Jim Simons retiring from Renaissance Technologies - <AUTHOR> http://www.zerohedge.com/article/jim-simons-retiring-rentec-sparcs-domination-ending

<comment><USER3> FYI, Jim Simons is a math PhD who runs one of the world's most successful hedge funds, that trades mostly algorithmically and as far as I know, mostly hires CS, math, and physics grads and not so much finance.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harris_Simons> for more info.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmm -- my understanding is they were one of the biggest low latency trading shops. Biggest in the sense of percentage of profits generated this way. Maybe some of the changes the SEC is pushing through lead to this.

Also, he's stupidly fucking rich. Sometimes calling in rich is the right thing to do.

<comment><USER5> >biggest low latency trading shops

RenTec always made money from superior quant analytics. Like almost everyone else in quant business, they used high volume, low latency trading, so it wasn't a differentiating factor. Hence I doubt SEC would have grounds to go after them on low latency or more specifically on front running orders using low latency capabilities.

<comment><USER6> It may just be, as one of the Zerohedge commenters mentioned, that Jim isn't about to be investigtated, he just sees the writing on the wall - SEC under political pressure to curtail HFT, which has been his bread and butter - <USER2> he's getting out at the top of the game and moving on to something else.</comment></comment></comment>


Fred Wilson's Miracle Quarter, Plus the Merits of Being Cheap - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/12/fred_wilson_mir.html

<comment><USER2> Great interview.</comment>


IT Executives shouldn't keep their jobs if they recommend production services for EC2? - <AUTHOR> http://wizeline.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/amazon-ec2/

<comment><USER2> Note that this guy runs a hosting company (<http://www.gni.com/>) & is a potential competitor to EC2's offering. Also note that his primary complaint is the EC2's SLA, but the link provided by GNi for their SLA (<http://220.127.116.11/Support/ServiceLevelAgreement.aspx>) points to nowhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good spot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree completely.

There seem to be a lot of web-startups that don't really have a firm grasp on colo/hosting/virt servers/etc. It strikes me as strange that the server availability part of their business is often seen as some uninteresting messy thing to be outsourced to the lowest bidder.

EC2 is _great_ for giving you moderately cost effective dynamic computing cycles. I personally think that EC2 makes for an expensive sucky web-host, and my guess is that over time (by the end of 2009) people will better understand EC2's niche.

</comment><comment><USER4> "virtual web hosting from the 80s"

I would say that EC2 is considerably better than web hosting ever was in the 1980s.

<comment><USER3> Name a SINGLE 80's webhost that ever had a verifiable SECOND of downtime. Also, name an 80's webhost that even charged any money for storage OR bandwidth.

Webhosting in the 80's was so much simpler than it is today, companies hardly gave any thought at all to their hosting providers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course, if your own datacenter is down you don't get a refund either. You might get some psychological satisfaction from firing some of your own IT people, but that's unlikely to help your business much.

</comment><comment><USER6> Startups shouldn't worry about uptime. Rapidly growing businesses should be building in failover and redundancy. Your choice of host doesn't change either of those facts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting read... not sure I whole-heartedly agree though!</comment>


Uber Suspends Its Ride-Sharing Service in Spain Following a Court Ruling - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/30/fiz-pop-ban/ <comment><USER2> AFAIK, this is a first: _" The company said it is "respecting the law" with its suspension"_.

Previously, they always said to continue their ways, going so far as promising to pay fines drivers get (sorry, can't find a link for that, but [http://ernstseconomyforyou.blogspot.nl/2014/12/the- untolerab...](http://ernstseconomyforyou.blogspot.nl/2014/12/the-untolerable- ignorance-and-arrogance.html) is an example of what they think laws mean)

They basically are trying to force law changes. There is nothing wrong with that. However, the changes they try to force go against the social structure of much of Europe. _" The MP's there should recognize that Uber is working according to one of the pillars of the Dutch taxi law: more market-like circumstances, better quality and lower prices"_. Their spokesman forgets about the "protect the weak" pillar of society. In a sense, this is a clash between hard capitalism and the social welfare state (a clash of civilizations, if you want)

Also, I find that he change they are trying to affect does not warrant the harsh approach Uber takes.

For that reason alone, I hope that changes, if they come at all, do not come soon.

<comment><USER3> Who are "the weak" being protected by taxi regulations? Uber is usually cheaper than regular taxis so more available to poorer people.

<comment><USER4> I can't speak for Spain but here in Australia there are regulations around pricing ie no surges, there are cameras present in every taxi and drivers are vetted and have their names clearly displayed.

All of which are designed to protect women, those who are intoxicated or incapacitated and the mentally challenged from being exploited.

Taxi regulations are like consumer protection laws. You don't know you need them until something bad happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some perspective from a Spaniard:

The Spanish taxi guild/lobby is very, very strong. Spain has a strong public transit system, but taxis are widely used nevertheless.

Taxi drivers went on strike this year during specific dates and all hell broke loose. They have much to lose, since a taxi license is very expensive and considered an investment, there is a second hand license market, etc. Some people buy houses, they buy taxi licenses. It is a heavily regulated market, since free competition would draw prices to a point so low that the business is not profitable (or so they say)

On one hand, I've never seen a rich taxi driver. I'd argue it's a low/mid- level job for low/middle class people who have nothing else to do. Similar to construction workers; if they lose their job they cannot work as anything else.

On the other hand, I'm pro-competition, but I respect regulated markets for some areas (healthcare, transportation, telecommunications, energy, etc). So why not taxis? I'm just not knowledgeable enough to make a strong point for or against taxi drivers.

While Spain is known for its political corruption, courts of law have been pretty professional and their rulings are usually fair and law-compliant. So if a court has banned Uber, it's because the Spanish law protects taxi drivers. It's a political matter.

In summary, devaluing or voiding taxi licenses would leave tens of thousands of people in debt, probably without a job, and with nothing else to work of. Yes, I know that if it were for ice drivers, we would never have had electric fridges, but I can also sympathize. It's basically a matter of jobs. The Spanish government doesn't want our 30% unemployement to be any higher, taxis to be on strike and in general people to be angrier.

TL;DR: Spain is a heavily regulated country and the EU directives also point to that direction. Taxi drivers are a low-mid demographic which need protection or, at least, protection from a total disruption of their jobs from new agents like Uber. Yes, this is bad for free competition, but this is Europe, and the level of legal protection is like this: workers > consumers > companies.

<comment><USER6> > Similar to construction workers; if they lose their job they cannot work as > anything else.

But this isn't true right? It's not that Uber is eliminating taxi jobs, it's that they are competing with the status quo. Surely, if current drivers would lose their jobs, they'd be more than welcome to hop on-board the Uber train (or I guess I should say "Uber car"). Is there a reason that you think that these drivers wouldn't be able to become Uber drivers? I only have a cursory understanding of the whole taxi situation since I hardly ever use a taxi (although I happened to have called one to take me to the airport tomorrow morning).

<comment><USER7> Uber make grandiose claims about the amount their drivers can earn, these claims have been demonstrated to be false, Uber drives down the cost of using Uber which in turn drives down the amount that drivers earn[1]. Driving for Uber is uneconomical for some drivers in some areas, if the trend continues more and more drivers for Uber are going to find it uneconomical. If the concern the taxi drivers have is that they are going to lose their _career_ , Uber is certainly not a viable alternative, because while it may provide a job _right now_ who knows what it will provide in a years time.

[1] [http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-say-theyre- making...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-say-theyre-making-less- than-minimum-wage-2014-10?r=US)

<comment><USER6> That's interesting, and at the same time perplexing. This seems to be a market that is opening up, with multiple options for drivers. If it's truly the case that a significant number of Uber drivers are struggling to make ends meet when working full-time, sure this should lead to an exodus? This is suggested right at the end of the article:

> There's no way you will stay with Uber if you want to make ends meet. So > either Uber will fix things, or drivers will leave."

I don't know what contractual obligations are forced onto drivers so maybe they're tied up for a certain period of time. The following quote from the article though suggests that it shouldn't be the case:

> Uber is not obligated to pay its drivers minimum wage; the drivers aren't > employees, they're independent contractors.

Neither do I know if there is a "non-compete" clause of some sort that prevents them from working for Lyft, Sidecar, or even reverting back to traditional taxi services. The article suggests that at present this is not the case:

> "Right now, the TLC is open, so you can work with multiple bases," Diallo > tells us. "

All in all, I find the business case for Uber intriguing because I don't fully understand the fuss. Admittedly, this is likely to my lack of understanding of the powerplay behind all of this, but I struggle to understand how drivers have gone from the "no-Uber world" to the "I-rely-on-Uber-and-can't-get-away- and-can't-make-ends-meet-world".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Spending a lot of time in Barcelona each year - what exactly is there to disrupt? taxi service is excellent, at all times of day. prices are reasonable, they know where to take you. cars are ok, clean.

i get it in the US, with all those shitty cabs and foreign drivers who don't know their areas, but Europe is different.

