Generation B - Middle Aged, Laid Off and Losing Hope - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/fashion/30genb.html?8dpc=&_r=1&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Oh what the hell people? Is this what it's come to? Am I now expected to feel bad for the guy who, after making as much as $255,000 up until the age of 55, only has enough savings to live for 2 or 3 years? Who, with a business degree, chose to move to New York of all places. The heart of the financial industry and the hardest hit area probably in the world?

I have a lot of sympathy for people who have lost their job and if you were making $30,000 a year I can understand not having a nest egg. But for this guy I have no sympathy.

<comment><USER3> Yes, you are. He didn't know this was going to hit him. Just imagine the psychological impact of having everything you know change, and basically being told that 30 years of experience is worthless. How many years of savings do you really expect someone to have?

<comment><USER4> I object to his sad-sack attitude. I agree that 2 years is a ton of savings.

So why the drama?

I'm actually shocked that this guy is in such disarray. If he's so in touch with the reality that "the world has changed," why doesn't he get another job doing something? Even delivering pizzas earns more than nothing - it would also get him out and talking to people.

Why move to new york, instead of a place with a lower cost of living?

Why write a novel? The story certainly didn't give me the impression that novel writing was something he loved to do. Also, writing a novel about your own life seems not only self-absorbed but uninteresting. Escpecially if you believe - as he does - that your situation is so common?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a whole generation of engineers in a similar situation. But what to do? Typically they cost more than a young buck, and their station often requires income now versus a startup windfall later. What is a creative approach for them?

My uncle is just such a hacker. Developed the Canon Cat, target disk mode on the Mac, tested nuclear weapons in Nevada when he was a kid (and god knows what else he still won't talk about). But in America where we succeed by embracing the new it is equally characteristic to leave our old champions behind.

This is worth fixing. We're forsaking the very people we hope to become.

<comment><USER6> Woah - did he write the book "The Humane Interface"? I just finished reading that a few days ago, it totally changed my views in regards to interface and even coding style.

<comment><USER5> No, but Jef was a friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This really screams "start a business" at me. Sales guy, probably has a killer rolodex, enough savings to live for 2-3 years, complaints about not being able to fill his free time.

<comment><USER8> He has enough savings for 2-3 years, which as the majority of businesses fail within the first 2 years (with bank loans) he could easily try to start himself in his own company where there's zero risk of a lay-off (to him at least) and if he strikes lucky he'll be making far more money than he did before.

I know people with their own businesses, not even big businesses, and they pull down upwards of $500,000 a year in money they pocket. The people I know didn't start off where he did, they started off with no degrees, no college, no nothing, just a ford truck and an idea.

This guy's going to sit on his ass for the next two years until things get desperate for him and by that time the economy will be back in full swing and he'll be straight back into a job.

<comment><USER9> I doubt the economy will be in full swing in two years. I would love to be wrong about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most telling quote for me was "If I walk to the store, I'm back in 10 minutes, and then what?" And then what???? Man, if I had enough money to live for 2-3 years, single, and having 24/7 time to do whatever the heck I wanted, I'd for damn sure be working on some crazy-ass shit. Another quote from him "...I can adapt". He refers to adapting as taking a cut in pay. Simply put, this man has no ability to adapt, nor an understanding of what adapting means. I have zero sympathy for this guy. 10 minutes to the store and back and then what? Get on the f'ing internet and freakin learn something and get a clue.

<comment><USER11> The trip to the store seems to be a reference to the plans he has each day, that is he has nothing he _has_ to do each day that will get him out of his flat. On the other hand at the end of the article it mentions that he's written a book, is actively seeking publication, and has started to think about his second. So he is in fact being productive. His statement about adapting was to an interviewer who asked about pay. He may just have wanted to make it clear that he doesn't expect to earn anything like what he was on before. Taking a massive pay cut requires adapting. Going from a $225,000 lifestyle to a $30,000 one is a hell of a difference.

<comment><USER12> Does writing a book seem like a reasonably intelligent reaction to the scenario he finds himself in? What percentage of writers make enough to survive on....my guess would be <1%.

No sympathy for this guy, or others of his ilk. There are so many middle aged, baby boomer, middle management people that have been way overpaid, promoted for no good reason, and pissed all of their ill-gotten gains away who are now complaining that they are hard done by in the financial crisis. I would counter that no, they aren't hard done by, they are now actually getting what they deserve, it certainly must feel like they are hard done by compared to the decades of being massively overpaid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So basically this guy has come face to face with the world his generation built for my generation? With 2 or 3 years and that much free time he'd better start thinking like people like me if he wants to survive. Somewhere there is a very tiny violin playing a sad tune. He'll get no sympathy from the people making hay with the kind of money and time he has on his hands.

</comment><comment><USER14> I know I've been out of the country for a few years and all, but really, is this what passes for hardship these days?

So basically, here's a guy living large for most of his life, bringing in $250k for much of it, and retiring at the age of 58. This is pretty much the _definition_ of the American Dream.

Granted, he has a terrible self-esteem problem (top tip for all you 58 year old multimillionaires without jobs: don't tell women you're 'unemployed'. You're retired!), and evidently he managed to squander most of his wealth along the way.

But really, how sorry are we supposed to feel for a guy living well in the suburbs who might need to think about moving to a smaller apartment at some point in the next 3 years?

</comment><comment><USER15> For non-subscribers:

Page 1 - [http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/3...](http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/fashion/30genb.html?8dpc=&_r=1&pagewanted=all)

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</comment><comment><USER16> What's a good hack for putting older, experienced people to work? My assumption is we're only going to be seeing more of this given demographics and changing career paths. Smells like a market opportunity.

<comment><USER17> Pair their work ethic, real world experience, and life lessons with the passion and technical skills of a 20 something hacker.

I started my first business when I was 27. My partner was 41 and had done things I hadn't even imagined. He was so smart, so seasoned, and knew the ropes about so many things that he saved us both countless hours and dead ends. And I was able to do things he never had a chance to learn. We made a great team.

Now I'm on the other side of that relationship. And would love to do it again with someone in their 20's. I have a million ideas that come from years of real world experience and not enough time to act upon them. (One of the reasons I'm here.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've worked it out ...

Average life expectancy in countries where most people die from old age or incurable diseases is around 80. Slightly higher in Australia, lower in the USA. So if 55 is still middle aged, then 60 or so will probably be the boundary into old age.

Dividing things up equally, we get that old age is 60 to 80, and middle age is 40 to 60, and the age where you don't think about it and don't name it is 20 to 40.

That fits.

So what about pre 20? I've always held that children are aliens that mutate into humans. I think we pretty much would all agree that teenagers are not properly human, and so that ties in. Up to age 13 we are aliens, then 13 through to about 20 we mutate into humans. 20 to 40 we're simply "people", 40 to 60 middle-aged, 60 onwards old-aged.

I'm not sure I find that comforting ...

</comment><comment><USER19> Here we are in a fairly lively field with technical skills and a million ideas but (generally) not all that much life experience. The demographic that this article talks about are older, more experienced, but either weary or lost due to unexpected circumstances. What if we built a marketplace for startups (and founders-to-be) and young engineers to connect with older unemployed folks? Kinda like an age-reversed mentorship program, maybe. Or a "young hackers teaching older folks how to hack" program?

\--

I was a bit surprised to find this article on HN, but since we're discussing it: Anyone else have ideas on how we, as a fairly narrowly-defined demographic, could help "generation B?" I personally feel like we have a responsibility to do so, if we can figure out how.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm curious whether having himself written on by the NYTimes in this way will help or hurt his chances for employment. Like you guys suggested, this guy sure is a whiner.

<comment><USER21> Not a whiner perhaps: it is easy to turn cranky when you're out of job for a stretch of time.

