60 miles. Thanks to the additional mechanical energy from our magnetic battery, the electric vehicle will consume only 4.8 kWh per 60 miles, thus increasing the range to more than 700 miles on a single charge.
All VCs we met decided not to invest in our startup (after talking to physicists).
How progress is supposed to go ahead if physicists are afraid of extending their knowledge about the universe? We have a working prototype. They say that it violates the laws of thermodynamics. We say that if it had violated the laws of thermodynamics, it would have not worked. But it works!
How we can find investors who actually want to change the world for better? <comment><USER2> If your product is a battery, why not completely replace the car battery with it? How exactly does it work? I'm assuming you've already patented it, so there should be no harm in revealing more.

If using _one_ of those magneto-mechanical devices of yours reduces energy consumption by 70%, why not use two and reduce it by 91%? Or four to get a 99% reduction?

Edit: The sibling comment raises a good point about bicycles. The cyclist is already acting as a motor, so just put your battery between them and the wheels. Then you can reduce how hard they need to pedal by 70-91% percent easy, right?

In fact, you could just buy an electric motor, put your magnetic battery after it, and have it turn a generator. Since the motor would be using 70% less energy than normal, it and the generator wouldn't even have to be very efficient to output more power than you put in. Then you can just plug it into a wall socket and sell electricity back into the grid...

Or you could divert part of the output power back into the electric motor, so you wouldn't need any power from the grid at all. You'd just be outputting clean, free electricity...

</comment><comment><USER3> You imply that physicists are afraid of extending their knowledge, but this is literally the physicist's goal in life. If you've discovered a mechanism that violates an established law of physics, a Nobel Prize is probably in your future.

On the other hand, every time I turn around there's a new crackpot trying to crowdfund research into perpetual motion machines and the like. It's possible that the VCs you've approached are doing a poor job of explaining your product to the physicists they've consulted, who then dismiss it out of hand.

If you have working physical prototypes, and not merely an idea that you _believe_ will work, and you're willing to let people 'get hands-on' to test them, and they're not prohibitively expensive for the performance increases they lead to, the tech community should be very interested indeed. Perhaps focusing on finding credentialed people to independently confirm that your process works _first_ rather than approaching VCs would be something to try.

</comment><comment><USER4> A startup is a difficult environment to try to rewrite the laws of physics. Consider either joining a research lab, or starting your own and applying for SBIR funding instead.

If you want to work on this in a startup, don't start with electric cars! You need several billion to launch a competitive electric car today. You can't raise that without a track record of previous successes. Start with something small you can build multiple iterations of on a startup budget. Electric scooter and bicycle owners also care about range.

</comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't you guys be riding high on your Nobel Prizes resulting from your last major breakthrough[1] that shook up the world? With that kind of track record, you should have no problems getting funding.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19423784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19423784)

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you have a working prototype?</comment>


Time to break up Google and Facebook, says New York attorney general candidate - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/25/time-break-up-google-facebook-says-new-york-attorney-general-candidate/?noredirect=on <comment><USER2> It's time. A solid 100% of the gains in wealth we've seen over the past decade have gone straight to this new aristocracy 10% of the population that has been fortunate enough to latch on to these gigantic companies that have concentrated wealth in a way never possible before in history.

And this will be a good thing for everyone. Look at what happened to Standard Oil. Rockefeller was forced by the DOJ to break things up at the height of our first gilded age, and the subsequent companies went on to be hundreds of times more valuable than Standard Oil alone, while creating thousands of jobs and spreading the wealth to more Americans.

<comment><USER3> Your diatribe is a complete distortion of economic history and facts, best crystallized by your use of "concentrated wealth" when what we have witnessed is an _enormous creation_ of wealth.

Search engines, social networks, mobile phones, high-speed Internet, same- and next-day e-commerce, interactive maps, video streaming, 24/7 access to world- wide news and commentary, electric cars, cloud services, solar panels, wind farms, fracking, online banking, fitness monitors, 4K tvs, retina displays, tablets, e-book readers, voice-activated assistants, cleaning robots, advanced medical devices, tailored drugs, reusable rockets, etc. etc. are all _created_ and those who create and finance the creation of these products and services deserve a) our accolades and admiration and b) reaping the rewards of their actions.

