Feedly gets hit by DDoS attack, refuses to give in to blackmail - <AUTHOR> http://grahamcluley.com/2014/06/feedly-blackmail-ddos/

<comment><USER2> Do people really get punished for it? I mean the actual ones behind those bot, not the innocent ones that had their computer hacked without knowing.

If yes, how long does it normally take to get them? If At all? Weeks? Months? Years?

These days DDoS seems far too easy, far too common.

<comment><USER3> Why do you think someone is innocent if they let some third party use their computer without permission? For essentially all malware that makes your computer part of a larger botnet, you have to be extremely careless to let it get on your device, not dissimilar to leaving your car unlocked when it is subsequently stolen and used in a crime (or just misused by playing kids). The latter is illegal[0], why should the former be ok?

[0] [http://www.gesetze-im- internet.de/stvo_2013/__14.html](http://www.gesetze-im- internet.de/stvo_2013/__14.html)

<comment><USER4> "not dissimilar to leaving your car unlocked when it is subsequently stolen and used in a crime"

In the US at least, this is not a crime. If someone leaves their car unlocked by accident, why should they get punished if someone steals it and uses it for a crime?

Victim blaming is not the answer, it's just silly.

<comment><USER3> > In the US at least, this is not a crime. If someone leaves their car > unlocked by accident, why should they get punished if someone steals it and > uses it for a crime?

Negligence. If you own a powerful tool, you are at least in part responsible for it not to be misused. Similarly to how you are usually required to keep your guns locked away and are held responsible (at least ideally…) if someone steals them from your kitchen table and misuses them, you are held responsible if someone just sits in your car and drives off to kill someone.

> Victim blaming is not the answer, it's just silly.

Except that the victim in a DDoS is the person being ddos'd, not the random user who installed malware. If someone gave you a key and said "Enter this flat over there, take the computer, bring it to me and I'll give you 10€", you couldn't later claim to be a "victim" because they stole your time. If someone sends you a file and goes "double-click this and you'll get _fantastic_ porn", I don't see how you could later claim to be a victim if they stole part of your data cap.

<comment><USER5> If someone tells you "Enter this flat over there, take the computer, bring it to me and I'll give you 10€", its on you to realize that that is illegal (and morally wrong) and refuse to comply.

"Double-click this for fantastic porn", on the other hand, will sound perfectly legitimate to many unsuspecting computer users. And there is nothing inherently illegal about the act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was just wondering why I couldn't hop on Feedly.

I feel sort of bad that this is what makes me finally self host my RSS reader, since it's totally out of their control, but I've been planning on jumping ship for a while, it's just been low priority for me. Goread has been tempting me though, so I guess I'll check it out.

<comment><USER7> If you were a former Google Reader user, you might like Feedbin. I've been with them for the last year or however long and have been fairly happy.

<comment><USER8> I've been using Digg Reader for a while and I'm actually kind of shocked that most people haven't moved to that. It has its bugs (sometimes showing incorrect numbers, the mobile app locks up sometimes), but it's honestly the best alternative that I've found so far.

Maybe it has to do with its free-ness, as people worry about them shutting doors like Google Reader, but if you're looking for a free solution then I'd definitely recommend it.

<comment><USER9> I was a very happy Digg Reader user for a while, but the bugs just kept getting worse and worse, and I jumped ship.

Now I'm on BazQux, which works very, very well and very, very quickly, but has no mobile version and a design straight out of 1996.

<comment><USER10> And it's written in Haskell. Which makes me want to take a look at Haskell again :)

<comment><USER11> I thought they used Ur/Web.

<comment><USER12> Ur/Web is used mostly for generating JavaScript and part of web server. Most backend is written in Haskell.

You could look more here [https://github.com/bazqux/bazqux- urweb](https://github.com/bazqux/bazqux-urweb)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Fever since Google Reader shutdown: [http://feedafever.com/](http://feedafever.com/)

I have put together install instructions here: [http://thornelabs.net/2014/05/10/install-fever-rss-reader- on...](http://thornelabs.net/2014/05/10/install-fever-rss-reader-on-fedora- rhel-or-centos-with-ssl-and-selinux.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder why nearly every self-hosted alternative RSS-reader here is a web- app; isn't using a desktop-application desirable? Like Firefox, Thunderbird, Liferea[1], Akregator[2], and probably lots of OS X applications?

[1] [http://lzone.de/liferea/](http://lzone.de/liferea/)

[2] [http://www.kde.org/applications/internet/akregator/](http://www.kde.org/applications/internet/akregator/)

<comment><USER15> So much of what you're reading in RSS-reader is web content, naturally you'd want to click through things in your existing browsing experience. At least that's how I view it. I'd like to use a desktop-app but find myself never opening running it and instead jumping to feedly/google-reader etc.

I'd really like to have a desktop-app w/o web service that sync'ed to my phone which I also like to read rss on.

<comment><USER16> Multiple devices is the main reason I rely on a web service.

<comment> mike-cardwell That's why I read RSS via IMAP. All of my devices have an IMAP client on them. I have a script which downloads RSS feeds and sends an email to me for each item, which is then filtered into a News folder via a Sieve filter. I spend half my time in my email clients anyway so I may as well get my RSS fix in the same place.

<comment><USER16> Interesting flow!

Personally I'm beginning to hate email... sorta wish the actually-important stuff in my email were sent to my RSS reader...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder why they're not using Cloudflare.

<comment><USER18> Cloud flare is a protection racket. Some people don't use them on principle. They are the vendor selling chastity belts to stop rape. It is in their best economic interest that these attacks continue.

It's sad that to run a service now the expectation is to shovel money to another service to absorb UDP packets.

<comment><USER19> It is a protection racket ONLY if they are aiding or doing the attacks. I don't see how protecting a company from DDoS attacks is a protection racket by itself, care to elaborate?

<comment><USER20> From what I have read, Cloudflare takes considerable flack because they willingly provide services to the websites that let you buy and sell ddos-for- hire services.

Also, I believe their defense is "we are a proxy, not the host, go elsewhere to complain". So, yes- They appear to allow these booters to exist and thrive in a world where they were unable to (at this level) before.

* [http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1235995](http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1235995) * [http://www.organicweb.com.au/17240/internet/cloudflare-secur...](http://www.organicweb.com.au/17240/internet/cloudflare-security-review/) * [http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/the-new-normal-200-400-gb...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/the-new-normal-200-400-gbps-ddos-attacks/)

<comment><USER21> If Cloudflare is knowingly providing cover to the DDOS-for-hire companies after being informed of what they are doing, that's a big bunch of bullshit right there.

Just because a company temporarily relocates behind Cloudflare doesn't mean CF is guilty, though. They can't vet every website before it goes up and each time it updates.

If they aren't kicking these guys off their network for performing the same activities they defend against, though . . . well, "racket" is kind of the term for it.

<comment><USER22> If Cloudflare kicked accused DDOS-for-hires, the first step in any DDOS campaign would become "accuse target of being DDOS-for-hire". That wouldn't actually be a step forward for DDOS victims who use Cloudflare, because then they would have to provide human input to some sort of appeal process ASAP, rather than Cloudflare just working automatically to thwart an attack.

<comment><USER23> An accusation should not be sufficient, obviously. Why can't CloudFlare take abuse complaints, verify and take action based on that?

In fact, this is precisely what they've done in the past, though they'd only provide the host details rather than stopping service to a site. (I don't think they'll even go this far anymore, rather they'll give you the abuse email for the host and tell you to have the host contact them, which is ridiculous.) I've filed a few such complaints myself. In one instance, the booter site didn't provide any info about its services without registration, so I linked to the hackforums thread where it was being offered. CloudFlare declined this as sufficient proof. Luckily, I could register an account without payment, and that gave me the options to pay to launch attacks, so I sent the login details to CloudFlare and they accepted that.

<comment><USER22> Your experience seems to contradict the insinuation that "Cloudflare is knowingly providing cover to the DDOS-for-hire companies after being informed of what they are doing", to which I responded. So I guess there's no problem after all?

