How We Uncovered the Real Identity Behind "Startup L. Jackson" - <AUTHOR> https://syrah.co/joshdickson40/5604e5e10fc1786b0152a51a <comment><USER2> > _The more I dug into the real SLJ, the more wrong it seemed. It felt > uncomfortably close to doxing._

I'm having a hard time seeing how it could possibly be anything but "doxing."

<comment><USER3> I think that depends on how you define "doxing." Yes, you're identifying a person's real information. On the other hand, malicious "doxing" usually means publishing phone number, address, kid's name, personal email address, Facebook, etc.

I think there's a clear difference between correlating a pseudonym to a real- life identity, and malicious "doxing" that could cause harm.

<comment><USER4> > I think there's a clear difference between correlating a pseudonym to a > real-life identity, and malicious "doxing" that could cause harm.

People use pseudonyms for a reason. Deanonymizing them can cause them harm, ranging from getting fired to getting arrested to causing severe social strife. Not your decision to make.

<comment><USER5> > Deanonymizing them can cause them harm, ranging from getting fired to > getting arrested to causing severe social strife.

Luckily I committed no crimes, or I would have had a hat trick.

> Not your decision to make.

There's actually a lot of debate and discussion about this issue; I am always surprised at the number and tenor of those who wholeheartedly support making this kind of decision.

<comment><USER6> You can be an asshole even without breaking the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great analysis, and really glad Josh didn't out SLJ.

SLJ is great because, due to his anonymity, his ideas stand on their own merit. Being outed killed Fake Steve Jobs; it'd do the same to SLJ.

<comment><USER8> I do wonder though, given the outcome, whether they did get a knock from the wolf.

<comment><USER9> i'm on the lookout

<comment><USER10> He's thirty minutes away. He'll be there in ten.

<comment><USER11> He's precise like that.

<comment><USER10> Your response is a _non sequitur_ , which could explain the downvoting (though certainly not by me). My comment was a reference to this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANPsHKpti48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANPsHKpti48)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Props for not going through with the outing. There's a weird sense of entitlement that people have, that they have the right to unmask someone doing nothing wrong but choosing to be anonymous. I'm really glad to read the author overcame that urge, it helps keep the world a little more interesting.

<comment><USER9> Author here. I'm not sure it's directly a sense of entitlement, though you could certainly argue that it's in play whether or not the author seems to notice. There's a sense that you found out the truth, and people want to know the truth. That's where Gawker got stuck; when one of your mottos/mantras is something like "we put truths on the internet," you feel like it's your __job __to go through with it. You feel like people are entitled to know. This is certainly borderline, and I feel like I could have defended either call, but I think we made the right decision.

<comment><USER13> I think some people get a high/rush/satisfaction [0] from revealing privileged information. Others get the same feeling from guarding privileged information and being one of the trusted few to know.

[0] I'm sure there's a nice, concise word that fits what I'm unable to articulate here.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that the same feeling that comes when one believes what is popularly construed as a conspiracy theory? I mean, you have this bit of information that the entire world doesn't know (or doesn't care or believes differently), and you _know_ that it's correct. Granted, one like this story is factual information where as conspiracy theories are theoretical (obviously), but the sense of responsibility of knowing that information makes people want to share it as wide and as far as they can muster so they can be the leader or originator of a movement changing the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing I've always wondered about these types of anonymous "Internet famous" people: How are they not instantly outed by someone who works for any of the providers in between their Twitter client and the readers? Are they all taking extremely careful steps to use things like Tor and anonymous email to prevent the process of tweeting from leaving a trail of bits anyone with access can see?

<comment><USER16> If your adversary is a Twitter employee, you graph "Payoff for 'outing' vs. likelihood of being fired" and come to the conclusion that no Twitter employee has cared enough. If your adversary is substantially better resourced than a Twitter employee or would not suffer equivalent costs (e.g. if your adversary is law enforcement), assume the inevitability of compromise.

An interesting question is "How would you rate the ability of e.g. investigative journalists on this score?", to which I answer "Equivalent to their ability to ask someone in their social circle to tell them what the answer is."

<comment><USER17> I'd add that the potential is worse than just getting fired. This could cause a fall in the stock price and a subsequent lawsuit.

<comment><USER18> Those probably don't hit the employee themselves; those hit the company. Classic principal-agent problem.

<comment><USER19> Companies will often sue for the difference. If random company X employee doxes a client of X, and then the market cap of X falls by $Y on the news and consequence loss of trust, company X has a pretty good case that financial damages of $Y are warranted through the actions of the employee's breach of contract. Chances are, the employee has nowhere close to $Y in assets, but will settle for $Z << $Y to avoid having a huge lawsuit with the potential to garnish many years worth of wages hanging over their head.

Many people who might think that the risk of being fired is worth having the inside scoop on a story might reconsider when the threat is a lawsuit from Google/Facebook/Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Really cool article. However, I found myself thinking, "ok, that's nice of you for not doxing the guy, but, you kinda just handed the keys to the kingdom to the internet." Doesn't seem like SLJ cares one way or another, but, I got the feeling that the author knows that this article will undoubtedly lead to SLJ's outing within a month, two months tops. There's _more_ than enough bored programmers out there who'll just apply the methods described wholesale, and throw it out there on reddit, or wherever. So, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "doing the right thing by not doxxing" issue, b/c it seems like we're sort of splitting hairs on the issue.

<comment><USER9> Everything that we used is now completely gone.

<comment><USER21> Right, so now we need to look for people who've recently deleted posts, and recently followed you, and ... :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is the (ultimately fruitless) approach I used:

1\. Find the people who were within SLJ's first few hundred followers (the API gives an account's followers in the reverse order they followed the account).

2\. Assuming some of the early followers knew SLJ's real life identity, find which accounts many of them were following prior to following SLJ.

3\. Accounts which are followed by relatively many of SLJ's early followers, but relatively few of SLJ's later followers, are candidates for SLJ's real identity.

Ultimately I couldn't make it work, although my guess is that SLJ has some connection to Pivotal (either is a former employee or has worked with them on projects).

</comment><comment><USER23> Great article. If nothing else, spreading the word about the severe limitations of stylometry is very important. This stuff gets used in forensics, and like other oversold forensic techniques, causes some terrible injustices. Once the court has allowed some expert testimony, the jury is instructed to take it at face value.

<comment><USER9> I am by no means an expert, in fact, it was really that having no expertise led me to dismiss it from what I ended up doing. I still wanted to mention it because (1) it's super interesting, (2) I think that it's not well known about, and (3) maybe I could catch someone who is only sort of tangentially into code or engineering, and hook them in with this sort of use case. Probably asking for a little too much on the last part ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://syrah.co/joshdickson40/5604e5e10fc1786b0152a51a)

Looks like HN has hugged it to death...

<comment><USER9> thank you for linking this!!!

<comment><USER24> Anytime. Thank you for a fascinating read :)

Any idea why the images aren't working?

<comment><USER9> yes our hosting provider is having problems with them, and when we get them mounted it kills the site. when traffic dies down a little they'll go back up. unfortunately #4 on HN is a little late to make a site arch change lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Am I the only one who can't see the scrollbar on the page? Looks like a misuse of overflow:hidden;

<comment><USER26> I'm missing the scroll bar too, it's really annoying. After looking at the stylesheet it looks like it's due to this rule: body::-webkit-scrollbar { width: 0!important; }. If you remove that rule the scroll bar will be visible again. Here's some JavaScript that you can copy-paste into the address bar to fix it (only tested on Chromium):

        javascript:void(_(document.styleSheets).chain().pluck('rules').map(_.flatten).flatten(true).findWhere({selectorText:"body::-webkit-scrollbar"}).value().style.removeProperty('width'))

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I haven't got anything to back it up, but I've always assumed it was Dave McClure. I'm much more curious about who FAKE GRIMLOCK is.

<comment><USER28> I once heard Dave say who knew who SLJ was, and he directly denied it was himself.

<comment><USER9> It's not him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does this website not have a scrollbar?

<comment><USER30> You know how you're never supposed to screw with the scroll elements in a web page? Syrah.co missed the memo...

I guess everyone in the whole world has a scrollwheel and/or touchscreen. Screw anyone who doesn't, you can just read the top of the page...

<comment><USER9> I wrote the post and made the site it's on. There are really people who don't have either of those?

But really, we just don't have everything done yet, I wrote everything on my own. We'll fix it in an upcoming update, sorry for the issues.

<comment><USER31> > we just don't have everything done yet, I wrote everything on my own.

Scrollbars work perfectly when you don't write anything.

<comment><USER9> Look this is a pet project, we're experimenting with different things, I happen to like it the way it is. Last time we were on the top of HN earlier this month our font was too light; I liked it as is, but I was wrong. It changed. If we're wrong on this, it'll change too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm extremely delighted that they spelled doxing correctly (one X, not two).

<comment><USER9> lol it was wrong in drafts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great job man!! This is awesome, on point ethics lesson as well.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, the last part was the hardest to write, by far. I revised it a number of times. The goal there was really to sort of draw a comparison with the Gawker post, which I found abhorrent when it happened, and getting caught up in your own thing and not seeing the situation clearly. Seems to have come across OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm sure he's prepared for being outed one day in the future. Glad it's not now. Always enjoyed his tweets.

</comment><comment><USER35> He won't talk? Time to grab my wrench...

</comment><comment><USER36> True Names and other dangers.

<comment><USER37> For those who might not have gotten the reference:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Fantastically resourceful. Great read.