<comment><USER2> >Your diatribe is a complete distortion of economic history and facts, best crystallized by your use of "concentrated wealth" when what we have witnessed is an enormous creation of wealth

Yes, created _and_ concentrated. It used to be that economic activity led to the improvement of everyone's lives. Think the model that worked great for us from post WWII, until the financial deregulation and tax cuts of the 70s/80s. Now it leads to record corporate profits which enrich a select class of wealthy shareholders.

The average American has been absolutely forgotten and left behind, as evidenced by our current political climate.

<comment><USER3> Please get a grip on reality. The average American has access to vastly better products, services, and health care than past kings couldn't even have dreamt of. Even the amazingly wealthy Rockefeller did not have access to the modern bounty that the average American can easily buy and use today, the bounty that is being created by entrepreneurs and people in the corporations you apparently envy so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now, we just need a CA AG candidate to propose breaking up the Wall Street giants...

<comment><USER5> Not the same. There are many wall street giants so competition is there vs there are basically no competition for tech giants

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it ever did happen--not that it would--it would happen like brexit: " _Bust them up! We don 't need them. Wait a sec... Where'd my cat videos and fake news go?!_"

<comment><USER5> you are misunderstanding, break them up meaning separate them into multiple independent entities that together still provide all the services. Here is a good summary: [http://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty- research/c...](http://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty- research/case-breaking-amazon-apple-facebook-and-google)

edit: link to full article [https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/a15895746/bust-big-tec...](https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/a15895746/bust-big-tech-silicon- valley/?src=nl&mag=esq&list=nl_enl_news&date=020818)

<comment><USER6> I am understanding perfectly. These things started out separate. They ended up together... for a reason.

We are spoiled western last men with broadband connections. It isn't enough that we can have all of these things without getting out of our chairs. Oh, no! It has to all be under the same login, integrated with alexa and siri, one-click checkouted with apple pay and google wallet, and cost somewhere in the ballpark of a couple dollars to free.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, conglomerate to conglomerate. Just like the AT&T (temporary) breakup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also, Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a software developer, I'm hugely in favor of this. These companies conspire to suppress wages via anti-poaching agreements and H1B lobbying. Not only that, but Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are using their size to put software developers and sysadmins out of work, McDonalds-icizing software with proprietary, walled-garden service stacks. The money those three make on their hosting services is coming out of our pockets (see: AWS cost monitoring and optimization is its own role!), but nobody seems to notice or care.

<comment><USER9> "Putting sysadmins out of work?" Why not just make computers illegal and use pen and paper to create jobs?

<comment><USER8> You took that out of context, I said "software developers and sysadmins out of work, McDonalds-icizing software with proprietary, walled-garden service stacks." Implying that the result is lower-quality and disempowering of software businesses who aren't Amazon, Google, or Microsoft.

So, pen and paper vs. the computer is not a fitting analogy. The PC vs. the mainframe is a better one.</comment></comment></comment>


The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité - <AUTHOR> http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html <comment><USER2> Slightly off topic, but...

Once upon a time in usenet, there was a fellow named Koos Nolst Trenite: [https://www.scientology-lies.com/event/1995-02-01/koos- nolst...](https://www.scientology-lies.com/event/1995-02-01/koos-nolst- trenite-usenet-kook.html)

Koos transcended the bounds of reality by claiming to do Scientology "audits" clairvoyantly on L. Ron Hubbard, who was of course, dead by this time.

Is Koos any relation to Gerard? I could not google up an answer. I did find a "Gerardina Elise Nolst Trenite" ([https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Gerardina_Nolst_Trenit%...](https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:Gerardina_Nolst_Trenit%C3%A9_\(1\))) not clear if she is related or not.

<comment><USER3> There was a time when Koos Nolst Trenité and I walked the same street. For reasons I can't recall we struck up a conversation a few times. Nice guy.

I dug up his card to find his site; he seems to still be active there. [http://www.angelfire.com/space/platoworld/](http://www.angelfire.com/space/platoworld/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Further notes on _The Chaos_ :

[http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/e/pronounc.htm](http://www- users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/e/pronounc.htm)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ok, let's compare.

To be: I am. You are. [S]he is. They/we are.

Etre: Je vais. Tu es. Il/Elle est. Nous sommes. Vous etes. Ils sont.

