Correlation between BCG vaccination policy and reduced mortality for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937v1 <comment><AUTHOR> Nice that they've already begun a double-blind trial [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/can-century-old- tb-v...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/can-century-old-tb-vaccine- steel-immune-system-against-new-coronavirus)

"the wholesale price was US$0.16 to US$1.11 a dose in the developing world.[6][7] In the United States it costs US$100 to US$200." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCG_vaccine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCG_vaccine)

</comment><comment><USER2> The case of Germany is interesting due to the difference in BCG vaccination policy between the former East and West.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_G...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Germany)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What if we already have a partial COVID-19 vaccine?</comment>


Why I Returned My iPad  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/06/why-i-returned-my-ipad.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+harvardbusiness+(HBR.org)

<comment><USER2> This may very well be the definitive iPad fluff piece.

<comment><USER3> Which is a testament to the iPad's popularity. Isn't having your brand name qualified as 'link bait' the ultimate marketer's wet dream?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey Peter, ever hear of a little thing called willpower and self discipline?</comment>


Show HN: Bsnes, a Super Nintendo Emulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/byuu/bsnes <comment><AUTHOR> bsnes is an SNES emulator I've spent the last 15 years working on.

I'd love some help from anyone who's interested in working on improving the project with me, so I'm submitting my GitHub project page link here for anyone interested.

Back in 2004, computers were much slower and so performance was a much larger concern with emulators. I was worried that many fan translations, ROM hacks, and homebrew games were depending on bugs in the other emulators to function, and feared this could lead to a loss of those games in the future, should emulators one day improve. And so I started bsnes with the goal to writing an emulator that was as accurate as possible. Needless to say, I underestimated the complexity by a few orders of magnitude.

In 2010, I led a fundraiser to decap coprocessors inside of game cartridges to extract their firmware. This allowed bsnes to be the first emulator to reach 100% game compatibility [1]

In arguably the most surreal moment of my life, it turned out that one of these coprocessors (NEC uPD7720) was used in professor Stephen Hawking's voice machine. Having written the only emulator for this processor, his assistants reached out to me and I was able to donate a portion of code to their project, which was ultimately successful in replacing the original failing voice machine with a much more portable version. [2]

In 2012, to improve emulation of cartridge PCBs, I started a goal of purchasing (and reselling after to break even) every SNES game cartridge. I started with the USA collection (725 games), finished it, moved onto the Japanese collection (1,450 games), finished that, and now I've been working on the European collection (540 games.) I've spent around $30,000 and 1200+ hours working on this goal.

Something I don't like to talk about, but it happened: once a person graciously lended me 100 PAL games worth around $5,000 - $10,000. It was lost in the mail. After a long, stressful five-month wait, I reached out to the media and within a few weeks, the package was recovered, and the games were analyzed and returned to their owner intact. [3]

A few years back, bsnes grew to emulate dozens of systems, and so I made the decision to move the multi-system emulation platform to a new project called higan. [4] This project is likely far too ambitious, but it keeps me occupied.

With bsnes once again a standalone SNES emulator, over the past year I've set about trying to create an easier to use, friendly emulator that is more performance oriented. One of the key insights was developing a method of parallelizing the video rendering in such a way that does not add any input latency.

This parallel renderer provided for another first: the ability to analyze the entire screen before rendering the first pixel. A programmer by the name of DerKoun came along and realized that by interpolating at higher precision the affine transformation coordinates of the screen, that 256x240-resolution SNES games could be upscaled to basically any resolution, even 3840x2160. The results were something no one else believed possible, and it received a good deal of press as a result.

DerKoun has continued with this project, adding new features to SNES emulation such as widescreen support, true color gradients (to remove banding from the system's 15-bit color palette), etc.

Recently, in an effort to try and preserve more history, I've gone back to emulate the older emulators themselves, so that the oldest fan-made SNES software can still be played.

It's never been bsnes' goal to be #1, and over the years I've contributed code, notes, and explanations to basically every known SNES emulator. Both free software and commercial, both open source and closed. My underlying goal has always been to improve emulation quality for everyone.

Thanks for reading!

[1] [https://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/44376-16_bit-time- capsule...](https://www.tested.com/tech/gaming/44376-16_bit-time-capsule-how- emulator-bsnes-makes-a-case-for-software-preservation/)

[2] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-Silicon- Vall...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-Silicon-Valley-quest- to-preserve-Stephen-12759775.php)

[3] [http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/02/usps_recovers_lost_...](http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/02/usps_recovers_lost_package_containing_usd10000_in_rare_snes_cartridges)

[4] [https://github.com/byuu/higan](https://github.com/byuu/higan)

[5] [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/hd-emulation-mod- make...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/hd-emulation-mod-makes- mode-7-snes-games-look-like-new/)

<comment><USER2> I've used this and donated anonymously when I could afford to do so, but I don't have the coding chops to actually help you out.</comment></comment>


Show HN: iOS 5 Global UUID Replacement - <AUTHOR> http://www.binpress.com/app/myid/591 Thoughts? Comments/Criticism? <comment><USER2> As they said, there is no completely secure way of providing device ID. I think people need to get over device ID though. Often what is important it really the user identity. There is no completely secure way of providing user identity either. Something close would be combination of DNA + Mitochondrial RNA + facial + retinal scan + at least one code known only to the user. But you could have multiple users playing an iPad game at the same time, etc., and how do you handle that? This is the wrong road to go down.

<comment><AUTHOR> You definitely have a point though in many cases we aren't interested in the user's actual identify. MyID is mostly aimed at developers who have multiple applications but need to know the actual _unique_ number of devices they're installed on. This is particularly important to advertisers who may have many different applications.</comment></comment>


Show HN: One-stop ML model managing, converting, profiling and serving platform - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cap-ntu/ML-Model-CI <comment><AUTHOR> The project is still under developing, we are trying to make Deep Learning models from academia to industry more easily. With a pre-trained model, ModelCI will convert it to different model types (TensorFlow, Pytorch, etc) and profile it (test throughput, latency) on specific serving devices automatically. Welcome to have a try and join our open-source community. I'm looking forward to your feedback!

<comment><USER2> Sounds interesting! I'm a bit confused about how can you profile the system's performance automatically? If I understand correct, the profiling process needs a client to mock real requests in production environment, and the client of serving Deep Learning models are various from one to another.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Actually, for clients of Deep Learning model, the only difference is the I/O type of the testing data, since there are models of image classification, language model... all of the inputs should be converted into tensor type, we will generate the testing data according to the format of the model's input I/O, and we have some clients in the hub for you if you want to profile the models automatically when you register them in the database. And we also have a parent client class for you to implement by yourself.</comment></comment></comment>


For Wisconsin results – how hard would it be to build a web-scraper? - <AUTHOR> Last minute idea, but how hard is it to whip up a web-scraper to grab snapshots of various election results in 10 or 15 minute intervals?
Each county appears to have a separate tab, so this is likely way too complex, but figured I'd ask.
Example: http://www.co.adams.wi.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=chB4qV2QBHo%3d&tabid=60
*Edit, after clicking around more, it seems a lot are in different formats, some PDF's, some iframes. So, that's not very handy. <comment><USER2> You could probably do it fairly easy & quickly using something like ParseHub ([https://www.parsehub.com/](https://www.parsehub.com/)), import.io, or KimonoLabs.</comment>


XSS in Tweetdeck (don't view in Tweetdeck...) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/derGeruhn/status/476764918763749376

<comment><USER2> So apparently this was retweeted by @5SOS, a teen pop band with some 3 million followers, which is why most of the responses are confused teenagers.

For some reason this is hilarious to me. Not the pinnacle of responsible disclosure, but no real harm done.

<comment><USER3> Obviously their social media agent uses tweetdeck...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The replies to that tweet are beautiful. Sometimes you forget that not everyone in the world can recognize a cross-site scripting vulnerability when they see one!

</comment><comment><USER5> What's sad is that not even wrong security was in place here. They didn't even try. There was NO XSS prevention.

<script>javascript</script> is the first payload you try when looking for the stupidest XSS you can find....

<comment><USER2> Apparently it was only activated if you included an emoticon (<3) in your tweet, possibly following the closing script tag.

<comment><USER6> Any UTF8 char actually 💩

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I guess the New York Times uses Tweetdeck[1]. I saw this because several people I follow had retweeted it and the Twitter app notifies you if several of your followers do the same thing. It's a useful feature. If Tweetdeck does the same thing it could make this spread really fast.

[1] [https://twitter.com/derGeruhn/status/476764918763749376](https://twitter.com/derGeruhn/status/476764918763749376)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if the poster of this "twitter worm" could get in legal trouble for this; it's quite similar to the Samy MySpace worm[1] of a decade ago, where the creator was charged with a felony (they plea bargained out).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samy_(computer_worm)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samy_\(computer_worm\))

<comment><USER8> Fortunately, the author appears to be German.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like it might even be starting to loop around? The Guardian have already scurried an article about it [1].

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/11/twitter- tw...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/11/twitter-tweetdeck- xss-flaw-users-vulnerable)

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot of people I follow must use Tweetdeck. This has been retweeted on my feed several times in the last few minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Somebody in my office got hit with it, that's how I found out.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wonder if it's because of the emoji at the end? It's HEAVY BLACK HEART, U+2764, e29da4 in hex.

</comment><comment><USER11> "The _most powerful_ Twitter tool for real-time tracking, organizing and engagement."

<comment><USER12> So powerful, it even supports scripted tweets

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 39,000 retweets and counting.

</comment><comment><USER14> Someone's gonna get in trouble for using an eval in tweetdeck...