</comment><comment><USER39> The posts top picture of Eminem is already telling me it is Ben Horowitz.</comment>


Don't Bet Big. Little Bets Are The Ones That Turn Into Billion-Dollar Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/19/little-bets/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

<comment><USER2> The title could not possibly be more wrong. I don't usually presume to speak for Peter Thiel, but pretty damned sure this is his viewpoint as well. Not just Silicon Valley but _human civilization_ needs more people building real companies that generate large amounts of new economic value and push the borders of what we do with technology, because five-dollar iPhone apps and ad- supported blogs are not going to sustain human progress or the growth of the world economy.

There's something to be said for betting on many different people, but _someone_ has to be willing to bet large amounts on the ones who get early traction; and if you want a billion dollars you should be making those bets on many people with big ideas, not little ones.

<comment><USER3> I think the point of the article was that smaller innovations can eventually lead to the greater pushes "that generate large amounts of new economic value"

Coming up with those "big ideas" is an extremely tough thing to do. Often, people who get so enamored with the grand scheme of things engage in endless strategy with no prototype and nothing to show the world.

I will agree with you that one should not write off the bigger picture, but sometimes in order to get to the bigger picture you need to put the little pieces in place first

<comment><USER4> I think just because it is an "extremely tough thing to do" doesn't mean that people shouldn't do it. Sure, people who aren't capable of coming up with a brilliant idea shouldn't do it, but those that are exceptional are better off thinking about the next big idea than a small one.

I think its more of a blanket statement to save those who aren't "exceptional" but are just good-very good. If you're good-very good, then yeah stick to the smaller ideas instead of daydreaming about creating the next Microsoft, Apple, Google. Its tough to say, but some people are just better than others. Some people are great. The few that are "great", for the most part, are the ones who will create the next huge thing.

<comment><USER5> Were microsoft, apple, google thinking they had discovered the next ibm, or yahoo when they were working on their idea?

Or were they just working their idea as best they could? creating a revenue stream as quickly as possible and not worrying about trying to be bigger than the previous biggest.

I don't think any of the recent companies, google, twitter, facebook, thought that they had an idea that could create companies bigger than any previous ones. they were nothing but an idea that had potential and something people could understand and use in fun/new/helpful ways. And a team who could deliver that idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obviously this is a post begging for counter-examples, but I'll refer to Joel Spolsky's strategy letter "Ben and Jerry's versus Amazon" for a better articulation of how there are many roads to a billion dollars: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html> Some markets just lend themselves to land-grabs.

<comment><USER7> People love absolutes - usually...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the article hit the nail on an important element - Vision.

Yes, Larry and Sergey created something simple. But they had a vision what they want to do with it and the potential of what they were working on. Same thing with Zuckerberg. Yes, he created a simple networking site for Harvard and but he also had a vision. Most of them were recorded in his diary, i.e photo sharing etc.

If you create a small product without a vision, it will remain a small product and may not go anywhere. But a small product with a great vision have the potential to take you to the next level. Now a huge clunky product with an enormous vision? That is a recipe for disappointment.

<comment><USER9> While vision is important I do agree with the article how sometimes you discover the vision by doing small things. Facebook I don't believe was any more visionary when they first started. It first started as a knockoff of hotornot (if memory serves me correct). But by doing that project he realized and got on to the path that would lead to Facebook.

As much as I would like to wake up one day with THE billion dollar idea... I don't think that's how it happens. I think for most people it's about doing things and adjusting as you get more data to figure out what direction to go. But if you don't start and worry instead about chasing after the huge problem to solve...you might just end up waiting too long and passing on opportunities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't begin with an ingenious idea."

Oh please. They began with an ingnenious idea and then had more ingenious ideas.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was kind of surprised the Groupon story wasn't mentioned in this article.

<comment><USER12> Or Quora ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This interesting blog post mentions this too (namely don't invest more than 2% of your wealth at once):

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/11/what-do-you-do-after- yo...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/11/what-do-you-do-after-you-make-a- zillion-dollars/)

<comment><USER14> Any number like that 2% is pretty silly. Different people have different needs, different current resources, and different comfort zones. The only thing that can really be said about how much to invest is the old rule, "Don't bet more than you can afford to lose", however much or little that may be.

<comment><USER15> You misunderstand what the 2% is about. The 2% is about Kelly criterion optimal bets.

Yes, don't bet more than you can afford to lose -- but don't bet more than 2% _on a single horse_.

<comment><USER16> Buffett may be a huge anomaly but he probably never had close to 50 positions in his stock portfolio at any one time.

Some of the best investors concentrate.

<comment><USER15> Buffett can get away with large investments because he picks conservative stocks. Investing 20% of your portfolio in Coca-Cola Inc. is far less risky than investing 20% of your portfolio in Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interestingly, as an avid poker player and sports better, I only bet big on sure things and bet small on the things I think won't pay out.

</comment><comment><USER18> damn, when asked for a vision for my small project, being convinced by their websites claims that they search for a billion dollar opportunity, i describe the mass adoption and the world conquering. i'm doomed to stay unfunded :(

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't do this, don't do that, do this, do the other. I say have fun and cross your fingers.</comment>


Now Google Wants Your Genome, Too - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532266/google-wants-to-store-your-genome/

<comment><USER2> It is amazing that Google has it's hands in a vast amount of different industry.</comment>


Why Should You Learn Vim in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://pragmaticpineapple.com/why-should-you-learn-vim-in-2020/ <comment><USER2> For what it's worth: I really don't care to tell people what editor to use. But I do think that everyone should think about spending some time with vimtutor. Not because it will turn you into a 10x developer, or because vim has the best keybindings ever, or anything like that. I've never bought it. But I _do_ believe that it is very likely to make your life easier, even if you don't actually use vim.

Let me explain: I've been an emacs person for decades now. I was never super committed to it, though. In practice, I'll use whatever editor has the best plugin for the language I'm working in. Which means that, for the longest time, I had to try and keep track of 4 or 5 different sets of editor keyboard commands. Which is too damn much for one brain, so I found that, over time, I stopped being as efficient in any editor as I was in emacs 25 years ago.

So why vim? Because every editor worth its salt has an option to use vim keybindings. So you don't have to learn 4, 5, 6 different sets of editor commands. You can learn one, and learn it well.

<comment><USER3> > Because every editor worth its salt has an option to use vim keybindings.

I'm not sure about this. For instance, I'm typing this message in a text box in my browser and I don't have access to vim keybindings. There are many cases where this happens (other example: google docs).

I do use vim whenever I can, but I'd say the most useful keybindings that one can learn are the ones from the OS.

<comment><USER4> Both Chrome and FF have plugins to add vim key bindings - at least for navigating around the UI and the page. Which would support the argument to learn them. I guess your argument would be stronger if there were other $editor_of_choice key bindings for browser textboxes?

<comment><USER5> On macOS a majority of UI text fields support readline bindings (^A, ^E, etc) which is really nice

<comment><USER6> > support readline bindings (^A, ^E, etc.)

Those are emacs bindings. Readline uses emacs bindings by default, but it can also use vi bindings.

Unless you mean that it uses readline and so configuring it (i.e. ~/.inputrc) allows you to change the keybindings of macOS UI text fields. That'd be cool if it's the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're interested in vim, but hesitant about the lack of IDE bells and whistles, VSCode's vim bindings are so good - with full support for e.g. splits, macros, buffers, ... - that I've finally converted to using that over raw vim.

Most anything that VSCode can do, you can make vim do with plugins, but it is often incredibly time consuming and finnicky to get up and running, whereas with VSCode everything "just works".

All the productivity of being able to edit text in vim, alongside the conveniences of a real, modern IDE.

<comment><USER8> I'll add that all Jetbrains products (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm etc) have the IdeaVim plugin which is also great, and it also respects some vimrc configurations too.

I always loved vims movement and editing and hated it's file traversal / project management, so this is a perfect amalgamation

<comment><USER9> IdeaVim is faster and less laggy than VSCodeVim in my experience.

You can even use a custom ~/.ideavimrc and bind leader shortcuts to JetBrains actions. I rarely ever touch the mouse in IntelliJ now. It's an ultra- productive environment to have the power of IntelliJ, the convenience of vim, and Spacemacs/Doom Emacs style shortcuts.

For example, to manage projects:

        nnoremap <leader>po :action ManageRecentProjects<CR>
        nnoremap <leader>pc :action CloseProject<CR>

Or to create/switch git branches:

        nnoremap <leader>gb :action Git.Branches<CR>

Or to bring up the nav bar to change or create new files (Ctrl/Cmd + N once the nav bar is visible):

        nnoremap <leader>fn :action ShowNavBar<CR>

Or to summon git blame annotations in the current file (repeat to dismiss them):

        nnoremap <leader>ga :action Annotate<CR>

Or manipulate windows:

       " Window movement.
        map <leader>wv :vsplit<CR>
        map <leader>ws :split<CR>
        map <leader>wd <C-W>c
        map <leader>wx <C-W>c
        map <leader>ww <C-W>w
        map <leader>wl <C-W>l
        map <leader>wh <C-W>h
        map <leader>wk <C-W>k
        map <leader>wj <C-W>j
        map <leader>wo <C-W>o

Or summon "Refactor This" at the cursor point:

        nnoremap <leader>rt :action Refactorings.QuickListPopupAction<CR>

You can get a list of available actions for your current environment and plugins with the :actionlist command.