Although the rant about employers not acknowledging receipt of resume sure got me chuckle. Never had it other way, we certainly live in the different worlds :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember an article about college graduates not being able to find jobs during the dot bomb era. I was one of those statistics. Fortunately things have changed. I was able to consult/contract and meet people and my career took off from there. It sucks to be marginalized, and it's reality for those who do not have the right skills and/or know the right people.

Of course the situation is different for older people. They already have experience and there is age discrimination (which does not make sense in most situations because it's not like workers will be in the same job for 10+ years).

The one thing that did not work for me was to spam resumes. Better to identify an area you want to get into and meet people.

</comment><comment><USER23> HN on the weekends is like a vision of the future HN on every day. It will be filled with general interested articles like this.

</comment><comment><USER24> The only problem in this guy's life is his mentality.

He gets almost $200K handed to him and decides he wants to be an author? Great! But he's going about it all wrong.

Move out of the city, man! Find a nice country home. Ditch the Blackberry and all the other tech toys. Sell the suits. Stop spending money needlessly on train rides, eating out, and all that other nonsense. He's still trying to live his old lifestyle. It makes no sense at all.

Buy yourself a cheap laptop, get a basic package from your local ISP, install OpenOffice so you have a word processor for your writing, save your pennies, grow and cook your own food, and write!

Geez, I probably shouldn't armchair-quarterback other people's lives this early in the morning, but....

</comment><comment><USER25> Roughly a quarter of the people aged 65+ are working full-time. So, when did 58 become "middle-aged?"

<comment><USER21> It is a common figure of speech to refer to people in their late 40s or 50s as middle-aged; common enough to be ingrained in concepts like "middle-age crisis". It is technically correct, since this age represents the midpoint of one's adult life with modern life expectancy.

<comment><USER20> Last I checked only 0.012% of people actually reach age 100.

<comment><USER21> In most modern nations, "adult" refers to someone over 18 to 21. With life expectancy of over 70 years, that places middle age exactly in the middle of 50-year period. I thought that was obvious enough.

<comment><USER25> Post-college working life: 22 - 72 (extended SS eligibility age for the USA). Half of that: 47.

<comment><USER21> Yes, 72-22 is 50. Thanks for doing the math :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how fast or economically it would be to retrain workers to other section of the economies experiencing shortage of workers.

<comment><USER20> Interesting thought, but a couple caveats. A good economy self-regulates supply and demand for industries/job positions. This is especially true when all online job postings are online; it is easy for anyone to see what type of jobs are hiring the most. In an economy like ours, where unemployment is at a record high, if a section of the economy is experiencing a shortage, it is because those positions demand years of experience. Therefore it would take years for a government/institutional program to train workers for that field, which by that time the economic imbalance might have repaired itself. (Recessions typically don't last more than 2-3 years)

<comment> c-m "This is especially true when all online job postings are online" -- as that true by definition, you probably mean "when all jobs are posted in public". That however appears not to be the case, by a long shot. From my vantage point it looks like employers at least in "tech" try to first use "networking", and only go to public channels when this doesn't yield. Often you have "stealth req" - "we have a candidate" - "create public req" - "oops we already found a match". Hence the name "LinkedIn" - it's meant quite literally.

<comment><USER20> Unfortunately that is very true and good point. I work for a newspaper company and was baffled during a conversation with the Classifieds-Jobs manager when she told me something to the tune of "95% of job openings are posted online, but 75% of the postings are fulfilled by internal networking, not by respondents to the job listing."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, joblessness is worse for men over 45 (7.7 percent in July) than women the same age (6.9 percent)._

And feminists still claim discrimination in the workplace.

<comment><USER28> Unemployment could be higher for men, and there could still be discrimination against women in the workplace. Those are not in contradiction. Your comment seems like a non sequitur. (Leaving aside whether there really is sex discrimination in the workplace, a complex question that almost certainly has an answer more subtle than "yes" or "no")

<comment><USER29> > Leaving aside whether there really is sex discrimination in the workplace, a > complex question that almost certainly has an answer more subtle than "yes" > or "no".

Actually, the answer is both sex and workplace dependent. (Yes, there are workplaces where there's no sex discrimination and some where the sex discrimination is against men.)

However, the furor over sex discrimination isn't that "subtle".</comment></comment></comment>


When does a "startup" lose its label? - <AUTHOR> https://no-kill-switch.ghost.io/when-does-a-startup-lose-its-label/ <comment><USER2> When the bottle of vodka in the freezer disappears.</comment>


Will an assured $150k investment hurt the spirit of Y Combinator? - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/01/29/will-an-assured-150k-investment-hurt-the-spirit-of-y-combinator/

<comment><USER2> Bullshit. As a YC alumni I can say this will have a _huge_ positive impact on productivity.

Before: " _should I raise now? I'm supposed to wait for demo day but XYZ is doing it, maybe I should just raise a little to be sure? I'll just get 2 intros and that's it, promise._ "

After: _code code code code._

This is YC making sure their startups don't forget what matters: the product. Great move.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the perspective, shykes. As someone who just writes about what happens in tech, clearly I don't know what the feeling is like of actually being inside of YC. These are just questions that come to mind.

<comment><USER2> Didn't mean to shoot the messenger :) I'm seeing a lot of lamenting when there's every reason to be excited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As I understand it, recent YC graduates were already almost assured angel funding because of the YC brand. So, in effect, investors were already using YC as a proxy for evaluating startups. Now they're just making it official.

I think the greatest impact of this deal is that now founders don't have to devote months of their time and energy to fundraising. Which means a few extra months to focus on building the company.

</comment><comment><USER5> $150K will not make your startup succeed on its own. There were already companies raising larger amounts before YC started and this did not seem to hurt the "spirit" of YC.

I think the biggest effect this will have on the YC process is that more teams, especially those who pivot during YC or are building something very complicated, will choose to delay fundraising past demo day in favor of working on their product/trying to get traction for several more months.

</comment><comment><USER6> Of course it won't. It simply means that YC start-ups now have a guaranteed bit of extra runway if they should need it and if they think the terms are favorable enough for them (they probably do if they think it through).

Nobody is standing there with a shotgun forcing YC companies to take this, it's an _offer_.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a very legitimate concern. From my personal experience, I think "being starved" is an important part of the experience, it prepares you for the long grind (unless your are the lucky few that grow gangbusters out of the door). I think the right amount of money is the key.

<comment><USER8> It's a very fine line. Back when I had the record label we were consciously trying to ensure that the bands did not actually starve whilst ensuring they weren't totally comfortable either. In comfort you put your feet up, and too hungry and you won't get stuff done and will look for jobs on the side that distract you.

It's a lot easier to start with a tight belt than it is to try and tighten the belt further down the road. Starting lean and having a culture of that means you can stay lean and always be mindful of reducing your burn rate.

But the ability to stay lean for longer is a great thing, a really great thing.

It all comes down to how wisely the money is used by the YCs, if they're coding with a big injection in mind they might not find the right mindset, but if they're coding linked to a financial drip-feed then this just gave them all the time in the world to get the product right.

So... could go either way. Really it comes down to them to use this for good or to let it hurt their chances.

It's very hard to voluntarily take the Seneca position to prepare against bad fortune by the modern day equivalent of eating Ramen if you don't actually have to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that this found will improve the chance for a startup to become big, because with this extra money they can focus on the product and have a bigger found for advertising. If YC dose this is a win win situation for them because the companies that they found will get a bigger evaluation from the start. So now they invest $20K (let's say) and get somewhere to 10% if they invest $150K and still get 10% the company is worth $1.5 mil from the start not $200.000 like in the current funding.

<comment><USER6> Finding follow-on money for YC companies with a product and a plan was not difficult in the past, it just got a bit easier but not even that much. The YC brand is pretty strong and more or less guarantees investor interest. The only big difference here is that this guy basically won't say 'no'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't seen any mention of this: what does the investor get in return? the YComb people get six percent; what do the people behind Yuri's fund get?