Ser: Yo soy. Tu eres. El[la] es. Nosotros somos.

Estar: Yo somos. Tu estas. El[la] esta. Nosotros estamos. Ellos estan.

I think that pretty well sums it up.

<comment><USER6> s/vais/suis/

I think the point you are making is grammatical: in pretty much any language, the most common verbs are irregular.

But isn't this poem more about orthography and pronunciation? Some languages are much more regular than english in that regard.

<comment><USER7> > in pretty much any language, the most common verbs are irregular.

It's the other way around: if a language retains some irregular forms, then only because they're common enough that native speakers can remember them.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What technology to chose for a web app in 2020? - <AUTHOR> TL;DR: What front end technology should an inexperienced web developer team of two pick when starting a new project?
My startup is developing a web app that is very visualization-heavy. Since I have a background in machine learning and Python the prototype is based on plot.ly's dash. Changing the prototype has become more and more difficult and there are some aspects of dash that I'm not very happy with:
Poor separation of front end and back end code, Mix of Python and JS/HTML/CSS, No support for mobile, Difficult to extend (e.g. integrating maps was painful)
The bottom line is, it all feels like we have reached the limits of our current technology stack and we should start from scratch with more suitable technology.
So I went out to see how web apps are done "properly" in 2020. Separating front end and back end is a very obvious first step. The back end technology is also very easy to pick. But the technologies and trends regarding front end are just overwhelming for me. I've read/watched multiple guides on the topic (e.g. https://youtu.be/0pThnRneDjw) and they all present multiple areas (UI, CSS, transpiler, database, etc.) from which one library/framework/etc. must be chosen.
I'm looking for a as-small-as-possible subset of these technologies that is strong in the following areas: Maintainability: This is the number one priority. The code must be easy to change, extend and debug. Extensibility: Plays well with new libraries/technologies. Easy to learn. Good solution for the long term
Some technologies that caught my eye are: TypeScript, vue.js, chart.js, GraphQL. But I have very little confidence in my choices. Can you help me navigate this space? <comment><USER2> My go to stack is some combination of: TypeScript, React, Emotion (for styling), material-ui (component library), Next, Express (REST), chart.js, konva.js

But that's mostly because I have been using these tools over-and-over. So don't worry about it and build something first.

<comment><USER3> I am new in Node.js (only used express). Made some basic CRUD projects. I haven't given any interview or worked on Node.js in production. Can you please tell me what things are required to be considered a good Nodejs candidate? any libraries, concepts that I should look into? I would be very thankful to you.

<comment><USER2> First of all, CRUD projects are great to start learning kudos!

As far as the node/express route I'd say you should learn about the `req` (request) and `res` (response) objects, what information they have and what you can do with them. It would be pretty helpful to learn about how express middlewares work (they allow you to put little pieces of logic that will validate/enhance/authenticate etc..)

Express isn't the only library outthere you don't need to learn them all but its good to know they exist (hapi, koa, ...)

For node I think it is important to know how to use promises, (async/await) and some basic system libraries (such as `fs`, `path`, `os`).

After that you should probably transition form JavaScript to TypeScript (most new project will start with TypeScript today, and older ones are migrating to it).

Check starter projects, you can find a bootstrapped node js project with almost any framework you can think of, use it if it makes your life easier and later learn how to make your own project from scratch to learn the basics.

Hope you enjoy your JS journey ;)

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot. I am mainly doing same as you said, guess I am doing fine. I need to look into `fs`, `path`, and `os` though. I have just started working with TypeScript this year and really like it, also made a small starter project in TypeScript myself, took help from online tutorials.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The answer to this question is almost always: "the stack you're most comfortable with".

In your case, given that you have (apparently) a strong Python background, you should try to see how far you can go with Django and some vanilla js. If your front-end doesn't absolutely have to be a SPA, you'll be up and running and productive much more quickly with a fairly simple (server-side logic and page generation) and user-friendly (Django) stack. No need to jump into node, npm, etc.

If you want or need to get more fancy with the front-end, vue.js is relatively easy to pick-up, fairly future-proof (as another poster pointed out, vue and React are the two main choices), and can be included fractionally in your existing pages without a complete overhaul.