Apps like mytaxi.com are closing the payment/booking gap - backed by some powerful companies like Daimler.

Uber-like services are needed in the US where the government is unable to actually do its work due to a culture of distrust and paranoia.

There is no electronic health record, Google could not make it work. Sci Fi in the US. Austrians have had it for years now. Awesomely simple, proven. No startups needed. Also less chances for creating the next billionaires, but maybe it's ok if the rest of the population can enjoy working public services.

<comment><USER9> Blaming government incompetence on a lack of public trust in government is... fallacious to put it kindly.

<comment><USER8> not at all.

you make the government the source of all evil. blame regulation, blame the people working in government, don't pay them well. what happens? public service will suck. no one qualified wants to work there. a self fulfilling prophecy.

the people get the government they are willing to pay for, they deserve.

the whole starving the beast rhetoric of the GOP, etc in the US is what ultimately makes the government dysfunctional - outside of Defense of course, the holy cow. if the DoD would be in charge of healthcare and public infrastructure, maybe then there would be progress in the US.

<comment><USER9> It's too bad you're unaware of the calculation problem and its consequences.

Also, let's reverse your argument -

"you make the free-market the source of all evil. blame a lack of regulation, blame the people working in corporations, regulate their pay as well. what happens? free-market service will suck. no one qualified wants to work there. a self fulfilling prophecy."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Uber will find a way out of this situation. I am an Indian and am really feel sad for what happened in New Delhi. But, what happened after that incident is an example of how Uber handles such kind of unfortunate challenges [1]. Now the company is taking every possible step to be a socially responsible company which is committed to the safety of its customers.

Whenever a new and disruptive business model is introduced in a market, people (making a living out of the existing business) might show some resistance and even the governments will take some steps to safeguard the votes (I mean the affected people). However, in the due course things will settle down and the new entrant will emerge as winner (with an understanding of the local culture and regulation).

I personally feel, country like India definitely requires Uber like services to ease the pain of millions of travelers who are literally looted by the unfair taxi drivers and ineffective fare system around the country.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- life/11315782/Uber-I...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- life/11315782/Uber-India-to-roll-out-new-safety-measures-after-Delhi- rape.html)

<comment><USER11> Do you know why Uber wasn't invented in Spain? Because it is illegal. People giving rides for money have existed always and they've been punished because they were breaking the law.

Now they're telling us it is "disruptive" to make crime more organized? Hey, we've got this nice app in order to receive your illegal service in an easy, trackable and convenient way.

I'm not saying it should be illegal. I'm saying it is illegal. There's a huge difference. I'm all in for an open taxi market as a side business to cheap public transportation like we have in most places in Europe.

<comment><USER12> What's wrong with people giving rides for money? That's ideal model of open market IMO. I have this model applied in my country and 5 kilometers taxi ride would cost around 1-2 euros, depending on time (bus costs 0.4 euro). That's nice for customers, if you ask me. There's other side of the coin, it might not be safe enough to ride with unknown driver at night being in unconscious state. But we have public taxi services with slightly higher prices for that.

I was at Spain in my vacation and transportation costs shocked me, TBH.

<comment><USER11> Hey vbezhenar,

I don't see nothing morally wrong on their business model. I'm just pointing out it is illegal under the current law and that's why there's no Spanish Uber. Also, we all know this is not ride-sharing, just a cheaper and unregulated taxi company. Blablacar is ride-sharing :)

Transportation costs in Spain are far from free, but if you were shocked I would recommend you not visiting Britain for your health's sake. Well, I actually recommend visiting the country because it is beautiful, but just don't hop on a train.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can we clarify: is it just the Uber Pop service (normal people's cars, irregular costs) which is suspended, not the standard Uber taxi service (licensed booked hire by authorized driver) ?

Does Uber operate in Spain using it's other services?

<comment><USER14> No, they don't. They just had Uber Pop.

There is a Spanish Uber competitor called Cabify that does comply with the law. They have professional drivers and cool and clean cars. So yes, Uber could be legal if they want (it implies more effort though as every driver has to have a license)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why not self driving buses? - <AUTHOR> Was just thinking about this and wondering why there hasn't been more emphasis on self-driving buses.
Traditional Bus Pros:
1. Cheaper than cars (no insurance, repairs, maintenance, etc)
2. You can multi-task on a bus
3. Buses are arguably less stress prone because you don't actually have to drive it.
4. Safer than rail, automobile, foot, or bicycle [1]
5. More environmentally friendly [2]
6. Additional buses reduce traffic and congestion.
Cons of a bus:
1. Inconvenient: you can't go when you want to
2. Security: I guess you could be harmed on a bus.
3. You don't want to deal with certain types of passengers.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/166/2/212/98784/Motor-Vehicle-Crash-Injury-Rates-by-Mode-of-Travel
[2] https://www.statetransit.info/bus-fleet/buses-and-the-environment
---
It seems self driving buses would fix most of the negatives. A self driving bus could be owned by a HOA (home owners association) or community. The bus then could be connected to existing infrastructure such as rail or could just go to the "common areas" that the community/HOA desires.
The autonomous nature of them would also likely necessitate security which would select for more desirable passengers. Or at least desirable behavior.
In addition buses seem to be "simpler" in my view, from a self driving perspective. Buses tend to go to predefined destinations that are well marked or at least fixed. This would result in optimization in self driving techniques to get to specific areas, which would presumably make the route not only more efficient and safe, but less prone to technical error (whether its the implementation or data). <comment><USER2> Its not like nobody's thinking about it

[http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore- to-l...](http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-to-launch- first-trial-of-driverless-buses-in-jurong/3217632.html)

[https://www.google.de/search?q=autonomous+bus](https://www.google.de/search?q=autonomous+bus)

Another advantage that seem to be overlooked when people speak of autonomous buses is, it does not _need_ to have predefined routes, timings or pickup points. These can be dynamically optimized based on seat booking.

All that said, I guess the focus is on autonomous cars just so that the technology can be created and tested first in everyday practical terms.

<comment><USER3> Something maybe forgotten from 40 years ago in the Santa Clara Valley. For 6 months in 1974-75 Santa Clara country ran a dial a ride service[1]. What I remember was small buses and taxi's that provided door to door service. Call for a ride and a small bus would show up at your doorstep and drop you off where you wanted to go, not half a mile from where wanted to go. And travel times were generally fast.

I have a vague memory that people that used it really liked it. And it failed because it was too popular for the resources available. One could also imagine 1974 dispatch and routing technology wasn't up for it either.

This is a link to the program. Appears there is a post mortem written in 1981. Probably a good read.

[https://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=52882](https://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=52882)

Had a recent thought that a problem with SF Muni is it would work better with smaller more numerous buses. Fews passengers means longer distance between stops, faster travel times. The problem of course being, more drivers.

Autonomous buses solves that and congestion issues, which single rider autonomous cars do not solve.

[1] There are limited dial a ride services for old and disabled people.</comment></comment>


The End of the Router? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/hyperscale-routing/the-end-of-the-router-e4d769aea60f <comment><USER2> There's posts about this on a regular basis, every 2 years or so. Every now and again someone looks at Cisco IOS and Juniper JunOS and the various smaller ones and decides that they just don't work well, because they have subtle bugs, no real tests, etc. (Never mind that both these pieces of software predate TDD by decades, with code in there that has been proven to be incredibly reliable much older than that)

There is no more value in posts like this than there is in the regular academic "we should reimplement the linux kernel in 10000 lines of code" shit that also comes by. Every now and then someone even actually does reimplement it, but it never quite replaces the linux kernel because ... well the linux features are mostly there for a reason. By the time you have an actual workable kernel, it's also far beyond what most developers seem to consider reasonable complexity boundaries.

And so it is for those networking features. In reality there is a reason for all those protocols. They (well, some) also work incredibly well, and, crucially, those protocols that are required from a router all have global footprints and interoperability between dozens of vendors which is not optional. There is a reason for the complexity and there is a cost to cutting out complexity, a cost we won't be willing to pay.

Just to be clear: I don't deny that there is value in trying to reimplement these critical infrastructure programs from time to time. But the value in that is mostly in improving your personal understanding and abilities, they cannot reasonably replace the infrastructure we use. And if they can, well then they are also very complex.

What can we say ? The real world is complex. Mostly ... for good reasons. So if you want to work/program in this space, you'll need to deal with the complexity.

<comment><USER3> This didn't read to me like a proposal to simplify routing software by simply ripping out protocols, but to refactor the design of the control plane and use more modern engineering processes than the writer saw at previous workplaces. If I read between the lines correctly, he wants to build a microservices-based router for the high end network operator market.