<comment><USER11> The way uncapped convertible debt works, there is no valuation when the investment is made. That means that, when the agreement is inked, the investor can only guess at how much equity they are purchasing.

Typically when the next round of financing occurs, the investor gets equity at the valuation of that round.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The only thing I'm upset about is that I put in my application yesterday and now the competition is going to skyrocket!

But overall I think this is great for YC, and great for their startups. It's everyone else that should be worried.

<comment><USER6> > The only thing I'm upset about is that I put in my application yesterday and > now the competition is going to skyrocket!

As long as the quality of the competition doesn't skyrocket you'll be doing fine. And if competition worries you overmuch don't go the entrepreneurial path, it will be with you for the rest of your life if you succeed even a little bit.

Competition is good, also for you. If you could have done a better job on the application then the time to deal with that is before you hand it in, not when you know the competition heats up, you _always_ do your very best. Then you have nothing to worry about.

<comment><USER12> You're right, and I have done my best.

I suspect that the majority of strong candidates would have applied anyway, and my application is just as strong today as it was yesterday. We'll see!

<comment><USER6> Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> with a convertible note what happens if the startup fails? Do they owe $150K?

<comment><USER14> The same thing that happens with any debt when the debtor goes bankrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> $150k at what valuation?

<comment><USER16> "$150,000 in convertible debt. With no cap and no discount."</comment></comment>


Stop Paying for Gas with Your Debit Card - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2019/08/22/why-you-should-stop-paying-for-gas-with-your-debit-card/ <comment><USER2> Hy-Vee breach announced this week. I shop Hy-Vee several times a week and saw a $250 charge on my card on 8/20\. Hard to believe it isn't from this breach.

Someone signed up for a Zelle account with my card. Managed to initiate a transfer. I had never heard of Zelle, but there's a 0% chance I'll ever use them now. Luckily my bank does not use them...

</comment><comment><USER3> Stop using your debit card period. Use a credit card and pay it off monthly. Problem solved.

<comment><USER4> Don't support the credit card oligarchy. Only shop at places that are cash only or put the credit expense fee on the users, not the people paying cash.

<comment><USER5> > Don't support the credit card oligarchy.

I 100% agree. The problem is that the credit industry exists (obviously) to make money for creditors. Their profit comes from a.) vender fees (that often just result in higher product costs), b.) fees to people who aren't stable enough to pay their balances before fees kick in.

Either way, the credit industry introduces a middle man that a.) artificially inflates costs to goods and survices and b.) financially burdens those who can least afford it.

Sure, credit serves a purpose to bridge a financial gap, like say buying a house, but I go in to that loan agreement knowing how much I'm going to pay for that service. Credit cards, on the other hand are just shady societal life siphons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I may have missed something, but why specifically when paying for petrol? Surely the advice here should be to stop using debit entirely?

(Alternatively, choose to use cash now - or you won't have the choice in the future.)

<comment><USER7> Because American gas pumps still primarily use magstripe readers and thus skimmers are still a problem. Many new pumps are starting to get Apple/Android contactless payment, but I've found that most of the pumps that have the hardware don't actually have it enabled for whatever reason.

<comment><USER8> An AM/PM gas station in Bellevue, WA recently spent months tearing out tanks and putting new pumps in. "Sweet, I go by there every day, maybe the pumps will have NFC/Apple Pay." NFC? The new pumps don't even have chip readers. It is still mag stripe only. Words are inadequate.

<comment><USER9> Conversely, some Wawa convenience stores are only getting Tesla superchargers, no gas pumps (and Tesla automatically dings your CC on file for Supercharging). Interesting to see the dichotomy.

The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. Apologies to Gibson.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another reason: pre-auth will deduct up to $125 from your available balance, no matter how small the actual purchase is, which you won't get back for a couple of days.

</comment><comment><USER11> or just run your debit card as credit and don't play with snakes?

<comment><USER9> It's a lot harder to deal with fraud with a debit card vs a credit card. Better to never use the debit card, use a credit card for everything, and then pay off the credit card on time each month via ACH/bank transfer.

If you can, get only an ATM card for your checking account.

A lot of pumps support NFC/Apple Pay at the pump now. Also a great option instead of pulling a card out.

<comment><USER12> I'd always been taught that if I run a debit as credit, and the transaction occurs over the Visa/MC network, then it has all the same protections as a credit card when it comes to fraud/chargebacks.

Are you saying that is incorrect? That would be pretty concerning.

<comment><USER13> When the number on the card itself is compromised, regardless of whether your transaction was credit or debit, future transactions by the thief will put your money at risk (possibly for months) rather than the bank's money.

Debit cards should be reserved for ATM use only. Not a perfect solution but unless you are going to swear off of ATMs as well, the best one can do in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Or if you're at ARCO in Oregon, you can avoid 35 cent undisclosed debit fees.</comment>


Inside Quizlet's incredible feedback center - <AUTHOR> http://quizlet.com/inside-quizlet/quizlets-incredible-feedback-center

<comment><USER2> I love these tools, can't wait until my next chance to build another one. I've seen several of these at various startups that have been built internally with similar features (although not with this much polish!) I built the first version of one at StreetEasy to handle a large volume of support queries - mostly driven by the fact that it was us developers answering all the support queries at that point. As pointed out in this post much of the benefit comes from tightly tying in with internal tools - billing, logging, logins, site visits etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks good enough to be a product on it's own. It's got a crazy amount of polish.

I know it's highly-coupled to your particular infrastructure, but would it be possible to open source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! The polish came from a hack night we did to redesign it.

I don't think there's much to open source -- it's about 2,000 lines of code. It's mostly just writing custom sql and elasticsearch queries to show data related to the users we're about to respond to.

Re: the log integration, all our application logs get written to logstash/elasticsearch/kibana, and one of the fields on the logs is the person_id (they're unique id whether logged in or out). When we show the logs in the feedback center, we just query elastic search and group by the different log types.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice. I like the idea of tying logs to users like that.

Seems like there would be a lot of overhead for that amount of logging though. Could you elaborate a bit more on how it all works? Do you run an internally developed mixpanel/GA type tool? Or, is this server side logging (the JS issue speaks otherwise).

<comment><USER5> Quizlet employee here.

For the JS logging you see in some of the screenshots, we use some JS on the client side that watches for errors and fires off a request to us with as much data as on the error as we can collect (in most cases we can get stack traces, which is pretty nice).

In terms of where this all gets stored and aggregated, all of our application level logs are shipped into Elasticsearch, and that's where the aggregations and counts you see in the screenshots come from. All of the application level logs are sent in with a unique identifier per-client so that we can keep track of them that way, as well as tagged by username, IP address, and anything else that might be useful in cross-correlating with logs from the rest of our stack.

If there's any more specific details you're curious about, I'd be happy to elaborate.

<comment><USER4> This is excellent, thanks for sharing.

What do you use to ship the logs into ES? I'm not familiar with the technologies you're using, but is this in-sourced developed tools? Or, are there OS options for log aggregating in ES that you would recommend?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's shocking to see something so heavily polished that's accessed by so few people. Well done!

Maybe not the best place to ask, but are you guys hiring summer interns?

<comment><USER5> We're certainly hiring full time, and may be looking for interns more as summer approaches. Feel free to send a github/resume/etc. to jobs at our .com and mention the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lots of great nuggets here. Connecting logging data to customer feedback seems especially worthwhile.

There was one line that really surprised me: _" We personally respond to almost every one of [the messages], without using response templates."_ Is that a feature? I think you can sound fairly personal even while using templates, and they could save a lot of time (30 seconds saved per message * 20k messages per month = 1 full time employee).</comment>


Video: Evernote CEO Phil Libin Shares Revenue Stats - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/video-evernote-ceo-phil-libin-shares-revenue-stats-and-how-to-make-freemium-work/

<comment><USER2> Worth watching to see the retention chart. Great idea.</comment>


Why many B2C startups pivot to B2B - <AUTHOR> https://invertedpassion.com/why-many-b2c-startups-pivot-to-b2b/?hn <comment><USER2> You could also think of it in risk/reward tradeoffs. B2C is high risk but high reward, B2B is moderate risk and moderate reward (getting a job is low risk and low reward). It's often rational to _attempt_ the high risk/reward payoff a few times and then if it doesn't work out, take what you've got and claim your consolation prize. If you win you win big, but if you didn't you win at something else.