</comment><comment><USER15> Tweetdeck seems to be down now.

<comment><USER6> It is: [https://twitter.com/TweetDeck/statuses/476770732987252736](https://twitter.com/TweetDeck/statuses/476770732987252736) == "We've temporarily taken TweetDeck services down to assess today's earlier security issue. We'll update when services are back up."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Security 101 ?

</comment><comment><USER17> so fast

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently it's fixed already

[http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2014/06/11/tweetdeck-users- xss...](http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2014/06/11/tweetdeck-users-xss- vulnerability-means-revoke-access-now/)

<comment><USER18> Definitely not fixed here. Chrome on Linux, logged out and back in, closed and re-opened tab. Not fixed.</comment></comment></comment>


The SRE model at Google - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rakyll/the-sre-model-6e19376ef986 <comment><USER2> There's a book about it too: [https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/site- reliabil...](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/site-reliability- engineering/9781491929117/)

<comment><USER3> It's available for free: [https://landing.google.com/sre/book.html](https://landing.google.com/sre/book.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I came into Google as a Test Engineer (pretty funny since I had written maybe 1 unit test before Google) on an SRE team. I did Mission Control, it was great. I didn't like the ultra-demanding on-call and its compensation model, but SRE itself is great. Wonderful team of brilliant people.

<comment><USER5> What's the on call and the compensation model?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the Mission Control idea of sending developers through an SRE-role rotation. It's really nice for people to see another side of working in the firm and it helps build relationships and empathy.

My current employer has a engineer training course that's meant to help early to mid career technologists advance and it's heavily built around networking and teamwork. To me those are skills no less critical than ones needed for technical delivery.</comment>


Coffitivity – Increase Your Creativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.coffitivity.com/

<comment><USER2> I think this is a cool idea! And I'll be returning!

Often times I'll end up starting a Youtube video just to have background noise, but then end up getting too sucked up into it.

That said - I'll agree that you should have a big "Play" button on your page instead of immediately diving into the sound -- unless the page remembers your default settings. Thanks for the service!

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to point out that I'm not the creator of that page. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The audio just kicks in without warning, as soon as the page loads. The year isn't 1997.

<comment><USER4> not only that, it is useless background noise. Please turn that off.

On second thought, now that I've read the page, I see why they have that awful noise. But I'm far from sold.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been using it for the past few days and it might just work!</comment>


Dread Cthulhu Leads His Cult to Milestone Year - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2013/01/14/dread-cthulhu-leads-his-cult-t.html

<comment><USER2> AND THEY'RE CENSORING THE COMMENTS. I posted mine with the CSS code for a color from outer space that I intended would make the comments grow unnaturally quickly and they typeset it in black!</comment>


Remembrance of luncheons past - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/hungry-novels-laura-freeman/ <comment><USER2> I really should have read that while hungry. It made it even worse!</comment>


Ask HN: Setting up a captive portal - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,<p>I asked this yesterday but didn't get much insight. The documentation and solutions are quite dated for setting up a public WiFi spot with a captive portal. Are there any resources that I am overlooking into how one can build a solution for small business? Setting up the hardware and creating the portal. <comment><USER2> Untangle has captive portal functionality; It's a linux based OS with firewall, vpn, and a bunch of other stuff. you need hardware with 2 NICs.

We run it for a small busniess off of a refurbished desktop and it works fine for roughly 250 connected users at any given time.

Here's a link to the home page: [https://www.untangle.com/](https://www.untangle.com/) And to the captive portal section of the wiki: [https://wiki.untangle.com/index.php/Captive_Portal](https://wiki.untangle.com/index.php/Captive_Portal)

Alternatively you could get a router compatible with OpenWRT or Tomato firmware and set up a captive portal on the router itself.</comment>


Fish: Can a command-line shell be Mac-like? - <AUTHOR> http://hackercodex.com/guide/install-fish-shell-mac-ubuntu/

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to ask any Fish-related questions, either here or on Hacker Codex. :^)</comment>


How Platform Coops Can Beat Death Stars Like Uber to Create a Sharing Economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-11-06/how-platform-coops-can-beat-death-stars-like-uber-to-create-a-real-sharing-economy <comment><USER2> unless there's some kind of residual affiliate program I'm not sure how the cost to acquire a customer gets covered with these systems?</comment>


Disney, a Mobile Company - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/16/disney-a-mobile-company/

<comment><USER2> This is the stat that most blows me away:

        Over 55% of ESPN's traffic in a record
        September was exclusively mobile. Not
        just 'also mobile', but 'only mobile'.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised that is news to this audience. The head of NFL mobile was on a pod case (this week in Venture capital) and he had great statistics about traffic to NFL.com.

IMO NFL.com is a great proxy for a mainstream US sports site. He said about 60% of their traffic was mobile, 10% of mobile was tablet. This was interesting to me: mobile traffic was about 50% their app and 50% mobile web. That stuck in my head: apps are growing, but the mobile web is growing with it.</comment></comment>


'Tiny Tower' Ripoff 'Dream Heights' Hits US App Store; Zynga Employees "Love It" - <AUTHOR> http://toucharcade.com/2012/02/14/tiny-tower-ripoff-dream-heights-hits-us-app-store-zynga-employees-love-it/

<comment><USER2> Building a great product is step one. Marketing it is step two.

Zynga is really good at borrowing step one and executing step two, but they're not the only company that does this.

<comment><USER3> It's harder to nerd-rage on, say, Valve than it is to ride that Zynga-hating bandwagon 'til the wheels fall off.

Of course, if Valve ever makes a deal with Facebook then naturally that'll be a different situation altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Guys, zynga has been caught years ago creating fake accounts to post reviews for their games. This is from 2009: <http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=41577> sadly facebook has removed app pages and all their reviews

</comment><comment><USER5> This "article" is BS. The average rating for Dream Heights on iTunes (at the time of my writing this) is above 4.5/5 stars. Hardly the overwhelming negative response this article claims.

<comment><USER6> The game pops up a messagebox that says "If you give us 5 stars, we'll give you more features!"

Proof: <http://db.tt/whiVaG0t>

<comment><USER7> Not a fan of zynga, but tiny tower and others do that too. It seems pretty standard for games to prompt users for reviews.

<comment><USER6> They're offering additional game features in exchange for 5 stars, not merely prompting users for reviews.

Do other apps do this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For a company who ripped off Sim Towers I don't really get why they are complaining this much

<comment><USER9> Other than the basic aesthetic of "you're building a tower!", Tiny Tower and SimTower have practically nothing in common. If anything, Tiny Tower draws more from Zynga's "Ville"-style games than it does from SimTower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> and the developers of simtower laughing quietly</comment>


Smallest Transistor Ever - <AUTHOR> http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016/10/06/smallest-transistor-1-nm-gate/ <comment><AUTHOR> One thing FTA that I don't understand is when they say the electron passing through the MoS2 is heavier than an electron in silicon, aiding in controllability. As I understand, an electron is an electron is an electron in any substance, the only variable being the number of which are able to move as is determined by the valence ring. If someone with a better understanding than I could comment on this, I'd be grateful.

<comment><USER2> Short answer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_mass_(solid- state_ph...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_mass_\(solid- state_physics\))

Long answer: read my previous comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12660032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12660032)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This is all brand-new to me & I find it quite interesting. It took me a while to wrap my head around it though. This is how I understand it now- please correct me if I'm wrong.

The electron tar ball 'weight' is determined by the amount of perturbation happening in those atoms as is determined by the material/substance in which those atoms exist. The electron tar ball is like the 'sum' of the bare electron's mass plus the effect of the perturbation in the surrounding environment, resulting in an effective 'weight', or influencing force of more than the bare electron's mass. If I understand correctly, the electron which is surrounded by additional atomic components can be ejected into a vacuum, & in this case will only be able to affect another anything based on its own mass, devoid of additional forces contributed by perturbation in the surrounding atom componentry- since it left its proximity to go into the vacuum.</comment></comment></comment>


From NYC to Harvard: The War on Asian Success - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2015/12/29/from-nyc-to-harvard-the-war-on-asian-success/ <comment><USER2> I'm a second generation Asian American (parents immigrated from China), but I have mixed feelings about the obsessive culture around academics. Of course it's good to succeed in school, but being so narrowly focused can produce unbalanced individuals. Back in high school, I felt like a machine whose sole purpose was to work myself to death by achieving higher and higher. I came home with a 2390 SAT score and my mom asked why it wasn't a 2400. There were times where I was planning to just kill myself to escape from it all, which is a common sentiment in the nation's top high schools.

In the end, all that pressure wasn't worth it at all. I burned out hard and suffered for it. Now I'm trying to find the right balance in my life, which has meant rejecting some parts of my upbringing and becoming more of what I want personally.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the other side of the story: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the- sili...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon- valley-suicides/413140/)</comment></comment>


Post Launch Checklist: 10 Tasks You Should Complete - <AUTHOR> http://distributionhacks.com/post-startup-launch-checklist

<comment><USER2> There may well be companies in the B2C or social space which would, six weeks after launch, say "Damn, we missed the opportunity to make a Facebook page on launch day! Now how can we possibly make our rent?" I would bet against this being a huge win for many startups/businesses.

If you put a gun to my head and said "Make business value out of a one-time burst of transient traffic, the overwhelming majority of which won't be customers" I would

a) Aggressively attempt to capture their email address, for follow-up in a scalable fashion over the upcoming weeks. The Trough of Sorrow is a very happy place to be if you have thousands of people who want to talk to you. A significant portion of the audience for early stage startups hates getting email. That's not a problem, because 5,000 of them plus $3 will buy you a cup of coffee.

b) tail -f email_submission_log.txt

c) "Hiya $REPORTER | $INVESTOR | $CEO | $INFLUENCER I just happened to notice that you signed up for $COMPANY. Let me know if I can do anything for you. Signed, the CEO. (Psst we have a super secret VIP only tour at $LINK.)"