I only started playing with this recently but my current config is here for those interested:

[https://gist.github.com/nickcernis/bcb5cb7f55c07ed3de8287d16...](https://gist.github.com/nickcernis/bcb5cb7f55c07ed3de8287d163ed7c28)

It takes a bit of searching and fiddling, but once you hide all the chrome (I even hide tabs at Editor → General → Editor Tabs → Tab Placement = None), install IdeaVim and configure shortcuts how you want them IntelliJ feels just as slick as a tricked-out Emacs/vim, but with better out-of-the-box code intelligence.

On Mac I also remap Ctrl+hjkl system-wide so that I can navigate IntelliJ popovers with vim-ish shortcuts. I use Karabiner for this with the "Vi Mode, left_control + hjkl. shift/option/command + arrow working" option on this page: [https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/?q=%20PC- Style%20S...](https://ke-complex-modifications.pqrs.org/?q=%20PC- Style%20Shortcuts)

<comment><USER10> Any idea if there is a way to check for presence of Ideavim in vimrc/init.vim?

I have a single config for all vim related things(vimrc) and source it for neovim as well, hence I was curious. For example,

has('nvim') checks for neovim.

Something like this for 'ideavim' would mean I can add IntelliJ related stuff inside that check.

<comment><USER9> I haven't tried it but there are a couple of suggested workarounds here:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34528322/how-to- include-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34528322/how-to-include-only- some-of-vimrc-in-ideavimrc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Agreed 100%, for anybody who has to use a Linux CLI with any regularity.

You don't need to be a vi/vim wizard, but you should at least be able to use it a little bit. Vi is the one editor that's guaranteed to be available basically anywhere.

For working on a complex file (local to my workstation), I almost always prefer Geany or maybe VSCode (depending on the scope of the project). But I'm also semi-decent with vi, and it's saved me a lot of times on embedded systems where I need to log in via serial-console and edit some files.

It's also just faster/easier for editing the odd config-file here or there on a system that I'm logged into. Sure, I could launch a GUI and browse to it (for a local file), or maybe edit with a GUI over SSHFS or something. But if it's a small change? Vim is killer.

Maybe Emacs is better for CLI use, I'm not sure one way or the other. But it's definitely got a much smaller install-base than Vim. And proper-noun Vim has a _much_ smaller install-base than vi-compatible things generally (vim, busybox vi, etc).

</comment><comment><USER12> Unpopular opinion:

Programmers like using vim because it feels like solving a puzzle or RTS micro'ing and/or they have already sunk a huge amount of time into it and aren't willing to walk away (which is fine, but it's not evidence that these tools are better.)

Starting fresh (i.e. no experience with an IDE or vi/emacs) there is zero productivity benefit to choosing vi or emacs over a real IDE in this day and age.

Disclaimer: I am a former vi (~5 years) and emacs (~20 years) fanatic.

<comment><USER13> A bit myopic. Programmers have many different needs and as with almost anything - it depends. "zero productivity benefit" is blatenly false for many people. Now for you, in your current needs, sure. But why attempt to paint the entire developer world your favarite color?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> IMHO the reasons in 2020 are the same of the last few years and are not changing any time soon: you don't need to leave the terminal AND it is everywhere AND (once you get used to it) it is extremely powerful and blazing fast (most "normal" people think vim users are having some sort of meltdown when they see vim users do even pretty simple stuff).

TBH, although this might be an unpopular opinion among vim users, I don't think vim is worth for coding beyond simple scripting, a decent setup requires way too much work which defeats one of its key points. But for everything else in editing files, nothing compares.

<comment><USER15> Not quite everywhere. At my current job, I have gotten somewhat proficient with sed, which is the most advanced editor installed on our production systems.

Also, for some reason, many modern systems still only install vi by default. If you know vim, you know vi; but it is missing enough features to be annoying.

<comment><USER16> A lot of Linux systems (most as far as I know but could be wrong) actually ship vim but in a very stripped down build and set up to run in vi compatibility mode by default, e.g. vim.tiny on Debian and Ubuntu. BSD systems often use nvi, which is quite close to the original vi, and can feel very weird if you are used to vim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The reason I learned Vim in 2019 is b/c I wanted a lightweight, powerful, ubiquitous tool. I was willing to overcome the learning curve, but it took time. The most helpful advice I got was from this article [https://medium.com/actualize-network/how-to-learn-vim-a- four...](https://medium.com/actualize-network/how-to-learn-vim-a-four-week- plan-cd8b376a9b85):

Week 1: Complete vimtutor once a day, every day Week 2: Use Vim with minimal config, no plugins Week 3: Use Vim with minimal plugins Week 4: Compose Vim commands with verbs and nouns

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a vim user turned JetBrains user. I still use IDEAVim inside of all of the JetBrains offerings. I go back and forth wanting to purely use vim but I can't warrant all of the config overhead. To me that's the biggest reason not to use pure vim instead of a vimulator.

The vim ecosystem reminds me of the node ecosystem. It's a choose your own adventure approach. Yes, there are wonderful and powerful tools, but it's always a shotgun of plugins to get a solution for each language you want to support. With JetBrains, I get 90% of the tooling I need for the language I'm using out of the box. The other 10% can be handled by plugins and some small configuration changes.

I'm posting this because I want to be convinced otherwise. Here are the JetBrains features that I can't live without:

      - Contexts: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/managing-tasks-and-context.html#work-with-context

        - Re > I'm usually working with a 6 to 8 way split. Kind of like the tabs on my browser.

      - VCS tooling

        - Handles multiple git repos from a top level. I can commit across all repos or a single repo selectively

        - File change view

        - Merging view

        - Per line commit selection

      - Inbuilt database tooling

        - Ad hoc queries and output directly next to the code you're prototyping

        - Database introspection

      - Symbol based refactoring

      - Visual debugger

      - Multiple module repo

        - You can configure a language/ecosystem per each directory in your project to get the associated tooling for each directory

      - Scratch files

      - Local history

        - This has saved my ass more than once. It's amazing how far back you can go outside of commit history with this.

</comment><comment><USER19> I use Visual Studio 99% for my coding, and Visual Studio Code for 1%. I would prefer to use VIM for editing code or any text because it's a 1000% better than Visual Studio. The problem is, there's 50 other things you do with Visual Studio that is not editing code, and for those things VIM is not that much better, or better at all.

It's not even good at dealing with more than one file. Yeah, I have nerd-tree and have tried explore. meh.

I'll think about it when ReSharper comes up with an add-in for VIM.

Yes, I know Visual Studio Code has VIM mode. . and Visual Studio used to (or maybe still does), but then you're outside the norm of that environment. Ever Visual Studio Code extension is tested with Visual Studio Code. But they're not all tested with Visual Studio Code in VIM mode. That's why I like to stick with defaults and the base-case.

What's needed is for VIM itself to have features beyond just editing text files. It's never going to compete with Visual Studio or Visual Studio code until VIM itself adds those features that make a viable IDE replacement. Today, it ain't.

<comment><USER20> Here's my suggestion: give neovim nightly a try. With built-in language server support, many new features are easy to add. You can install it like this:

        wget https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/nightly/nvim-linux64.tar.gz -O- | tar zxvf - -C /usr/local --strip=1

And the relevant part of dotfile that adds LSP support and enables a few language servers:

[https://github.com/d33tah/dotfiles/blob/master/dotfiles/vimr...](https://github.com/d33tah/dotfiles/blob/master/dotfiles/vimrc#L118)

You'll also need to run:

        nvim +PlugInstall +UpdateRemotePlugins +qa

Personally I was surprised many times how easy it was to add decent support for new languages. It really is a godsend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I use vim because its got :sp/:vsp, can edit remote files over scp, :E, :earlier, and now :term, plus so many options in vimrc. I don't think I really even need tmux w/ it anymore.

<comment><USER22> Wow, I've been using vi for 30 years and I had never seen :sp/:vsp, :E, :earlier or :term (although you can do :sp with ^W s). I always feel like there's still a lot of "hidden" functionality in vim that I need to uncover one of these days.

<comment><USER23> :term is new with Vim 8 I believe.

The Vim author was against adding :term but their hand was forced by the success of neovim from what I understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Notice how quickly you can select characters along a column. Please let me > know if there is a way to do this as quickly and painlessly in other > editors.

Drag your mouse while pressing meta on VS Code. I certainly think Vim is powerful, and I've spent enough time in it to be able to edit a file solely via ex. But I think VS Code is making some awesome progress, too. I like using the two editors together

<comment><USER25> Almost 3 years of VS code usage, I can not remember _which_ meta key.

Doesn't help that I use a Windows keyboard on Mac some days, and a Windows machine on others.

Also mice suck (but are orders of magnitude better than track pads), I always find selecting columns this way to be super finicky and I often have to do it twice to get it just right.

<comment><USER26> As common as this argument is, I've always found for me that there's a hierarchy in "ease of use" for text selection that isn't quite as simple as "device X is always better". From quickest to slowest:

* Keyboard command that requires no counting or precision and has no easily-confused variants. In almost all editors this encompasses up, down, left, right, home, end, select or delete a line, and so on; some editors have more sophisticated ones like "select all in enclosing characters", or Vim's non-parameterized text objects ("cw" for "change word" as opposed to "dt6f" for "delete to the sixth occurrence of 'f' or maybe to the character in front of it, I always forget which").