<comment><USER23> I don't think it contradicts that. CloudFlare is indeed knowingly providing cover to them. The fact that they'll give you an abuse email to the actual host doesn't change them continuing to provide service to such sites, even when they acknowledge a site is a booter.

<comment><USER22> I think we agree, that any defensible policy would lie somewhere between "ignore all accusations of booting" and "credulously believe all accusations of booting". Re-reading your comment, I'm not sure, but are you saying that CF are at the former end of the policy spectrum? That's regrettable.

I wonder, however, if even the latter policy would solve the booter problem. Accessible websites are convenient for commerce, but they aren't required.

Also, any argument you make about CloudFlare could also be made about Google: I see [http://quantumbooter.net](http://quantumbooter.net) as the second link and [http://top10booters.com/](http://top10booters.com/) as the fifth link at [https://www.google.com/search?q=booter+services](https://www.google.com/search?q=booter+services)

<comment><USER23> > I think we agree, that any defensible policy would lie somewhere between > "ignore all accusations of booting" and "credulously believe all accusations > of booting".

I agree with this.

> Re-reading your comment, I'm not sure, but are you saying that CF are at the > former end of the policy spectrum? That's regrettable.

Somewhat. As of my last experience with them (which was like a year ago), they will accept abuse complaints for booters. If you can prove to them the site is a booter, by providing documentation on the site itself (not hackforums or anywhere else where it's being advertised, which is understandable as it's basically hearsay, though a bit difficult) indicating the site offers a DDoS service, they will provide the abuse@ email of the hosting company. They will tell you to have the abuse@ people contact them directly for further details. This is the only action they will take.

But my opinion is they should, upon confirming the site is a booter, terminate their service to the site. It would also be nice if they would continue to provide the host details, in addition, so the reporter can contact the actual host and have the site taken down from there as well.

> Also, any argument you make about CloudFlare could also be made about > Google: I see [http://quantumbooter.net](http://quantumbooter.net) as the > second link and [http://top10booters.com/](http://top10booters.com/) as the > fifth link at > [https://www.google.com/search?q=booter+services](https://www.google.com/search?q=booter+services)

Very good point, thank you for mentioning.

The difference I see is that CloudFlare actively provides a service to them, while Google is merely maintaining a keyword-based search listing for them. That being said, I can see both sides of this one.

My views on the legitimacy (rather, lack thereof) of booters: they are a service that serves absolutely no legitimate purpose. The sole purpose is to perform an illegal act against another person. I know a bunch of them are sold on hackforums as "stressers," i.e. "stress test your own server," but that also isn't a legitimate purpose - I can see no case where one would want to stress test their own services with some UDP or SYN flood over the Internet. Such a thing would only be done over a private network using your own packet generator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One of the problems is that the Android app is draining the battery whilst it can't connect to the Feedly servers.

</comment><comment><USER25> The original posting on their blog: [http://blog.feedly.com/2014/06/11/denial- of-service-attack/](http://blog.feedly.com/2014/06/11/denial-of-service- attack/)

> We are working in parallel with other victims of the same group and with law > enforcement.

Last.fm is also experiencing "network difficulties" for a few days now, I'm curious if they are also on the same group.

[0] [http://status.last.fm/](http://status.last.fm/)

</comment><comment><USER26> When they said in their post that they were working to neutralize the attack, I started wondering how they are doing that. If anyone else is curious, this article - [http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/22518-How-to- Protect-a...](http://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/22518-How-to-Protect- against-Denial-of-Service-Attacks-Refresher.html) \- briefly describes how DDoS are neutralized.

</comment><comment><USER27> I posted it on HN a month ago, but it wasn't popular then: [http://selfoss.aditu.de/](http://selfoss.aditu.de/) (yes, it's opensource)

</comment><comment><USER28> What kind of low life do you have to be to do this kind of crap ? Is this what "hackers" do these days ?

</comment><comment><USER29> Best thing they can do is offer a bounty :-D that seems to be extraordinarily effective

</comment><comment><USER30> It looks like they got hit by a second one today.

</comment><comment><USER31> How's this blackmail? What secret are they threatening to reveal?

<comment><USER32> Yep, from their blog.

"2:04am PST – Criminals are attacking feedly with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop. We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can."

[http://blog.feedly.com/2014/06/11/denial-of-service- attack/?...](http://blog.feedly.com/2014/06/11/denial-of-service- attack/?utm_content=bufferf6540&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> yes.

</comment><comment><USER34> I guess the demise of XP is still a long ways off. If there were no XP users remaining, could there still be enough hackable computers to create a large enough botnet?

<comment><USER35> Considering a lot of intrusions happen via the web browser / plugins installed in the web browser (flash/java come to mind right off the bat), I don't think XP being retired has anything to do with future botnet sizes.

<comment><USER36> it's a coktail,you cant only blame flash or java,the browser and the os running these stuff shares some responsibility.

<comment><USER37> Exactly how is the OS supposed to stop an exploited browser from doing anything malicious? Even if you have strict access controls like SELinux, that won't stop a browser from participating in a DDOS attack and changing settings like cache or homepage to get reinfected next session. And if you _don 't_ have strict access controls, like 99% of desktops, the exploited browser can freely install all the user-mode malware it wants. So XP vs. not-XP is completely meaningless at this stage.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any advice for a programmer who has hit rock bottom? - <AUTHOR> Throw away because my other account is quite active on here.  I was diagnosed with depression a few years ago and since then have made peace with it.  I am under medication, but it's barely helping.  Recently I switched job to a very good tech company with good quality work and pay.  The plan was to join a startup  in a year or two and see where it takes me.
However, things have been going downhill.  I have  10 years  of programming experience and I would say I am above average at it.  Since the past few weeks, I have grown anxious and fearful of anything that's remotely challenging.  So much so that I have started lying to take leave from work.  I like my work  but cannot muster the courage to do it.  I fear letting my team down.  I am always afraid and anxious.  It's horrible living in fear.  Guilt has become a normal feeling.  I cannot bear lying to my awesome colleagues.
I cannot decide what to study.  My programming confidence is taking a hit.  Everything looks bleak.  I have even thought of giving up and taking a job where I don't have to think much, like an assistant or librarian or low level management associate.  It's like I am just waiting to die...
Any advice will help.  Thanks HN. <comment><USER2> As someone that had depresion, I know how you feel.

> my other account is quite active on here

1.- STOP READING HN! Go out, read books, do hard work (dig holes, plant trees, etc), sweat! exercise! there's more to life than the latest startups and 'show hn' posts.

2.- watch funny movies Seriously, I had a ritual, every night after work I'd prepare dinner, and watch something funny, every single night. No excuses. This helped a lot.

3.- exercise. Helps with mood. I think this is even better than medicine.

4.- leave HN, there are other things more important.

5.- find a hobby or do something different. I decided to do something bigger: I had enough with my previous career and wasn't happy, So, I entered school again to study a different career 10 years later. This saved me.

6.- it gets better.

7.- Oh, and don't sleep at daytime, keep a schedule, a routine, sleep at night.

8.- Don't play videogames, avoid repetitive stuff: like 3d shooters where you play again and again the same levels.

9.- Again, find a hobby, something that makes you go out.

Drop me an email if you need anything

<comment><USER3> You forgot: 10.- Eat healthy and drink lots of water. Fruits and veggies, less bread and potatoes.

(I can be presumptuous in saying I know you forgot #10 because it feels like I wrote your list myself...)

<comment><USER4> I'd like to add an increase in your fish and seaweed intake will also be beneficial. There are so many things interfering with iodine uptake in our thyroids that this warrants some serious attention. You can also google "iodine cured my depression". I can honestly say it did for me as well. What fefifofu has said about "less bread" is extremely important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you have a therapist or someone to talk to who will give you the ability to just voice your thoughts without judgement? If not, I highly recommend that you seek one out. If you have one and are unsatisfied, you should find a new one.