The writer is a multiple RFC author, IETF protocol chair and former distinguished engineer at Juniper, i.e. they already do "work/program in this space" and "deal with the complexity", so criticism on that basis might fall a little flat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems to imply that because there are features in the software, it would be preferable to get a build with fewer features for the sake of quality; but that makes no sense, removing features from your build isn't going to improve the features you keep. A lot of this post doesn't make sense. :- P

> _Hardly understandable if you consider "state of the art" Developmental and > operational models like DEVOPS._

This, and some other sentences, are gibberish. "DEVOPS" is not an operational model.

> _Lack of micro-services architecture renders technical debt possible._

This of course implies that routers can reasonably be constructed as systems of microservices, which to me seems like it would sacrifice basic performance targets if taken literally. If he means node-based routing, sure, that's basically how things work anyway. More facile, it seems to imply that microservices render technical debt impossible, which is ridiculous.

> _However, it gets challenged using new concepts like SDN and NFV, which > promise much faster network adoption, automated control, reduced time-to- > revenue, which all are good business solutions._

More gibberish.

This is probably not an honest article, but a professional services marketing wankpiece. That's too bad, because frankly it seems like some of the ideas are worth exploring, and I would be more convinced and excited for his company if this were less manipulative and more direct.

<comment><USER5> As an operator at a networking vendor this article really rang true. To me the whole article was a cry to re-think embedded systems design. He opened with relationship between feature-bloat and hardware performance in networking space. Won't your service be more performant if you avoid STP check on a routed network? Yet because of history and system design even if you don't use STP your hardware will perform check because of system architecture. Just take a walk through an IP or Ethernet header and look at how many of those protocols you actually use. Yet even if you avoid using them you can't 'disable' this checks in hardware. Refactoring seems to be hard or cost- prohibitive for network vendors, so it is avoided (at least until the next hardware generation is released). Even when engineering identifies an architecture problem, most managers will not take the risk of proposing refactoring. Maybe because it's more cost-prohibitive in an embedded system? Maybe because engineering teams implementing 20 year old protocols like ARP, Ethernet, STP, OSPF are in that position because they are inexpensive? His bit about DEVOPs is just trying to point out how QA for networking gear running well established protocols should not be a hard problem, yet for some reason gear gets released still with the same bugs you'd see in 2000. Why is this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems to indicate that on some aspect, internet complexity has stopped growing: [https://www.isc.org/network/survey/](https://www.isc.org/network/survey/)

But still the BGP table grows, but the growth has changed from exponential to linear in ~2012: [https://bgp.potaroo.net/](https://bgp.potaroo.net/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> fta 'Critics of router-based network services argue, that it's adding and never removing features, keeps driving up the cost of the routers to a point where advances of Moore's law are not passed down to customers any longer.'

this is exactly right. for multiple reasons, network equipment manufacturers had to have their _own_ 'stickiness' in network equipment. and the canonical way to do that is via feature-bloat. fwiw, see this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abXezfJsqso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abXezfJsqso) around 6:00(min) mark, and also around 10:00 (min) mark. the last one being very instructive.

james-hamilton assertion '...the network is anti-moore...' is also to the point. imho, it is a situation brought on my the vendors themselves. which ofcourse is the reason why you see, to a large extent, the big three (amazon/google/facebook) leveraging their s/w expertise to design and manage their networks way more efficient than what would have been possible otherwise.

all of these, coupled with the fact that x86 h/w is now capable enough for very high speed packet-io seems really bad for network equipment vendors.

</comment><comment><USER7> What the network needs is precomputed paths. Let the end devices or at least network edge compute the routes. The core should be just a dumb crossbar, with the switch bits directly selected by the header, and gets consumed in the process.

This would even work with purely photonic relativistic cut-through.

<comment><USER8> > _What the network needs is precomputed paths._

You mean like ... PSTN?

<comment><AUTHOR> > What the network needs is precomputed paths.

>> You mean like ... PSTN?

it seems to me that OP is perchance referring to MPLS...

edit-001 : re-worded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "lack of loosely coupled components" argument is kind of sad considering that some unnamed network equipment vendor initially started off with QNX based firmware, which inherently enforces such a model.</comment>


Multiple-Car Collisions and Weather: Can We Stop the Carnage? - <AUTHOR> http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/11/multiple-car-collisions-and-weather-can.html <comment><USER2> > Drivers are moving relatively close, many with insufficient following > distance.

Another article by someone who doesn't understand the topic he's writing about.

A "safe" stopping distance is only meant to take into account typical human reaction times, in normal circumstances.

Let's say a car slams on its brakes. Normally the following car will have time to react to the first car's commencing a stop if the separation distance is sufficient. But this assumes that the first and second cars then slide across the pavement in the same way, with the same stopping distances, distances governed by this mathematical relationship to speed:

<http://arachnoid.com/wrong/index.html#Auto_Safety_1>

But if the first car crashes into a stationary object and stops abruptly, the second car will crash into it, and in that scenario, _there is no safe stopping distance_ because the normal braking distance relationship doesn't apply.

This is why, to avoid this kind of car catastrophe, people _absolutely, positively must_ pull over in fog or reduced visibility, not continue driving. And as usual, this fact, _this requirement_ is not presented in the article.

What people don't know about their cars is astonishing. This is just one example. Read more here:

<http://arachnoid.com/wrong/index.html#Auto_Safety_1></comment>


10 Ways to Anticipate and Survive a Power Outage  - <AUTHOR> http://www.itmanagement.com/features/anticipate-and-survive-power-outage-031708/ <comment><USER2> From the article: Which party is responsible for which legs of the connections?

Do you have each party's telephone number on paper, in a big folder which never leaves your office? Having this information in a fancy database is useless when there's a power outage.</comment>


Ask HN: (How) Would you do it all over again?  - <AUTHOR>

Knowing what you know now, how would you set up your life differently if you were to be able to go back in time? <comment><USER2> I would have told myself not to study so much and to meet more girls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although I'm only 19, there are a ton of things I wish I could go back and talk to past me. Too many times have I missed out on opportunities and lost advantages.

Ah well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd have recognized the beauty of mathematics earlier so that I could be doing cooler stuff now.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would move my ass to a first world country before I ran out of money to do so.

</comment><comment><USER6> Start meditating a lot earlier. Started mid 20's.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would not change a thing.</comment>


Ask HN: What development processes do you use / recommend? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If you ask for the methodology, my favorite one is BDD.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_Driven_Development> \- <http://www.quora.com/Behavior-Driven-Development-BDD>

</comment><comment><USER3> That is a pretty open ended question... could you share a few details about your objectives and market?</comment>


U.S. Calls Radiation 'Extremely High' and Urges Deeper Caution in Japan - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17nuclear.html

<comment><USER2> Thus begins the swan song of nuclear energy. This is a screaming example of why we shouldn't use nuclear power. It isn't safe, and if it goes wrong, it goes VERY wrong!</comment>


Ask HN: Things programmers should get rid of in 2017 - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Crazy long working hours. Work/life balance will make you a better human being... but it will also make you a better programmer ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/10/work-life-balance- so...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/10/work-life-balance-software- engineer/)).

<comment><USER3> Would you suggest taking more time off, or working less hours for less pay?

I always hear that during an 8 hour day you only really work for 4-6 of those hours, but if I was able to work 4-6, and get to see more sunlight during my day I would! Although I would dislike being paid less.

<comment><USER4> Whoa whoa, why do we have to get paid less? Here in lies (one of) the problems with our industry. We should work 40 hours a week and be done with it. Seriously. In the United States we are (more often than not) paid as exempt employees. This has some interesting legal ramifications in that according to the Fair Labor Standards Act exempt workers professional knowledge workers essentially have no rights at all (under that Act. Other laws and standards at other levels may affect this in other jurisdictions).

Why is that? Well simple. We are Professional Knowledge Workers. In every place I have ever lived I have been on the correct side of the supply and demand curve. There has been a low supply and a very high demand for my particular type of professional knowledge work. The theory goes that if you are a professional knowledge worker you have the ability to move from one job to another with more ease that other classes of workers. Thus, we as professional knowledge workers don't need the level of labor protection that other classes of workers need. Not only that but my particular brand of professional knowledge work sure makes organizations a lot of money; far more than I take back in the form of pay.

So, why should I work a substantial amount of overtime in order to make them even more money faster and without any additional compensation? Good question, I don't. If my employers would like to try to guilt me into doing more, I don't let them. If my employer wants to threaten me, I threaten back. If I have a team (which I often have), I hold them to the same standard as me. It can be painful at first. Companies can get really touchy. But after they see the benefits they praise this way of working (Better, less buggy, more stable code. Higher engineer retention rates. More successful feature releases. To name a few benefits).