* Mouse selection in any editor that lets you do multiple clicks to change selection object (e.g.: single click character, double click word, triple click line; on a Mac this is nearly any editor, including the text box I'm typing in right now). This _isn 't_ as precise as a correctly-executed keyboard command like "dt6f" or some Emacs equivalent, but it requires less cognitive switching: you don't have to think about the command and you don't have to do any counting. You just know you want to select from _there_ to _there._ If you mess up, it rarely requires any effort to recover.

* Keyboard commands that require you to think carefully before composing them. This is where Vim, god love it, sometimes falls down hard. I know exactly what I want to select, but I have to stop and think about the "best" way to select it, and if I screw it up, I have to get back to where I was and try again -- which may require yet more thinking. I don't doubt that there are people who are just _super good_ at this and get it right _first try evey time,_ and those people are... well, probably not much faster than someone who gets selection right with the mouse every time.

tl;dr: Mice do not suck, and I like trackpads, dammit.

<comment><USER25> > Mouse selection in any editor that lets you do multiple clicks to change > selection object (e.g.: single click character, double click word, triple > click line

Keyboard does that better than mouse IMHO. Alt-arrow to skip between words, alt-shift-arrow to select word to left or right.

Use correct meta or home/end key along with shift and arrow key to select the entire line, based on your platform of choice.

I'd like to see some more intelligent selection hotkeys though. JumpingBetweenCamelCase, "everything inside the quotes" { data:'inside', the:'braces'}

<comment><USER26> I think whether the keyboard is "better" than the mouse depends to a degree on where and what you're selecting. If I want to start the selection at or very close to where the cursor is at the moment, I'm going to use the keyboard; if it's somewhere else on the screen, though, the mouse might well be quicker. (I just experienced both of those when I wanted to change the last phrase in that last sentence, and the cursor was all the way at the bottom of this comment, then wanted to edit something just one line above. The latter case, keyboard; the former case, mouse.)

> Use correct meta or home/end key along with shift and arrow key to select > the entire line, based on your platform of choice.

Ideally this is just one command, I think, like Cmd/Ctrl+L for "select current line". :)

> I'd like to see some more intelligent selection hotkeys though. > JumpingBetweenCamelCase, "everything inside the quotes" { data:'inside', > the:'braces'}

The only editor that I've found that does both of those out of the box is BBEdit for the Mac, which uses Ctrl+left/right and Opt+left/right to navigate and select by word but Ctrl stops for camelCase and underscore breaks while Opt doesn't. And Cmd+B, "Balance," selects text between enclosing characters in the current scope: brackets, parentheses, quote marks, etc. I'm not sure why equivalents to these aren't more common in other editors.

<comment><USER25> > Ideally this is just one command, I think, like Cmd/Ctrl+L for "select > current line". :)

I find it easier to, instead of remember another command, remember "jump to start of line, select entire line."

Mentally composable and it works in all text input boxes across the entire system. (MacOS, cmd-l selects current line in VS-Code, jumps to URL bar in Chrome.)

IMHO the problem is getting stuff to be system wide. Per editor hotkeys, or even worse. hotkeys added by plugins, cause dissonance when I sit down at someone else's computer, or just switch apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Vim is absolutely awesome. I've been a heavy user for a good 15 years now, and yes, I was a very weird kid. Ever more so now, since covid-19 hit us, and the wfh saga began. I've been developing solely on vim. The only downside is that by the time my working hours are done, I'm usually working with a 6 to 8 way split. Kind of like the tabs on my browser.

</comment><comment><USER28> Was taught VIM by my mentor in the early 2000s, along with Gentoo Linux and friends. I've since gone from sysadmin to "devops" to CTO - and VIM skills still rank as some of the most useful. VSCode in VIM mode finally convinced me that maybe being a developer isn't such a bad fate.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd also recommend Neovim[0], a community-led fork of Vim. One of the focuses of Neovim is exposing an API that lets other apps embed a headless instance in their UIs. This lets you use your Neovim editor along with all its configuration and plugins inside other apps! I've never been satisfied with any of the available vim emulator plugins out there for VSCode, IntelliJ, etc. (there's always something missing!), so this feature has been really valuable to me if I need a better debugging experience but want to use nvim as much as possible.

Someone's already made plugins that embed a Neovim instance right inside VSCode[1] and Sublime Text[2]. There's no emulation here, just straight up neovim running behind those buffers. I've tried VSCode with that plugin (though personally I like to stick to just neovim when I can), and I can say that despite some minor bugs it's been a pretty smooth experience. Even stuff like `gt` to change editor tabs is supported.

[0]: [https://neovim.io/](https://neovim.io/)

[1]: [https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode- neovim](https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim)

[2]: [https://github.com/lunixbochs/actualvim](https://github.com/lunixbochs/actualvim)

<comment><USER30> How does the Vscode and Neovim thing work though? I've tried to implement something similar for Kakoune and Atom editor, but i noticed that Atom would always manage its own buffer, and Kakoune as well, so i'd have to basically duplicate the buffers - passing tons of data around constantly.

Does vscode-neovim work around this somehow?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't agree. I work in cloud / ssh environments all the time. My main computer is a mac and I need to copy text to and from multiple machines and the host machine. I write C++ and other languages on all the remote machines. [https://micro-editor.github.io](https://micro-editor.github.io) is the only viable alternative for me as its more modern and supports all the features I would expect from this distributed environment.

<comment><USER26> While I've only given micro a cursory look, it doesn't seem to have any particularly unique features compared to Vim, and from all appearances it's far less powerful. (This isn't the knock it might seem to be; it's hard to match any editor that's been under fairly active development for 25+ years.) I'm also not sure what you meant by "this distributed environment"; if you're SSHing to cloud servers and running micro in a terminal there, that's "distributed" in exactly the same way people have been running Emacs and Vim for decades.

My main computer is _also_ a Mac and I _also_ need to copy text to and from multiple machines and the host machine, and while I don't write C++, I do write other languages on all the remote machines -- and BBEdit lets me do that a lot more easily, since it has menu commands for save/open over FTP/SFTP. But it's certainly not unique in that regard. (Personally I've found Vim's netrw implementation of this a bit clunky and never got Emacs's functionality for this working quite right, although "Never Got Emacs Working Quite Right" may be my epitaph).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't think that the editing experience is the biggest selling point in VIM (although it can be very good). I think it's the ease of creating and integrating custom tools for the specific problem that you are dealing with, sometimes even for one shot demands. It's orders of magnitude easier than creating a plug-in for a mainstream IDE.

</comment><comment><USER33> I use vim bindings with everything and am a full convert to modal editing.

But...

Vim bindings also feel like they have accumulated 40 years of cruft and evolved into some severely localized maxima. I'd be really interested in other attempts to do modal editing. Are there other attempts out there?

(Disclaimer: I use vim and vim bindings a lot but I am not really a vim power user.)

<comment><USER34> There are several within the vast expanse of Emacs extensions:

[https://github.com/mrkkrp/modalka](https://github.com/mrkkrp/modalka)

[https://github.com/fgeller/fingers.el](https://github.com/fgeller/fingers.el)

[https://github.com/jyp/boon](https://github.com/jyp/boon)

I believe I've seen at least one standalone editor focused on this, too, but I don't recall where.

<comment><USER35> Could it have been [http://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why- kakoune.html](http://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html)

<comment><USER34> Yup, Kakoune was it.

Thanks!

Edit: And, as had to be the case, someone has made a simple simulation of Kakoune for Emacs: [https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el](https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I learned vim properly in 1999. I was a power user back then.

Years later, I started thinking that sooner or later, a simpler, better alternative would emerge.

It's 2020, and I'm still waiting.

</comment><comment><USER37> People who are extremely comfortable with vim + tmux look like they're doing straight up wizardry (probably the closest to what people imagine programmers do in movies). I remember seeing one of these folks during my first engineering internship and I was sold. Now I can't imagine doing most things without vim + tmux + the_silver_searcher + fzf (vim plugins).

The biggest downside for me is I don't think autocomplete is on par with other IDEs (even with YouCompleteMe, which is great). To be fair, this would be a massive challenge, considering how generalized vim is vs. an IDE like Xcode — which is purpose-built for writing Swift/ObjC. I feel like half of the time in Xcode I'm just hitting tab, and the code writes itself. I want that same experience in vim.

<comment><USER38> Try spacemacs and lsp. Or just vanilla vim and lsp. Should work for most languages just as well as a real IDE.

<comment><USER39> I second using LSP servers. It's an absolute treat having an editor which is completely independent from the backend intellisense, which I can add my own LSP servers for however I choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> in all honest, is important to learn basic vim because is avaliable everywhere and there's a nearly 100% chance that at least vi will be in a random remote server you ssh into and needs to edit a quick config file.

That said, after use it extensive in the past, unless your editing code in a potato, for more complex work, I don't see a reason to learn advanced commands. You will be more productive with a modern text editor.

</comment><comment><USER41> vim

\- opens instantly

\- does side-by-side file viewing with reasonable text size and low enough clutter for a laptop screen

\- offers a great deal of editing power with no need for any extra preparation

Starting to work -- particularly at irregular times -- is much more fluid with vim. I usually need to take a deep breath before opening an IDE. Vim is just _there_ , at my fingertips, all the time, and few competitors offer that experience.

<comment><USER42> > Starting to work -- particularly at irregular times -- is much more fluid > with vim. I usually need to take a deep breath before opening an IDE.

I can't even count the times I've accidentally written :w into a document while using an editor without vim bindings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've been an nvi user for around 20 year, vim ain't for me.