All of the points in the article are _reasons_ why consumer markets are high risk & high reward, but the reason why entrepreneurs focus on them at first is often just that if you're an entrepreneur, you're already the type of person that wants to see what you're capable of before settling for what reality gives you.</comment>


Security company Blue Coat files for IPO - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/06/02/bain-blue-coat-ipo/ <comment><AUTHOR> Blue Coat is rather controversial: [https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/735941957130817536](https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/735941957130817536)</comment>


Bing Goes Full-On Censorship in English Search Results Within China - <AUTHOR> https://thenanfang.com/search-engine-bing-com-featuring-skewed-results-china/ <comment><USER2> Same with Yahoo in the past week. I think about new years eve the search results suddenly shifted to what they should look like using a Chinese only training set.

Results were all Xinhua and such, wikipedia, imdb, etc are no longer results numbers 1, 2, 3 anymore instead seeing a lot of qq, baidu, xiami etc results for song lyrics, movies, etc.

But it seems to be closer to normal today.

The normal internet speed has been maybe halved or thirded since about the week before Christmas, VPNs are all sketchy, there seems to be a regular interval when all connection is cut for a short time. You see pings oscillate between 40 and 400 ms quite regularly.

Chinese domains are always rock solid though. Can stream music off qq or xiami or stream youku without issue for extended periods of time when ycombinator, bbc news, etc are down. Yahoo and Bing stay up when most western sites are down.

However haven't been seeing as much total blockage as usual when they kick up the security. Lots of social sites that usually go black for a week or two are up just fine.

<comment><USER3> Gee, it sure would be helpful if the Chinese government had a switch they could flip at will to slant the internet to a pro-Chinese position. Why, that would be almost the definition of _" secure and controllable"_ when faced with periods of civil unrest...

<comment><USER4> Disinformation is a natural progression after total information awareness.

<comment><USER3> Well, I see it as the typical (and smart) Chinese straddling of control and efficiency.

The government would like the capability to render the internet more favorable to their interests.

The government also recognizes that a modern economy cannot run at competitive efficiencies with incomplete/mis- information.

Ergo, it'd be perfect if you had a propaganda switch you could throw to influence the chokepoints (search engines) only when you needed to. Economy keeps humming along with mostly full internet during status quo: when dissent breaks out, you restrict information and take the hit to economy efficiency in favor of order and security.

Pretty evil genius, actually...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I cannot believe after all these years China is still banning the whole site instead of using some keyword or content-based method. Not that those methods are right, but at least it would save a lot of programmers and researchers time. How can people make progress on anything related to scientific research without the help of Wikipedia? seven years ago I was a college student in China and I sure remembered how I have to set up VPN to check on wikipedia pages for my thesis. And needless to say, the school doesn't have the up-to- date paper collection from either IEEE or ACM. I have to directly visit the author's sites. I really wish the government could realize how harmful this is to innovation...

<comment><USER6> The answer is HTTPS. Unless China can compromise the whole country's OSes by forcing them to install a security certificate that lets them impersonate Wikipedia, Google, etc, they can't block individual pages on sites that only serve over https * They can only block whole sites. Wikipedia forces https sitewide for just this reason. Selective censorship isn't permitted.

Fun fact #1: That's believed to be why the Chinese government orchestrated the attacks against github in April 2015 using the great firewall to distribute infected javascripts via Baidu. They were trying to force github to take two projects offline that were being used to get around the great firewall and gain access to the unedited NY times online. The Chinese government can't selectively block those projects because github enforces https sitewide.

* Fun fact # 2: An intermediary of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) issued several fake certificates for Google-owned domains in March of 2015. Google untrusted the certificates in Chrome and Android and Mozilla did the same in Firefox.

<comment><USER7> Well, you could make everyone install a compromised SSL certificate...

[https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/perpass/current/msg019...](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/perpass/current/msg01979.html)

<comment><USER8> So you force your citizens to install a compromised SSL cert and can now impersonate any website. Now what? If you want to monitor someone don't you have to proxy all their traffic? Is that even feasible on a country wide scale? Because you can't do it intermittently since a user can just check which cert the key is signed with to tell you whether you're currently being monitored.

<comment><USER9> I would think it's not only feasible, but also more simple than what the Great Firewall already does.

You could probably do it on on 0.1% of the NSA's yearly budget. (Which, after some Googling, turns out to be 10M USD. That's even more than I expected.)

<comment><USER10> 10B, not 10M!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This would be a powerful argument against turning over ICANN's responsibilities to an international agency (i.e. an agency dominated by authoritarian governments like China). I hope the EFF and other advocates of a free, borderless Internet will take notice.

Who knows, maybe Microsoft did this on purpose as a not-so-subtle hint of what's to come.

</comment><comment><USER12> The things Bing will do for market share. I recall they even paid people to use it at one time. I wonder why they still continue to operate in China. They'll never be a factor in China, but are more than happy to bend over backwards to serve state sponsored results for their pittance percentage of search engine market share.

<comment><USER13> Probably to please stock owners - it is better to show 200 million active users, rather than 50 million active users from prime locations. I imagine Bing must have been crazy money wasting machine for MS so probably they do everything in their power to show MS management how "futuristic" is to look at them like on investment rather than liability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am trying to understand what the purpose of this blockade is? By the way here is a great talk about how the Great Firewall works [https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7196-how_the_great_firewall_disc...](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7196-how_the_great_firewall_discovers_hidden_circumvention_servers#video&t=3564) by CCC the biggest European Computer Club ;)

<comment><USER5> I think mostly it is for political related contents. Especially things like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989) and this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A more accurate title might be "Bing tries full-on censorship..". The author of the post notes:

> This isn't happening anymore (as of January 2), but we'll keep checking to > see if any further changes are made.

But it's worrying that Bing seems to have enacted censorship (maybe they pushed a change to production too early and rolled it back?). Certainly something to keep an eye on.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if someone at Bing, ordered to do that, deliberately overdid it to make it clear Bing was censoring.

<comment><USER17> Doubt it. Money is a bigger motivator to corporations than moral outrage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not just China:

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/02/internet- cen...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/02/internet-censorship)

I still remember when Google exited China and Microsoft tried to take advantage of that by being an even bigger lapdog than it was before to the Chinese government. Unfortunately for Microsoft, that didn't even work in gaining it more market share, so it may have been trying to please its Chinese masters for nothing:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-insight- id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-insight- idUSKBN0UE01Z20160101)

Of course, when Google got hacked back in 2010, it was through its own voluntarily setup PRISM-like access point for the NSA, so I guess there are no "innocent" parties here. It's still disappointing to see these companies making it easier for governments to control/arrest/assassinate their citizens through censorship and surveillance. Hopefully history will not look with favor upon these actions (although IBM still seems to be doing pretty well decades later after its Nazi genocide collaboration and Cisco is still making a lot of money after starting to sell surveillance-enabled routers in China and worldwide many years ago).

<comment><USER19> Any source about this "voluntary PRISM-like setup for the NSA"? And that this thing was the hack vector?

<comment><USER20> I assume it's

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/chine...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/chinese-hackers-who-breached-google-gained-access-to-sensitive-data- us-officials-say/2013/05/20/51330428-be34-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html)

but it wasn't "PRISM-like", it was an internal database of accounts under court ordered surveillance (in this case, orders specifically "issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act"), and it wasn't the attack vector, it was apparently the attack target.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like the typical twisting of facts from a conspiracy theorist.