Have I had to put my money where my mouth is on this? Absolutely yes. Interestingly, I have never been fired or reprimanded for not working overtime. I have however walked out because I have gotten tired of being guilted, threatened, or harassed about it. It hasn't happen often, but it has happened.

Work 40 honest hours a week. Go home. Enjoy life. Let your brain relax. Stop being treated like a slave to the organization who pays you and start working like a highly sought after individual.

<comment><USER5> Here, here.

There are essentially two forces at play that drive the current default work culture --

1) Fetishization of work itself -- which I happily stole from an article posted on HN some time ago.

2) Arbitrary deadlines -- these usually come from the business side ("suits") in collusion with one's superiors. Notice I said arbitrary. If the competition has rolled out a new feature that seems to have a payoff, then a crash program - pardon the pun - might have justification. But a lot of times deadlines are set by a manager's vacation calendar or horoscope, who knows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Their massive egos. It's you "I know algorithms and wouldn't touch a framework of any kind if kill me" boys and girls. Every second comment thread on this site ends like that.

<comment><USER7> Hahaha, I'm sorry? Maybe elaborate, I don't see this much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Javascript. Let it go back to what it's good at, basic web interactivity.

<comment><USER9> Half of HN would be unemployed in that case :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I got my password emailed to me in plain text the other day. So that's still a thing.

<comment><USER11> What app / site did that? Please do share.

<comment><USER12> Family Tree DNA did this at one point. Not only that but they took any password and converted it to uppercase. So aHa is the same as AHa and AHA, etc. I was less than ecstatic when I found that out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Building SPAs when they're not needed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting question.

I would say - Password only ssh logins; Old / Vuln libs; non tests covered code; XSS and SQL Injection from all the code. - But this is really boring.

AI witch threatens to take over developers occupation - this is more interesting idea for future consideration.

But really I just want to see one thing to be destroyed - idea that creating new tools will solve all the issues (looking at you JS world) instead of improving existing ones or even real deep thinking about the problem beforehand. And then dropping it (new tool) after something new more shiner comes up.

<comment><USER7> > Password only ssh logins

Dear lord, this still happens? :)

<comment><USER14> Of course not. Your SSH key on a server lands there magically using quantum entanglement-based key distribution protocol.

<comment><USER7> This is a little funny, because I haven't spun up a new server in years with a password. They've all had my public keys from the get-go.

<comment><USER14> How often do you deploy servers? And how much of that is cloning[#] a prepared virtual machine?

I realize that there are ways to install an OS and preconfigure it at one go, but those need some non-trivial mechanics in place. Also, it is (was until quite recently) much easier to share a password between machines with LDAP than having the same with user keys.

Programmers tend to have quite skewed idea on what operates the production, as they rarely see the details.

[#] Cloning an already installed system is usually a stupid thing, unless you make sure that SSH host keys don't get shared (and several similar things).

<comment><USER7> > And how much of that is cloning[#] a prepared virtual machine?

Shouldn't this or using deployment scripts be "almost always?"

> much easier to share a password between machines with LDAP than having the > same with user keys.

I think this is a different subject, no? I've never had to do this.

> Programmers tend to have quite skewed idea on what operates the production, > as they rarely see the details.

I've worked as both a programmer and a sysadmin for large enterprises, so I've seen both sides!

> Cloning an already installed system is usually a stupid thing, unless you > make sure that SSH host keys don't get shared (and several similar things).

No it isn't. It's fine to have a "base" image that you use to then run deployment scripts on, if done correctly. Way better than having to go through a 20+ step process of securing a new Linux or Windows box :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Over-architecting the software. Sometimes a simple problem can be solved with simple scripts.

</comment><comment><USER16> Complexity

</comment><comment><USER17> Wordpress and Drupal</comment>


TechCrunch Launching "Elevator Pitches" Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/techcrunch-elevator-pitches <comment><USER2> i love the cropping up of new communities like this to help entrepreneurs link-up with investors. as if proprietary deal-flow wasn't hard enough to get, this trend helps ease the playing field a bit and puts some coverage (which hopefully translates to leverage) on the budding entrepreneurs side.</comment>


Slideshow.html - yet another HTML5 Presentation Assembler - <AUTHOR> http://slideshow.dmfranc.com/

<comment><USER2> Shameless self plug: <http://letslide.com>

It uses landslide as the backend. I used landslide a few times and thought it was great, but could not have non-techies adopt it since it requires some knowledge of Python, pip, etc. Figured I would put it on the web.

<comment><USER3> I created Landslide (github.com/adamzap/landslide).

I found letslide.com a few weeks ago and have been wanting to contact and thank the creator. You did a great job with it.

We'll be talking more!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the kind words. Also thank you for the work you did on Landslide. I love the idea of just typing in content and not really worrying about the final formatting.

I will shoot you an email to the address in your profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aww damn, I was super excited at the `Your slideshow will be built and refreshed automagically` bit, but (unless something is wrong with my setup) I assume it doesn't refresh the page in your browser when it's rebuilt?

I've been passively looking for a good way to do this for years now. Couldn't the server send some kind of "hey browser, refresh this page" message? I've seen super platform specific hacks that tell the browser to refresh the currently open page, but this is clumsy and difficult to setup. Every other technique relied on some kind of a continuous refreshing timer which gets in the way and always seems to refresh _just_ before you saved your changes.

<comment><USER5> I've found Guard::LiveReload (<https://github.com/guard/guard-livereload>) to work exceptionally well. It's Ruby, but should work alongside whatever development framework you're using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Link to GitHub project: <https://github.com/dmfrancisco/slideshow.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> Among the html slidshows, impress.js impressed me the most.

<comment><USER8> There's also a jQuery port with many improvements, called jmpress.js[1]. And you should also have a look at my App for creating jmpress-like presentations, Imprys[2]

[1] <http://shama.github.com/jmpress.js/> [2] [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imprys- lite/id523769425?ls=1&...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imprys- lite/id523769425?ls=1&mt=8#)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Apart from HN, what other websites you frequent for interesting content? - <AUTHOR> ...and why? <comment><USER2> Here's from yesterday.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12123642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12123642)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well done! Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I get a daily email from [http://www.codeproject.com](http://www.codeproject.com), which sometimes have interesting tech news (not as much as in the past though). See [http://www.codeproject.com/Feature/Insider/](http://www.codeproject.com/Feature/Insider/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ars, The Information [1] (slightly controversial because of their paywall), and I also really like Fred Wilson's short blog posts [2].

[1]: [https://www.theinformation.com](https://www.theinformation.com)

[2]: [http://avc.com](http://avc.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://copepodo.wordpress.com/](https://copepodo.wordpress.com/)

For the combination of nerdy humour and botany

</comment><comment><USER6> arstechnia, reddit, quora, mr money mustache

</comment><comment><USER7> isomorphism.es</comment>


Internet Activist Charged With Data Theft - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data-theft/

<comment><USER2> Raldi responded a year ago to how much Aaron was a "cofounder":

 _"Aaron Swartz founded a company called Infogami that merged with reddit to form "not a bug", so this is sort of like Steve Case calling himself a Time Warner cofounder. "_ [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/9r8on/aaron_swar...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/9r8on/aaron_swartz_cofounder_of_reddit_was_investigated/c0e2p9m)

Alexis responds via Twitter:

 _ATTN @nytimes Steve Huffman & I founded @reddit. We acquired Aaron Swartz's company infogami 6mos after we launched._

<https://twitter.com/#!/kn0thing/status/93374221685755904>

<comment><USER3> I distinctly remember being surprised at this turn of events. It didn't seem natural, but then again I understood startup hiring was a challenge (for different reasons then versus now). I haven't heard of much YC intermerging since then.

I would be interested to hear what the current status and thinking is on the subject of YC startups merging with each other.

<comment><USER4> It happens all the time, although I think it's now more typical for successful YC startups to bring the founders of less-successful YC startups on board as early employees. Scribd was apparently formed from the merger (and reshuffling) of 3 YC startups. Slinkset merged into Posterous. I was just talking a couple months ago with a former YC founder I knew from Google about founding another startup, but he ended up signing on with an existing YC company as an early employee instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2781615>

<comment><USER6> this thread as well <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2782059></comment></comment>


Show HN: A library to record and intercept JavaScript at runtime - <AUTHOR> http://maierfelix.github.io/Iroh/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how relevant my code is, but I did something similar using Proxies[0] for a game engine built on javascript (RPG Maker MV) following some useful advice I found online[1].

I presume that the same type of logic could be used to make more powerful loggers.