</comment><comment><USER44> Almost every reason given in the comments in favor of vim is not mutually exclusive to vim nor mutually exclusive with other features in other editors. It's easy to find vim alternatives, including GUI applications, with these supposed great features - and more.

The most significant, real benefit is the ubiquity, and the ubiquity is a function of tradition, vim's size, and its portability. This leads to its use because its 'the only option, not because 'its the best (or even good) option'. There's no arguing against the benefits of the ubiquity; its on almost every device that runs linux or unix like OS.

What really separates vim from the real day-to-day competition is the abysmal usability. From the complete lack of visibility and discoverability to the numerous modes, vim is a hall-of-shame when it comes to UX and UI. The original post even points to this stack overflow question with 3k upvotes and a top answer of 5k upvotes asking simply 'how do I quit vim': [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11828270/how-do-i- exit-t...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11828270/how-do-i-exit-the-vim- editor)

I don't think it's fair to ask every user to read the man pages, read a book, take a class, or go through a tutorial on how to use vim. If most users can figure out notepad.exe or TextEdit.app without reading a manual or taking a class, I think it's fair to say vim loses the usability battle, regardless of how powerful of a text editor it is.

I find most evangelists of tools have jumped from some feature anemic tool (notepad.exe or notepad++) to a more powerful tool (like notepad++ or visual studio, respectively) and decided "theres no way anything is better" then plug their ears to hearing about better tools. Nothing could possibly beat the amazing tool they use now!

JetBrains tools are less ubiquitous than vim, and sure take up more disk space. But the usability and power, as far as I can tell as I am no vim expert, far exceed that of vim. If I'm going to pick a daily-use tool, it's not going to be the one so small it fits in the tiny memory of my router, I'm going to pick the tool that with the most utility.

The original article should simply say "In many cases, vim and emacs are your only two options. When you are forced into that corner, you better know at least one of those two tools. You should learn vim because it's the (just barely) easier to use of the two ubiquitous editors."

</comment><comment><USER45> I think if you never bring up a barebones Linux (e.g. embedded system or some old HW) you might not really need it.

But being able to connect via serial port to some crappy stripped down Linux and knowing vi is there is a good feeling and it asks nothing of you in return.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm been an Emacs+Evil user for many years, but I would like to switch to Vim-- mainly because I use Windows 10 most of the time now and Emacs can have some input latency. But I'm old now and can't really imagine life without my init.el.

</comment><comment><USER47> You should learn vim if you want to deal with systems. You can learn vim or not if you don't.

lookback: vi, sh and unix have become your vim, bash and linux systems of today. Now, while they have forward compatibility, of sorts, vi and sh, the same cannot be said in reverse, as a rule. Modern bash folks have bent bourne shell syntax into foreign looking contortions where bourne shell syntax is a) performant and conformant, b)a lot simpler when simpler is better and c) is why bash maintains posix.

I agree, learn basic vim. And bash. But not really to program with. It's more of a burden than not for a million languages and formats.

</comment><comment><USER48> One useful configuration was changing the command mode key to a single letter. This way you did not have to switch back and forth between escape. Additionally, for people who have hyperhydrosis, which drastically hinders laptop touchpad usage, vim is really useful for navigation. As for vim itself, it is perhaps more effective to use a modern text editor rather than Vim as it is was a bit of a hassle to get it set up. Vim is very useful, and its good to see more encouragement for it in modern software development.

</comment><comment><USER49> It ain't that difficult. Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I worked for a training company teaching C and C++. This was done on Unix boxes and our clients were mostly VAX VMS and IBM people. The editor we used to write code was vi (not vim). The clients had no prior experience of it, but by the end of day one of the course they could write programs using it - not without a lot of complaining, it must be admitted. Perhaps people were smarter back then?

</comment><comment><USER50> I use it because vi is everywhere.

The busybox implementation kinda sucks at times, but I can't complain given that they've obviously focused on size.

<comment><USER22> > vi is everywhere.

Although, surprisingly, most command-line interfaces and command-driven apps (like redis client and psql) use emacs key bindings for command history.

<comment> joatmon-snoo This isn't a deliberate choice though on their part, is it? Isn't it just a consequence of everyone depending on readline and readline using emacs-style key bindings?

<comment><USER51> Some Emacs-style bindings, like ^W (erase word) and ^U (erase line), are baked into the UNIX tty discipline -- basic implementations of these bindings exist within the kernel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> vim/vi is to linux embedded dev what a nail gun is to roofing or a Henckel knife is too cooking. Don't show at work without it.

</comment><comment><USER53> I find that most passionate vim advocates have spent a lot of time learning, using, twiddling vim and the investment has paid off and now life is great. Is that a point for vim or his persistence? I'm unpersuaded that I should learn vim instead of $EDITOR, I just happened on vim first. Speaking as an inveterate vim user.

</comment><comment><USER54> For anyone who has been inspired to try vi/vim:

To exit vi or vim, press Esc then type ":q" (without quotes) and hit enter.

If it warns you about not saving, try ":wq" to save and quit or ":q!" to quit without saving.

If this is in the article video I apologize, but I did check and it's not in the article text.

<comment><USER55> This vimmer is always inclined to laugh at tutorials for how to exit vim … but then I remind myself that I still have to Google how to quit emacs whenever I stumble into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I use vim because it's guaranteed to be installed. The version installed at work is from 2004 but still.

</comment><comment><USER57> EX mode

How to get there? Press Q in normal mode.

What is it about? To punish you for trying to type while still in normal mode, or for having fat fingers. An opportunity to type "visual" to go to Normal mode.

</comment><comment><USER58> Larry Tesler would disagree.

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

</comment><comment><USER59> There are so many of these articles, why write another one?

<comment><USER60> _Mandatory GPT-3 comment_

<comment><USER61> Are you implying the article is auto-generated? Your comment is a bit vague...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Oh for a good (stress _good_ ) orgmode for vi(m)

</comment><comment><USER63> I moved from Vim to Emacs and definitely prefer it as a minimalist editor. That said, I usually end up working w/ VS Code or Intellij

</comment><comment><USER64> Oh look, yet another Vim nerdgasm

</comment><comment><USER65> Learn Vim in 2020... because 2020 just can't get any worse.</comment>


Netflix tries to explain its apparent sudden flip-flop on net neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/03/04/netflix-tries-to-explain-its-apparent-sudden-flip-flop-on-net-neutrality/

<comment><USER2> They are the #1 player, they can afford to pay data-cap exemption and squash competition now. The top dog always wants barriers to entry after they thrived on not having them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pull quote is literally the last paragraph of the article:

> So is Wells really displeased about Title II? Insofar as he wasn't able to > get his ideal outcome (industry self-regulation), sure. But that probably > doesn't mean Netflix is somehow opposed to Title II now.

<comment><USER4> The inevitable buzzfeedification of non-paywalled journalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Netflix just didn't want to pay more money to ISPs. It didn't want the extra regulations that would come with giving the FCC more power over the internet.</comment>


US elections has the lowest voter turnout in the free world - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#International_differences <comment><USER2> It's just about 50%, which is kinda low. I think that's because people didn't really like the options available.

[http://globalnews.ca/news/3054505/u-s-presidential- election-...](http://globalnews.ca/news/3054505/u-s-presidential- election-2016-voter-turnout-drops-to-near-50-per-cent/)

<comment><USER3> Wow, that is low. Here in Germany it's usually between 70-80%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone have the number for this election?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's still being tabulated, but you can get a glimpse here - [http://www.electproject.org/2016g](http://www.electproject.org/2016g)</comment></comment>


A free 3-10 nodes Kubernetes cluster - <AUTHOR> https://www.civo.com/?ref=c89c42 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi All,

I have been using CIVO's kubernetes cluster under the free program Kube 100 beta. I had really good experience, the service is very simple, adding service mesh, volumes, function apps is straight forward from console. They have offloaded many of the manual activities. This is free under the Kube 100 program for a long while for first adopters. You may need to signup and wait for a while (couple of hours) to get your signup approved. It is still a new service and they don't want random users overloading the system. They also have an amazing slack channel to support and discuss concerns, as well as provide feedback.

I would love to answer any questions here !

Note : Link is my personal ref.</comment>


Ahmed Mohamed: 'Clock boy' seeks $15m from city and school - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34904226 <comment><USER3> Sorry, that seems opportunistic. I felt bad for him, but no way he was scarred to the tune of $15 million. Even the bad experience had a major upside - <USER2> was offered an internship to Twitter and an invitation to the White House. Schools are budget-deprived enough without adding frivolous lawsuits to the mix.

In this case everyone involved in suspending him should have been seriously reprimanded and an apology given (and I'm surprised one wasn't). But a $15 million lawsuit isn't the answer.

<comment><USER4> I think this is how you get schools to care and avoid doing the same in the future.

<comment><USER3> Should schools really not take security seriously though? Do we really want people second guessing themselves when it comes to safety? That precedent is asking for trouble.

<comment><USER5> How does safety enter into it? Everyone knew it wasn't a bomb. Some people thought it was pretending to be a bomb, other people contend that it wasn't pretending to be a bomb. How are you worried about people second guessing themselves, in that context?

Schools have procedures for when there's a suspected bomb. They don't look like what was done, here. There was never a suspected bomb - only a suspected hoax.

<comment><USER6> Everyone knew it wasn't a bomb? Really? AFAIK he was asked what it was and he was uncooperative although we won't ever know since his family refused the public release of the police records.