In the meantime, I am not sure you have hit rock bottom. Rock bottom is where you realize that there is a way up from here. You are still looking down into an abyss. Still, this might be the point at which you change your life. Start by changing your perspective. Every day, you have taken a step towards where you are now. Were all of those steps fumbles or mistakes or failures? You wouldn't be where you are if that is the case. There is evidence of success. What are those successes? How did you deal with adversity to claim those successes? There is evidence that you have overcome challenges.

From another angle: right now you have a good job and a career and you are depressed. If you take a menial job, you will probably be unsatisfied, broke, and depressed. If there is anything I've learned in this life: No matter where you go, there _you_ are. Still you.

Lastly, start building upon and celebrating little successes starting today. Any little thing will suffice. Every little thing. Do the same tomorrow. Make your way up the chain until you are celebrating success at the scale you want.

Hang in there. You are not alone.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do have a therapist, but not a counselor. I will try and find one. I have a very supportive spouse.

Thanks for your kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are classic symptoms of clinical / major depression. You have not found the right medications that help you yet. Keep seeing a psychiatrist who can help you find the right medication. Each time you switch it can take 10-12 weeks to know if that medication works for you. Please don't give up on the search for medication with a psychiatrist you trust.

If you find your cognitive abilities are lower than they used to be, don't worry. Those will come back too; but are the last thing to return after getting better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, my problem solving skills have taken a hit in the past few months. The progress is slow. I haven't been able to put enough hard work, it just seems pointless. I hope it gets better. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I also suffer from depression and anxiety. I have since I was 15 years old. I believe in runs in my family. I've only sought professional treatment for this in the past several years. I see a psychiatrist and I take some medications. It has been difficult. It still is difficult, but I'm doing pretty well.

I recommend that you seek out a psychiatrist. A lot of people don't understand that chronic depression and anxiety are real ailments. They will tell you things like "you're fine, it's just in your head!" Don't listen to these people. They mean well but they are ignorant. Get the help you need.

Feel free to message me.

Good luck to you!

<comment><USER8> I also suggest seeing a therapist. Can be a helpful complement to a psychiatrist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The depression doesn't help, but this sounds more like stress. Don't know how much it will help, as I don't suffer from depressin, but occasionally I'll get myself into a rut like that, and I found a few things that help.

Sleep at night. No more late nights, give your brain a rest before bed. Limit your caffeine to the morning - and no naps either. Sleep a full 8 hours, and willingly go to bed early enough that you have an extra hour of leeway in the morning. You'll feel tired until your body adjusts, but it will.

Get some cardio in - go for a run, ride a bike, or swim. Do something to get your heart rate up. Your body will naturally reward you, and will help calm you down mentally. Pay attention to your body, and add more cardio as you can tolerate it.

Keep a day-to-day list of things that you have to accomplish, and update it as part of your morning routine. I would recommend the Bullet Journal method, since that's been working for me. This will help you keep on track and see what you've actually accomplished.

Break down tasks that seem too daunting into smaller portions. Something that may sound simple like deploying an application can be overwhelming until it's broken down into smaller steps. Smaller steps also lead to more frequent wins, which will act as encouragement since you'll get to see progress.

And finally, don't expect to get so many things done per day. Focus on one or two things and work on them. If you add more than that, you'll just compound your stress which will turn into a vicious cycle because you'll constantly feel behind on your work.

Good luck, you're in a spot that plenty of people have been in, including myself, but even if this isn't it, there /is/ a way out.

<comment><AUTHOR> This, exactly! I have problem sleeping early at night. Thoughts and anxiety prevent me from sleeping. I don't have insomnia, I feel very sleepy, but very afraid and restless.

Also, I get overwhelmed by any task at hand. It starts getting procrastinated. Fear creeps in. Confidence takes a hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like you might be suffering from "imposter syndrome". A good number of high functioning, highly productive people who really care about their work suffer from this. It's normal and once you learn to control is, it can differentiate you from your peers.

[http://lifehacker.com/overcoming-impostor-syndrome-what- to-d...](http://lifehacker.com/overcoming-impostor-syndrome-what-to-do-when- you-feel-1651827849)

</comment><comment><USER11> I suggest that you take a different approach to dealing with your depression and anxiety, brain biochemistry is only a link in a huge cause-effect chain. If you win the lottery you may experience a big dopamine high, but a dopamine high won't make you win the lottery.

View your brain as a super computer (which certainly is) and your personality as an operating system which you must hack to get rid of bugs and malwares. You must crack those thought patterns that make you feel miserable and recover the full control of your system, you couldn't even get up on your feet if you had lost all of your willpower.

(I am not saying that you drop medication, just that don't rely on it as the only form of healing).

To feel Ok about programming again, try to have small personal projects which are easy to complete. Find new ways to deal with boring, monotonous and complex tasks at work. Rescue an old hobbie like playing guitar or find a new one.

EDIT:

I see these small buddhist koans as very insightful from a psychological - rather than religious - point of view. Basically mind suffering can only exist if there is an ego to experience it, and if you find that this ego is just a stream of recurrent thought patterns, you realize the absurd of fear and anxiety.

Huike said to Bodhidharma, "My mind is anxious. Please pacify it." Bodhidharma replied, "Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it." Huike said, "Although I've sought it, I cannot find it." "There," Bodhidharma replied, "I have pacified your mind."

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

A Zen student came to Bankei and said: "Master, I have an ungovernable temper -- how can I cure it?" "Show me this temper," said Bankei, "it sounds fascinating." "I haven't got it right now," said the student, "so I can't show it to you." "Well then" said Bankei, "bring it to me when you have it." "But I can't bring it just when I happen to have it," protested the student. "It arises unexpectedly, and I would surely lose it before I got it to you." "In that case," said Bankei, "it cannot be part of your true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you -- so it must come into you from the outside.(...)"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @neurohax. Your advice will help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stop with those medications. Psychologists and doctors these days tend to fix everything by putting you under some generic label and give you some generic medication. Medication is a good fix if you have some inflammation in your elbow and you take antibiotics for a week or two, but taking medications for longer than that is just plain wrong. Usually it will only deal with the symptoms, while hiding the real problems.

I don't know you personally, but let me give you my general opinion about solving your problem:

\- " I was diagnosed with depression a few years ago and since then have made peace with it" \- Don't let other people tell you what you have, even if they have a PhD. What if this guy was wrong? Some doctor told me 10 years ago that I will never be able to walk properly, because knees don't heal. Guess what, it did heal. I run 10 Kilometers for fun every Friday.

\- Start exercising. Go for some martial art if you can. Do it at least twice a week.

\- Stop with the news. Any kind of news. Read a good long book instead.

\- Meet some good friends, and do it often.

\- Don't give up to yourself. Don't work at a boring non challenging job. It will rot your soul from the inside. Keep up with the challenging work. You don't have to go over your head, always aim just a bit higher than your comfort zone. If you feel things are too difficult for you at this point, ask your team to go easy for a while. No shame in doing that.

Life is beautiful. Do your best to enjoy your time here.

<comment><USER13> While I appreciate the sentiment you're going for, it should be notes that you have no authority to give medical advice, and OP should not go off his prescriptions based on your comment. What you should have said (and what OP should do) is to have a discussion about that possibility with his or her primary care physician. I don't care what the circumstances are, people should not accept unsolicited medical advice from anonymous users on the internet without fact checking with a doctor. Not all doctors push pills the way you're describing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Things WILL get better.

It takes time to find the right medication, but if you don't feel better within 2 weeks tell your doctor and they'll give your something. I've had people close to me go through the same thing and it took a while to finally hone in on something that works. I know it must feel like the most hopeless and frustrating situation, but hang in there. Something out there will work, you just need patience.

Just remember that it's not your fault. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but the most difficult part is to convince myself that it's not my fault. It always seems my fault.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would encourage you to try meditation. It's not a cure for depression, but it can have effects that help. In the Zen tradition, Brad Warner's books have been very helpful to me. [http://www.amazon.com/Hardcore-Zen-Monster-Movies- Reality/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Hardcore-Zen-Monster-Movies- Reality/dp/086171380X)

</comment><comment><USER16> This sounds like a medical issue not a career one. I would focus on finding medical help from a competent professional.