That said, I welcome evidence of the original claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thanks programmers! Wouldn't have been possible without you!!

</comment><comment><USER22> Skeptical. I've been using Bing as my primary search engine for awhile here and haven't noticed any changes of late. When I can't be bothered running a VPN, it's the only foreign-language (ie. English) indexing search engine with reasonable results that is accessible (Duckduckgo and Google are blocked). For all the problems, Chinese internet has its perks though: we have many great, instant media streaming services, pervasive mobile payments and Taobao!

</comment><comment><USER23> If you want to de-index yourself from Chinese spammers, just put "tank man" on your pages.

</comment><comment><USER24> Search engine show what they want you to see. It's no longer search results.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's the dominate ethic among the big players these days: "If we don't bend over and do their dirty work for them, they'll just ban us, and find someone who will."

</comment><comment><USER26> Can't help laughing upon the "USA" to "About us" :-)

</comment><comment><USER27> All companies doing business in a country have to abide by the laws of that country. What's the big deal?

If anything, I'm surprised to learn it wasn't already the case.

<comment><USER28> There's a difference between "following the law" and eagerly participating in state-sponsored censorship.

There's also the fact that, in countries with basic human rights codified in their constitutions (i.e. most of the Western world), companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft make a lot of noise about protecting the rights of their users. But in less free nations, they tend to silently flip to the other side and go out of their way to appease the governments of those nations, especially wealthy ones like China. Hence the ease with which their services are manipulated in those countries.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is changing career at age 30 right choice? - <AUTHOR> I am 30 and working in a call center. I am not earning good salary. And I think there is no future in call center. I want to learn coding and make better living.<p>Is learning coding right decision? Where should I start? What are trends in coding? <comment><USER2> If your situation leads you to ponder a career change, a career change is almost always a good idea.

Ultimately the right decision is whatever lets you earn a living in a way you enjoy. If you like coding, code. If you like something else, do that. If you're poor but you enjoy your life you still win the game.

When trying to become successful, it really helps to have a clear idea of where you want to go, and a set of steps you can follow that lead there from where you're currently at. If you don't know where you want to go, your best bet is just to do something you enjoy for a while and see where life takes you. Just make sure that the things you do are related somehow, so you're building a deeper skill-set, rather than becoming a jack of all trades.

</comment><comment><USER3> Decide whether coding is a good fit for you. If you are one of these things:

* You love learning.

* You love to build (legos, woodwork, pillow fort, etc)

* You prefer efficiency (you like to do it easier, you find shortcuts)

* You are patient (you can do repetitive tasks without complaints)

* You like math (you don't need calculus, and you don't hate math)

With 0 experience, I would start by pursing QA (Quality Assurance) and user testing. It will help you better understand how things are made without actually making them.

[https://www.usertesting.com/](https://www.usertesting.com/)

Try to be good at it, and start doing freelance QA work (there's plenty of jobs).

Once you feel comfortable how it works, then you can pursue whichever direction you want. Let it be iOS, web, Android, whatever.

</comment><comment><USER4> It might be a right decision, might be not, only you can decide. Having a low paying job is definitely not fun, but having a job which you don't like or which doesn't fit your traits is also not good.

I would start in the following way:

* Learn basics of programming and learn whether it's for you. You can use any of the introductory MOOCs available there or Swift playgrounds which are very good: [https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/](https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/)

* Try finding an option to get a degree. There're plenty of places where you can get it part time (you can get into Harvard Extension School which doesn't require admission to just take courses, and having completed courses as validation, you can get an admission to an undergrad degree: [https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/undergraduate-de...](https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/undergraduate-degrees)). As the industry matures, it's harder and harder to get into it without some validation in the form of education, especially for best paying positions.

</comment><comment><USER5> You actually answered the complicated part yourself - you see no future in your current job and you do want to do something else. Now is the simple part - go out and do it.

Also, you have to realize that an age of 30 nowadays, it's more like 20 some time ago. You will most probably live something like 80 years, so you still have around 50 to go !

</comment><comment><USER6> I didnt start coding professionally until I was over 30 years old and I had a degree in Economics, though I do have a youthful appearance and looking like a recent grad, playing video games, fitting the culture, etc. may have helped me avoid age discrimination. I'm now pivoting towards a career in computational biology.

I would have made more money had I not changed career paths, but I have absolutely no regrets. Unless the path puts you towards Financial Independence in the short-term, it's not worth it to labor for 40 plus hours per week for something you don't care for. Nights and weekends dont really make up for it imo

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm starting my career at 30, so I don't see how changing one would be a problem.

Hope you take it as encouragement, because that is how it is meant.

</comment><comment><USER8> Look at it this way: you have another 30-35 years of career in from of you (that is a 3+ times your current working experience). That is a lot of years to be stuck in path you don't like. It is enough time to build a fulfilling career in probably any field (in fact it is probably enough time to do it more than once).

</comment><comment><USER9> You can make > $100k in less than 5 years with no college degree. JUST DO IT.

<comment><USER4> I am afraid, that software development is harder and harder to get into without college degree, though it's definitely still possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Follow your passion where you have potential and you can do great things!!

</comment><comment><USER11> You can do it, I made a career change from Civil Engineering to Developer at 30. It takes some time so don't plan on quitting your call center job soon.

First determine if you enjoy coding and have a knack for it. Some people enjoy it more than others and some people have the ability to quickly track down bugs, solve problems and apply knowledge to solving new problems.

If you're totally new to coding I would recommend starting with the book Head First HTML and CSS. You can find the first version pdf online, order from your library, get it on amazon, barnes and noble usually has it in stock. Work through that book at your computer.

Use google+stack overflow for help. Typically you can google a problem or error and you'll find a proper solutions on stackoverflow.com. This will ring true even as a professional/experienced developer.

Work through the book at a computer working along with it, don't just reed it and expect to learn.

After that create some basic websites of your own, register a domain name. Get an inexpensive shared hosting account. hostgator will work. Learn how to setup your domain, point the a record. Register yourname.com or something you might want to use in the future since you'll have it for a year and might want to renew use for your projects. The hosting account you could cancel after a month or two once you're familiar with setting up domains.

After you're comfortable with that. You could start contacting local businesses and see if you can land some work creating small business websites. It seems there are always small businesses out there that could use a website. In the beginning don't worry about forming an LLC or anything. Write them a simple proposal to create their website for $XXX or $X,XXX. Small businesses don't usually expect to pay a lot for sites and this isn't going to replace your day job but you can make some money and get experience working with clients. Also they will request things like can you make it do this that will expand your skills.

You can charge them for creating the website, for hosting and for maintenance. You can charge a fixed fee for creating the site. Getting started I'd estimate work at 2x your call center rate. Estimate how much time you think it will take, then double that and make that your fixed fee proposal to start. Initially you're probably going to take longer than you expect and might even lose money on projects by taking too much time. But part of doing this work is to learn new things, get more comfortable with your new trade.

I would have them register their domain name since that's something they will always want to keep with their business. A good service is keeping track of their expiration dates (run a who is) and follow up with them to make sure they renew in the future. Especially if they are new to websites/domains.

Charge monthly for hosting and maintenance. I would try charging $50/mo for hosting, maintenance offer a $99 plan that includes once monthly updates to content (up to 1 page). So this could be adding news, updating phone numbers, adding/removing staff, adding a page. You can setup recurring charges through paypal, they can signup with a credit or debit card through their paypal account or you could offer an annual plan that they pay by check.

Ok at this point you'll run in to clients asking can you make my site do xyz. Most likely this will require some server side development or javascript.

At this point I'd recommend getting the book headfirst php and mysql. and work through this book the same way as the first. PHP isn't a super glamorous language but I think it's the best next step.