[0]:[https://github.com/ldd/plugin-analyzer](https://github.com/ldd/plugin- analyzer) [1]:[http://exploringjs.com/es6/ch_proxies.html#sec_proxies- expla...](http://exploringjs.com/es6/ch_proxies.html#sec_proxies-explained)

<comment><AUTHOR> Proxies are definitely a nice catch, but won't allow full code instrumentation. Iroh doesn't use proxies but patches the submitted code to allow full code instrumentation including call tree recording and full ES5 code support.

If you're wondering what the patched code looks like:

 _Input_ :

      function add(a, b) {
        return a + b;
      };
      add(2, 4);

_Output_ :

      const $$STx1 = Iroh.stages["$$STx1"];
      var $$frameValue = void 0;
      $$STx1.$45(5)
      function add(a, b) {
        $$STx1.$4(6, this, add, arguments);
        return $$STx1.$1(1, "add", $$STx1.$32(7, 1, a, b));
        $$STx1.$5(6, this);
      }
      ;
      $$STx1.$44($$frameValue = $$STx1.$2(4, this, add, null, [$$STx1.$30(2, 2), $$STx1.$30(3, 4)]));
      $$STx1.$46(5, $$frameValue)

<comment><USER2> partial call tree recording is supported, I think. Take a look at section "28.3.2 Intercepting method calls" from the link I posted above.

More importantly, you are entirely right about ES5 support. Babel doesn't polyfill Proxies, and the google polyfill is not as powerful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! One of the main challenges of Iroh was to always keep track of all branches (calls, ifs, loops..) correctly. All listeners provide an _indent_ value which represents the level of branch deepness and can be used in _code flow_ visualizations. When your program is inside a _function- >loop->if_ and a return is inside there, then you have to manually leave _if- >loop_ until you get to according function to return on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

the code for the example is just ~100 LOC - it's a showcase of a library called "Iroh", which brings dynamic code analysis to the whole ES5 syntax. If you're wondering what the essence behind the example is, then I really recommend to give these links a try:

Github: [https://github.com/maierfelix/Iroh](https://github.com/maierfelix/Iroh)

More examples: [https://maierfelix.github.io/Iroh/examples/index.html](https://maierfelix.github.io/Iroh/examples/index.html)

Cheers!

<comment><USER3> Since the big project is more interesting and didn't get much attention, we've changed the URL to that from [https://maierfelix.github.io/Iroh/examples/type- checking/](https://maierfelix.github.io/Iroh/examples/type-checking/). We also adopted your title from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15040182) as a way of fending off the title nitpicks re 'polymorphism'. (Submitted title was "JavaScript: Tracing Polymorphism at Runtime".)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great. Is there anything similar for Scala applications? I had wanted to do something similar to reverse an ETL pipeline of a codebase I do not have control of. The idea would be to send some data through the pipeline and watch it as it is stored in variables and transformed.

</comment><comment><USER5> awesome stuff. I took a look at the code and I was marvelling on how clever the solution is. In particular in creating the 'mock' code.

//> const $$STx89 = Iroh.stages["$$STx89"]; //> var $$frameValue = void 0; //> $$STx89.$45(27) //> $$STx89.$44($$frameValue = i = $$STx89.$35(25, 0, "i", null, $$STx89.$30(26, 23))); //> $$STx89.$46(27, $$frameValue) //>

Well done.

[https://sequential.js.org/live.html#DYewhgJgFA5AFgFwQBwM4C4D...](https://sequential.js.org/live.html#DYewhgJgFA5AFgFwQBwM4C4D0mC2YCWApgE4Bmhw+AHgHQDm+CcArgEY34iYCSxIcmCPlQJM+PnAC0rPgHdUJGgCtUMAJQBuAFABjEADtUIYIRqg6UfYVkACXvxoBlBGDqFY+ALwAmAMzqaVB1ifGQETS0gA)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome! I wonder if it will be possible to find undefined object properties with this !?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://jsfiddle.net/yurctL2c/3/](https://jsfiddle.net/yurctL2c/3/)

<comment><USER6> I mean like misspelled properties eg. obj.x

edit: I figured it out myself, just replace ASSIGN with MEMBER ! Awesome!

I've been thinking of how to do this statically for a while now, but dynamically is good enough, as it still will be able to point out the bug before you even start debugging. I think this is game changing and will make things like Typescript feel like stone-age. I'm currently working on an editor/IDE for JavaScript and I can just add a check-box like "static typing" and you'll get warnings every time a variable or function parameter change type.

<comment><USER2> proxies can do this relatively easily.[0]

Here's a minimal fiddle doing just that: [https://jsfiddle.net/6v82dj01/](https://jsfiddle.net/6v82dj01/)

As for actual implementations, I used it in a small analyzer for RPG Maker MV plugins[1] that roughly does what you want with very little actual code[2].

[0]: [http://exploringjs.com/es6/ch_proxies.html#sec_proxies- expla...](http://exploringjs.com/es6/ch_proxies.html#sec_proxies-explained) [1]: [https://github.com/ldd/plugin-analyzer](https://github.com/ldd/plugin- analyzer) [2]:[https://github.com/ldd/plugin-analyzer/blob/master/plugin- an...](https://github.com/ldd/plugin-analyzer/blob/master/plugin- analyzer.js#L22-L49)

<comment><USER6> yes, but you have to manually select which objects to watch, eg in your script, it goes through the window object and adds the Proxy observer to a set of classes. But Iroh doesn't use Proxies. With Iroh you can trigger an event for example "Iroh.MEMBER" and check if the property is undefined.

<comment><USER2> I only observe certain classes because observing anything and everything is not convenient. Nothing prevents you from doing

`window = new Proxy(window, handler)`

(or more generally, to Proxy the global object) where the handler replaces anything with a Proxied version of it either once a trap triggers (yu-gi-oh style) or immediately.

Then again, I did not write the specification for `Proxy` and Iroh is cool. It probably has plenty of use-cases where Proxy would not do a good job. I'm just showing what we have right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty cool. I was meaning to create something like this for a while now, but never got to the point where it started being usable in larger projects.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very neat! I could definitely use this for one of my side projects, which injects this sort of instrumentation into a webpage through a script tag.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the interest for the HN crowd should be the enabling technology, which is Proxy[0]. It provides a way for user code to trigger on property definition & access, as well as function invocation. Dynamic debugging is a good first application of this technology, but is by no means comprehensive.

0 - [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Proxy)

</comment><comment><USER10> +1 seems to be useful for investigating unit-test failures!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is not polymorphism. This is type coercion.

<comment><USER12> Why not?

you have a function that takes something that is polymorphic in the sense that I can be added. A string and a number aren't the same type, but they share some kind of interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Polymorphism" is being used incorrectly here. Please see here [0] for a good explanation.

[0]: [https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/IandI/polymorph...](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/IandI/polymorphism.html)

<comment><USER14> as with a lot of js terminology, it's been re-appropirated:

[http://mrale.ph/blog/2015/01/11/whats-up-with- monomorphism.h...](http://mrale.ph/blog/2015/01/11/whats-up-with- monomorphism.html)

also, polyfill (hip) === shim (no longer hip)

<comment><USER15> The term is not merely a recent appropriation. Parametric polymorphism is a concept from functional programming and formal type theory, with application far beyond just JavaScript.

<comment><USER14> tbh, polymorphism makes more sense to me in the parametric definition [in the context of weak types/signatures] than in the standard oop def.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Today I Deleted My LinkedIn Account; You Probably Should Too - <AUTHOR> http://moshebildner.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/today-i-delete-my-linkedin-account-you-probably-should-too/ <comment><USER2> I find linkedin is the most useful social network I'm a part of, even though I rarely visit it. I have made many professional connections, and linkedin aggregates them nicely and I find the periodic emails of people getting new jobs or new titles to be very interesting. I guess I am not as annoyed about the shady tactics as you are, I just ignore them.

So I'm sorry that you don't like the site, but I politely decline your recommendation to delete my account.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I have a love/hate relationship with LinkedIn.

I don't like the site, and I don't like the company. _That said_ , I've had on-site interviews at Google, Facebook, and the like _not_ via my StackOverflow profile (which is pretty good, 20k+), _or_ my blog, but directly through being hit up on LinkedIn.

I'm about to start a dream job next week, again after being contacted first on LinkedIn by my new employer.

Perhaps it's alright if you can post online about all the great work you do, or you have a name for yourself in the industry, or you make lots of OSS contributions on GitHub. Unfortunately I don't have any of those (yet!). But I do have a LinkedIn profile, and that's what got me on the one-way flight from London to SF next week.

I'm not defending LinkedIn as a company: I think they're pretty scummy. But if I didn't have my account, maybe I wouldn't have got this job.

<comment><USER4> At this point, it's as if a lot of company have stopped accepting applicants except via LinkedIn. They find you, instead of you find them.

<comment><USER5> Recruiter here. Would you rather have an inbox with 2000 unqualified resumes or just go find qualified people yourself?