</comment><comment><USER17> Maybe .... just maybe... you don't like programming that much. Maybe... just maybe... sitting on a computer 5 days a week all day to make some other guy rich IS kind of depressing.

THAT'S OKAY. You can do other stuff. You don't have to be a programmer for the rest of your life. You don't. Don't listen to HN people just telling you to take pills and get on with it. Jesus christ.

If you feel like working the same kind of job that is going pretty much nowhere is pointless... IT IS. That's not necessarily depression or some kind of mental illness.

</comment><comment><USER18> Work on finding things you can do without anxiety. It will likely be something very different from programming, but it will make you happy! That is the key. You must focus on your own happiness. It will be a tough transition, but consider it. Maybe just do some thought experiments (like "what if I were to get involve with art?" or "what if I built an app to help volunteers do . . . ?".

Go slow, but look into very, very different areas for a potential match. Think about YOU and happiness.

The very best of luck to you, my friend!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @warrenb. Hopefully this helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> All I can say is that it gets better, involves a combination of fighting back and staying put to weather the storm. I don't have a sure shot advice for you. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER20> What changed in the past few weeks? Look at this as possibly a somatopsychic issue. Look at dietary changes or other health changes. But also look at other stressors, like breaking up with your SO or having a falling out with a family member. Depression typically comes from one of two sources: 1) wonky brain chemistry, which is a medical issue or 2) some kind of real world problem that leaves you feeling helpless, often that problem is social in nature.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not much has changed. My diet, routine etc is the same. My problem is mainly due to wonky brain chemistry, but I haven't faced such an episode in a couple of years.

<comment><USER20> Hey, I did not see this yesterday.

I have a very serious medical condition. As a side effect, it sometimes jacks up my brain chemistry suddenly and very badly. I have spent nearly 15 years working to get a handle on it and I have made substantial progress. I am pretty confident something has changed in your life. You just do not know what it is.

There is research linking diet and depression. The most solid stuff concerns the role that certains fats/oils play and the impact they have on brain inflammation.

Look some of that up. Start a food diary. I have a food blog where I talk some about things like that (and I was a mess the day I wrote my last entry): Http://miceats.blogspot.com

If you email me or leave comments, I would be happy to have feedback or questions and you can shape the direction the blog goes to some degree by giving me some feedback.

Best of luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Go back to a doctor (preferably a real psychiatrist, rather than a doc in the box type place) and get on a different depression medication. There are an incredible number of combinations and medications that you can get on, each treating depression just a little differently.

For what it's worth, my fiance and I have both had a lot of success with Wellbutrin.

I'm not a doctor, but every symptom you listed sounds exactly like depression. Fix that, and you're golden.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just to echo the recommendation on exercise. Can you muster the strength to run/walk/rake leaves?

I won't pretend it's THE answer-- but it can help significantly > [http://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/exercise-and- dep...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/exercise-and-depression- report-excerpt)

</comment><comment><USER23> Wake up very early, don't take naps, start exercising. This works for me but I'm certainly not trained to give medical advice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, waking up early helps? I generally find it difficult waking up early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is evidence that meditation can help with anxiety/depression. I've experienced depression through varying life circumstances although never clinical depression. In these times of distress i began meditating, and have not stopped as i find it helps me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Talk to your physician. You should let them know what's going on. Perhaps adjust medication. Suggest talking to them if you are thinking about going off meds (at least have them taper you down so your body doesn't freak out by going cold turkey)

</comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like you're burnt out and need to develop other interests besides programming.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am the original OP. I got locked out due to the no procrastination settings...Sorry. I will reply through this account.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you read this another thing to try is CBT. It gives you a framework to deal with anxiety and bring it back under control.

There are books that you can work through or you can do a course (probably better). CBT is supposed to be very effective against anxiety. It is actually quite a short program (10 to 20 weeks).

</comment><comment><USER19> EDIT - Fuck throwaways. I am desp_programmer and desp_programmer1.

HN has been of great help to me. I owe it to the community.

</comment><comment><USER8> Therapy

If you can afford it, take some time off.

</comment><comment><USER28> bounce</comment>


Google StreetView using camels to travel Arabian desert - <AUTHOR> http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/national/google-straps-camera-to-camels-back-for-street-view-of-arabian-desert

<comment><USER2> Google should trade the Camel for a tank, the biggest tank they can find.</comment>


'Locked-in' people show signs of awareness when faced with sums - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28789-locked-in-people-show-signs-of-awareness-when-faced-with-sums <comment><USER2> Could this also be used to ask them yes or no questions? I wonder if that would be helpful or not. Perhaps "would you like us to pull the plug?"

<comment><USER3> Something like, count to 10 on the "yes" screen if your answer is "yes" or count to 10 on the "no" screen and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This technique can be used to operate a speech synthesis device. It would then but possible to more completely evaluate the patients.

</comment><comment><USER5> Given facilitated communications, I'd give this a BS until proven otherwise.

"The patients' families were very happy when they found out that the patient could do maths"

A Chinese study in New Scientist where they admit to giving the family false hope, a lot of alarm bells.

<comment><USER6> Facilitated communication is an _obvious_ scam, built on complete nonsense, with no empirical support. This is completely different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm sceptical, because some people in (what was presumed to be) a vegetative state also showed those "signs of awareness". Not read the paper yet, though.</comment>


Ask HN: Nigerians flooding my site with phishing emails - what to do? - <AUTHOR>

I've been seeing the number of messages on my site - UniversityTutor.com - increase a lot lately.  It looks like a lot of them are phishing emails (the same common Craigslist scam where they send you a fake money order and ask for a refund) and Google Analytics shows an unusual amount of traffic from Nigeria.
I have in place: * captchas * rate limiting per account * geocoding the IP to block Nigeria
Because of the captchas I'm pretty sure humans are sending the messages (not bots).  Of course the rate limiting and geocoding isn't fool proof because they can create new accounts and proxy the IP.  So I am still seeing lots come through.
Any clever solutions to this?  Thanks!
P.S. I'm looking into Evercookie and Panopticlick, but not sure if these are production ready yet. <comment><USER2> How do you validate the email address? You may consider DNSBL (DNS Block List) validation which is basically a dns lookup at an rbl site like dsn.rfc- ignorant.org, zen.spamhaus.org, bl.spamcop.net.

Learn more at <http://tinyurl.com/6ba6mq>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm....I'm not currently validating IPs for clients (only for tutors) because I didn't want to introduce an account creation step.

I could add this - although from what I can tell the emails they are using are real (usually Gmail accounts) since they want to be able to respond back and forth with the tutor to complete the scam, and get them to send stuff, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> You're not using an effective captcha => Confirm Human: 2 + 2 = Consider a more powerful implementation like <http://www.captcha.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's just something I threw on the new tutor form.

I'm using a real captcha on the contact form for tutors' profiles (which is what is being abused):

Example: <http://berkeley.universitytutor.com/tutors/40157>

(click "Send A Message To This Tutor")

There are humans filling them out.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A searchable list of self-hosted software with screenshots - <AUTHOR> https://selfhostedsource.tech/self-hosted/all <comment><USER2> I know many non-technical small-scale entrepreneurs who would love to use OSS self-hosted tools to run the basics of their businesses and get away from BigTech. I'm talking little shops, yoga studios, restaurants, recording studios, etc. All they need is basics - email, calendars, maybe some shift management, inventory management, and obviously documents. These people are completely non-technical and I don't know of any tooling that would let them set these things up quickly and reliably.

I fantasize about running a little consultancy that would set up and maintain a tailored package of self-hosted OSS software for such small businesses. But I haven't actually studied whether there's a workable business model to be had, or whether there's enough quality self-hosted software out there to adequately cover the needs of most small businesses. I'm curious if HN thinks this could be a viable business...

<comment><USER3> A few of us are trying to get development moving again on Sandstorm.io. It's a super handy (and default-extremely-secure) piece of software, it just needs a little nudge of developer interest. It's original target was the enterprise space, but it's an awesome self-hosting platform for privacy nerds too.