But that's only if you put a gun to my head. My truest feeling is that there is an overemphasis placed on launch because of a) community sentiment that it represents an important milestone, b) we suck _so bad_ at marketing that 1,000 transient users feels like an accomplishment, and c) launch activities feel like high status (Talk to the press! Be the center of attention!) and standard day-in-and-day-out-marketing feels low status. (When's the last time an email campaign generated a celebratory dinner after it for everyone involved?)

P.S. A micro-tip for receiving PR. If one expects PR, one can trivially create a landing page specific to that source of PR -- e.g. "Welcome TechCrunch readers..." There's a variety of ways to do this -- if you have a programmer who can 302 redirect their way out of a paper bag the simplest way is to look at the referer. You pre-write copy that uses the social proof of whatever the media source was with the name and logo of the source abstracted out, then launch those pages in real time as required. You can pitch an exclusive benefit for people coming from, without loss of generality, TechCrunch -- perhaps a special offer or an exclusive premium created by the founding team -- as an incentive to that particular audience... and offer it in parallel to several audiences.

You can arrange this with media in advance with their co-operation but, again, you don't _need_ people's buy-in to make this happen. It's two hours of work or less. Your conversion rates will notice the difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> That news story specific landing page idea is gold, I'm going to play with that soon

<comment><USER2> Glad to have helped.

A variant, less useful for launch (too much to do, not enough time to do it, PR outlets institutionally less motivated by it): let's say you desire coverage by, e.g., a particular blogger. You might try to offer the blogger something. The traditional offer is free or discounted $PRODUCT for them personally or for their readers. This is often less than motivational, because a) it can feel like a bribe, b) your $PRODUCT may not solve a problem for the blogger, and c) the blogger may feel that their writeup of you explicitly feels like hawking $PRODUCT.

Instead of offering $PRODUCT, get deep enough insight into the blogger or their audience to identify a problem that is of mutual interest of you, then create an exclusive incentive about that. The sky's the limit on options, but if someone on the founding team is an expert about something the blogger's audience cares about, then something like "A 30 minute video tutorial about $SUBJECT by $EXPERT" is incredibly motivational. You can use the offer to create something like that as bait for coverage. Highly motivational, totally above board, scales impressively. (The pitch writes itself. "We want to create something of high perceived value exclusive to your readers. Here's an example of us doing it before. Don't worry, no sales pitch included. Interested? Spiffy -- we can have it ready next Tuesday or delay launch until is convenient for your publishing schedule. Can we get a write-up out of this to introduce this to your readers? It might look something like this...")

You can then prepare a landing page for that coverage knowing it will happen, and that landing page should probably have an attractive, mutually beneficial offer leveraging the social proof to the hilt. (I seem to always suggest "Trade something extra for their email address!" so that would be my go-to suggestion.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In addition I would suggest emailing any peoples blogs you've read over the past few years.

After our launch, I emailed a bunch of people who I'd never had any connection with other than reading the content they put out and simply thanked them for all the lessons I got to learn the easy way because of their writing.

Most ended up promoting our launch in some fashion and a few even became users even though they'd never heard of us until then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow I've never tried that. If I got an email like that from a startup I'd be so touched, I'm sure you generated a ton of goodwill by doing that.</comment></comment>


Google Should Buy Twitter Before The IPO - <AUTHOR> http://uncrunched.com/2013/10/24/google-should-buy-twitter-before-the-ipo/ <comment><USER2> I don't get these sorts of articles. The author did not present any sort of argument beyond the implied "because it would be cool". Does he actually think that at no point has it occurred to anyone at Google to buy Twitter? What exactly is he expecting to accomplish with this article? Does he think that after reading this article, some Google fat cats will change their minds?

I should start my own blog. First article will be "Google should buy Uber so that once they roll out driverless cars they already have a customer base".

<comment><USER3> [Do you not know who Michael Arrington is?]

The argument is that Google+ is unsuccessful, and Twitter is, on the other hand. Twitter is booming with growth and is a prime target for Google if their goal is really to own a social network with a high amount of usage and and public knowledge. Google+ is not.

Arrington presents that it would be akin to Google purchasing YouTube even when it had Google Video gaining moderate traction over a slower period of time. Twitter is to YouTube as Google+ is to Google Video.

<comment><USER4> Twitter has NEVER made a profit. They can barely monetize their products.

<comment><USER5> Which makes his youtube analogy more apropos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh boy. "No one I know uses Google+ much, if at all." I'm getting sooo sick of this argument. Noone I know uses Twitter, but a lot of friends are active on Google+, sharing things in private. Yet I don't call Twitter a failure. It's just different groups of people that use either service, and just because you have more connections to one "side" doesn't mean the other doesn't exist...

<comment><USER7> These claims that people make about Google+ are ridiculous. Sure, if you count account sign-ups then they are probably #1 but active users...no way.

"Google+'s user numbers are juiced simply because Google forces the product on everyone, and if you use Google to authenticate yourself to third parties, you are using Google+"

I feel the same way, I know a lot of people _online_ that use Google+, but zero of my IRL friends use Google+ (most use FB, Instagram and Twitter).

<comment><USER8> You're confusing the cause and the effect. Google± is not being juiced up with integrations to make G+ popular, but rather those integrations are the reason for why G+ was created in the first place.

Google simply wanted a universal Google account for YouTube, Google Play, Blogger and so on. As to for why the wanted that? Well, Facebook is proving that there is value in collecting people's likes and comments, and then using those for serving ads.

On the active G+ users remark, I disagree. Every YouTube user is now a G+ user. Every GPlay user that wants to write reviews is now a G+ user.

So the point that their growth is not organic is rather moot.

<comment><USER9> > Every YouTube user is now a G+ user.

This statement surprises me. Casual video-viewing is a large proportion of YouTube's attraction and does not require authentication ( except for age- restricted content ).

I don't have any Google accounts and I don't have any problems viewing YouTube content.

Every Youtube _uploader_ might be a G+ user, but what proportion of the audience is that? 10% at most?

<comment><USER8> I go to YouTube all the time to listen to music. Organizing playlists on YouTube requires an account (playlists which are public by default, something that really annoys me). Liking a video on YouTube requires an account. You really underestimate the number of active YouTube accounts. And even if 10% is a good estimate, given that YouTube is the de facto destination for videos, 10% is huge.

And btw, Facebook is a competitor because a great deal of YouTube traffic comes from Facebook and so many people end up liking or commenting around YouTube links on Facebook. And that's what Google is trying to prevent with Google+: lost traffic, lost opportunities.

Note, I'm not saying that what Google is doing is good for us. After all, the Internet's strength is in its decentralized aspect. All I'm saying is that, from Google's point of view, Google+ already is a success. People miss the point when they view Google+ as a failure. Larry Page once said that Google+ is now the new Google. And he wasn't joking about it.

People laughed at Android when it came out. Nobody's laughing now. I fear a Google dominated near future, which is why in the Google versus Facebook battle I actually hope Facebook wins, but I admire Google's execution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> ...because Google buying a loss making company for $12 billion+ on the basis of some notional 'value' to the business has worked out fantastically well for them in the past (replace 'Twitter' with 'Motorola', and replace 'data' with 'patents')...

<comment><USER11> They bought YouTube when it was basically a financial and legal trainwreck...

<comment><USER12> Weren't there mails exchanged between Youtube founders at the time that were going like "let us ignore those legal worries until someone big buy us, then we tell them" ? So Google didn't really get the full problem until it got its hands on it (hard to believe, maybe they bought Youtube despite that ? Can't remember).

<comment><USER13> I think the legal problems of YT were pretty clear even if you were outside of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amongst the big players, Twitter is the one who cares the most about Open Source and transparency. I wouldn't want to see them being swallowed by Google, or anyone else for that matter.

<comment><USER15> is mozilla a big player?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand why he cites Google's market cap since that doesn't really support the purchase cost as "pocket change."

Google has a free cash flow of ~$2.8 billion [1], so no, it wouldn't be pocket change.

Twitter's data worth tens of billions? Well, CNBC is saying they've sold their data for +$47 million [2] but I don't find any clear indication of that on the SEC filing [3]. A part of me doesn't believe that data would be worth billions to Google's search team seeing that they made ~$13.8 billion just on their own data.

Personally speaking (as in I have no data supporting the practicality of these thoughts), where Google could profit in buying Twitter is in using tweets for machine learning conversations, connecting geography with social interests & economic impact (Japan loves anime, US loves football, etc), and asset acquisition.

[1] Pg.8 - [http://investor.google.com/pdf/2013Q3_google_earnings_slides...](http://investor.google.com/pdf/2013Q3_google_earnings_slides.pdf)

[2] [http://www.cnbc.com/id/101103596](http://www.cnbc.com/id/101103596)

[3] [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/0001193125133...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312513390321/d564001ds1.htm#toc564001_12)

</comment><comment><USER17> It is both a measure of Internet companies strength & weakness that multi- billion dollar acquisitions are taken so lightly. _" Spent 3-4 years building a product which didn't become a winner? No problem, buy someone else!"_

"Strength" because compared to other industries, integrating two Internet companies is not that tough. Strength also because of the speed at which startups build scale and become world dominating. And the sheer amount of finance at their disposal to make these acquisitions.