<comment><USER6> It would be interesting to hear first hand what your process looks like, and why you might find Linkedin to be a better fit as opposed to something like SO (which obviously I'm not sure you do).

<comment><USER7> The parent wasn't apologizing for LinkedIn so much as advocating for an active recruiting strategy rather than a passive one. If I were a recruiter mercenary, I'd look use both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > A quick scan of my Google account reveals that I have granted access to 49 > different websites. AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT MOST OF THEM ARE, OR WHAT > PERMISSIONS I GAVE THEM.

Okay, at the risk of sounding arrogant, _you have no rights to complain if you give out permission to 50 different websites without knowing what they do._ You cannot complain that you are being exploited, when you allow yourself to be exploited. My google account is linked to fifteen different sites which I know what they are all for.

> go check your inbox for an "Invitation to connect on LinkedIn". They don't > come from firstname.lastname@example.com, which THEY ABSOLUTELY SHOULD

Again, _you gave them the permission to do so _. And to play the devil 's advocate, would you be _less* likely to accept an invitation from your friend if he sent you an e-mail from some foreign account, or his account of which you are familiar? Again, you gave them the permission. If you don't like it, just make a linkedIn account without a connection to Google account. You've not done so because connecting to Google is _convenient_. You are paying a fair price.

I get minimal number of e-mails from linkedIn because I didn't give them permission to send me every gritty details of other people. It does exactly what I told it to. Maybe you should as well.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. This is promiscuous behavior. One should occasionally check out their Google dashboard and see what's going on. A few times a year, I check out what has permission via my Google account and deactivate anything that I haven't used in awhile or no longer care about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Seriously, go check your inbox for an "Invitation to connect on LinkedIn". They don't come from *@linkedin.com, which THEY ABSOLUTELY SHOULD."

Not true. I just checked the headers on a recent email and LinkedIn is definitely setting the From correctly:

From: [redacted] via LinkedIn <firstname.lastname@example.com>

The Reply-To is the one of the user however.

<comment><USER11> Yup, so not only is this article preachy and boring (seriously, how many "I'm quitting $socialnetwork and you should too" posts do we need?), but it's also factually wrong.

Even if the from address was that of the user who sent the message, it's kind of hard to ignore the huge LinkedIn branding the message resides in. You'd have to be a fool to miss it, because I'm pretty sure even a blind person's screen reader would pick up on this.

<comment><USER12> It's not about fooling the human, it's about giving the spam filter a hard time.

<comment><USER13> LinkedIn emails get through spam filters because they have properly configured email auth like SPF and DKIM, LinkedIn accounts are double-opt-in, and because LinkedIn works closely with major email providers like Google and Microsoft.

<comment><USER12> I feel like there should be a button for people who don't have accounts to say, "I don't want to make an account _and_ I don't want any more email from LinkedIn."

<comment><USER14> Would be nice if Gmail's "Spam" button actually blocked future emails from that same person indefinitely!

Sometimes they get around filters by sending from different emails, that's really annoying. I should probably quit Gmail and go back to Cerberus which has awesome filtering!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wait, why should I delete mine too? Because their business model is, in the author's opinion, unsustainable? Because of the fact that the _author_ gets spam from them (I have gmail filters set up such that I am not aware of any mail LinkedIn sends me)?

This smells like just another hipster anti-culture movement. "LinkedIn is popular, down with LinkedIn!"

<comment><USER16> I could not agree more. I'm getting real tired of seeing sensationalist platitudes on HN. Next up: 'Why I stopped going to the bathroom'. It's fine to buck the trends, it's a bit awkward to try and make other people taste your sour grapes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I get basically no LinkedIn mail and haven't for about a year. The settings are pretty easy to change [1][2][3] (though there are a lot of them) and they don't seem to roll out new settings and default them to on like Facebook used to.

Occasionally I log in and check my messages and update my profile, especially when I need to look someone up or figure out how to get an introduction to someone, but generally I find LinkedIn to be pretty unobtrusive. I'm not sure lack of using it constantly is really a good rationale for closing an account though. Seems a bit short-sighted based on the value of having your second degree network so easily identifiable.

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/settings/email- frequency?goback=.na...](https://www.linkedin.com/settings/email- frequency?goback=.nas_*1_*1_*1)

[2] [https://www.linkedin.com/settings/partner- inmail?goback=%2En...](https://www.linkedin.com/settings/partner- inmail?goback=%2Enas_*1_*1_*1)

[3] [https://www.linkedin.com/settings/research- invitations?gobac...](https://www.linkedin.com/settings/research- invitations?goback=%2Enas_*1_*1_*1)

<comment><USER18> They have defaulted new emails to on in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well, to each their own. LinkedIn has added great value to me. My current job was because a recruiter found me on it. After researching the company, I knew I'd love it there. But, I babysit my LinkedIn account like other people tend to their Facebook. I comment on articles, posts updates, keep my profile up- to-date, share random things I find interesting. I do this _daily_ , which is what I see people around me doing with Facebook.

<comment><USER14> Same here but I find few people comment on the articles or get involved in the comments. Seems that's one area where Google Plus is winning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't see much here. For many people LinkedIn is a good way to connect with other professionals, and you can always change your email settings. I'll need a better reason to delete it. This article just seems like someone who never saw the value in something deciding to get rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't use LinkedIn like I use facebook. With facebook I'm checking in on friends. With LinkedIn I occasionally add professional contacts, and just maintain an update profile so that recruiters can search for me.

The cracking-open-your-email that LinkedIn does, however, is really aggravating. I've never let linkedin access my email account to search for contacts.

</comment><comment><USER22> Although I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with LinkedIn, I think this article is a little off; as many point out, it's fairly easy to set email preferences on LinkedIn.

This article was useful, however, as it reminded me that I've been meaning to delete my Path account. That I did delete today.

</comment><comment><USER23> I deleted mine a few weeks back. I was getting negative value of it in the form of spam and random connections I didn't actually know in person.

In the developer world, LinkedIn is seen as marginal at best, and uncool at worst. Other industries? I don't know. I had someone tell me they get a lot of B2B value out of it in the bio med space.

At any rate, I don't miss it for a second. I had to create a quick test account for a portal I was using and the signup process was just awfully deceptive. I deleted that one as well.

</comment><comment><USER24> LinkedIn also sets some very annoying traps for its users.

A few days ago, I received an email from LinkedIn displaying an old friend who wanted to connect. I was excited to see an old familiar face, so I logged in and eventually found a way to connect with him. Today, I received an email again for the same person, saying my invitation to connect was still standing. I clicked through the links in the email this time, and was walked through a multi-step tutorial, that tricked me into sending 16 invites to random people I have never met before. They had a list of potential connections, only one of which I wanted to make, so I took the time to uncheck all the other boxes beside strangers. When I hit their continue button, it told me I had sent 16 invitations ... apparently the list I had just seen was actually scrollable, but by design, it was very difficult to tell that there were 16 hidden users I had to scroll down to see. Very frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER25> OK, great, you don't find LinkedIn useful. I respect that, but I do not at all _understand_ it. LinkedIn is about 100x more _useful_ than Facebook in my life, even if I spend more raw time on Facebook (and I'm not 100% sure that's true, actually).

I guess it depends on how you use LinkedIn, but for me, it's a marketing & promotion channel (via LI groups mainly), a constantly updated Rolodex, an expertise locator, and a source of information for market research, competitive intelligence and general industry awareness.

Now, to be fair, I am a startup founder, where said startup is in the B2B space. Maybe that makes LinkedIn uniquely useful for me, compared to other folks who aren't in this position. I don't know, I just know that LinkedIn is wildly useful for me. _shrug_

</comment><comment><USER26> I did, a while ago. Nothing useful came out of Linkedin for me, but tons and tons of spam. It took me months to get unsubscribed from all the spam.

</comment><comment><USER27> So glad that I've _never_ had one. They sketched me out right from the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER28> Build a webapp for users to generate nice-looking, highly usable resumes. Host their resumes on public profile pages, maintaining complete openness (with an optional permissions model, of course). Offer a "Download Resume as PDF" option, so users can download their resume for emailing as an attachment. Let them own their data.

Create such an awesome experience, that everyone is compelled to use it. Absolutely no paywalls for individual users.

Design an awesome interface for companies to search through resumes. Implement algorithms for automated job-matching. Monetize on subscriptions to this, and on job postings, a la StackOverflow Careers.

Watch LinkedIn crumble.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'll delete my LinkedIn profile after I'm sure that I'll never want employment anywhere. This is essentially professional reputation/resume service, which eliminated my use of a half dozen job websites.

</comment><comment><USER12> According to [http://justdelete.me/](http://justdelete.me/) LinkedIn has been reported to send you emails even after you delete your account. I know one woman who kept getting invitation emails from another guy, even though he wasn't active on the site at all. She was so annoyed that (with her permission) I added her email address to my account so it would stop bugging her.