The OSS is out there, but you've gotta wrap it in enough design work to make the experience comparable to closed source offerings: Most businesses aren't going to want to pay for worse software.

<comment><USER4> Came to the comments to lament Sandstorm's demise. Glad y'all are looking to keep it moving!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From [https://selfhostedsource.tech/about](https://selfhostedsource.tech/about):

> Lucid index sources it's data from curated lists of software compiled by > volunteers. The specific lists used are:

> \- Awesome Self Hosted[1]

> \- Awesome SysAdmin[2]

[1] [https://github.com/Kickball/awesome- selfhosted](https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted)

[2] [https://github.com/n1trux/awesome- sysadmin](https://github.com/n1trux/awesome-sysadmin)

<comment><USER6> My biggest factor in choosing an Open Source Software platform is the size * activity of the community.

I think it would be a huge improvement to give me a sense of whether the product is well supported.

There are a few reasons for this...

1\. I want to choose an OSS that will have security vulnerabilities resolved in a timely fashion.

2\. I want the product to keep up with the times and changing landscape.

3\. I want to be able to converse usefully in a forum to resolve issues.

4\. I don't want to search for a new replacement product and undergo a migration because all the devs have abandoned the project in x years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense. What would you want to see in that regard beyond what's already on the site? It currently shows last commit and release date, and that date is green for projects with recent releases...

<comment><USER6> Some sense of how widely adopted the software is. There is a critical mass required for me to commit to an OSS. Before that critical mass the products are usually poorly maintained and full of bugs and security holes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My company (cloudron.io) provides an App Store for self-hosted apps. We have an app store listing page which has the description and screenshots of each app. [https://cloudron.io/store/index.html](https://cloudron.io/store/index.html) if you want to take a look. But we have this only for apps that we have packaged/maintain.

That said, the layout of your site is very nice! How does one get new projects added to the list? (For example, we would like to have Cloudron itself listed there).

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks really nice.

In principle, I'm a big advocate of self-hosting (one of my services is even on this list). In practice, it just doesn't work for me. Once I get beyond 2-3 services it's just too much hassle to keep track of everything.

The key realization for me is that I don't actually care too much where the software is running, or who is running it for me. What I do care about is a avoiding vendor lock-in. As long as I have a reasonable escape hatch if my service company starts doing things I don't like, that's good enough. This keeps them honest. My issue with the current crop of monoliths like Google services is that there's no obvious migration path if you get fed up with them, so you're pretty much stuck with them no matter how crappy their software or customer service is/gets.

That's why I think something like sandstorm.io or cloudron is the future of self-hosting, at least in the near future. Maybe eventually we'll have a substrate of simple protocols and practices that will make it reasonable to manage everything yourself, but we're not there yet.

<comment><USER9> I found docker was perfect for self-hosting services with relative ease. upgrades are self-contained, security is simplified behind a reverse proxy like nginx, and there are very few dependency conflicts to worry about. I've got about 40 containers running at any given time and barely think about them at all.

<comment><USER10> Exactly my thought and setup.

I used to install and upgrade everything myself until I discovered docker and docker hub.

Together with watchtower I have zero maintenance on the versions and everything updates automatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the screenshots are a nice touch, but I still prefer [https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome- selfhosted](https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted)

<comment><USER12> the screenshots are all just a screenshot of whatever the project's listed homepage is. not a single screenshot of the actual software. these screenshots are pretty useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome list - thanks for preparing this.

Shameless plug: Would you be open to listing our project Rudder, an open- source Segment alternative. [https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudder- server/](https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudder-server/). We were on HN recently

</comment><comment><USER14> For ease of setting up self-hosted apps, Yunohost ([https://yunohost.org](https://yunohost.org)) is less polished than Cloudron ([https://cloudron.io](https://cloudron.io)) but is free. There's also Sandstorm ([https://sandstorm.io](https://sandstorm.io)) which had funding at some point and was looking slick, but it's not clear if development is continuing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Website constantly times out for me, stuff doesn't load etc. Not sure if that's because of traffic due to this post or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely the traffic. Wasn't expecting the front page. Working on it now.

<comment><USER16> I'd highly recommend Solr[0] for searching to cut down the load. Or, if this is a static site, you could use Lunr[1] to have an efficient search that runs on the client. Is this site OSS?

[0] [https://lucene.apache.org/solr/](https://lucene.apache.org/solr/)

[1] [https://lunrjs.com/](https://lunrjs.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I will check out Solr. I'm using Elasticsearch currently for the readmes, but I disabled it while troubleshooting so it's currently just searching on titles and descriptions via mysql. I will re-enable elasticsearch later and figure out how to better optimize it for future traffic.

<comment><USER16> Ah, then there's no need to check out Solr! They both use the same backend search engine called Lucene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Bitrix24 isn't on the list, even though self hosted editions are available since 2008 - [https://www.bitrix24.com/self- hosted/](https://www.bitrix24.com/self-hosted/)

Am I blind or there is no 'Submit' section on the website?

<comment><USER5> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21713048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21713048).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> reddit.com/r/selfhosted might like this

</comment><comment><USER19> Awesome, thanks a million. Working for a privacy-concious NGO, this (not the screenshot part) is a nice starting point for sw-evaluation.

</comment><comment><USER20> Bugreport: You have 2 different 'Heimdall's leading to the same page. Not sure what went wrong but still:

[https://selfhostedsource.tech/self- hosted?search=heimdall&li...](https://selfhostedsource.tech/self- hosted?search=heimdall&list=self-hosted)

</comment><comment><USER21> I was going to say this really needs to be sorted by category.

Then I noticed under filter was categories.

So, actually, its perfect.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why is something like this included? [https://selfhostedsource.tech/p/algorithms](https://selfhostedsource.tech/p/algorithms)

Am I meant to put this software on a computer and run it 24/7? Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> You've stumbled on the python list: [https://lucidindex.com/python](https://lucidindex.com/python)

It's not 'technically' part of selfhostedsource, but there's one database shared between selfhostedsource and lucidindex so it's pretty easy to get results from other lists

Lucid Index will eventually index all the 'awesome' lists, but there are a few others already functioning here: [https://lucidindex.com](https://lucidindex.com)

<comment><USER22> Ah, this makes much more sense, thank you for the clarification. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great list. I started using Firefly to track my finances back in October. Loving it so far.

<comment><USER24> How well does it integrate with other financial services? I currently just use Mint because it's the only app that can consistently pull in all my accounts into one place.

<comment><USER23> It has the ability to import data, but it's not perfect. The author actually discourages using it: [https://docs.firefly-iii.org/importing-data/csv#best- practic...](https://docs.firefly-iii.org/importing-data/csv#best-practices)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Seb-C This is a great and interesting idea. The search could use a bit of tuning. I only found a lot of unrelated stuff by searching for "feed" and "rss" .

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice list - not sure the screenshots add a great deal though.

<comment><USER12> agreed. they're just screenshots of each project's homepage. not a single screenshot of the actual software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone have a good recommendation for a Yelp-like OSS?

</comment><comment><USER27> Neat! I'm wondering if you're looking to monetize this, and how? I'm working on a curated list of [not software] and wondering about how I can monetize it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a link to one of my other projects on the site - [https://duetapp.com](https://duetapp.com)

Beyond that, I don't really have any specific plans to monetize.

</comment></comment><comment> k-godwin Congrats on launching.

Search could use some work:

\- Search for Bot, get a bunch of unrelated results.

\- Search for Email, get accounting/translation/etc tools.

\- Search for Accounting, seems to work correctly.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is _awesome_! I'll be absolutely adding these to our Template store over at [https://KubeSail.com](https://KubeSail.com) (YC S19). I use FreshRSS, BitWarden and Firefox-sync all the time on my pile of Raspberry PI's at home! Very excited to show off some awesome home-cluster utilities we're working on soon that will make self-hosting these kinds of tools a breeze! Great work on the site!