"Weakness" because all of it seems so ephemeral. All it takes is a few years and a leader is often a laggard. Conversely, if you don't sell out before your bubble pops, you're history. And of course there's the network effects curse - if you're not among the top few players, you might as well sell out or close down.

</comment><comment><USER18> > I might be wrong...

Key phrase in the article.

<comment><USER19> Problem is, whatever I read from Arrington, does not make me feel, that he really believes, he could be wrong.

And that is my problem with most so called tech-journalists (or celebrities). They oftentimes seem to make a great show of learning. At least, this is what it seems to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lest we forget that Twitter has DENIED Google's advances, on multiple occasions, for a purchase.

Twitter would have been sold a long time ago if Google _really_ wanted to pay what it was worth.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think noone should buy twitter,certainly not big corporations like google.they got already too much power.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's all about price. At $11 billion, maybe. Double or triple that, probably not a good deal.

</comment><comment><USER23> What about Amazon instead of Google.

<comment><USER24> I kinda understand Google (search, advertising, social)... but how could Twitter possibly integrate w/ Amazon?

<comment><USER25> "People who tweeted this also bought..."?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Apple should buy Twitter just to delete Arrington's account.

</comment><comment><USER27> At what point do monopolies become a worry? Or do they at all?

</comment><comment><USER28> yea let them also control USA</comment>


Want a Job in Silicon Valley? Keep Away from Coding Schools - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-06/want-a-job-in-silicon-valley-keep-away-from-coding-schools <comment><USER2> I went to one and now a couple years in I'm working at one of the "big 4" companies. It worked out for me but I still wouldn't recommend them to other people. It only worked for me because it helped lay the groundwork but I put in countless hours every night studying and getting better while working as well.

Too many of my former classmates graduated and expected that to be the end of the hard work, like they were now entitled to a good job and that they knew enough. It was enough for a junior role but not at a huge company.

Also because of the negative stigma of having gone to one of these I scrubbed it from my history as soon as I could. I don't bring it up in conversations either. It only seems to do more harm than good because people will hear it and look down on me. You only have to look at these discussions to see how much vitriol people have against those of us that attended one.

<comment><USER3> Funny, I have almost the exact same experience. Quit my job as a CPA at a big firm to go to a coding bootcamp, made myself put in the same number of hours coding/learning as I was working my old job (70+/week) until I found a job... got a job at a startup first and 2 years later got a job at one of the "big 4".

I also don't list my bootcamp anywhere mostly because I'm worried about assumptions people will make about my technical knowledge if I do (rather than judging based on my actual performance). I'm also hesitant to recommend it to others because while I have to say it was 100% worth it to me... I've tried to help too many people learn to code who just failed because they weren't willing to fight past the frustrations of the learning curve (which is very steep at first). I just assume now that most people don't have what it takes (and that is NOT intelligence or cleverness... it's mostly just discipline/work ethic/intellectual curiosity).. so I'll never really encourage people to follow my path.

<comment><USER4> > Funny, I have almost the exact same experience.

I left the world of government contracting to attend a code school on the east coast. Now, I'm on my second year of my second startup, and truthfully, I've learned more here than at code school. Not because the school was terrible, but due to the dynamic environment.

When I left code school, there's zero percent chance I could have successfully deployed one of my applications containerized, secured, scalable, etc. However, after working here, I either (a) know how to do step X or (b) can successfully read documentation and use context clues (or ask peers for help).

To your point, I have trouble recommending code school to friends and family. It's not that I don't value what I learned, but I can't compare my intelligence/persistence/etc to theirs, I wouldn't know how. I haven't worked for one of the "big 4" although I did interview with Google and am in consistent contact with Amazon.

I've always wanted to get together with other code school graduates and develop material for graduates focusing on different areas in more depth, specifically I believe more information on databases, production environments, and open source would be highly beneficial to alumni. After code school, there's a lot of knowing about some topic, but it's so much more important to understand that topic, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Full disclosure: I work at a coding bootcamp.

This is a weird article. It's more focused on one bad school then the industry as a whole. Everyone quoted in the article got a job as a software developer. It seems the biggest issue is that expectations are not set correctly by most schools. Some people find a job asap and some people take a lot longer.

This quote seems particularly shortsighted, "When people go to coder camp, they're never going to be part of the in crowd," Dinan, the recruiter, said. "There's way more to success than just having the software education."

As a former recruiter I cringe seeing this. Someone is NEVER going to be 'part of the in crowd' because of their education? 1 year in? 3 years in? 5 years in? 10 years in when they are in a management role they still will be an outsider because they went to a coding camp?

<comment><USER6> The only issues I see is that many coding schools give the fake illusion (god forbid, advertise) that you are industry ready after a 3 month 'training'.

Sorry no, you are not.

<comment><USER7> Depends on which sector of the industry you're working in. I've participated in the hiring process (technical interviewer) for several candidates from bootcamps.

What they clearly lack in expertise (which can be learnt) they more than make up for in intangible qualities of character- self-driven, hungry to learn, motivated not only to do well, but to do better each time. Many come from backgrounds that are also useful, but not commonly found in degreed programs, such as former project managers, academic researchers, etc.

If you can afford the time and effort required to have a green developer on your team, they can be some of the best hires you'll ever get.

With regard to your specific call out of 3 months, the one I'm familiar with had something like 50-60 hour weeks. Most people were learning non-stop, focused primarily on easy-access web tech such as html, css, front-end and server-side JS, and mongodb. However, many of them also dabbled in a variety of other languages on their own time, such as python, c, java, as well as graph and SQL databases. They graduate coding bootcamps with more ready for web development than many learn at more degreed programs.

It's entirely possible that that level of expertise simply isn't enough where you work, and that's totally fine. But don't imagine that there isn't a place for these people within the industry.

(For reference, I've been in the industry myself for 7 years, and have never personally attended a bootcamp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _said one reason he chose the school was it said its instruction included a software language called PHP. Halfway through the course, when he asked when they would start learning PHP, he said he was told the school had scrapped plans to teach it_

This right here I think is the biggest problem with coding bootcamps. Many novices go in thinking that they need to learn a cool/new/useful language - and then they will find a job in it (after all, the job boards rave about experiences with specific languages).

However, learning how to code is _not_ learning a coding language. Learning a language is almost secondary to learning underlying CS concepts. It's not as sexy to say "learn algorithm design and garbage collection" no matter how necessary it is.

I feel many students go into these bootcamps thinking that learning a language and syntax is the most important software skill to have. However, when a company has to decide between someone from a 3 month javascript bootcamp, or someone with a CS degree - the decision is easy. We need to start preaching that learning to code and building software skills is totally language agnostic - and the underlying concepts are by far more important.

<comment><USER9> >However, when a company has to decide between someone from a 3 month javascript bootcamp, or someone with a CS degree

That really depends. Often, CS graduates know computer science and that's it. Often having some programming skills as well as domain knowledge can be as useful or even more useful depending on the maturity and positioning of the projects in the team's portfolio.

To use a shitty analogy: you don't need (or even want) a team of Yngwies busting out face melters. Sometimes the project just calls for three chords.

But yea, I'm with you in the sense that when I'm hiring for my team, I'm hiring deeply technical people to shovel bits into the engines. But I recognize that not all projects require it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the main thing for coding boot camps is twofold.

1) The good ones have high character requirements, as in they select for the people who are self-driven and willing to put in the work. That self-selects for success, especially since the most famous code academies have more candidates than spots, which means they can be selective.

2) Simply by paying a large sum of money (10k+), which is generally a large sum of money for the applicants, incentivizes the people to actually put in effort to do the work and study. MIT gives away all of its courses free online, and the pass rate is abysmal, precisely because it's free and the entry cost is so low, that you feel as though you can walk away at any time.

I personally think that coding boot camp vs. a four year university education is like learning how to cook in a chain restaurant vs. learning how to cook at a culinary institute. You'll get the same basic (very basic) skills, such as knowledge on how to chop a vegetable, how to debone a chicken, etc etc. However the reasons for doing things and terminology in the kitchen you'll have to learn by yourself.

Is going to college for four years worth it vs a 12 month boot camp? I don't know, but I think it's naive to think that the knowledge imparted is the same between the coding camp vs the four year degree.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're meant to be a programmer, you won't give up. You will get frustrated, but if you're determined, you'll keep trying. A bootcamp can't give you that motivation.

Some low-cost coding lessons on Code School, Treehouse, NetTuts+, Udacity, Pluralsight, or Launch Academy are also a good option, and they cost far less than does a bootcamp. MooCs are also a good way to find out if you like coding. If you're still coding on your own after a MooC, then you might be interested enough.

Try building a new application every day. Jennifer Dewalt, the founder of Zube, did this and blogged about it. With each new project, she added to her portfolio and gained new skills. Quantity trumps quality when you're learning. Just build lots of things.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sensational title. Most of article is about one bootcamp, which seems particularly badly run, and there are few comments from recruiters at large companies like Google, Cisco, and Autodesk that say they don't really look at bootcamp grads.

Full disclosure: I attended a bootcamp myself and I'm now working as a software engineer. My bootcamp made it clear to us that their program most qualifies us to be junior web developers. While some do get jobs at Google, Amazon, etc. straight out, they often had other quantitative background to make up for the lack of a formal CS education. The career services folks told us that the Big 4 become more reachable after we've had couple years of experience. Which is exactly what happened - I have friends who have ended up at those large companies after working in startups for a few years.