After you have worked through a portion of that book. Give setting up wordpress a go. wordpress.org. You can install this on a hostgator account the same way. Wordpress is a CMS that powers lots of sites on the web and runs on PHP and MySQL. After you get your feet wet with this you can learn about wordpress themes and plugins. There is alot you can learn here. I think it's good experience. There are lots of WordPress developers out there so I don't think this should be your ultimate goal, but it is another service you can provide to clients to get more experience. Wordpress based websites where they can login and make updates, add pages, or you can set them up in WordPress and make the updates. I find many clients can't even handle making updates in WP and will still end up requesting you do it for them. Always charge them for making updates (unless you have a basic maint. plan that covers it that they pay monthly, get them used to paying for work).

Working with clients don't get overloaded. Always pad your deadlines and try to deliver early or at least on time.

Ok so you're getting familiar with Wordpress and working through the PHP and MySQL book. Once you complete the work with the book start creating some of your own applications. A to do list, something to track something you collect. Then research creating a login and authentication system from scratch in PHP and MySQL. This is a great learning experience. Once you have completed your own application I would recommend learning a framework. Frameworks handle all the messy behind the scenes stuff you just worked out on your own. But creating it from scratch once will help you understand what the frameworks are doing behind the scenes.

Ok so for frameworks I would recommend Laravel or Rails. This is your ultimate goal as Laravel and Rails developers get paid a good rate.

For Laravel start here (only after completing the books and your own apps)

laracasts.com

use forge.laravel.com for creating servers and deploying your code, learn git (use gitlab or bitbucket or github).

You might also want to start listening to startupsfortherestofus.com start with episode 1, being a developer if your ultimate goal but you should think about having your own products too.

Good luck with the transition.

<comment><USER12> I'm 41 and working on my second career shift. I was originally a lawyer and switched to content marketing about two and a half years ago. I'm currently learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and (eventually) PHP. @saluki, your comment is terrific. It speaks too many of my challenges at the moment.

I want to update the CSS of a WordPress theme for my wife's blog and I started reading through the theme files today. It seems really complicated and like a mountain to climb.

What I started thinking is that, maybe, the solution is to break the whole project down into smaller chunks and handle them, one at a time. My career change feels pretty similar: one step at a time.</comment></comment>


Linux 2.6.35 is out - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/398371/

<comment><USER3> Some improvements are pretty major, IMHO. The distribution of traffic load between CPUs, KDB integration and the improvements done to perf are my favorites for this release.

And, as a BtrFS user, I am always looking forward to improvements. After accidentally deleting 70+gigs of stuff out of an ext4 partition, I became very fond of snapshots and I can't imagine how I ever lived before that.

<comment><USER4> Have you had any problems with BtrFS? I'm going to transition my workstation to the just-released OpenSUSE 11.3 in a week or so, and planning to do a fresh install rather than upgrade, so I'm wondering whether to go with ext4 or BtrFS. (my 11.2 install originally was 11.1 and has accumulated a lot of cruft)

<comment><USER3> I boot off ext4 and have my home on a BtrFS partition. My kernel is 2.6.32-24 and can't remove snapshots. I am waiting for the next Ubuntu release so I can properly remove them.

The machine is configured to take a snapshot of my home folder on boot, but I am staring to regret snapshotting the downloads folder. I will change the setup accordingly in the future. I would like to mimic the way OpenSolaris does it, but didn't have the time to dig into the docs. Or a live OSOL box.

I haven't had any real problem beyond the annoyance of being unable to remove snapshots (have to rm-rf their guts and move them to a "delete-me later" folder), but, as always, YMMV.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the tips; OpenSUSE 11.3 runs on 2.6.34, which as far as I can tell has the snapshot deletion built in, but I'd better test it before I rely on it.

Re booting: I've already got a boot partition as my root is a logical volume on top of a RAID5 array anyway (thinking about changing this though - <USER2> better to buy 2 new much bigger HDDs and RAID1 them instead).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A list of major changes can be found here <http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_35>

</comment><comment><USER6> Has POHMELFS reached production quality yet ?

I heard a lot about it when it was first included but not much since.

<comment><USER7> It looks pretty much abandoned at this point; there's been no patches there since May, and nothing other than cross-tree cleanups for much longer than that.

<comment><USER6> What a pity. I spent two full weeks trying to get it to work when it was first announced, but I never could.</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Why I'm Choosing the Perils of Unemployment - <AUTHOR>

Background: Soon to be MIS graduate, decided quit working for the company that would have been my first post-college job (as a .NET developer).
Why I Quit: Job was intellectually unfulfilling, company completely fails the Spolsky Test (I don't want to sound like a prima donna, but I've been asking for a semi-new laptop and second monitor since I started, either of which would have increase my productivity significantly), little opportunity for career growth. I've also realized that I am lucky enough to enjoy a profession that is in demand despite the current economic climate.
What I'll be doing with my newfound free time: Between working nearly full-time as a .NET developer (35+ hours a week) and being a full-time student, I haven't had time to learn the data structures/algorithms basics that my course curriculum hasn't covered (which I find genuinely interesting). I'll be spending time learning that stuff, along with working on some personal projects and improving my Ruby on Rails chops. I might even read a book or take a nap.
I'll also be looking for a job. So, if in a month or two you would like to bring on an entry level developer who is refreshed,  has recently broadened his skillset and is eager to learn new things, my email is in my profile. <comment><USER2> have you thought about attempting to accomplish these things in the evenings? once school is done and all that

<comment><AUTHOR> That was certainly something I considered. However, I feel I can accelerate my learning if I focus solely on improving my skill set. More importantly, I have managed to save up a year's worth of living expenses, so I can make this decision without worrying about my financial situation.</comment></comment>


A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood <comment><USER2> > My system will never have to deal with names from China

I work in a small French town where Chinese people were quite rare until a few years ago. Their passports have a translation of their names in Latin alphabet, same for Russians.

However one day one of my user told me "hey I can't find some customers in your app, but I'm 100% sure I recorded them previously. Funnily they're all Chinese".

It turns out that to avoid querying the database too much I was starting to look for customers name once the user had entered at least 3 chars. Most of the Chinese names were only 2 chars like "Xi", "Wu" etc.

I clearly remember thinking at the time of writing the original code that nobody had only a 2 letter name :)

<comment><USER3> This happens with western names as well. Jo, Bo, Malcolm X.

<comment><USER4> Wasn't he just known as X though? His legal name would have been Islamic and his birth name was Little.

<comment><USER5> If you are Malcom X and you create, let's say, a Facebook account, then your last name is X.

<comment><USER6> Harry S Truman's middle name was the letter S.

<comment><USER7> Ditto Ulysses S Grant (though he wasn't born with that name).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read through the entire list of falsehoods about addresses and I think I've got a few more broken assumtpions that weren't listed:

* _A property will have an address_

(I live in a very rural area of CA where the roads have forked several times for many miles to get to a property and they are all unnamed private roads. People often just put down the APN and the nearest town (which might be several miles away) as their address. I deal with this one all the time. I routinely have to find their house for the first time. Good luck using GPS here, if you can't read a map, you're S.O.L. [And no, even trying to confirm that you are where you think you are with GPS on your phone is gonna be a challenge. For one, you're miles from cell reception so if you didn't save the map to your phone, you're screwed. For two, under heavy tree and cloud cover, you may not even get a GPS fix on a phone.])

* _A recipient needs a name and address_

My mother lived for a time in a _very_ rural area nearby. She rode a BMW motorcycle and someone she met only briefly once successfully sent her a letter by simply drawing a BMW symbol as the name and address and affixing the nearest town.

* _A person has a street address_

Homeless and rural people regularly fail this one.

</comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately - especially when dealing with non-technical ideas - some of these "falsehoods" veer into opinion territory.

It's an interesting resource but perhaps the title of it is a little egoistic/presumptuous in that regard.

<comment><USER10> You just inspired an idea from me regarding HN comments. I think Slashdot still has one of the most elegant commenting systems around, even if the quality of the comments (due to the site's ownership) is worse.