</comment><comment><USER5> The folks at Shopify, Basecamp and Hey are all showing that if you care about developer ergonomics, you can still develop in Rails.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you are looking to ship, then do not separate the backend and frontend too much. I'd pick Django for the backend and "sprinkle" some javascript (vanilla or stimulusjs or alpinejs) on top of the html.

The trouble of of separating frontend from backend fully is just not worth it, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's nothing wrong with the tech you list at the bottom. They're all solid choices right now. I think you can go ahead and start writing production code right now.

Python/Node is a very popular enterprise stack, similar in mindshare to Java/Node.

I think it's going to be Vue vs React for a while

</comment><comment><USER8> Spring Boot or Flask (backend) with React (frontend) and Postgresql/Elasticsearch (persistence).

</comment><comment><USER9> Go with React and a charting library like Nivo. Write wrappers around Nivo so you can switch out Nivo with something else that might handle particular charts better. Don't marry a charting library. Pick a small Redux alternative for global state management (haven't tried Recoil, but maybe Recoil?). That will hopefully keep your frontend light and away from an industrial (too big to ever refactor, too intertwined to ever pull things out or change paradigms) codebase.

Your backend can be anything that serves up a rest api. Otherwise go graphql.

<comment><USER2> Redux is still a very valid choice. If you don't like the setup boilerplate, you can use the official toolkit which has very sane defaults.

[https://redux-toolkit.js.org/](https://redux-toolkit.js.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Angular for the frontend makes the most sense to me. React and Svelte are good but you need to bring in a lot more supporting libraries for more complex libraries.

</comment><comment><USER11> GraphQL, as far as I know, has been gaining immense popularity as of late. I've never used it in a professional capacity, but its great in that you can shape the types of API responses returned from a single endpoint -- very different from how REST does things. The ecosystem is growing pretty quick too, I've been enjoying playing around with Hasura which can generate a GraphQL API from a PostgreSQL DB you point it to.

</comment><comment><USER12> TypeScript, React and some charting library. create-react-app has the TS and React part, you just need to add the charts. With CRA, you don't really have to worry about the transpiler and so on, you just write npm run start.

</comment><comment><USER13> Since I'm doing several parts of the stack, this year I went full Typescript...

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://github.com/yewstack/yew](https://github.com/yewstack/yew)

Rust web framework generating webassembly apps.

Possible stack could be

yew -> grpc -> rust backend.

</comment><comment><USER15> Svelte.js (svelte.dev) would be my recommendation for frontend.

</comment><comment><USER16> You can keep backend in Django and switch frontend to Vuejs</comment>


Researchers Move Closer to Completely Optical Artificial Neural Network - <AUTHOR> https://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa/newsroom/news_releases/2018/researchers_move_closer_to_completely_optical_arti/ <comment><USER2> Tip: When you read articles that says _" researchers might have..."_ or _" researchers get closer to..."_, read them as follows:

These folks ran out of their funding and need to renew their grants. For that purpose here's their progress report and no, tech is still quite far away. Watch out for same article title next year same time.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with this. Some progress takes time and funders just need to know that folks are working hard at it.

<comment><USER3> I think it has more to do with the way that researchers describe their projects to journalists. Whatever you're working on is to complicated to explain properly, but you can at least say what it might eventually be useful for. So you tell that to the journalist, and (if they are good) the journalist publishes "A step towards X" (if they're a bad journalist you'll see "Scientists discover X").

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can it compute anything non linear? I.e. can it actually have any activation function?

<comment><USER5> Without a non-linear activation function, it wouldn't be an ANN, because multiple linear layers are equivalent to a single layer applying the composition of their transforms.

The article gives no clue about this part. I have no idea if the optical domain can compute non-linear functions.

<comment> jf- If you want a non-linear function that can be produced optically, consider an evanescent wave[1], as used in TIRF microscopy. Whether this is suitable in practise as an activation function I couldn't say, though the curve does to my eye look like something that could be used in place of relu.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Optical computation will never become relevant at scale. There are fundamental reasons for this: first, particle size. A photon at usable wavelengths is extremely large, much larger of any modern electron based _devices_ This makes it imossible to scale to usable density. Second, optic-optic (as opposed to electro-optic) non linear effects are based on interaction with electrons, in particular with electron decay from an energy state to another which is tipically extremely slow.