Also, my bootcamp made it clear that our education cannot end with our graduation. They established a clear timeline for us: for three months after graduation, focus entirely on applying for jobs, practicing technical interviews, building projects, and continuing to learn. And that's exactly what we did. The bootcamp was a 9am to midnight experience, and most of us did not slack after graduation: we continued to code and build things and learn every single day, all while sending out resumes and practicing interviews. And in the end, it paid off for most of us.

Still, there are many questionable bootcamps out there. For prospective students, I would encourage them to meet with grads and talk about their experience with the specific bootcamps that they attended. Look at the hiring data - many offer audited reports now (and be careful of those that don't). Do your due diligence before making an expensive commitment.

And for companies hiring, keep an open mind and talk to the bootcamp grads. Learn about the differences between the schools too. It's right to be skeptical, but bootcamp hires can also provide very good value to your company.

</comment><comment><USER13> Learning basic computer science can be bad for productivity as you start to worry about memory, bits and cycles. While its good to know for optimization, high level programming is mostly about memorizing methods. Most high level languages have a very good abstraction layer, so it's possible to be a very good programmer without knowing the stack in depth. What I like about new programmers, someone that switched from another profession, so they got a lot of life and job experience, while being eager to learn. I'm dealing with professionals every day do _do not_ want to learn, even if it would make them more valuable and efficient.

</comment><comment><USER14> So how would one go about getting a job in the Valley? I'm a dev w/ 3 years experience. Google and Facebook reached out to me for interviews but I couldn't pass the phone screen. I don't need a bootcamp, but I'm not exactly sure how to prepare for a modern day technical interview.

PS. I don't aspire to work in the valley per se, but I've failed multiple technical interviews with a variety of companies, if I ever want to earn another job I feel like I'd have to learn how to work w the system.

<comment><USER15> How do you go about getting a job anywhere else?

You research companies that share your values/goals, then start a conversation with them.

<comment><USER14> Sorry if I wasnt clear, this is more about the interview process than anything. I've been able to find some companies that seem to be a near perfect fit, and they range from SV giants to smaller shops in between. It just feels like I cannot pass the modern day technical interview and I'm looking for some advice in that domain.

<comment><USER16> I recommend learning discrete mathematics, then data structures and algorithms.

I cannot stress enough how important mathematical foundations is. It'll make everything else much easier to learn. I haven't read the book but heard good things about: [https://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications- Sus...](https://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susanna- Epp/dp/0495391328) as a beginner text.

Coursera has multiple offerings on Data Structures / Algorithms -- find one that works best for you.

For instance:

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/introduction-to- algorithms](https://www.coursera.org/learn/introduction-to-algorithms)

[https://www.coursera.org/specializations/algorithms](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/algorithms)

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithmic- thinking-1](https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithmic-thinking-1)

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithmic- toolbox](https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithmic-toolbox)

By doing all of those you'll get a good introductory exposure to the topics.

You should also look at a rigorous course offering of Algorithms. MIT has a few online to view.

Some readings for a beginner are:

[https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer- science/algor...](https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer- science/algorithms)

[https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Unlocked-Press-Thomas- Corm...](https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Unlocked-Press-Thomas- Cormen/dp/0262518805)

[https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT- Press...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT- Press/dp/0262033844/ref=pd_sbs_14_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=1B27XH2M0SZR2ZQ6RA91) (not beginner level but classic)

After all of this you should be fine with diving into interview books. You'll want to whiteboard solutions and be able to do all the difficult problems. Look into sites like leetcode, glassdoor and be able to do the difficult problems posted there.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, there are some good resources here. I rushed through CLRS to help prepare for these interviews but I failed at the phonescreen, which was mostly comprised of Leetcode / Hackerrank type questions. I'll definitely take a look at the coursera course specialization but it seems as though these interviews comprise of a 'programming challenge' type question for the phone screen and more with a focus on data structures, algorithms and system design for the onsite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _To get it, he had to work there for months as an intern and overcome his manager's misgivings as he got up to speed._

Is that so bad? It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to intern for a few months to demonstrate one's technical skills, after just 3 months of learning, are good enough for the company. Furthermore, it allows the candidate to show off some of the "intangible qualities of character" as described by another commenter.

I am assuming, of course, that the internship is not exploitive and that the company truly has the time and resources to mentor the intern. In the best case scenario, the manager would see culture fit and a new motivated employee who is open to growing into a great senior developer at the company. In the worst case scenario, at least the intern should have gotten some real world experience that can be leveraged into the next job.

I guess I'm taking issue with the tone of the sentence. Why wouldn't an internship be "good enough" for a coding bootcamp grad? And why would they have to fight a "manager's misgivings" since it would clearly cost the manager even more time and effort to find and train yet another person for the position. As the manager, it would be in my best interest to find an intern I think capable of succeeding AND to do my best to help him/her succeed!

Disclosure: I've hired a coding bootcamp grad as an intern and then was very glad to be able to promote him to full-time after a few months.

Edit: grammar

</comment><comment><USER18> "Tuition averages over $11,000 at non-degree granting programs that generally last around three months, but it can go as high as $21,000."

For comparison, I received a master's in software engineering from a reputable school with actual professors and a well-tested curriculum for ~$7,500/semester. Of course, it was an academic graduate degree, so I already needed to know a large amount of engineering and programming before applying, but still -- there are a ton of avenues through 'traditional institutions' that are far cheaper, and of higher quality that will teach you programming.

What are people paying for, exactly? Is it the speed that they'll learn at? If you want a "bootcamp" experience, stack 5 classes at a local college and work your ass off for a semester.

Perhaps easier said than done -- I live in the greater Boston area, where you can't throw a rock without hitting prestigious institutions with professional education options and night classes, or at least a good community college. So perhaps it's the accessibility of the bootcamps? Do they serve areas where education options aren't great? Do they do "online" better than other programs?

Is it the branding? The teachers? Something else?

Is it that bootcamps offer a "hands on/practical" experience, where students feel like academia would let them down? I'd disagree on that point, with some reservations, but I don't think that my suggestion of "stacking 5 [well- chosen] college classes" would let you down in that regard. Colleges teach the theory, sure, but they ALSO teach practical application development, especially these days.

So, I don't know. Honest question. What's the draw to bootcamps over other forms of education?

<comment><USER19> On the other hand I know plenty of people with Computer Science degrees from real universities who can't code their way out of a wet paper bag.

<comment><USER18> I'm not talking about a CS degree, or "computer science" classes, but something more along the lines of engineering/software engineering.

Also, I think we can agree that there are people from all sorts of degrees, bootcamps, certificate programs, and other assorted methods of education, who can't code their way out of a wet paper bag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For anyone that thinks that programming bootcamps are still worth considering. Why not try a free one: [https://www.freecodecamp.com/](https://www.freecodecamp.com/) Really great student curated content!

</comment><comment><USER21> i remember hearing about a coding school that was charging something close to fifteen thousand dollars for a course on programming Android apps.

the company claimed to have some kind of special relationship with Google. but the course curriculum was apparently homegrown from nothing. very little actual input from Google.

and i remember wondering "what's the special understanding, the inside track, the competitive edge that their students will have?" it didn't seem to exist at all.

i mean, the company wasn't even making the curriculum up as it went along. it was hiring outside freelancers to make it up as they went along. that was their "program."

<comment><USER22> I think Udacity had a claim like that for a nano degree.

<comment><USER23> but not for $15K. maybe 2400 if you finish in a year doing it part time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why can't people learn from online courses provided by treehouse or codeschool or udemy. There are cheaper when compared to coding bootcamps. Anyone care to comment ?

<comment><USER25> Some people find it easier to learn in a structured environment.

<comment><USER24> Structured environment ? Can you elaborate on this one ?

<comment><USER23> maybe a place you have to show up and be present for the training and there is someone there with expectations that you have to fulfill. Vs being self- motivated to work independently. In my case I have some personal projects and a couple of online courses in progress but I usually find it easier to play WoW instead. If I had to go to a physical class I wouldn't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There seem to be only two benefits to coding schools:

1). It's structured. You plan to meet people to learn at certain times, so it's easier than going it alone and being tempted to slack off.

2). You need some mentoring/personal guidance along the journey to make sure you're on the right track.

These are helpful, but I don't see why you need to pay $10,000.

Organize a like minded group via meetup.com. Ask experienced people to volunteer to help plan curriculum, to provide once a week mentoring sessions (people will help for free).

And there you go, same thing but no debt.

Important: Be honest, do you really have some natural interest/drive to do this? Really tough if you don't. Also it will take a lot of hours but if you persevere you'll make it.

Also important: There is almost never snobbery about education or "in crowds". Maybe what the author meant is that you will lose repect quickly if you're not prepared. If you are prepared and a hard worker you'll be welcome even with a GED.

</comment><comment><USER27> The big issue is that students get the illusion that a boot camp is all that's needed to get a 100k job. The reality is that it takes dedication that needs to continue after the boot camp.

Long term programmers know that it takes a long time to get a true understanding and mastering of the profession. Over the years I've known of people who thought a short programming course would be enough to get into the profession. I know I wouldn't pay a new programmer top salary much less one from a 6 month boot camp. They are just not productive enough. But the reality is that book camp is only the start. I wish they would understand that. No one is a master from the start. My advise for them is to continue with their training by creating a project either a brand new idea or just a copy of what is available. This gives them a chance to be masters eventually.

</comment><comment><USER28> Had the analogue of this experience at Maker's Academy in London, £8000 for a 12 week course, claims that you'll get £60,000 pa job within 3 months.

Lots of bullshit from the people running it as well, including talk of knowing everyone in the London tech scene and its great reputation.

</comment><comment><USER29> That's a long hard fall for Tony Fadell, from the pinnacle of autocratic Googliness to doing promo videos for dodgy coding schools.