I would love to tag HN comments with certain attributes and be able to filter them out. For example, this comment and the parent could be tagged "meta- discussion". Then those who want to discuss the content of the article could filter them out quickly.

/. tags are pretty accurate - "funny" "informative" "insightful" "trolling" \- though trolling is a delete-level offense here.

Likewise, metamoderation (peer review, or moderation of tagging) was a brilliant idea.

<comment><USER11> I have been thinking about this for a while with Reddit. If users could mark why they think something is worth upvoting then everyone else could just filter to find the insightful or informative comments and get rid of the funny ones, or vice verses depending on what they were looking for at the time. Distilling down the comments to stuff you are much more likely to be interested in could improve the site quite a bit, it works on Steam fairly well for games even with a somewhat free tag system but I can't help but think that perhaps not many people would bother.

The simplification to up and down hurts discussion on Reddit (and probably on hacker news too) because it promotes widely comprehended and accepted content. This is why on Reddit pictures do so well unless they are banned, they are very quick to review and choose to up or down vote. However a 10k document will be reviewed by a lot less people, it could fit exceptionally well with the content and get 100% upvotes but be completely buried by all the pictures because a lot less people had time to view it and upvote it.

There is a deeper challenge here with how comments and upvoting and content filtering via users is done. It isn't just the lack of information from tags but also once a document is reviewed will an upvote occur. Much of Reddit shows users will widely upvote on the basis of the title of say news without ever reading it. The longer the article is the less people will return to Reddit to upvote it. Both HN and Reddit promote popularity over fit because low numbers of upvotes on content equates to low engagement and that isn't valuable to them, but it might be the singularly most important piece of content for that audience its just long and badly titled.

There are a bunch of unsolved issues that Reddit and HN have surfaced around the model for content and comment voting and where these two sites differ is mostly only in the rules to try and mitigate the problem with the chosen model. The problem is only more complicated models can improve it and the moment you do that you potentially lose customers, but at the same time you potentially don't want those customers either.

That is my unfinished thought chain on this.

<comment><USER8> >The problem is only more complicated models can improve it and the moment you do that you potentially lose customers, but at the same time you potentially don't want those customers either.

Therein lies the key paradox. Statistically, content quality usually has the shape of the the lognormal distribution, with community size on the horizontal axis and quality on the vertical. Content below a certain margin of popularity is usually unpopular for a reason--the ideas of the community are not very good! When content quality is high, the popularity of a community rises because the ideas are good! After a critical threshold though quality goes down. Once you've reached that threshold, number of users is inversely proportional to quality. I really like HN vetting process for voting: you have to have spent enough time on the site, and commented in a way that gained sufficient approval from the existing community in order to get the right to vote in that community. Keeping barriers to entry high is critical to this, but marketing people can only see $/user.

Reddit has become increasingly intolerable for me except for a few niche subreddits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the units of measurement falsehood list[0]:

> _Heterogenous units are of no practical use. (Radar beam height formula uses > a constant expressed in nautical miles per foot)_

Constants in formulas can be expressed in any unit system you want. What the author means to say is that one formula they saw in one textbook used nautical miles per foot. The "radar beam height formula" is not specific to any particular unit system.

[0] [https://www.stevemoser.org/posts/dev/falsehoods- programmers-...](https://www.stevemoser.org/posts/dev/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-systems-of-measurement.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> idk

> The term "domain-specific language" has meaning.

It means "is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain".

The fact that it is hard to draw the line between DSL and general purpouse, that DSLs grow too large, ... does not invalidate the meaning of the concept.

Or:

> It is meaningful to talk about the speed of a programming language.

It is? When I have to perform a given computation within a given time on a given hardware, the same algorithm can be fast enough in one language and too slow in another. Except if you want to nitpick and see _language_ independently of _implementation_, which is a valid point, but has little practical meaning.

<comment><USER14> Well, Haskell (say) can _never_ be as fast as C++, because of immutability. That means that it has to make a new place to store the new value, which means an allocation. That's not dependent on implementation.

(Except, I suppose, you theoretically could implement C++ so that it _also_ allocated every variable. Still, I think the point is valid: Haskell, by its nature, _has_ to do things that C++ doesn't, so Haskell is going to have a very hard time being as fast as C++.)

<comment><USER15> Immutability doesn't mean no one can implement a Haskell extension that allows safely describing and composing operations that use mutability on the inside.

Of course on current hardware with current compiler Haskell programs tend to be slower, and also tend to be more correct compared to C/C++ (maybe even compared to let's say C++20).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am always appalled when systems (built in the US) have difficulties with apostrophes in the names. I mean, have you missed all the Irish names that exist in the US?

It would be "fair enough" forgetting about accents when computing resources were limited, but to not deal with apostrophes? Really?

(I mean, ok, this story is not new, just look at the history of the [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fu633/when_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fu633/when_and_why_did_english_orthography_stop_using_%C3%BE/) )

<comment><USER17> Apostrophes in street names is a bit of a cause célèbre in the UK.

Also, should we treat ' and ' as equivalent?

<comment><USER18> Can't forget about ` and '

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This doesn't seem curated. It just seems like a list (a long one bloated one at that).

<comment><USER20> Most github list projects seem to suffer from this. For instance the infamous "awesome list" [0]. Select a category. Most of them contain several hundred items. As if this is anything better than searching google for the term.

[0]: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)

<comment><USER21> Even if there were all in one place it would be a good overview or an easy place to lookup but the list is not even far from complete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really enjoy these, but where can I find an explanation of what each falsehood means (in particular: the network one)?

I mean, now that I know I'm wrong, how do I become right?

<comment><USER20> Yup, I don't like some of the lists that just lists falsehoods without providing what one's supposed to do about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> After reading the Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, I wonder, what would you recommend as a universal way to store users's names?

There seems to be two main options:

Store the name in a single field, be correct but lose the option to sort the names reliably.

Store the name in two fields, have the users bend over our western form standards but be able to search and sort easily.

Do you have any real life experience with these or other "falsehoods"?

<comment><USER24> I've dealt with that on a project for Kuwait embassy. The solution was to create a 2 fields (columns) in a separate table that was linked by ID to main "users" table and the UI would ask the user to add whatever wanted and name the field. Then when searching the algorithm would categorize the most used ones and present them from time to time to Admin that would manually add as options for general search UI. As times passed on and more data was entered this way became better and better allowing for a more fine tuning of searchable data.

I shit you not, there were fields added there that our Western thinking would never dream they are needed, for example plenty of old people from Papua New Guinea added "Grandfather initial" to their name. Or others added "tribe name" as a meaning to somehow show that they are part of an extended family.

<comment><USER25> I too would love to read more about this. It sounds like a great general purpose solution.

Are there any mandatory parts? Assuming not, how does sorting work? Was it a matter of sort orders being pre-programmed for more common fields (e.g. sort by last name first, then by first name) and an assumption that any name that didn't include any of the pre-programmed parts was just stuck at the end? Was it even an issue? (i.e. how many people even had a name consisting entirely of "uncommon" fields?)

Edit: Another question. You said just two fields in the secondary table (perhaps you where simplifying though...). How does display work? Presumably the user expects their grandfather's middle initial to be printed in a particular location relative to all of the other parts of their name.

<comment><USER24> The only mandatory part, from UI point of view, was the username in "users" table. On 2nd table (think was "userExt" called) everything was user generated and not required. From law point of view the data you entered in there was your responsibility to comply with both embassy requirements and your country issued ID's (personal identity card, passport, driver license, marriage license, etc).

The document was also user generated from their defined fields and was user customizable. My implementation was to allow users move fields on the form however they liked and also had an option to be saved as template to be used further by same user or others.