</comment><comment><USER29> Looks like the content tiles/cards are overflowing over the pagination and footer, fwiw. On Chrome on Android 10.

</comment><comment><USER30> The biggest problem for me (that make multiplayer games that are latency sensitive) is that you can't get self hosted global presence.

Otherwise my stack is completely self made and can run on a Raspberry: [http://github.com/tinspin](http://github.com/tinspin)

<comment><USER19> > self hosted global presence.

Could you elaborate what that is supposed to mean?

<comment><USER30> I have one server in the center of every major population cluster; Taiwan, Iowa and Belgium, in order to self host those I would need a apartment/building with >1GB internet in all those places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think something like this, but for lambda and cloud run would also be cool.

</comment><comment><USER32> Really cool list, some stuff I hadn't seen, thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER33> Perfect, this is really nice! Love the highres screenshots!

</comment><comment><USER34> Thanks for this! I get inspired to host my own stuff!

</comment><comment><USER35> no facial recognition?

</comment><comment><USER36> This looks awesome!

Would you be willing to add my project (10K+ GitHub stars)?

[https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun)

It is a self-hosted Open Source alternative to Firebase, with graph features, and fully decentralized. It is used in production by HackerNoon and other sites with millions of users.</comment>


Ask HN: Is software engineering really a dead-end job after 35-40? - <AUTHOR> Reading this: https://www.quora.com/Is-software-development-really-a-dead-end-job-after-age-35-40<p>But it seems grey bias is deep rooted. <comment><USER3> I _started_ working as a developer when in my mid-30's. I am 50 now. I get paid more than I did when I was younger, and I generally have less trouble getting a job. However, two caveats: 1) your age is not necessarily held against you, but it also doesn't buy you anything. Expect to need to learn new skills every year, just like your 20-something coworkers. 2) the older you get, the easier it is to feel snarky about every new technology that comes along, and nobody wants to work with that guy, even when they are sometimes right. Suppress the urge to pour scorn on every new library/framework/language/architecture that comes along. If it is actually that bad, then it will become apparent. In the meantime, see what you can learn from it.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for number two. Enduring the (perceived, not necessarily objective) idiocy of cargo culting and reinventing shinier but crappier wheels can be tiring.

On the other hand, there are always amazing new ways to think about code, new languages, new perspectives.

It's an exciting field.

P.S. if you're over 40 you owe it to yourself to read Dan Lyon's Disrupted. He's also the guy behind Fake Steve Jobs blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a gray-haired programmer who happens to be on interview teams, I interview a lot of older candidates along with a team of younger professionals.

It's not so much their age, but rather they have a tendency to be set in their ways, are less eager to learn and explore and change.

On a personal level, I'm impressed you've stuck with Perl all these years, and I'd love to nerd out with you over a beer later. On a professional level, I'm wondering if you're an inflexible curmudgeon.

Also as an older person, you're going to be expected to have some good basic management skills and wisdom. It's just the course of human nature.

Another couple of anti-bias tactics:

1\. Dress nicely and modern. I see a lot of candidates who wear a suit that looks like its been slept in, or it looks like a suit they bought in the 80s. I'm not telling you to wear skinny jeans and Supreme shirts, but just dress relatively clean and modern.

You can get away with a lot on this front as a youngster, but it really works against you once you become one of us grays.

2\. Stay fit/eat right. It doesn't do you any well if you're old, and overweight, and breathing hard during the interview.

</comment><comment><USER6> I believe (vanilla) software development is a young man's/woman's game. I realized this last year at age 38 and I've been rapidly trying to alter my career trajectory.

\- If you aren't a specialist, you are constantly competing against 20-somethings who will always be more current in their skills and breadth than yourself, because they have more free time than you have (e.g. I have a wife, kid)

\- I've written GUI widgets from scratch, servers from scratch, same thing with linked lists, sorting, etc. Guess what? That doesn't likely justify an ever-increasing salary. No one cares.

\- Older programmers tend to be very opinionated and have lots of war stories. This gets on peoples nerves. The stereotype, based entirely on truth, is that they are cranky and hard to work with.

I don't believe the same is true in specialized disciplines like engineering or modelling/simulation, numerical programming, etc. A 40, 50, 60 year-old engineer/mathematician/analytics developer doesn't have the same stigma. Those decades of experience are invaluable. The fundamentals of engineering or statistics aren't being reinvented every 3-5 years. Web development skills that are 5 years old are literally worthless today. Aside from general problem solving techniques, unless you've really specialized, the stuff you developed 10-20 years ago is of minimal value today and that experience (writing software that is now obsolete and could now be written in a fraction of the time, likely!) doesn't make you competitive against younger programmers.

My takeaway was to go deep as possible into analytics and math. AI, ML, anything that requires heavy math background, those are what I'm focusing on now.

<comment><USER7> Younger developers are way more naive and out to prove their skills by engaging in any fool's errand they are presented with. Older folks have a lot of heuristics and experience that pushes them away from conventional collaboration and makes them unwilling to engage in negative work or emotional labour.

There is definitely a middle ground, I believe emotional agility is at the heart of 'true' agility and the emotions have been highly overlooked by people who either master the art of bottling it up (looking at you former managers) or brooding (that's on me and many of us I believe)

The middle ground is becoming aware of the spectrum of unpleasant emotions and learning to feel in more depth while using intellect to guide your own actions.

For example, one can sense disgust at a certain codebase. That's perfectly acceptable, and it doesn't have to be anyone's fault. The disgust will drive us to want to improve it. Unfortunately, our managers tell us `bottle up your disgust and do some more disgusting things so we can ship` in which case young guys jump to the challenge and old guys tend to feel completely undervalued.

Edit: this statement is intentionally opinionated. It's alright to have an emotional reaction to it. I'd be interested to know what emotions it evokes in the reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This following is meant this in sincere and non-snarky way:

If the problems you are working on can _actually_ be done/solved at a large table with lots of people around, then it probably isn't a problem that requires 10+ years of experience i.e. it probably could be done by someone younger/cheaper. [Of course, if you "hack" around this by coming in early, working from home, etc. you aren't actually "doing it at a table with lots of people around you".]

I know lots of gray haired guys solving problems in the desktop and embedded space. I'm a not-a-genius developer/consultant and at 0x38 years old, I have no problem getting work.

<comment><AUTHOR> 0x38 is cool. Never thought about doing that. Hex years. Makes everything seem younger. I'm still an 0x20-something then, not so bad! :)

I thin I'd like to get into the niche / older spaces, liked embedded / desktop, but I wanted to learn a lot about web dev / cloud first, based on interest and curiosity.

I programmed in C when younger, and had an embedded opportunity a couple years ago in it which I turned down, but I think I'd like to take that up now.

Do you think there's more work / less applicants ( or at least a higher such ratio ), in C / embedded, etc?

<comment><USER8> >Do you think there's more work / less applicants ( or at least a higher such ratio ), in C / embedded, etc?

I don't know but I think you are on the right track thinking in terms of ratios. If there are (only) 100 jobs for technology X and 90 people with that skill, that's a good skill to have. If there are 10000 jobs for technology Y and 11000 developers for that technology, the ratio is not as favorable.

I think the Internet Of Things (IOT) might be a nice bridge from the "webby" world to the embedded one. One of my friends was doing node.js on an embedded medical device for example. (Queue "Security is the 'S' in IOT.")

At the end of the day, job security is based on creating value. If you want to be remunerated well for that value, you don't want to have a lot of direct competition.

I deliver solutions on the "edge" of the embedded realm sometimes - <USER2> that run on small Linux computers (Beagle Bones and Raspberry Pi). I can't speak to the demand for "real" embedded developers. By "real" I mean dealing with things like "board bring up" and FPGAs. Perhaps the graybeards I know that do that stuff are there through selection bias.

As consultant, I create the software for complete products or the core technology/secret sauce for companies that don't have that skill in-house. They could hire a skilled web developer fairly easily (assuming they pay reasonably). It's a lot harder to higher a developer that can turn data packets into a radar display, make a desktop product to monitor laser plasma emissions or track a flying golf ball using computer vision (my last 3 projects).