<comment><USER30> Nah, that one is a free school, funded as charity by a French billionaire. It charges no fees or commission. It's been "promoted" (for free of course) by many top silicon valley business people and engineers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(school)#Endorsement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_\(school\)#Endorsement). Check your facts before saying bad things about people.</comment></comment>


Has anyone ever used this site to get a name for their business? Is it legit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandroot.com/business-names

<comment><USER2> I'm sure it's 'legit', but if you're a start-up, I would recommend that you can probably do everything they are doing for you for a much better cost.

They are just selling you domain names, and have added a pretty basic logo to it. Is that really going to match and define your brand going forward?

Take the time and figure out what you want your brand to be/say, you'd be surprised how many great names you can find.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks pedalpete. I'm not thinking so much of using the logo. I just really want a particular name they have. I've found others but this one is actually the cheapest. And honestly, I'm tired of looking for an available .com domain name with this sort of brandable style they offer. I haven't found one yet. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find it extremely unlikely that a new user would sign up simply to ask a question about a new domain reseller. I find it even more unlikely that such a user would be named "Stargo" when "stargo.com" is one of the example sites used by that reseller. Please go shill somewhere else.</comment>


A Cover Letter To Penny Arcade - <AUTHOR> http://www.adventuringcompany.com/pa/

<comment><USER2> Now _that_ is how you get noticed by a potential employer.

Even if they don't hire him, someone else is bound to snag that guy up...

<comment><USER3> It doesn't look like he made it into the top 3. <http://www.penny- arcade.com/patv/pa-the-series/112/>

<comment><USER4> What a horrible interview process and post-interview discussion. Even if I had gotten the job, after watching that self-important and vague, irrational driven reasoning process I'd promptly turn it down.

<comment><USER5> No kidding. I only hope those Rorschach tests were a joke but I'm not so sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It may be trendy, but I wouldn't call it a fad. The key to getting a job is demonstrating your skills. That's exactly what this comic does.

</comment><comment><USER7> They actually covered the final interview process for this job in a couple episodes of PATV, starting here: <http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/pa-the- series/112/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like this sort of thing is becoming a trend. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

<comment><USER9> This seems like a losing strategy: invest tens of hours in a single application for a highly visible opening with no expectation of a callback.

I'd think an applicant would want to cast a wider net and then escalate investment in individal openings as hiring companies signaled some mutual interest.

Maybe some rules of thumb are in order, i.e. _x_ hours for an application, 2 _x_ hours for a first interview, etc.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure that's how designers think about things

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whether or not they hire him is moot -- funny and creative is a hard thing to get across, and he did a bang-up job. I'm sure he'll get noticed by someone.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does any know if the job actually required Javascript? As cool as the comic was, it sounded like it was a must have.

</comment><comment><USER13> I hope he gets the gig - he did a great job on this comic.

Side note: Does anyone know where the job posting is? I'd like to see what they are actually looking for.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=823322](http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=823322)

<comment><USER15> Here is who got the job, according to LinkedIn: [http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=7248250...](http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=7248250&authToken=J4zN&authType=name&trk=coprofile_new_hire)

Here is her personal site for those w/o LI. <http://www.erikagreco.com/>

<comment><USER15> Looks like they are attacking Robert Ebert: <http://www.erikagreco.com/portfolio-web.html>

<comment><USER16> <http://gamescanbeart.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's too bad his actual website is broken in FireFox, that seems like a bit of a downer compared to his awesome cover letter.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hire this man immediately.

</comment><comment><USER18> My vote is Hire. I'll be watching PA for your name. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER19> That's the kind of research and work that you need to do before applying any job. Not just sending you resume to 50 potential employees.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't see what's so great about this comic. It's not funny, there's no perspective except an infatuation with PA, and a third of the comic is talking about what skills he doesn't have or other reasons to NOT hire him. I'm all for self-deprecation, but it should GO somewhere.</comment>


Using "git push" to deploy Ruby applications to your own server - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2014/05/12/git-push-ruby-applications-dokku-server-bigv

<comment><USER2> Deployments using source control probably aren't wise for most cases -- the index, for the most part, is always growing.

<comment><USER3> What about simply putting a "deploy" script into your main source directory? Executing

        ./deploy

is even less work than "git push" into a special remote repository/branch.

This "deploy" script would execute RSync and whatever needed to update the destination machine, without any server-side magic behind the scenes. It could also execute "git push" so you don't have to remember to push before deployment.

<comment><USER4> IMO the neat thing about a "git push" deployment is that you are deploying a particular commit.

The build server could annotate the build with the commit's hash, making that deployment reproducible.

If you just have a local ./deploy script, a dev might deploy changes that never make it into version control.

(Even if ./deploy forces the working copy to be clean and the index to be empty, the dev could still "git reset --hard" afterwards and the version that has been deployed is lot)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >>>> # Not currently on any branch.

>>>> nothing to commit (working directory clean)

>> This means we're on the version of Dokku currently suggested for use with Ubuntu 12.04 by its author.

No, it just means your on a detached head. Instead of git status, try:

      git tag --points-at HEAD

</comment><comment><USER6> Dokku is awesome (as is Docker which it builds on). The guy that wrote it (Jeff Lindsay) has been working on Flynn for the past 6 months - [https://flynn.io/](https://flynn.io/) \- think of Flynn like a 'multi host dokku'

<comment><USER7> I love Dokku for my Node apps. Still trying to find a good setup for WordPress installs that need to be able to upload media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is interested, i just added the MS alternative (it's the engine for Azure, but it's opensource and you can use it yourselve)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7755914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7755914)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious how this would handle rolling restarts (maybe a randomized delay before deploying?) or rollbacks on failed deployments...

</comment><comment><USER10> I have used git-deploy in many cases and it works great for any language/framework combo

<comment><USER11> [https://github.com/git-deploy/git-deploy](https://github.com/git-deploy/git- deploy)

Interesting ... it says one of its main functions is the ease of reverting / backing out of an install.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting, as GitLab B.V. CEO I'm very much looking forward to part 2 :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you go to trade your cryptocurrencies? - <AUTHOR> What sites/platforms do you consider best and trustworthy? Why? <comment><USER2> Comments are off the top of my head when last used, not very scientific, just markets I've used lately.

* gdax.com - coinbase's exchange - only btc/eth/ltc, easy to buy with CC, high fees, high traffic

* etherdelta.github.io - only erc20 tokens, contract based, low fees, very bad ux, low traffic

* kraken.com - quite a few alt coins and tokens, insanely slow support, bad ux, average to high fees, average traffic

* hibtc.com - many coins, average fees, slow site, low traffic

* bitfinex.com - many coins, average fees, high traffic

* poloniex.com - many coins, high fees, high traffic

* liqui.io - I really don't recall

You can always go to coinmarketcap.com and see the various exchanges for each coin.

<comment><USER3> Questions on your list (which is appreciated) if anyone can fill these in:

-Which have (legal) US compliance?

-Which have options/futures or other contracts?

-Which have red flags (holds on withdrawls for mysterious reasons, like Poloniex, for example)

-Which have security red flags?

-Which have actual support help?

-What countries are they based in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kraken is one of the safest choices IMHO. I automated my trading via a script:

[https://github.com/elsesiy/crypto-trader](https://github.com/elsesiy/crypto- trader)

<comment><USER5> For those reading this, Kraken does not (and has no intention too), of buying the NY BitLicense. I had to close my account with them as my address was registered in NY.

<comment><USER6> Also not able to use them if you live in the state of Washington.

I want able to find on their site which states they do support so you might want to email them first before setting up an account you can't use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We are working on a platform for exchanging Ethereum (ERC20 tokens) at Ethdex. Exchange happens atomically and on chain. No counter party risk, unlike exchanges such as Bittrex. We aren't rent-seeking or forcing you to use a token.

[http://ethdex.io](http://ethdex.io)

[https://github.com/Ethdex/contracts](https://github.com/Ethdex/contracts)

<comment><USER8> So how does this differ from Ox?

<comment><USER7> We have a FAQ[1] which is being fleshed out but take a look if it helps.

We are 100% non-rent seeking.

In Ethdex we incentivise Trading platforms by allowing fees to be charged in Eth, the natural currency of Ethereum. Not by creating a token and forcing its utility (ala ZRX and 0x).

We also support Multi-Relay, which is something 0x does not support. As a maker you can submit your order to every trading platform, every slack channel and every subreddit. Other platforms cannot do this.

We also don't have any obligations to VC's to ensure they make profit.

[1]: [http://ethdex.io/faq](http://ethdex.io/faq)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bittrex: lots of cryptocurrencies, fast, simple and I didn't had problems with them to this day.

<comment><USER10> They claim to be operating out of the US, and the address listed is a half empty strip mall in the Las Vegas suburbs. They post no licensing details. Seems legit?

<comment><USER11> They managed to get a BitLicense (one of very few orgs to do so) which at least somewhat lends to legitimacy. Also pretty easy to find the people involved, and a founding team of infosec people is a pretty decent means to start an exchange. [https://bittrex.com/home/about](https://bittrex.com/home/about)

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

<comment><USER12> As far as I can tell they do not have a BitLicense, they just applied for one. The wikipedia page you linked even includes the 3 companies who have been granted one so far, and none are Bittrex.

<comment><USER11> Hmmm you're right. Interesting

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I personally use Gemini for primarily trading Ethereum but dabble with Bittrex and Poloniex (got an account pre-BitLicense).

Poloniex, I don't trust with the majority of my funds for various red-flags that the community has presented and Bittrex doesn't seem to have any retail presence (other than being in an abandoned strip mall in LV).