<comment><USER7> "If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong." \- _Arthur C. Clarke_

<comment><USER8> "A platitude is a trite, meaningless, or prosaic statement, often used as a thought-terminating cliché, aimed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease" – Wikipedia

<comment><USER7> "Touche." \- Me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It may be my lack of knowledge about optics, but from an ML perspective this seems rather mundane if not useless. Model training involves high levels of parallelism on a large scale for difficult tasks, something I can't see these optical chips doing. Does anyone have any further information that might enlighten me to otherwise?

<comment><USER10> By performing these transformations optically, they primarily get data parallelism (like [GTV]PUs). I expect this to happen. NVIDIA's ACDC paper provides an FFT-accelerated neural network layer (similar to deep-fried convnets), with an offhand remark that the transformations could be performed optically. I wonder what kind of information bandwidth they can get, though.

<comment><USER11> Physicists were using optical lenses to do approximate FFTs over a hundred years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Makes me think of the positronic brains from Asimovs books.

</comment><comment> bra-ket related: "All-optical machine learning using diffractive deep neural networks" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698135)</comment>


Most Important Programmer Skills: Communication Skills? Uh. No. - <AUTHOR> http://lbrandy.com/blog/2008/09/a-programmers-communication-skills/

<comment><USER2> I kept trying to figure out if this was a deliberate joke.

The author sets out to be contrarian with this thesis statement:

 _Communication skills are completely and utterly overrated for the position of software developer._

Then the essay goes on to eloquently argue the opposite, complete with quotes from Steve Yegge _and_ Jeff Atwood as well as Diana Larson of 37signals, and with a fairly decent five-point argument in favor of communication skills. All of which takes up most of the post.

The impression is that of an author who is desperately at war with his own subconscious mind. It's like watching Doctor Strangelove write a blog post: The author occasionally has to seize his right hand with his left in order to stop it from undermining his stated goals.

Anyway, just in case this isn't all tongue-in-cheek: Yes, it's true that you also need to know programming as well as communication to be a good programmer, just as a good runner needs a right leg as well as a left one. But there are good reasons why communication is often prized as highly, or higher. The essay offers several; here are two more.

First, a great programmer who cannot communicate cannot argue with you. You'll tell him to build X, and with his brilliant insight he'll know that X is the wrong thing and that he should really build Y, but _he's not verbally facile enough to win an argument with you_ so he'll either go off and build a beautifully optimized version of _the wrong thing_ , or he'll sit around sulking until you finally figure out, weeks later, that his mumblings about Y were actually a stroke of genius. Either way, you waste time and money.

A more serious problem is this: The great programmer who cannot communicate will build you a fast, well-designed, robust piece of software that is almost entirely opaque. When you ask the other workers on your team to maintain that software, they will come back to you two weeks later with the news that they just can't understand it, that the Silent Genius can't or won't explain it to them, and that your company therefore has no choice but to throw it all away and rebuild it in Enterprise Java. This is a _huge_ problem that happens time and again. Even hiring a brilliant communicator can't always save you -- PG can write and argue, and yet Yahoo rewrote his Lisp software anyway -- but at least it gives you a fighting chance.

Software is the art of building a structure inside your own head. (The computer is just an accessory.) But _professional_ software engineering is the art of pinning that structure down, making it work, and keeping it working _independently_ of you and your head, because your brain doesn't scale. And the latter task is all about communication.

<comment><USER3> Why don't you have a blog?

<comment><USER2> I have a blog, <http://www.mechanicalrobotfish.com> . I never write on the darned thing, despite good intentions, and despite the good arguments in favor of doing so. Instead, I write here. I can't seem to help it.

Let's invite Zombie Feynman to explain:

<http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html>

 _When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don't get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they are not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come.

Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and challenge: You're not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!_

HN features questions from the students -- literally, in some cases! It's very inspiring. Even the craziest submissions can provide useful food for thought.

Having said that, I need to force myself to blog more. Thanks for the inspiration!

<comment><USER4> Or just keep using HN as a blog

(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226482>)

P.S. Thanks for the URL :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has changed over time. Communication was not as important as reasoning or problem solving when programming was difficult and computing time expensive. I can remember when programmers were expected to spend considerable time preparing to make good use of their programming session. One of my worst programming experiences was the time I was forced to work with a friendly, sociable but otherwise poor programmer on a task where we collectively had only 2 hours a week to use the hardware.