Anyways, if we're going with hearsay then we should mention the boy's sister was suspended for making a bomb threat so I'd doubt the average teacher would just brush this off as "definitely not a bomb".

Now, seems like in your mind it would've been better for the school to send a SWAT team after him. I'm sure that wouldn't be seen as a negative thing by anyone.

<comment><USER5> Better? No. More consistent with "we thought it was a bomb"? Yes. At which point, the discussion of what should be done when you think there's a bomb becomes germane. So far as I understand it, no one involved is _claiming_ that they thought it was a bomb.

Far more conspicuous than relative lack of force (which, depending on particulars, might possibly have been a fine reaction to an actual bomb) is the apparent lack of any move to evacuate other students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Regardless of what you think about all the actors at play here, this is one of those stories to look back on that says... something... about the internet. A few million tweets led to media attention, discourse about schools and race, meetings with presidents and scholarships to prestigious universities. All good things and all was once again well in the world and the internet won.

However, with time, more details come out that make the whole thing not quite as clear cut and it becomes pretty obvious that there might be more than to one side of the story that we all jumped into.

I don't pass any judgement, it just makes me wonder how to bring balance to the social media firestorms and convey a more nuanced perspective to stories like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't sure what you were talking about, with respect to the other side of the story, but after searching ran across this article:

[http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse- engin...](http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering- ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/)

Not sure how I missed it, but if anyone else did as well, it really looks like he just moved the guts of an old clock into a new casing. He didn't really design any circuitry at all.

<comment><USER8> Yeah well, fuck it. I'm officially done with controversies on the Internet. I thought I was done already, but I fell for that one. Hell, I was even considering participating in "build a clock in support of that boy" Hackaday action (job stood in the way).

That's why I keep complaining about manipulative and lying media. It really fucks up our society.

Thanks for posting the link. It's really good.

<comment><USER9> WOAH, You just saw someone just changed their mind based on new evidence. Didn't realize that happend IRL.

But _why_ are such important details left out of every media account?

For the clockmaker sympathizers: What educational value is gained by taking an exisitng clock out of its normal casing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why the internet changed their attitude and started hating Ahmed Mohammed

[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tzyos/e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tzyos/eli5_ahmed_mohamed_why_does_reddit_hate_him_to/)

TLDR: People believe everything was set up by his sociopath Dad, who has a background in being obsessed with the spot light.

</comment><comment><USER11> He didn't even make the clock: [http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse- engin...](http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering- ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I encourage everyone to dig into this story a bit more. This family acted in a provocative way, and now they to attempt to punish the school and taxpayers.

<comment><USER13> > This family acted in a provocative way

Lucky for them, then, that the school and police were as racist as his family expected, and they walked right into his trap.

<comment><USER14> This had nothing to do with race. Children have gotten into serious trouble just for drawing guns (see links below). This is a result of "zero tolerance" policies which have been in place for a while now.

This child repeatedly brought out a clearly provocative object which he didn't even make and which looked like a count down timer in a small container. He also ignored e very single teacher who politely asked him to put it away. Until finally one teacher got freaked out enough to take action.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2486036/Eight- year-o...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2486036/Eight-year-old-boy- threatened-expulsion-school-drawing-pictures-Halloween-costumes-included-guns- knives.html)

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/13-year-old-suspended-for- doodli...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/13-year-old-suspended-for-doodling- gun/)

I don't agree with his arrest just like I don't agree with those kids getting into trouble for drawing guns. But to try to paint this as a race issue is plainly ignorant at best.

When you look at the details of this case (the father who is a Sudanese politician, the sister who tried something similar a few years ago, Mark Cuban saying that when he was talking to him he was being fed lines and told what to say, the fact that he didn't make the clock and has not even a cursory knowledge of electronics commensurate with his age or skill - claiming in an interview to 'solder' CPUs, etc.) then it becomes clear what this was really about.

I feel sorry for the child because it is clear that his father orchestrated all of this.

<comment><USER15> Neither of your examples were the kids ever arrested.

So they suspect he has a bomb, but don't evacuate the school? If someone calls into a school and says there is a bomb, they evacuate regardless of whether its a hoax or not.

Also you misquote what Mark Cuban said, just like a lot of news sites that want to focus the narrative that his sister "fed" him answers.

"I talked to the kid," Cuban said. "He's from Dallas, and I've talked to the people in the school district. The kid is a super smart kid. Science geek. We talked about science, but while I'm talking to him on the phone, as I ask him a question, 'Tell me what happened because I'm curious.' Right? His sister, over his shoulder, you could hear, listening to the question, giving him the answer. So, I don't know all the details of what happened, but what I do know, when I talked to him about science, when I talked to him about magnets, when I talked to him about creating things, he was very, very engaged."

<comment><USER8> They didn't suspect he had an actual bomb. They suspected he's making a bomb hoax. It's important to teach kids not to make bomb hoaxes.

<comment><USER15> How do you charge someone with a "bomb hoax" unless someone initially assumed there was an actual threat of a bomb? Can you just somehow jump straight to "bomb hoax"?

Why do you need to call the police for a bomb threat you know to not be real? If I said something stupid like, "I have a bomb" and the teacher _knows_ I'm lying. The teacher probably sends me to the principal's office or maybe gives me a stern lecture about "misusing words"

If he really did something that warranted cops being called why would the Principal need to threaten him with expulsion if he didn't sign a written statement coping to that fact? You either have him dead to rights on making bomb scares or you don't.

I honestly don't know if his dad was the cause of him bringing that clock to school. But man if that's true, the dad must have read the school well enough to know they would try to arrest his son on something dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This move really undermines the overwhelming good will that people had towards Ahmed.

<comment><USER17> I couldn't disagree more. Schools & cities both ought to live in fear of lawsuits to stop this kind of nonsense from occuring as a kneejerk reaction and give common sense an opportunity to prevail.

<comment><USER18> Living in fear might be too strong. There needs to be a monetary deterrent discourage abuse. For example, the Internet often claims police brutality will drop if the settlements were paid from their pension.

<comment><USER19> This punishes tax payers who didn't do it. To discourage abuse those that did this should be fired. We need personal accountability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When I was in middle school a kid got suspended for bringing a paper mache firework to class (basically just a fist-sized cylinder with a wick). It turns out it was completely hollow and didn't contain any black powder, but he still got a suspension since it looked like a bomb. The kid was white. Islamophobia is very much a real problem, but it seems reasonable that any kid in the same situation might get in trouble as well. I haven't read the Steve Jobs book in awhile, but didn't Wozniak bring a metronome to his high school that they mistook for a bomb? Again, I'm not saying racism and Islomophobia in our school system don't exist, but there's a long history of educators mistaking harmless devices for explosives, and I think its a tad presumptuous to say that this issue is only about race. Just my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm seeing a lot of comments on how this was all orchestrated or how he didn't actually make the clock.

Even if any of that were true, I'm not sure why it should change anything at all. The issue from the very beginning was the school's reaction to the clock.

If any of them really did get fooled into thinking it was a bomb, then they definitely wouldn't have handled it the way it did (handling the bomb themselves instead of evacuating and calling in professionals). This was simply a display of power by the school officials and police, and an attempt to make an example out of a kid that was somewhat disobedient.

If they acted reasonably, this whole ordeal would have ended there and there would have been nothing to further orchestrate by the kid's parents. They didn't. And now they're paying the price and being made an example of themselves. The irony is delicious.

<comment><USER22> Except they're not the ones paying the price. Anyone who pays taxes is instead. There doesn't appear to be any accountability for this massive mishandling of events. I think the next group of people who should get rights (along with moral agency, and all the other hard parts of freedom) should be children.

<comment><USER21> True enough. Society is collectively paying the price, instead of the individuals actually responsible. That is unfortunate, but I am still cautiously optimistic that this could lead to people in positions of power to think twice before abusing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Gotta ask for $15 mil just to get a $10k settlement.

<comment><USER4> I assume this is partially about his detention without parental notification, but maybe that would be the city, not the school. It seems a pretty big error on the part of the administration and police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This makes no sense. The standard award for one death is $8m. In no world is what he went through equal two people losing their lives.

<comment><USER24> Living people appeal better to the emotions of jurors. If you want a lot of money out of a lawsuit, don't die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting to watch all the bitter fighting over control of the narrative. I feel like the comment threads all over the internet are a more interesting story than the story itself.

</comment><comment><USER26> Internet outraged to lose boy hero. Meanwhile Ahmed laughs all the way to the bank.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if they got persuaded by lawyers to do this.

</comment><comment><USER28> Schools are already hurting so badly from frivolous lawsuits and oversensitive, opportunistic people. Schools are one of the few institutions trying to actually do some good. Don't kick them when they're already down.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wish I got $15 million every time I got called to the principals office.

</comment><comment><USER30> The clock boy incident was a clever hoax. Ahmed and his family may not be great engineers, but showed themselves masters of our media and legal system.

</comment><comment><USER31> This thread makes me want to stop coming to HN.

<comment><USER8> Why is it so?

This thread is one of the reasons why I come to HN. It turns out that yet another important story of this year was utter fabrication and lies. I wouldn't know about it if not for HN, and would keep believing falsehoods.

<comment><USER32> That point of view on the story has been covered all over the mainstream media. E.g.:

[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/22/clock- controversy...](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/22/clock-controversy- may-cause-headache-for-obama-as-doubts-raised-about-story.html)

<comment><USER8> I don't read mainstream media. Too much bullshit. If something is important enough, it'll pop up on HN - usually with the people in the know pointing out all the blatant lies made by the news source.