I hope that was helpful.

<comment><USER9> I understand from your other comments you're mostly getting work through word of mouth. That said, in your experience, what would be the channels through which the kind of projects you do are advertised? I hardly see any of those.

<comment><USER8> For one of those jobs, I was approached by a head hunter. I outright tell the headhunters I know (that do contracts) to call me if they come across something "weird" but they generally can't pay enough for it to be worth it.

All the rest where word of mouth from people I know. I wish I knew of a place where these sorts of jobs were advertised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm 46 and this question seems a little ridiculous if you're located in a good market. In the bay area there is such demand for developers that you will find a job. It may not be the most amazing, perfect job for you but the pay won't be "bad".

However, I do see a few problems:

1\. If you've been out of the algorithm, leetcode, game for a while, passing the bs interviews is going to be a challenge. The truth is that almost no one uses that shit or they just google an implementation. So, you're choice is to dedicate a significant portion of your free-time to studying or use the shotgun approach unless you have a network "in".

2\. It's probably going to be difficult for you if you refuse to learn new things. I've been specializing in front-end for a while and the framework I'm an expert in (Ember.js) is basically dead. Time to learn react. Luckily 90% of what I know translates.

3\. If you want ever-increasing salaries, you're going to have a hard time. There is a cut-off for even the best senior developers. The only way up is management.

If you can still add value as a developer, someone will hire you.

<comment><USER11> If you're doing anything more involved than CRUD apps knowing the "bs things" is pretty useful; especially if you think you qualify as a "senior developer". Mindlessly copying from google won't tell you the right questions to ask, and won't help you mentor new talent. If you're found yourself at 40+ and don't know the fundamentals that tells me you've done little to no mentoring and probably _don 't_ fit in my organization.

Given (1) 3 also becomes a bit of dead end. If you're actually on a principle track (that's ownership, aptitude, etc) senior developer tracks can be nearly unbounded; especially at the usual suspects and increasingly at companies serious about growing their technology department.

I'd caution against striving for "just adding value"; being one of the people that have 2 years of experience 10 times is going to cut you off from most employment opportunities.

<comment><USER10> Funny because I've built many, many apps and worked as a professional dev for 15+ years and literally never, not even once, needed to write a reverse bubble sort or whatever from scratch. Modern development is more about making good design choices and knowing how to leverage languages, frameworks and systems to develop a solution that meets the companies objectives and does it quickly and in the most cost-effective way. I've saved and produced millions of dollars of value for many companies and advanced algorithms knowledge was never part of the solution. This leetcode shit is just a hazing ritual perpetuated by the majority of companies because they're unwilling to do something more sensible because it requires time and effort. Wouldn't it be more effective to review my code on github and bitbucket than to give me a puzzle to solve? Right, that takes effort.

[https://twitter.com/dhh/status/834146806594433025](https://twitter.com/dhh/status/834146806594433025)

<comment><USER11> Through these first 2 decades of the 21st century I think this industry has thrived on the fact that all of the fruit is laughably low hanging. You could "produce millions of dollars" with an excel macro. That doesn't make the skill a good thing to peg the long term health to your tech company to. Hint playing this <[https://media.giphy.com/media/kwEmwFUWO5Ety/giphy.gif>](https://media.giphy.com/media/kwEmwFUWO5Ety/giphy.gif>) game isn't software development any healthy company wants to hire for.

Moore's law has smoothed over many the failing of a mediocre dev; the next generation isn't going have same luxury (just the same as the current generation has to know exponentially more than those that made their fortune during the dot com boom).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ken Thomson and Rob Pike still program. They are inspiring people I wanna follow not those useless and inefficient bureaucrats in charge of "human resources".

As programmers, we should take the control of the recruitment with coopting. The market is in our favor. We are more needed than we need. We can do that smoothly and the good business men will understand they can save a lot of money with a such system.

I already know few good programmers who are available and I can recommend.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fellows, grey bias, impostor syndrome, burnout, toxicity, anxiety and the others are all symptoms of the rigid mindstate that permeates our industry.

It has to do with the curse of comfort and a lack of emotional agility which is exceptionally pronounced in this industry for many reasons which I shall not accentuate here except to state that `casual` is another word for `toxic` in my view.

I would care to suggest to everyone in this thread the following work: [http://a.co/3Wlz2bw](http://a.co/3Wlz2bw)

Having read this book my views on how we ought to be engaging in our day-to- day have been completely transformed. Going from a rigid mindstate to a growth mindstate changes the whole game and I bet you anything it would go a long way to alleviating the burden of grey bias and all the other evils we face.

<comment><USER13> Non-shortened link:

[https://smile.amazon.com/Emotional-Agility-Unstuck- Embrace-C...](https://smile.amazon.com/Emotional-Agility-Unstuck-Embrace- Change/dp/1592409490)

<comment><USER7> Very kind of you to provide this link; highly interested to know your take on this work.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for sharing book. I am always looking for interesting stuff to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm 41 and doing great. I 'work' for an amazing organization (work is in quotes because I do exactly what I'd do if I was retired) and have a number of extremely interesting problems on my plate.

A few caveats:

1.) I don't bash new frameworks (even if I know they're a bad idea) until I've built something non trivial with them.

2.) My education and experience are outside the norm for developers where I live. I have a business degree (with a marketing major) and have spent most of my life working for or founding startups.

3.) I love introducing people to each other. When you get older, you're usually much more connected than you imagine.

4.) I make fun of myself when it is deserved.

5.) I praise others when it is deserved.

6.) I stay current. Hell, I have built things with blockchains even though I didn't think it would be a good idea.

Basically, I stay current and try to be a good member of a team.

<comment><USER16> Agree; being a good team player, someone folks _want_ to work with, counts for a hell of lot, IMO. Too many devs, young and old, are oblivious to this. Humility, a sense of humour, and being generous with credit are all great traits to help ensure a long and happy career!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> my personal situation is: 45yo, just back to the corporate world after bankrupting my own consultancy company ( i shot myself on the foot with the tax and labor laws ) as a senior java developer. I fly circles around my 20-something teammates, and also around the tech team from our current client... became the de facto tech leader without even trying. Bad thing is, now i have more responsabilities than i bargained for, and dont't have that "workdays are just payed vacations" feeling anymore.

<comment><USER4> You get the satisfaction of neatly organized maintainable code and teaching many by example :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Find a niche that serves as a barrier to entry to the young, trendy, and easily distracted. Security clearance could be one example.

</comment><comment><USER19> The average age of my team >30 and it's the best team I ever was a part of. It's not the dead end, but rather the light at the end of the tunnel..Hope it's not the freight train coming my way though...

</comment><comment><USER20> I hear that, but I haven't seen it. The age range where I work (small company) goes from 20 to almost 70. Same at the last two $BIG_CORP jobs, except there the bottom of the range was a bit higher.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think so. Building software is a creative process that benefits from team diversity in multiple aspects. You need both young and older people. I'm 54 and still going strong. :-)

Also, not every 'new' development is as new as it appears; "Old is the New New". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbgsfeGvg3E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbgsfeGvg3E)

<comment><USER22> I mostly work with firmware, which hasn't seen much innovation, especially on small devices (finally Rust is coming along). There is no way youngsters can compete with me in breadth of experience. They are still building their toolbox and design patterns, so they can learn a lot, including from me. I value their appetite.

I see myself as a child of my time, with home-grown skills typical for a time- frame. I see that time-frame fading into history much like pop-music is doing. Going by the example of rockstars, maybe my skills will still be in demand 20 years from now, because the original author has so much more depth.

In some ways I am at the peak of my skills, more focused on results and a well balanced, easy to evolve design. But grey, so not cool I suppose ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 40 here and not seeing a flagging salary or problem with work. I just get calls from larger companies than I did when I was younger. Stay away from the startups, Keep your skills up to date, drop the complaining habit if you have it and find ways to be a positive influence around your community, find a decent company that does things you care about, and settle in.