Communication is more important now that machines and people are relatively plentiful and the most difficult issue programmers face is knowing exactly what problem to solve.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was having a conversation about communication skills with a few colleagues just today.

I work with a lot of off-shore people based in India, and yes most of them are just code monkeys. While their English is generally (but not always) excellent, the single worst trait we have spotted is terrible communication skills.

If you work on something that is technically difficult and requires a great coder and not a code monkey, then perhaps great coding trumps communication at all times, however in the big enterprise world, I already know I am going to encounter countless code monkeys, but if they cannot communicate its just sole destroying attempting to set their direction and manage them.

This can be in several ways:

* Extracting information is a painful process - they are never keen to offer it up and when they do, they leave vital pieces out, or forget bits and don't tell you about it until you ask as second or third time when you suspect things don't seem quite correct.

* Developers send you emails with questions or explanations devoid of context assuming you can read their mind - This just wastes everyones time, as I have to then reply asking for more information or call them.

* The communication is so bad, that they explain something in a way that it allows it to be assumed to be something else entirely, and the team/project/whatever heads off in the wrong direction entirely, until someone hopefully catches it!

* They give managers extra anxiety, as they never send progress report of keep him up to date on what is going on, which means the manager has to spend a lot of time chasing things up.

</comment><comment><USER7> At my university, the WORST people to work with are the people who love talking. They always argue and want things to go their way, and it just stalls projects. The best are those who simply do what they are supposed to do, quietly and competently.

The problem with the blogging is that it's not the non-communicative ones who are out there talking, it's the ones that love talking.

People who know intricate details about hardware do not have time or inclination to write all the time about it - the audience is small, and usually just as competent.

<comment><USER8> Talking a lot has nothing to do with being a good communicator.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree. It is, in fact, the opposite. Over half of being a good communicator is being a good _listener_ and that's often missed.

Yes, you have to be technically competent. Communicating clearly is a technical skill and if you fail it, it is like saying you're competent, except you know, with pointers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think "good" communication skills are the requirement but rather just adequate skills in a field populated by people notorious for having rather poor communication skills, thus making the basics look good.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you can't communicate well with your compiler, communicating well with other humen beings about the software you're trying to write will most likely not be in your skillset.

</comment><comment><USER12> it reminds me about an article of comparing US and German customer support

The US CS have better communication than technical -> "your call is important, the problem will be resolved within 24 hours bla bla bla" ... but things rarely get done

The German CS don't talk much but their competency is high so things get done quickly ... much faster than the US

</comment><comment><USER13> "Good communication skills" go hand in hand with "easy to manage."</comment>


Larry Ellison Is Spending a Fortune to Save American Tennis - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-04/oracle-s-larry-ellison-plans-u-s-tennis-revival-indian-wells-growth

<comment><USER2> I thought it was Mark Hurd (the current oracle co-CEO) who was trying to save tennis

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-04/oracle- s-m...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-04/oracle-s-mark-hurd- wants-to-revitalize-american-tennis-by-starting-with-schools)

<comment><USER3> Unrelated, Hurd sounds like an ass.

> Unlike Ellison, Hurd played tennis throughout his youth. He was good enough > to earn a full ride to Baylor and to play No. 1 for the team. Without any > prodding at all, Hurd will pull out trophies earned at National Collegiate > Athletic Association Division I championships. "You would never have seen > one of these," he says, knowing that I managed to play only Division III > tennis. When the Indian Wells tournament is on, Hurd flies down from > Oracle's headquarters to mix business and pleasure. He speaks with customers > and takes in the matches. He also plays at Porcupine Creek and can be found > showing off his guns in a tank top.

<comment><USER4> Then they are perfect for each other. I like the story of how Ellison will violate smaller airports no-fly times (due to the noise and close neighborhoods), and land his private jet anyway and just pay the fines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >>instead of spending a minimum of $60,000 a year of their own money traveling the world and working their way up tennis's ladder.

Right the article spent a lot of time being Life Styles of The Rich and Famous but that's the punchline if you want to talk about "saving american tennis" there's not just no money at the bottom, there's negative money. The article mentioned Hurd donating to _one_ college club but if either of them want to save tennis they need to be buying or starting smaller regional tournaments with enough money to keep food on the table for the lower rungs. Or donating to dozens of colleges. Something that gets more players in the bottom. Increasing the payout for one tournament and turning one complex into tennis heaven is useless.