<comment><USER32> Well, sure, if HN is your only source of information, then you wouldn't know anything if it wasn't for HN.

<comment><USER8> I didn't say it's the only source.

<comment><USER32> I know, but you made it sound as if HN was giving you information that you couldn't have gotten from other sources, whereas in fact, in the particular case we're discussing, just reading the news would have been sufficient.

<comment><USER8> Fair enough. The information about this case, as opposed to the original story, didn't pop up in any other source I usually track, which provides an interesting example of another phenomenon - controversial stories get spread widely, but their retractions don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems like an effective way to teach the state not to be so racist/reactionary. Assuming he wins. Of course the lawyers will no doubt take most of it.

<comment><USER34> Or effective bait for activists to troll public institutions for publicity and cash settlements. Settlements paid by tax payers that take funds from education, public safety, infrastructure, and other public insitutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I see plenty of comments saying that the parents orchestrated this. If you truly believe this, I can only assume that you are not now or never have been a parent.

If you truly believe that a parent could send their child into a situation where there is a high probability of a fatal or long term negative outcome for the child, then you do not know what being a parent is.

There are plenty of bad parents, but believing this is orchestrated by the parents is the height of cynicism.

<comment><USER8> > _If you truly believe that a parent could send their child into a situation > where there is a high probability of a fatal or long term negative outcome > for the child, then you do not know what being a parent is._

I pass such "parents" on the street every day. Begging is an organized operation in big cities in Poland, and there were reports that children are actually drugged or fed alcohol, so that they're asleep. Fatalities happen.

There's a lot of sad stuff going on in this world.</comment></comment>


Freelancer Accountability Service? - <AUTHOR>

My startup is approaching our second birthday. Its been a wild ride, and I've certainly learned a lot, but something has always bothered me about the path we took...
We've worked with a good amount of technical contractors over the life of this company. These days we have a solid core of full time and part time workers, and we're doing well enough that we can start to hire some of our best. Times are good, and the world is looking up.
But I remember the 'dark days' that we were in only a dozen months ago. We were three young guys with a solid business idea, hunting for reliable, capable, and honest technical ability that would help us create the company of our dreams. We struck out with a few of our contractors - they simply ran away with the first one or two payments, or were completely incapable of accomplishing the task, and slowed us down because of their obvious incompetence.
Sure, in hindsight it might seem so obvious that you're going to get 'played', but the fact is I'm sure its happened to more companies than my own. I diligently researched our contractors as best as possible, and it just seems like a fact of life that there are wolves (or simply dumb-dumbs with a heavy dosage of confidence) out there.
Last week I was consulting a friend of mine who is looking for his own technical resources, and it really started to irk me - I wish I would have `known` about these guys, or had somewhere to go out to and ask about their character and reliability (aside from the always positive references they provide).
Is there a database for this stuff? An Angie's List for developers? If not, who wants to make one with me? <comment><USER2> Angie's List --- which actually kinda sucks --- works with the grain of supply & demand in its market, not against it: homeowners always have multiple qualified choices for contractors or plumbers or electricians (along with many not- so- qualified choices).

Supply & demand for vendors and clients are flipped in software development. The best freelancers have no reason to participate in a tech "Angie's List", so the ones you do get will be selected adversely.

The problem you had wasn't technological, it was that you were hiring (temporarily) for a role that is simply very difficult to hire for in 2013.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points - but check my comments on other posts. Perhaps it doesn't need to be a developer opt-in service? You're right, good devs would not need to sign up, and bad devs would avoid it... but really, we're only trying to protect from someone who has a bad record, no?

<comment><USER3> There's no guarantee that "bad" devs would avoid getting listed. They'd probably sign right up, and promptly collect lots of glowing reviews from their extensive network of sock-puppet clients.

There will also be some bad reviews. The "bad" dev will respond to those, claiming that the client had vague, expansive, and ultimately impossible deliverables and, perhaps, a tendency to avoid paying bills. And then it's one person's word versus another, because it's not as if the "bad" dev's story is particularly difficult to believe.

Meanwhile, the problem with the "blacklist" model is that it doesn't help _you_ , but it does hurt you. Yes, there is some probability that you'll help the next poor sap that tries to hire the Voldemort Development Corporation, but that's overbalanced by the near-certainty that you'll drive away a lot of competent talent who will see your "blacklist" as a gigantic warning sign about _you_. No contractor wants the risk of working for a customer who is prone to publicly badmouthing the contractors when a project goes wrong. Because software projects do go wrong. For reasons that are often outside a contractor's control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think this is a problem that can be solved via a technical solution to be honest. Personal recommendation can go a some way, but being able to vet developers for a specific role is something only the prospective employer can do.

Someone may be good at bashing out CRUD rails apps day and night and so anyone who uses them for this task is going to highly rate them, but that doesn't mean they're a good fit for your company, especially if you don't actually know what you need them for at the point of hire (especially true for non- technical founders).

Couple that with the fact that there's no motivation for 'better' developers to sign up to these services (as good devs are normally stacked up with work and have an existing network to hook into) and all you're left with is something similar to an odesk clone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point on the oDesk clone. Its interesting to think that the main drive behind this would have to be the developers themselves - and if they are good enough on their own they won't need the service, or if they're the real 'problem,'they will avoid being in the system at all costs. Any idea on how to build an accountability system without it becoming just a 'Black list'?

... On second thought, a 'Black List' might not be the worst idea - two of these guys were total snakes. Without going into too much detail, they they boldly lied for a couple of months, until they stopped responding to calls altogether. This is what makes me think this could be a decently large issue for startups/small businesses. My company wasn't overly aggressive or pushy - the project was a simple signup wizard with very good compensation in a contract-to-hire relationship, so I'm not convinced these types of people don't do this more often.

That being said, most HN freelancers are probably more reputable, but there are other mediums out there that people are getting tech jobs through, and all you have to look back on is their own LinkedIn, GitHub, etc.

+1 for the employer being the end judge on these things. Unfortunately we just didn't know enough at the time to pull that off, nor did we really know where to ask for a consultant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How would you prevent would be developers from simply 'playing' the rating system on your hypothetical Angie's list for developers?

<comment><AUTHOR> I presume you mean self-promotion/self-upVoting when you say 'playing'?

I think the solution is somewhat similar to how google became a success - build off of reputable links. Employers must link to their personal LinkedIn pages, company websites, an online record that they are who they say they are (either a D-U-N-S repository, or an incorporation document, etc etc). Yes, it can be spoofed - but if someone leaves either a glowing or awful review, you at least can look them up.

Likewise for freelancers. Many have profiles around the web, but it can be a struggle to find enough for a third party 'character check' - for instance, Salesforce Developers are in the AppExchange network, or the Force.com boards... I'm sure a ruby developer is in a completely different space!

In a certain sense, this needs to be a yelp for developers - reviews are valued and sought after. Bad reviews are feared, and its a somewhat ubiquitous place to find information on developers in a variety of spaces (Ruby,PHP,Salesforce,Obj-C,Java...)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Learn how to work remotely from people doing it every day - <AUTHOR> http://remotehabits.com/?ref=hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! Here's a small side-project I've been working on to help remote workers. I noticed when I switched to full-time indie dev, I experienced some new problems, like building discipline, habits and healthy routines. I don't like most productivity advice, as Paul Buchheit says most advice is limited life experience + over-generalized to fit your situation.

I thought a good way around this would to just tell stories about remote workers, how they got started, what they like, what they don't like, routines they've found that are helpful, etc...

So that's what the site aims to do—interview remote workers so you can learn from their experiences.

One cool thing about the site is you can deep dive specific questions, like

* What do you like about remote work? [http://remotehabits.com/interviews/question/what-do-you-like...](http://remotehabits.com/interviews/question/what-do-you-like...).

* What do you not like about remote work? [http://remotehabits.com/interviews/question/what-do-you-not-...](http://remotehabits.com/interviews/question/what-do-you-not-...).

Let me know what you think, thanks!

<comment><USER2> the best thing is no commute, the energy overhead of a long commute is terrible. The worst thing is missing out on conversations/decisions being made at the office. My corporate office is in San Diego while I'm in Dallas, even though I'm a director and the buck stops with me in engineering, lots of sidebar conversations and decisions get made in Sand Diego face-to-face and not on conference calls and slack channels.

<comment><USER3> This is very difficult to address. I think people (in the office) need to buy in and use chat or email as communication mode number one. Either that or someone needs to come out with some better tele-presence for remote teams to interact with people in the office.

<comment><USER4> Think about what you are saying. We should forgo direct communication with people next to us, in favor of an online alternative? Even though your goal is noble (enabling remote workers) your method is unnatural.

I agree that a way to better integrate remote workers is essential. However disposing of direct communication is not the way to do it. I don't have an answer, we need a novel approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I've been remote for about 5 years now. Once thing often overlooked is the perception of working remote by significant others. It took a handful of fights with my wife until we came to an understanding that from 8-5 i'm at work, even though I'm home, I'm still at work. Granted, there's give and take like with all things in a marriage but when I "leave" for work and shut the office door I may as well be 30miles away in an office building until 5.

<comment><USER5> As someone who's not married it also isn't good for relationships in general. Staying home all day basically makes you the least interesting person in the world. You never have any crazy stories, weird colleagues, office romances, and whatever else normal people talk about. How do you answer "how was your day" and make it interesting?