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't that run afoul of the CAN-SPAM act?

<comment><USER12> Since the emails were supposedly sent at the behest of a user, I don't think it counts as unsolicited email.

<comment><USER29> CAN-SPAM requires an option to unsubscribe, though.

<comment><USER12> It's not like Gmail adds a link to unsubscribe from all Gmail users' emails. If a user sends a message, LinkedIn can deliver it without falling afoul of CAN-SPAM.

<comment><USER30> That sounds broken. If I want to spam someone, I just need to set up a website that allows you to message users and then register for it myself and keep requesting to send messages. That sounds like the sort of obvious loophole you catch early on.

<comment><USER12> You would have to go after the user for spamming you, not the email service that delivers the message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm currently working at a job, where a recruiter reached out to me via LinkedIn.

I'm glad I'm still a loyal LinkedIn user.

Regardless, I wish you best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER32> I actually find Linkedin useful. I like being part of a social network whose focus is professionals. If only they weren't so smarmy. I used to be able to link my Behance.net portfolio and github there but I can't even see those apps anymore. It's sad, but I still go in and check my groups every day.

I'll definitely sign up with whoever can do it better.

</comment><comment><USER33> The ability to shut off emails has been pretty easy, in my experience. Other than that, I find quite a bit of value from linkedin.

</comment><comment><USER34> If you are in a service industry (consulting, law, etc.), sales, or other business role, LinkedIn is absolutely critical for qualifying leads, being qualified, and networking. If you are a line-engineer, sure, you probably can delete it.

<comment><USER4> LinkedIn is essential for everyone, it's how you get the great jobs, versus say any job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yep, I was thinking exactly the same thing a couple of weeks ago. What annoys me more is the constant money grabbing - things like asking me to pay to view some people's profiles, asking me to pay to see who viewed my profile, etc. linkedin has provided me with zero value over the years.

Anyway, I'm so pissed off at linkedin that I've spent the last couple of weeks developing my own lightweight, less evil alternative. Once it's complete I'm just going to update my linked profile to say something like 'see my full profile on ...'. If other people find it useful then they can use it too.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Google is the holder of your information and manager of your identity

I don't agree with this. Google may be the locker in which you put your information, but you hold the key to it. If you decide to give the key to 3rd parties that's your responsibility.

People need to educate themselves about how their information can be used and abused. Perhaps someone needs to drive this education and perhaps Google can/should be a part of that, but they are in no way implicitly obliged.

If you write your password down on a post-it and stick it to your computer screen, is that Google's responsibility?

</comment><comment><USER37> LinkedIn would be three times as useful if it changed a single line of code.

Instead of giving users the default "I'd like to add you to my professional network" placeholder text, LinkedIn should require users to explain how and why they want to connect with other professionals.

Would this make it a bit harder to grow your network? Yes, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It would put quality over quantity, making your connections more meaningful and requiring users to stop and think before sending someone a connect request (therefore cutting down on email spam).

</comment><comment><USER13> Sending emails "from" your Gmail address has nothing to do with granting application access to your Gmail account.

The former is basic spoofing; the same thing spammers do to make it look like "you" sent that C!alis email. Any mail server can put whatever they want in email fields, no special access required.

The latter means that LinkedIn can actually harvest your list of contacts in Gmail for marketing. Way worse IMO and I encourage people to be very careful about what apps they authorize into their personal accounts like Google.

</comment><comment><USER38> I can't quit you, LinkedIn.

On one hand, I hate it for all the reasons everyone has already mentioned.

On the other, I wouldn't have my current job (which I love) if not for LinkedIn. And since that job has paid me something in the neighborhood of a quarter-million dollars over the last several years, that makes LinkedIn about a quarter-million dollars more valuable to me than all other social networks put together.

I can't quit you, LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER39> Articles like these dilute the seriousness of some of the other legit posts on why one should quit some other sites, e.g. Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER40> I haven't gone to the extent of deleting my account, but I have removed my entire work history and all details except a "contact me via another medium" message. I suppose it is at least a placeholder to stop anyone trying to impersonate me.

But I have missed exactly zero content of worth. All I ever got were endless spammy e-mails from recruiters.

</comment><comment><USER41> >> A quick scan of my Google account reveals that I have granted access to 49 different websites. AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT MOST OF THEM ARE, OR WHAT PERMISSIONS I GAVE THEM.

It really pays to observe what permissions are being asked for. When a flashlight app asks for your GPS, and network communication, you know something's amiss.

<comment><USER12> Or it just wants to show ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Ironically, yesterday I deleted my Linkedin account, just because it is totally useless for me and for 101% of those in my circles (or network or how you want to call it), except for a sense of doing the right thing and being professional in their social networking.

Not to mention their dubious approach to password management, of course.

</comment><comment><USER43> On skimming, the piece does not appear to provide any technical how to info nor does it indicate what it really means for the account to be officially closed. Can one really delete a LinkedIn account? I vaguely had the impression you could not really truly get rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER44> While deleting your account is certainly one of the options, I disabled all email notifications and removed all the recruiters that added me. Now I am careful about which requests I approve. Overall, LikedIn can be useful for connecting to new colleagues or former ones.

</comment><comment><USER45> So I should delete my LinkedIn because YOU don't like it?

Uh... ok....let me get right on that

</comment><comment><USER46> LinkedIn has been a great way for me to build clients and put myself out there. I routinely get inquiries from my portfolio. I just recently landed a new client through LinkedIn. I'll keep it for now.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm afraid after you signed up for LinkedIn there's no way to completely remove your data. It might be a good idea to limit the information on your profile and keep it dormant.

</comment><comment><USER48> I use unroll.me and that way I only see one daily digest of my LinkedIn emails and any other spammy things I signed up for at some point for some reason unbeknownst to me now.

</comment><comment><USER49> I managed to delete my account about a year ago, on my second attempt. That was after two unsuccessful attempts to unsubscribe from _literally all_ emails from them.

<comment><USER50> Before deleting my account, I unsubscribed from several groups. Yet two weeks later I was still getting daily updates from the unsubscribed groups. Also, even though I had unsubscribed and they were not on my group list, they still showed up on my public profile. After two support tickets, the emails stopped.

Then I decided that LinkedIn was useless to me so I deleted my account. For two weeks, I still continued to get daily email updates even though I no longer had an account. After another support ticket, the emails stopped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you tell other people what they should do, at least have the decency of writing a READABLE ARTICLE.

All I get from this is "author is angry".

</comment><comment><USER52> i am pondering opening linkedin account. the idea of networking and possible job prospects are intriguing, but displaying my profile publicly creeps me out. also it seems better fitted for people with a straight career path. when applying for jobs i tend to target job postings with each resume, not sure how would that work with linkedin.

<comment><USER14> You can customize what's displayed on the public profile, section by section.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You are a nobody without a LinkedIn account.

</comment><comment><USER53> so if I'm reading this correct, he hates linked in because they spam him with email? Gosh, its my resume. And recruiters call me. And I have all my recommendations in one place. sorry, but I'd like to hold on to my account if you dont mind.

</comment><comment><USER54> I did this like 2 months ago and it's been really great.

</comment><comment><USER55> I deleted it when they had the password leak last year.

</comment><comment><USER56> As I was reading this article I received an email from a recruiter on LinkedIn...

</comment><comment><USER57> I checked my inbox. Every email from LinkedIn is 'email@example.com' or some variation. It was kind of hard to believe the rest after that.

</comment><comment><USER58> Closed too. #Hate #Linkedin

<comment><USER59> #not #twitter

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> LinkedIn is ripe for disruption. A great idea for a start-up but without LEO.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A bunch of people have (correctly, I think) pointed out that more recent LinkedIn emails come from them directly. I have seen emails as recent as 2012 sent from user addresses: [http://imgur.com/gallery/fapPDhZ/new](http://imgur.com/gallery/fapPDhZ/new) (sorry for the manic smudging).

Anyhow, assuming these are anomalous, and that LinkedIn has generally moved to sending emails properly, I still stand by my decision to close down my account. I haven't gotten anything useful out of it and I have been consistently annoyed by it. Not devastating, but like I said, annoying. If you use it and love it then great! I hope LinkedIn keeps on improving and becomes/stays (your option) a great company. But if you're not getting anything out of it, then I think it would behoove you to think twice about why you maintain the account, and if it's nothing but annoying then at least consider getting rid of it.

<comment><USER61> That's probably just a narrow situation where the sender knows your email address and is sending a message from within LinkedIn. It's not that LinkedIn has modified its email sending behavior in the past year or 2. I am sure you can confirm for us that the dozens or 100s of other emails you have received "from" LinkedIn are actually being send "From:" LinkedIn?</comment></comment>


Most claims in software development are unjustified - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/most-claims-in-software-development-are-unjustified-f0640acc8389 <comment><USER2> No they do not. OO is based on set theory for structure and finite state machines for behavior.