<comment><USER6> The article makes no mention of the USTA Junior Development program and how it could be enhanced. Nor does it mentioned their effort to court more African American players. Donating to a few colleges (which will likely be the schools with the top 1-50 rankings; take a look, they are the same as in every other NCAA sport) will do very little to scale up young American talent. My two cents: more red clay courts. Young players need to learn how to think and construct a point as opposed to over powering an opponent. Also lower the cost of participation. Maybe Ellison can donate to the USTA which would in turn subsidize the cost of lessons for those who are talented but from an economically disadvantaged background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's great that someone cares enough to use their own money to help shape things like this.

</comment><comment><USER8> I presume it's only a matter of time until he manages to fit some giant Yachts in there.

</comment><comment><USER9> What tech titan is worse than Larry Ellison? I have a hard time thinking of any. He makes the Uber guy and the Snapchat dudes seem like mother teresa.

<comment><USER10> Specifically, what's wrong with Ellison? Kalanick? and Spiegel?

<comment><USER11> Ellison lands his private jet during no-fly times and happily pays the fines while local neighborhoods have to take it.

Spiegel has a Steve Jobs painting/poster in his office and is REALLY touchy about it.

Kalanick has a whole "I'm going to squeeze every penny from this industry and call it a disruption" vibe.

<comment><USER10> >Kalanick has a whole "I'm going to squeeze every penny from this industry and call it a disruption" vibe.

Interesting, do you think the same impression migrated to Uber? Do you think they're 'squeez(ing) every penny from the industry'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this hacker news? Where do I go to read news about hacking?

<comment><USER13> Larry Ellison is closely associated with a prominent technology company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The next time HN readers run into the weeds and start complaining when some billionaire isn't solving world hunger, etc and is instead trying to solve a crazy technical problem, going to space, etc let's try and remember that most billionaires just have fun with their money</comment>


The Classic Two Egg Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.interviewcake.com/question/two-egg-problem

<comment><USER2> Those hints were pleasingly helpful, they lead you right to the 'aha' moment without giving the whole answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> On my planet, eggs will break when dropped from the 1st floor. ;-)</comment>


Using Spotify as a social signal while working remotely - <AUTHOR> https://pragli.com/blog/using-spotify-to-communicate-status/ <comment><USER2> FTA: "They could potentially be deeply focused on a task, but if there is an urgent task that I need from them, I can likely safely contact them."

You interrupt me during deep focus time[0] and the last thing you should feel is safe. There had better be a critical emergency, someone dying, major financial risk or otherwise an important+urgent issue. Urgency by itself won't protect you.

Otherwise you will find yourself the subject of this week's debrief meeting about "what didn't work" and more importantly, now responsible for paying for drinks and food for the rest of the team. We each have a block of time allocated and we aren't joking about how rare and precious actual uninterrupted time is.

[0] around 3 hours blocked out per day ahead of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah... the idea was that urgent meant a site outage or customer P0. I'd like to think that would qualify, no?

<comment><USER2> We've heard this many times when people hear we have deep focus scheduled: "You'd better respond or you'll lose customers". But we use teams. The team responds. There's always many more than one person on-call and/or available to respond. If one person is unavailable we have others from the team able to step in.

An outage that can only be resolved using a single hero individual that must always be available to swoop in to save the day means there was no team backing them up. That seems less effective: It means no one is really taking leave. No one is taking real breaks. No one is doing real handovers either on a regular basis.

The "no real handovers" aspect means that the current state of each system isn't being checkpointed. We see that as a business risk. Not unlike what source code control protects against. Imagine you didn't commit code into git or similar for awhile. Still feel safe about rolling back changes? _How are you going to roll changes back_? Its a similar thing in people. If you don't do any handovers then stuff stays in one individual's head.

Your situation might be different. That's fine.</comment></comment></comment>


Hiring a  project manager prototype ready for launch in Feb - <AUTHOR> http://www.elance.com/php/bid/main/proposalList.php?jobid=22367994 <comment><AUTHOR> this is just a very part time and temp job but may lead to more, and possibly fulltime. Would be managing outsourced programmers who will be putting prototype together.</comment>