</comment><comment><USER24> A lot of good answers in this thread. I want to emphasize that, though ageism clearly exist, it more than anything else depends on you. I have many colleagues and friends that started coding in their childhood (like me) who got burned out after doing it for decades. I have also experienced several times the feeling that coding just doesn't motivate me anymore. Software development is quite different from other technical work, constant pressure to learn new things while at the same time nothing really changes.

What helps is to acquire additonal skills or knowledge outside IT, for example domain knowledge of an industry. This takes time and dedication. Personally, I got very interested in training and I'm now building a training business.

Also important to keep in mind that there exist a whole different IT world outside startups and what you read on HN where ageism is much less a problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> I find the whole hypothesis of the "grey bias" to be rather baffling. My personal thought is that boomers are puzzled that this industry doesn't confirm to the standards set in the other engineering discipline (ie younger workers are treated like shit and expected to like it with next to no advancement opportunities).

In my experience, older (20+ years exp) workers that have kept their skills sharp and were above average throughout their careers tend to do well. However, those that expect software to work like other engineering fields, where seniority is a sole function of tenure, tend to take arms and complain about the new generation out performing them.

</comment><comment><USER25> From an employer perspective, as long as the employee is a good asset there's no dead-end. To be a good asset as a developer, you need to be good at coding and somehow easy to work with. That's it for an employer. Now, from an employee perspective it's a complete different story. When you have fresh grads coming in every day with a lot of energy and already up to date with all the latest trends and technologies, no family life, no mortgages, no kids, no responsibilities. How do you keep up with that at 40? They can spend 15h at the office who cares.

<comment><USER26> You keep up by being better.

Those kids can code 15 hours a day if they want. I'll code 8, and I'll still produce _working_ code faster than them. I won't waste (as much) time with flawed designs. I won't write nearly as many bugs that then have to be fixed. My code will be more maintainable.

In short, I'm more valuable than those kids. If an employer can't see that, then the employer is still at the kid level, and they aren't someone I want to work for.

But if you're going to try to compete with the kids when you have just the same skills, well, that's a hard road. You have to have gotten better over the years.

<comment><USER27> > I'll still produce working code faster than them

I think my advantage (I'm over 40) is that I produce the _right_ working code. Listen to the client, think about the problem, suggest short cuts or alternatives (including COTS if needed). I am much more focused on solving problems now than I was when I was younger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Your mileage may vary of course. But i've been independent consulting now for 25yrs. Started doing primarily dba/unix work in the 90's and now of course cloud heavy. Devops is in extremely high demand. i do docker, ecs, terraform, kubernetes, aws, gcp. Python. postgresql, mysql, redshift. athena. it goes on & on.

yes as others have mentioned you have to be willing to learn. to be also excited to learn. that's key.

i'm also much more mature now. so i can work well with anyone and see perspectives others miss.

opportunities abound !

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm 31, my company also contracts a dev that is almost 60. He knows much more than me about architecture, old systems that we still use, I would not want to do his work. I work on the newer stuff.

As I get older I plan to shift to a different role. Maybe management, I am waiting for a position to open in a city for a dev project manager. I'm not really concerned.

</comment><comment><USER30> Not really sure if this mindset is more regionally based than anything else but as a full stack developer working in Toronto at 24 years old I've never heard of this stigma in the workplace. The past 2 companies I've worked at have all had an average age of 40+. Same story for most of my college friends now working in the GTA.

<comment><USER31> I'm in the Southeastern US and have similar observations, average age around 40+ and experience generally very highly prized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Generally it is. It's "become a manager or get out".

Like everything there are exceptions but you and I are probably not the exception.

</comment><comment><USER33> No, of course it's not! :)

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm 36 and run circles around guys in their early and mid 20's.

Every 2-3 years I reinvent myself with new tech and new challenges.

If you feel you cannot compete at 36 (my age) and are not getting interviews and offers from Amazon, Google, other companies.... then the problem is You and not your nominal age.

The fact that you're seeking out validation for self-victimization is alresdy going to shine through in your insecurities and victim complex. Leading to a self fulfilling prophecy.

<comment><USER35> In the middle of a self-reinvent cycle myself. Great points you made there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there discrimination at the average company against 35+ candidates? Yes.

Is it because the candidates don't know the latest languages and frameworks? Sometimes, not always.

Is it because "fresh grads" have "energy" or something? Almost certainly not. What does that even mean?

Is it negated by the comments here like "oh there are 70-year-olds doing programmig where _I_ work!"? No, that's just an anecdote, not statistically relevant.

<comment><USER37> Where is your evidence then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wat!?!? Ok I'm 37- but like why would I ever need to stop pwning nubs? Hack and slash for life bro!

If anything I know more now about solving problems and handling stress. Likewise, everyone I work with who is older than me I have crazy respect for ageism is so silly</comment>


The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume II - <AUTHOR> http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_toc.html <comment><USER2> Volume 1: [http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_toc.html](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_toc.html) Volume 2: [http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_toc.html](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_toc.html) Volume 3: [http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc.html](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> How I WISH I had access to this kind of material when I was studying high school/pre-engineering physics. These lectures are brilliant just so very easy to understand.

<comment><USER4> They are definitely not easy to understand, at least for me, they are just easy and pleasant to read, but it's deceptive. Once you go to the exercises and try to work out what Feynman meant really precisely and how it applies you realize how big reasoning leaps he does all the time in the lectures. I mean, years ago, I read the full first volume once, almost like a work of fiction, it just was pleasurable, but I understand almost nothing, except for the first few chapters of general introduction. I came back after 10 years to it with much more math background, and it's still really really difficult to understand what Feynman is doing and why and solve the exercises. He is the kind of author that will make you almost angry, several times I thought he must be wrong in something, and then an hour later you realize he was exactly right but he choose the most clever way to put it. On the other hand, if you are not struggling with a textbook, you are just memorizing, not learning, so maybe it's not a bad thing, I can't really say.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree. In every physics book from feynman i've read, the most pleasant thing was the introduction paragraphs that gave you a context, and tried to give you an intuition of what happend, and i think that´s a very important thing which probably inspired a lot of school book writers. Now for the "hard" part of solving real problems, i think my current school book were better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This one in particular is quite good: [http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_06.html](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_06.html)

Further study: [http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/](http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps it's just me, but I get real giddy when I see the formulas rendered by LaTex. Very beautiful!

</comment><comment><USER8> My favorite chapter is the Principle of Least Action: [http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html)

<comment><USER9> +1 for that. An especially neat chapter given the work he won the Nobel for...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the bottom of my heart,thank you!

</comment><comment><USER11> Now that this is done it'd be lovely to read a project postmortem. Great work, everyone.

</comment><comment><USER12> These might also be helpful:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lewin_Lectures_on_Physic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lewin_Lectures_on_Physics)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why didn't this just link to [http://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/](http://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/)?

</comment><comment><USER14> this is Christmas for hungry minds and the great explainer just came down the chimney - thank you!

</comment><comment><USER15> The best physics textbook ever compiled, in HTML with no paywall. Just wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER16> i picked up the hard copy of this set when border's was liquidating :) very glad to see a digital copy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Love them!

</comment><comment><USER18> Why do these lecture series keep showing up on HN? It seems every month now they are re-posted. I for one have no interest reading about Physics (I dropped that major for a reason!)

<comment><USER19> Mostly it's been announcements about the new volumes. Volume II wasn't available last time a post about the lectures was posted, which was the announcement of Volume III. And if you have no interest in it, guess what, you can ignore it.

I for one am interested because when I was an undergrad I couldn't grok physics, I don't know why. After I graduated I went back and found the material that was breaking my grades seemed trivial. Something I had learned between Physics I/II and graduating put the pieces in place in my brain to understand the subject. I've just never gone back to study it in depth, this sort of content is a boon for people like me.

<comment><USER20> ... and as a freshman physics student many of these lectures were a little opaque. I really came to appreciate them as an upperclassman / grad student.</comment></comment></comment>