It all boils down to the material that we work with, which is a discrete digital machine.

<comment><USER3> OO is definitely not based on anything like set theory or finite state machines. OO has no formal backing, but it's often integrated with basic type theory in languages like Java and C#.</comment></comment>


Terraform – Build, Combine, and Launch Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://www.terraform.io

<comment><USER2> I'm so stealing that starfield....</comment>


8 ways to tell you're building something nobody wants (and what to do about it) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hullfinancialplanning.com/why-paying-assets-under-management-fees-is-like-getting-a-car-loan-from-a-used-car-dealer/ <comment><USER2> Incorrect link?</comment>


The Magarshak Ratio - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/GregMozart/status/695283012595007490 <comment><AUTHOR> The best criticism of a country or group often comes from outside the group, especially if the group quashes dissent. So there should be a site set up to compute this ratio, in my opinion, with actual statistics and evidence of both the devastation / danger and the outrage. This way we could focus the outrage where it should go. This way we can send drones and cameras to film more evidence of what people are talking about.

For example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soxm2De- fZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soxm2De-fZc)</comment>


Posterous Adds Simple Custom Domain Registration - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/03/30/posterous-domain-registration/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

<comment><USER2> Blogspam:

<http://blog.posterous.com/private/cvywyxHCnB>

<comment><USER3> This article has the prices... (though I see that they are listed in the comments of your link)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "After you've purchased your own domain, we also make it super easy to set up your own personalized email boxes, calendars, and wikis using Google Apps."

They make it super easy by setting the dns settings to Google apps, or is there anything else involved? (Setting the dns records is already well documented on the Google apps site and not hard at all).

</comment><comment><USER5> DEAD SIMPLE!</comment>


Software markets and businesses are 10x bigger due to the internet - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2019/05/markets-are-10x-bigger-than-ever.html <comment><USER2> My experience of this is that the size makes it harder as an entrepreneur to access the market.

You can't, say, develop a local presence and become the best in your corner of the country, as you hit global competition from mature products right at the start.

What's everyone else's experience?

<comment><USER3> From a simple consumer's perspective, I'm content with all software I already have, and don't have extra money to burn. The few times I need more software, I can usually find free (and open source) solutions pretty quickly, and I've never had to compile it myself.

From a seller's perspective, I've made software that I found useful and nobody's ever willing to pay for it. The few times I did make money off software, it was because it was shiny, during the era when shiny software got attention and made money. And even then, it was short lived.

I personally think we've exhausted all categories of software possibilities. What society could really use now is to reinvent existing software in a reasonable way, with better principles:

\- Make software much more interoperable with other software, and invent decent protocols for this.

\- Make software less invasive of our lives, and less manipulative of our minds, moods, and attention spans.

\- Make software that encourages you to get the job done and move on with your life, rather than optimizing for endless consumption.

Put another way, imagine there was no software at all right now, but we still know everything we know about software. And imagine avaricious people didn't call the shots, but the software engineers who care make the decisions. Imagine we could still collaborate with one another as fast as we do now. All you have is hardware and a bunch of specs and firmware. Now, what could humanity come up with?

That's what we should be working towards.

<comment><USER4> > I personally think we've exhausted all categories of software possibilities.

640k programs should be enough for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only 10x? How large would Facebook, Uber, or AirBnB be on a 1980's BBS? an 1880's telegraph network? a 1780s campfire?

The other examples may have been 10x each but the Internet seems more like 1,000,000x</comment>


How many people read HN? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to come up with a ballpark figure for the number of readers HN has.
The only source I could find with some concrete figures: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/18/the-evolution-of-hacker-news/ which is about 2 years old.
- 1.6M views, 200,000 uniques per weekday.
Just from this, I'd guess about 25-50% higher than it was in 2013, but that is just my gut speaking.
So the ask: how would you estimate the number of readers HN has. Even better, what their demographic breakdown is. <comment><USER2> Roughly 2.6M views a day, 300K daily uniques, 3 to 3.5M monthly uniques. It depends on how you count, of course.

<comment><USER3> That's a magnitude bigger than I thought it should. Guess it's time to move on!

J/K, is it possible to share what kind of hardware is HN running on?

<comment><USER4> HN runs on a single, not so beefy server:

      FreeBSD 10.1
      Nginx 1.7.10
      Racket 6.1.1 with some HN and FreeBSD specific patches.

      2x 3GHz Intel Xeon-IvyBridge (E5-2690-V2-DecaCore)
      8x16GB Kingston 16GB DDR3 2Rx4
      SuperMicro X9DRI-LN4F+_R1.2A
      Adaptec 71605
      9x 1000GB Western Digital WD RE4
      2x 200GB Smart XceedIOPS SSD

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> One thing I feel I should add: HN has always been about quality over quantity. We spend our time on what we think may improve the quality of the site, and if we had to choose between being smaller/better and bigger/worse, I hope it's obvious that, and why, we'd choose smaller/better. Growing, but slowly, seems to be the right state for HN.

</comment><comment><USER5> A stat that I can share. My iOS Hacker News Client which is currenty number 4 on AppStore has between 550 - 600 daily unique users and roughly 2.5k daily sessions on average.</comment>


Choosing a First Machine Learning Project: Start by Reading or by Doing? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.smellthedata.com/2010/07/choosing-first-machine-learning-project.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what you are imagining the scope of your first project to be, but I would recommend you begin by understanding and implementing some well-known algorithms. Start with a Guassian Mixture model trained with the EM algorithm. Then do linear and logistic regression, perceptron is pretty simple and a simpler version of the widely used support vector machine.

The handwriting recognition database here is fantastic for testing a variety of simple ML models:

<http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/>

In our machine learning class, we would use data from the KDD cup for our projects. Why don't you create a submission for old KDD cups and see if your model can do better than random? 1998 is good for logistic and linear regression:

<http://www.kdnuggets.com/meetings/kdd98/kdd-cup-98.html>

Using the 2007 dataset, you can try out some of the matrix factoring methods that have worked well for the Netflix prize:

<http://www.cs.uic.edu/~liub/Netflix-KDD-Cup-2007.html>

These should all be relatively small tasks. Learning how to interpret your results and iterate your models to make them better will take longer than understanding the algorithms.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are so many possible directions that somebody might want to go, though. If you're ultimately interested in reinforcement learning, you don't immediately need to understand EM in order to "get" Q learning. Or to work on discrete problems related to computer vision, having a basis in linear programming and algorithms will get you further than logistic regression or SVMs.

I'll agree that anybody doing machine learning should understand the basic idea of maximum likelihood learning (e.g., logistic regression). But how far do you go beyond that? This is really the heart of the issue, I think. Yes, there are a ton of things that are really useful to know, and any machine learning student should learn them at some point. If you're trying to do an interesting project that teaches you something about research (and thus looks good on a graduate school application), though, what is the best use of your time?

<comment><USER3> You're right in that you need direction. Each subclass of machine learning has some elementary algorithms worth learning:

For unsupervised learning or probabilistic latent models, the EM algorithm, Metropolis-Hastings sampling, variational methods (variation EM, variational Bayes, expectation propagation).

For supervised learning, linear regression, perceptrons, support vector machines.

For reinforcement learning, Q-learning, E^3, Rmax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Start by doing...pick a relatively easy algorithm, implement it, and fully understand why it's doing what it's doing. If you start out by implementing something with extreme math-fu it may just seem like magic.

My first ML project was to implement STAGGER (Schlimmerand Granger, 1986), which is a very simple algorithm for handling concept drift. Then I trained it on the domain {red, green, blue} X {square, circle, triangle} X {small, medium, large}. I fed it 40 positive examples of small red square, then 40 positive examples of large green triangle, then 40 positive examples of medium blue circle, and watched the learned concept change. I understood how and why it worked, and that felt pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER5> For what it's worth, I think it's important to start with interesting problems. My first interaction with ML was an implementation of Naive Baye's for classifying spam, borrowing much ideas from PG's A Plan for Spam from scratch (ie no libraries). This is what got me really interested in the field, much more than randomly picking up topics- there are just so many areas to choose from. Another approach would be to read up on standard supervised learning techniques and just observing how the parameters for these algos behave on datasets. something like a Weka really comes in handy if you wish to focus on analyzing behavior of such techniques first. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> Doing. If I just read, I don't get the other parts, like getting the debugging aspect correct, finding out the requirements of the environment, etc. Plus, I have less investment if I haven't typed the code in myself.

Edit: And continue with the formalized learning through reading (and experimentation). Later get a handle on common conventions, as they usually help accuracy/readability.</comment>