Gemini is founded by the Winklevi twins.

<comment><USER13> What red flags have you heard about concerning Poloniex?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would've told you Coinbase until not long ago, but they seem to be going down the drain in terms of support (and I promise: you will at some point need it). It's been over a month for me to even get a single reply to a ticket where there are hundreds of dollars in limbo, and I'm not alone (check their @CoinbaseSupport reply threads)…

Previously, my setup was USD<>BTC at Coinbase, and BTC<>AltCoins at Bittrex… Might try some of the other suggestions for USD<>BTC in the future.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most of them (?) let you trade without verifying identity, as long as you only withdraw cryptocurrencies.

The largest one in Europe seems to be Kraken. Bitfinex was one of the first to let people use leverage, but nowadays you can get it on most of them.

If you want to withdraw fiat, you'll need to have a verified account (think sending them a photo of your ID/passport and some invoices to verify your location).

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://Binance.com](http://Binance.com) is by far the best! (for BTC => ALT trading)

Interview with the CMO - [http://news.8btc.com/8btc-interview-binance-cmo-he- yi-talks-...](http://news.8btc.com/8btc-interview-binance-cmo-he-yi-talks- about-the-outlook-and-strategy-for-2017)

</comment><comment><USER17> shapeshift.io - I used to use this a lot. It doesn't hold your crypto for more than a minute.

bitmex.com - (futures exchange) - This is a gem. They're extremely professional. Every feature seems throughly considered, e.g. margin positions are valued based on global indices, not the local princes, to prevent flash crashes. The API is the most feature complete I've seen. One thing that bothers me is that Bitmex seems to have a conflict of interest, since they run a trading bot ('anchor market maker') on their own platform.

etherdelta.github.io - (ICO tokens only) - This was designed so that the exchange owner never controls your tokens, an Ethereum contract does. You decide whether this reassures or frightens you. It supports all tokens which is probably the main reason I used it (besides being a cool proof of concept). The in-browser UI is pretty bad.

</comment><comment><USER18> I usually use SFOX (sfox.com) since they let me trade on multiple exchanges at the same time and I'm big on arbitrage (I have scripts to do it for me). Not sure why they're not more popular. Most UIs on exchanges are utter shit so at least SFOX's is decent.

</comment><comment><USER19> I traded on Poloniex once but they stopped withdrawal on Monero and would not answer. Finally they processed the withdrawal like a week a later. I am not using this platform anymore.

Currently I am using Bitfinex and it's working pretty well!

</comment><comment><USER20> Gemini to transfer from bank account for free instant buy capability, then switch over to GDAX for the higher volume USD pairs. Poloniex for crypto pairs.

</comment><comment><USER21> Honestly KYC for cryptocurrencies is ridiculous. What if I want to buy for a company shall I identify the beneficial owner?

Cryptocurrencies have limitations against alternative payment systems: (1) they are "push" only (2) have a huge buy/sell spread and (3) risky fluctuation, if they do not have at least anonymity benefit why should I prefer them to UDS, EUR or GBP?

Anyway seems that there are ATM for bitcoins, never tried one ([https://coinatmradar.com/](https://coinatmradar.com/)). Did anybody already tried one?

</comment><comment><USER22> Ask HN expansion: It would be good to know as well the degree of KYC enforced by each of them (KYC = know your customer)

<comment><USER23> Almost all exchanges have tiered KYC. Almost all allow you to deposit any amount but limit withdrawal. Thus, this is largely dependent on how much information you're willing to share and how much money you want to be able to move within 1 day. Basic KYC is typically name and address, while highest tiers require passports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm looking for recommendations for those in New York State. Everything seems to be blocked here.

<comment><USER5> Hey Mason, I can personally vouch for Gemini (being in NY myself). They allow for immediate trading of your ACH deposits, before the money has cleared, which I think is a massive boon to cc-traders.

I haven't had any availability issues with their backend (i.e Coinbase) and their support staff seems responsive to the fact that the trading GUI needs an overhaul (2 separate pages for buying and selling ETH).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I used to go to TradeHill. So now, not really much trading to do anymore.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can someone share their experience with Bitfinex? Compare to others?

<comment><USER27> [https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/216/review](https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/216/review)

Bitfinex is closed for US customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Poloniex. Because it's easy

</comment><comment><USER29> I use a mix of Gemini and Kraken.</comment>


Why Google+ is a Plus for startups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tape.io/what-a-success-why-google-is-a-plus-for-start

<comment><USER2> Is it just me or does the chosen voice sound synthesized?

It would be interesting to hear the original as a comparison -- I'd often prefer to hear a screencast straight from the founder.

</comment><comment><USER3> Until it gets infested with spam and nobody can do this sort of thing any more :/

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that was interesting. The default circles include 'Following'--I didn't realize you could invert the process and push stuff into other people's streams.

<comment><USER3> It goes to their "incoming" thing, which is why I never check mine... Too bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With LinkedIn charging you to message a single person and Facebook's closed network, Google+ has a great opportunity by blending the open/closed network concepts.

Nice creativity on your part!

</comment><comment><USER6> My startup, Photochrome, has benefited from its page on FB, yes. But Facebook is not doing all that it can to open Pages to its users because revenue is derived from the buffer inherent in a closed system. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of targeted ads to drive likes/social connections, but free is nice too. Waiting for share-able circles or G+'s business offering...

</comment><comment><USER7> this is an interesting story. I like the idea on finding experts via social networks. This is what facebook doesn't do: Aim on the users with a professional perspective. But it has risks too: What about the spammers and scammers?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm as real as they come! Matter of fact, the audio was produced without any compression or enhancement. What you hear is how it was recorded, minus a few gaps of silence. Cheers, Kim

</comment><comment><USER9> Why use Google+ when you can use LinkedIn which is designed to help you find professionals on the web? I like Google+ too but I just feel like each Social Network has its own purpose.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice, but it's not like that can't be done on other networks as well. G+ has everyone's attention, and that's a bonus, but it won't always be that way.

<comment><USER11> It's a bit harder on other networks.

I tried a search on Twitter to find voiceover artists. The search worked surprisingly well. Searching "Voice over artist" was useless though. Ok, now I've got a list of Twitter users that I want to put my request in front of. But I can't reach them. I could follow each and hope for a follow-back. I could @mention each of them and ask. I can't DM them because they're not following me. Not very easy on Twitter.

I tried a search on Facebook. I can find pages for individual voiceover artists, but not a "Freelance Voiceover artists of the world unite" page that I was hoping for. So now I can message each artist individually or like each of their pages and write on the wall of their page. Not very easy on Facebook.

I tried repeating their Google+ search. Not only do I get a list of voiceover artists on Google+, which I can add to a circle and message (though they'll have to add me to a circle or check their Incoming to see it), but there's a "VoiceActors onGPlus" Google+ profile already that 105 people have added to their circles.

Unless I'm missing some Twitter or Facebook tricks, Google+ clearly wins that contest and I don't think it's just because it's new and people are checking it, though that certainly helped in this case.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that that profile is against TOS and will probably be deleted for that. It's not Google+ that helped you, it's people who abused it for something it's not. (At least, not yet.)

Twitter probably also has lists of voice over artists... Yup, a quick google search for 'twitter voice over artists' provides a few directories that have been compiled by people.

Facebook probably has groups.

There are forums out there specifically for that, I'm sure.

So there isn't really anything specific about Google+ that made it easier. (Again, at least not yet. I'm hoping they add those features soon.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how long the ability will last to use Google+ that way.

</comment><comment> johnx123-up These "micro jobs" are worth only $5. Next time, please crosscheck with <http://jobreapr.com/>

<comment><USER13> You believe that an hour or two of someone's time is worth $5? Even McDonald's pays more than that.

<comment><USER10> And it's certainly not worth only $5 for someone's professional time. Voice acting is not the piece of cake that people think it is.</comment></comment></comment>


Convincing the Boss to Pay for Developer Training - <AUTHOR> http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/2836 <comment><USER2> I was quoted in that article and to clarify my response, it was based on my personal experiences and also on the Joel Spolsky article: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html> (I provided the author with the link to it.)

Truthfully, most _great_ programmers really do not need formal "training" focused on a specific technology in the sense that they will more likely learn on their own by creating and working on a side project specifically for that purpose.

I will make the distinction that _training_ in this context means something like a course titled "Learn .NET development in only six weeks" versus a broader _education_ as in earning a CS degree. Great programmers can probably learn more on their own than spending time taking a training course, but they could benefit from a few CS courses focused on more general computing fundamentals and concepts.

</comment><comment><USER3> No offense, but this is one great thing about where I work at now. My boss encourages me to seek out new things to learn and foots the bill.</comment>


Your Instagrams on marshmallows - <AUTHOR> https://www.boomf.com/

<comment><USER2> Glad that problem is solved. -_-

<comment><USER3> BoooOOOOOooOOOOoOOOOooooOooM(f)!</comment></comment>


Google Clip vs. GoPro Hero6? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Seems like they do different things, Clip seems like an indoor "set it and forget it" kind of toy. There's no manual setting of modes, resolutions (from what I've seen so far). Very casual feel.

Plus mounting capabilities are probably few. GoPro is more for creators, directors, people who know what they want to achieve with their video.</comment>


Hadoop Screencasts - <AUTHOR> http://www.hadoopscreencasts.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an attempt to build a series of screen casts on Apache Hadoop and its various components. I am doing this to keep myself updated and to also share whatever I learn. Your comments are most welcome.</comment>


BugMeNot - <AUTHOR> http://bugmenot.com <comment><USER2> Excellent website, I use it (and try to contribute) all the time. I wish they wouldn't ban some websites in the system.