<comment><USER6> I know I'm unusual about this, but I really try to keep my conversations away from simply just normal happenings. I recognize this is probably a necessity to share our days, but I value people that speak about ideas more.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I work remote and I don't talk to people about my job at all other than to describe it if they ask. Frankly my job sounds boring and the industry I'm in is totally unglamorous so the less I say the better. I'd rather talk about all the stuff I do outside of work.

For the record I love my job and the company I'm with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I see a ton of new freelancer make the mistake of charging $15 or more from > the jump without 0 reputation to back up that value. You can't expect to be > paid what you want without having a way of proving that value in some way. > [1]

To give a counter point. I have done the opposite with 0 reputation, I charged between 60 to 70 euro's per hour. I now increased my rate to 75 euro's per hour, since I know a couple of bootcamp graduates who charge the same. Why do they charge the same? Well, one got into a dev shop and he quickly realized he was the best web dev and got rented out for a 100 euro's per hour.

Though per haps one difference is that I knew people who needed a freelancer _now_. They couldn't find anyone and I was still studying CS and therefore available. Finding clients on your own with that rate may be harder.

I think understanding supply and demand really important, as well as building trust with your client. Can you get the job done? If yes, then what's the going rate for any other freelancer and charge that.

With all that said, it is just one interview that I am quoting. It is also interesting to see such diversity in there!

[1] [http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a- full...](http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-full-stack- web-developer-who-works-remotely)

</comment><comment><USER9> Well advice from one of the freelance webdevs ([http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a- full...](http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-full-stack- web-developer-who-works-remotely)) is to start to charging 10usd. He calls it reasonable pricing. I mean i live in quite poor country but 10usd is pretty hard wow. The great twist is that he works for YCombinator backed company as lead front-end dev. Way to go lol

<comment><USER10> Oh boy. Please no one take that advice of charging 10/hr. Remote does not at all justify making < minimum wage

<comment><USER11> How much do freelancers usually get in different countries/regions? Or on average in the US and Europe?

When I was still living in Finland (few months ago) the market rate was usually around 80-120 EUR/h => 90-140 USD/h.

<comment><USER12> I work remotely as a writer living in India. I charge the same rates as any writer living in the US. I haven't yet seen any client dispute my pricing.

I don't see why I should charge less for my skills just because of my geographical location.

<comment><USER13> Time zone can be somewhat of a filter if your client has a large team with daily standups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be nice to have a way to separate full-time remote employees from consultants/freelancers and part-time remote contractors.

I feel as though the constraints and consequences are very different between the two.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion, I've tried to tag Freelancers/Consultants where appropriate but this is something that can be improved—thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

<comment><USER16> I am curious, what kind of provider is this and what kind of bandwidth limits could be burned through by a basic HTTPS website? I tried to do a reverse DNS but it only came up with a generic "com.remotehabits.in-addr.arpa"

I only ask this because even my very poor $2.50/mo server gets 500GB to 1TB of bandwidth allocated to it which is enough for millions of standard page loads.

<comment><USER17> Some whois sleuthing suggest a company called Conseev who operate a shared hosting service[1] with a 250MB bandwidth limit.

[1]: [https://www.purespeedhosting.com/shared- hosting/](https://www.purespeedhosting.com/shared-hosting/)

<comment><USER18> Is it not 250GB Data Transfer? That would be a lot more than 250MB. Still hard to guess how they would get over that limit.

<comment><USER17> Hah, yes, whoops. Hard to imagine blowing through 250GB of bandwidth via HN traffic in only a few hours.

<comment><USER19> Reason #2384 to keep your site lean...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My experience after having fully remote jobs and onsite jobs in companies with satellite offices and other remote workers, as well as managing and hiring for a team that includes on-site and remote engineers, is that you are generally practicing all the same skills needed for working remotely even if you are based on-site. You have to fight through the distractions of the surrounding environment and practice self-discipline, you'll have a video call option for every single meeting (and often even other in-office participants access the call by video rather than walking to the conference room), all "water cooler talk" is deliberately moved into a medium like Slack, other on-site people work from home often, even managers using video calls to talk about your yearly performance review.

I'm sure many people making the transition could still use a service like this for good advice.

But generally, on-site experience in many types of tech / ecommerce companies these days imparts so much of the identical skills used for remote work that you would find pretty much the sole difference is the utter bliss of not being in an open-plan office.

Similarly when hiring for remote or on-site roles, I find years of experience specifically working remotely plays no role. It does not make a candidate more or less likely to fit in a new remote role. And lack of prior remote experience rarely ever factors in even when hiring for a remote role.

In other words, most types of prior work experience already prepare you well to be a remote worker. There's no special "being good at remote" skill that most on-site jobs fail to exercise, though some people might occasionally feel that they _personally_ or idiosyncratically need more help with certain aspects, unrelated to what general job experience offers them.

<comment><USER21> It sounds like in your opinion "no open plan office" is the sole value of working remote? As I misunderstanding your comment?

My office does not have open plan offices. Some of us work remote about 20% of the time. But I think we all generally enjoy working on site too.

<comment><USER20> That has definitely been my experience from a worker's point of view. People assessing costs, etc., might have other opinions.

The second-biggest benefit is not spending time on a commute. And if you have child care needs or other family arrangements to tend to, the flexibility offered being at home is a benefit.

But by far the biggest benefit is that it lets you get away from working in open-plan offices.

At one past employer that had a mix of on-site and remote workers, the company had an amazing policy of letting on-site employees work from home as often as they wanted, no questions asked.

During one especially difficult design and implementation phase for a certain project, I worked from home for three weeks straight, because otherwise it was literally impossible to get the work done with noise distractions and lack of private space to think and tinker while at the office.

Personally, I like working on-site (in private offices) most of all, but the downsides of open-plan arrangements are so severe that I'd practically use any other type of working arrangement, even being fully remote, if it allowed me to avoid an open-plan office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am getting a 509 Bandwith Exceeded error. The sites is still accesible via [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jNN8m0q...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jNN8m0qEa2EJ:remotehabits.com)

<comment><USER22> It seems like the cache link I previously pasted does not allow to click on deeper links on the site. Sorry. At least it helps to have a quick view to the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hey guys, I saw a few people quoting my interview here and I appreciate the criticism and wanted to clear a few misconceptions is the word? up!

For reference: [http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a- full...](http://remotehabits.com/interview/interview-with-john-a-full-stack- web-developer-who-works-remotely)

When I say charge $10 USD that is what I started charging personally as I felt it gave me the most competitive edge as I was a recent graduate and JUST starting out. The minimum wage in Puerto Rico where I live is $7.50 so it definitely made sense to me and I'm the type of person who doesn't like overselling themselves or feeling like I'm being cocky/arrogant, plus I was starting out I barely knew anything haha. It's a personality thing you know. I am however by no means saying hey charge $10 USD to start out, that made sense to me and worked for me because I was a recent graduate, have no debts and no family to support. Someone with all these things to consider $10 USD would be DISMAL to even accept and I get that. What I was trying to convey above all is be reasonable with your pricing, charge something that for you recognizes your value and needs and ALSO Values your client and their needs if that makes sense!

Also someone mentioned me being a lead front-end dev at OpenSea which YES is backed by YCombinator but I wanted to clear up one thing which is I said main dev not lead front end dev as I have been with them from early on, that title belongs to the co-founders haha I'm sorry for that confusion and wanted to clear it up, I hate taking credit where credit is not due! I am/was the lead front-end dev for a startup called freshChefs in shanghai for their food delivery app though which was an AWESOME experience!

Finally, I have upped my rates considerably from my early days starting out and now usually charge $50/hr so I definitely climbed those up over time, I just started at a reasonable price that worked for me but in no ways mean works for or should be done by everyone.

Thanks guys! And I hope the article gave you some insights and it's crazy to see it somewhere like HackerNews!

PS: I'm actually 24 and that picture was from my graduation day back in 2015 because I abhor pictures, I still have a baby face though XD

</comment><comment><USER24> If you're looking for folks to interview, I've been full-time remote for almost 5 years and have managed to do it quite successfully. I'd be happy to share thoughts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! Can you email email@example.com and we can get something setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is great website! I think we need more things like these to make it easier for people to learn how to work remotely. I have outlines some of comments in this video message I recorded for you: [https://www.useloom.com/share/3e8262418d7c4f1187d3b92b037624...](https://www.useloom.com/share/3e8262418d7c4f1187d3b92b037624ca)

</comment><comment><USER26> The key difficulty for me is finding a remote job (from scratch) in a name brand company i.e listed on the NASDAQ.

<comment><USER27> A lot of major companies offer remote work, but why is that important? Are you using that as a proxy for salary?

<comment><USER26> How do you find them?

<comment><USER28> Are you based in the US? weworkremotely.com has worked well for me in the US

<comment><USER29> Shameless plug here, my side project [https://www.mikesremotelist.com](https://www.mikesremotelist.com) finds about 10-20 newly listed remote positions a day, they are not all US based, but the majority are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Death by hugs, 509 bandwidth exceeded~

</comment><comment><USER31> It was working but now I'm getting "Server Not Found" when I click the link.

I find the content very helpful. How do you plan to keep producing such good quality content in the long term? I've seen many Show HNs like this with meteoric launch getting abandoned after some months.

</comment><comment><USER32> Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

</comment><comment><USER33> I am looking for a remote developer role myself

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreycallaghan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreycallaghan)</comment>