Sorting and filtering was the biggest issue. Since we talk about Kuweit, Unicode complaint was paramount, including Mongolian alphabet (not to mention classic pitfalls of Chinese, Japanese, Arabic). Initially I went with UTF-16. That was a big mistake and I've refactored that part of the code a year later to be UTF-8. Since this was also manually picked by Admin, it had a points system. For example if more then 10 different users would add a new field (let's say "tribe name") then Admin would get a notification about it and could be added as option, for future users, to pick when entering their data. Once defined in Admin part, it could be used for sorting/filtering like any other already defined field. As for exact sorting, I've simply let Unicode standard and the library used at the time to figure it out, I haven't done any special code on it. Best to let others smarter then you on that issue to do it, you just use their defined interfaces.

Display for Admin would show all the user defined fields, one after another. Admin also had the possibility to view them in the user saved templates. In case of using a template from another user to current user, the form would simply show a red outline and empty space there if data was missing, and if the same user had other fields not used by current view they would be enumerated at the end of current form. Forms could be on as many pages as the user wanted. Remember, this was used by embassy and everything entered online would also be manually compared with the hard copy of them by the officer in charge of your application. I don't think pranking the embassy officer with a shitty form would be nice for you since he would simply reject your application and you had to pay (the least amount was on thousand of dollars) to begin the process. Only a bored billionaire would do something like that, usual folks took great care to actually be 100% accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Falsehoods programmers believe about life and people outside California."

<comment><USER27> "You don't need bitcoin because you can just wire money from one account to another"

"Okay, you don't need bitcoin if you are not sending your money to imaginary places like Iran and N'Korea"

"Okay, you don't need bitcoin in Europe or US unless one party in your transaction has surname that starts with Ass and ends with ange"

"What do you mean by saying that banks abroad could refuse to open you account if you are US citizen"

"Capital controls and war? What you are, a character in a Neal Stephenson novel or Python developer?"

<comment><USER28> You do realize that it's still illegal to do all these things with Bitcoin, right? It's not that banks can't do these things; they just have no interest performing illegal activities on your behalf. Bitcoin solves nothing here.

<comment><USER27> It's also illegal to smoke weed, drop acid, watch netflix or be gay or publish suicidal jokes in some places. Everybody draws a line for themselves in regard to which laws they have to respect or have no choice but to break today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is not equivalent, but if someone has the time to read the list, I would recommend instead the reading of R. L. Glass "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering" [1].

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Facts-Fallacies-Software- Engineering-...](https://www.amazon.com/Facts-Fallacies-Software-Engineering- Robert/dp/0321117425)

</comment><comment><USER30> Lists of falsehoods can be very useful and enlightening (especially about common things like dates, names and email addresses), but with the "falsehoods programmers believe about falsehoods" it becomes just an exercise in pedantry.

<comment> kube-system Knowing the falsehoods is useful, knowing when and how to apply that knowledge is what makes someone an effective engineer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is kinda depressing reading for the start of the workweek. Also, I wish each of these was more expanded.. I can think of many workarounds for each of these situations but I am curious what other people's solutions might be: [http://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/01/28/falsehoods- progra...](http://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/01/28/falsehoods-programmers- date-time-zones.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> Actually most of these things are not bound to programmers. In fact, I think programmers in general are more aware of these lists.

<comment><USER33> Yes, but in the other hand, if you don't handle validation or storage of these things it's rather irrelevant.

<comment> kube-system I wouldn't say it's irrelevant. If you are speaking to someone over a phone, over a counter, or through the mail, they interpret your communication through the same lens of assumptions, before it even reaches your application.

<comment><USER33> That's why I said rather ;)

Human assumptions are one thing, but if you're directly speaking to a person, you can explain your unusual name situation. There is no discussing with the input validation on a web form, though. That's why I think it's far more important for programmers rather than, for example, counter staff.

<comment> kube-system > if you're directly speaking to a person, you can explain your unusual name > situation.

Sort of. I'm more thinking about situations where the person makes interpretive assumptions on their own without opportunity for discussion. You don't normally see what people are actually filling out in the application when you're talking to a customer service representative. Nor would 90%+ of western CS reps have any clue what you're even talking about if you brought up even a very common exception.

Example:

Form: [first name] and [last name]

CS Rep: what's your name?

Customer: "Kim Jong Un"

Resulting record: {firstname: 'Kim', lastname:'Un'}

And even if your developer was smart and made those fields "given name" and "surname", your CS rep might still jam the values in the wrong fields because they're a kid in Nebraska making $12/hr who barely understands the difference between Korea and China.

<comment><USER33> Fair point, I never thought of that. Thanks for expanding on this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Quite interesting. I have written software (and still do), that follow those falsehoods. But in many of those projects, it did not matter ultimately.

So I am glad I did not sweat over those, and got something up and running, and did not get bogged by some of those very difficult questions.

Hopefully for the projects that stick around I'll be able to do some clean- up...

</comment><comment><USER35> I didn't see a falsehoods list from the perspective of a sysadmin. Time to start writing a blog post....

</comment><comment><USER36> Isn't it strange that bits of essential knowledge ends up being either opaque (some form of code that does some magic) or negative, as in these 'falsehoods'?

</comment><comment><USER37> There are things more important than working software.

<comment><USER38> A fair few of the these lists (which are fascinating, by the way - just pick one at random) are ultimately about respecting people and culture. Being bothered to correctly handle calendars or naming conventions (and lots of other things) that may be unfamiliar is helping to include people who might otherwise be excluded, or treated as second class.

<comment><USER39> I think this can be compared to the standard trade off of doing things the right way or the quick way, which is not necessarily wrong but can blow up spectacularly. Unfortunately, sometimes the work to do things the right way is an infinite pit of edge cases and domain knowledge.

You can use libraries to paper over this trade off but then you have other trade offs like needing to worry about bugs you have no control over.

In the end, if you don't feel at least a little bad about the software you've written or how long it took to write it, you are probably doing something wrong

<comment><USER37> Do your users care if it's done the "right" way so long as it works the way they want?

Cannot tooling and methodology make up for poor documentation or "code quality"?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Researcher: CIA, NSA may have infiltrated Microsoft to write malware - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/security/281553/researcher-warns-stuxnet-flame-show-microsoft-may-have-been-infiltrated-nsa-cia

<comment><USER2> > The suggestion piqued the imaginations of conspiracy theorists, but doesn't > have a shred of evidence to support it... That's still no evidence that > Microsoft could be or has been infiltrated by spies from the U.S. or from > other countries.

"Researcher: Aliens may have infiltrated Microsoft to eat your souls" would've been equally accurate.

</comment><comment><USER3> This conspiracy theory has literally no supporting evidence. The entire article is linkbait built around a sensationalist headline.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just to point out, infiltrations don't have to happen in a certain order. i.e. ex-NSA employee, goes job hunting at Microsoft. Infiltrations like this can happen when NSA, for example, approaches, an existing MS employee and offers money or other rewards in return for cooperation.

If this story is true that would be the easiest and fastest way. It always helps to first find someone who has done something illegal or shameful in their past. Then in addition to a reward there could be a veiled threat of exposure to ensure loyalty and co-operation.

Hate to talk about tin-foil crap like this, but unfortunately I don't think I would be too surprised if this was true.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your top point, and would also hazard a guess that these agencies hire lots of ex MSFT people as well. Also, when you are the federal government, you can always "suggest" Microsoft do certain things, and give them an offer too good to refuse.

I think the biggest thought this article left out is that I wouldn't be surprised at all if microsoft and the NSA were in bed together, and in a perfectly "legal" manner, with both parties full aware. And working together. I'd bet microsoft even does a little consulting/contracting work for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few months ago, I would have told you that there is no way that anything like this is possible at MSFT - especially the crypto world at Microsoft where everything is extra locked down (it is kept separate from the rest of Windows).

However, after Flame, I'm not sure what is possible and what isn't. If somebody can figure out a way to sign binaries as Microsoft using hitherto unknown crypto research, you have to wonder what else they're capable of.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is pure speculation...</comment>