<comment><USER3> It saves some websites the trouble of having to look up IDs on bugmenot and manually ban them on a regular basis. BugMeNot originated back when the NY Times and similar sites were free but required you to register (so they could market to you) to access content. When folks use BugMeNot for online forums that don't permit anonymous posters, it's generally for trolling and abuse, so I used to have to check it regularly before BugMeNot added the option of a website requesting to be excluded. From the site:

"Sites should only appear blocked here if they match one or more of the following criteria:

* Pay-per-view: users pay money to access the site

* Community: users register only to add/change content (but not to view)

* Fraud risk: user accounts contain sensitive details e.g. banks, online stores, etc"

Basically, bugmenot allows websites to opt-out when the main purpose would be for fraud, theft, or abuse.

<comment><USER4> I never knew those were the criteria. I had assumed "force majeur" \-- i.e. that people would threaten to sue bugmenot, which would kowtow to the threats. This is much better.

I also consider bugmenot super useful!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I created a nodejs module to find user and password for a specific site: [https://github.com/dlion/bugmenot](https://github.com/dlion/bugmenot)</comment>


What is the current best platform for a public personal profile page? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-current-best-platform-for-a-public-personal-profile-page

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it possible that there is no web application doing this? It looks like a great opportunity to me...

</comment><comment><USER2> flavors.me, about.me Check out my answer on Quora.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting, thank you. Can you point out the advantages/disadvantages?</comment></comment>


C# versus C++ performance - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4257659/c-sharp-versus-c-performance/19505716#19505716

<comment><USER2> Not to be ad hominem, but why do these posts advocating garbage collected languages keep making exaggerated claims?

F# certainly is capable of expressing code more succinctly than C++, but 6,000 versus 1,000,000 lines is far beyond what that difference could account for; the code could presumably have been rewritten in much less C++ as well. Nor, in all likelihood, would it "have taken man-decades of work by real experts and cost millions of pounds" to get "better performance"; quite possibly it would to get to near-optimal performance, but compared to F#, it would probably be relatively easy for a skilled C++ developer (and the author does seem to be a skilled F# developer) to get _better_ performance.

shared_ptr has issues, and in many respects is significantly inferior to a real garbage counter, but the post downplays the extent to which idiomatic C++ code avoids use of shared_ptr in most circumstances. You can write Java in any language...

The claim that scope-based reference counting can keep garbage around for longer than necessary is strictly true but seems absurd to argue with, as the time between end-of-use and end-of-scope is usually rather short. The linked post ([http://flyingfrogblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/memory- management...](http://flyingfrogblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/memory-management- myths-promptness.html)) attempts to illustrate this, but uses a completely illogical/pathological example.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, maybe Jon Skeet (the top user on StackOverflow and a googler, IIRC) exagerated - he didn't even use Lisp :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In a trading environment, the question of C# vs C++ is probably moot. The low latency trading languages of the future will probably be Verilog and VHDL.

<comment><USER4> FPGA's and ASIC's are the only context I know for verilog and VHDL. Do you mean hardware solutions?

<comment><USER3> Yes. Trading is: first a network game, second a hardware game, third a math game, fourth a software game.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Targetblank – Organize Your Links - g-harel https://targetblank.org/ <comment> g-harel More info on the GitHub page. [https://github.com/g-harel/targetblank](https://github.com/g-harel/targetblank)

I'd love some feedback on the initial user experience and enhancement ideas.

Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: Tools for Android NDK development? - <AUTHOR>

Looking at porting a desktop C++ and OpenGL app to Android. Wondering what tools do you use for debugging and profiling apps on Android? Am interested in profiling both CPU code, as well as OpenGL shaders. <comment><USER2> For CPU profiling, the Android Open Source Project includes both oprofile and Linux perf tools in the source tree. You would need to compile your own kernel and Android to include them. Some options need to be set in the kernel config to enable support for processor hardware events for profiling. Additionally, you need to compile the profiled code in ARM mode instead of Thumb for perf tools to be able to unwind the stack traces. Oprofile might work without kernel hardware support, I'm not sure.

I don't know about shader profiling. GDB is apparently supported for debugging, haven't used it: <http://www.kandroid.org/online- pdk/guide/debugging_gdb.html>

EDIT: By the way, depending on the accuracy you require, you might want to take a look at this poor man's profiler that Mike Dunlavey has been advocating: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/375913/what-can-i-use- to-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/375913/what-can-i-use-to-profile-c- code-in-linux/378024#378024) It doesn't require compiling the operating system, you can just send a kill signal to your process multiple times and examine the stack traces from the logs. It may or may not be enough for your needs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be aware that Android (and I believe iOS) does not use OpenGL. It uses a subset of OpenGL called OpenGL ES. OpenGL ES does not handle OpenGL begin and end commands. You can not directly specify rectangles on OpenGL ES like you can on OpenGL. There are other differences as well. So you will somehow have to translate your OpenGL code into OpenGL ES.

I would look into this before worrying about debugging and profiling. If it were possible to easily port OpenGL C++ apps to Android, I (and others) would have ported every popular open source OpenGL C++ game to Android a long time ago.

Garen Torikian and Sergii Pylypenko both have attempted to port C++/OpenGL games to Android. There results are here and might help you:

[http://github.com/pelya/commandergenius/tree/sdl_android/pro...](http://github.com/pelya/commandergenius/tree/sdl_android/project/jni/application/openarena)

<http://gjtorikian.github.com/Neverball-ME/>

I am almost always on Freenode IRC channel #android-dev as Ologn, feel free to send me a message as I'm interested in this topic. You also might luck out and run into someone with some NDK/JNI experience on the IRC channel, depending on the time of day etc.</comment>


Python's float makes me want to smoke crack - <AUTHOR> http://renesd.blogspot.com/2009/05/pythons-float-makes-me-want-to-smoke.html

<comment><USER3> All makes sense to me. The first "silliness" is because float's __repr__ is a little different from its __str__. This is because str() is supposed to return a user-friendly representation (e.g, fewer decimal places) whereas repr() is supposed to return something that's an exact representation of the value (e.g, enough decimal places to replicate the bit pattern).

Decimal not converting from floats is also intentional. While it's possible to represent any float as a decimal, chances are that any randomly chosen float will be a very long and ugly decimal. Decimal isn't a float replacement - <USER2> you're basing your whole argument on the idea that decimal should be the default numeric type, you don't really understand the difference.

</comment><comment><USER4> This chap has no idea what he's talking about - there are very good reasons why the Python interfaces are designed the way they are. The real rofl moment is in the comments when he kindly recommends that Python should "try to keep up and move on to more dense numbers"... like 64 bit ints and decimals. I mean... wha??

</comment><comment><USER5> Python 3.1 changes the way floats are converted to strings. See [http://docs.python.org/dev/py3k/whatsnew/3.1.html#other- lang...](http://docs.python.org/dev/py3k/whatsnew/3.1.html#other-language- changes)

</comment><comment><USER6> I still would prefer floats as default instead of decimals. What should be fixed is how you have to convert a float to a string to then convert it to a decimal.

<comment><USER7> Python is trying to tell you something. By the time you've got a float, it's too late to turn it into a Decimal. The operation doesn't make sense. You can argue about the details, but a floating point number doesn't represent a number, it represents a numeric range, the exemplar of an infinite set of values that would map to the same float if converted to a float. When you ask to turn a float into a Decimal, _which_ element of the range the float represents are you trying to turn into an exact Decimal? The operation is ill- defined.

All hacking it up with a string does is convince Python that you actually mean that exact number, but you're hacking. Either convert where you got that "float" directly into Decimal (where Python can't tell enough to know where the number came from), or deal with the fact that you are cheating and it may bite you in the future.

So, no, the correct solution is not to "convert the input into a float, then convert that into a string, then convert that to a Decimal"; the correct solution is to make sure you never pass through float in the first place. Unless you're loading a binary file specified as containing IEEE-754 floats, you _probably_ didn't actually have to cut through the float stage. Anything other than the correct solution should be expected to be annoying and blow up at random times.

Floats are treacherous little bastards, and all attempts to paper over that fact will lead to grief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Crack is not good for you.

<comment><USER9> Do you have some data to back this up? Just sayin :)</comment></comment>


Unmasking DDoS for Hire on Fiverr - <AUTHOR> https://www.incapsula.com/blog/unmasking-ddos-for-hire-fiverr.html <comment><USER2> What a cesspool Fiverr is sometimes. They just don't do a good job policing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry but I have to disagree. I have no prior experience with them, but in this case they very extremely responsive and banned the accounts in less than 48 hours.

I wish other companies were as decisive when dealing with "stressers"...</comment></comment>


Functional Programming with Clojure (pay per view, has anyone used this ?) - <AUTHOR> http://peepcode.com/products/functional-programming-with-clojure/

<comment><USER2> I think posts to pay-per-view stuff ought to reflect that in the title. Knowing this is out there for purchase has value, just like knowing a new book on whatever topic was available for purchase would have value - and the site as a business model has interest, too. But the title should indicate it's that kind of link IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, but then we shouldn't be linking to any articles behind paywalls from major newspapers either either without putting that in the title.

Updated the title as per your request.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you there, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting business model, screen casts pay-per-view.</comment>


Show HN: Simple and distraction-free offline-ready Notepad - <AUTHOR> https://notepad.js.org <comment><USER2> This is great - I literally started writing one of these yesterday. Mine was going to use a WYSIWYG editor like Medium Editor and be more of a WIKI.</comment>