Dengue, aka "Breakbone Fever", Is Back - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/pandemics/2012/12/dengue_fever_in_united_states_breakbone_fever_outbreaks_florida_texas_and.single.html <comment><USER2> back??? I live in Rio, it never left... We have thousands of sick people every year. I caught it two or three times already. Horrible thing. Its so common that we know in which months it will strike worse.

For those of non tropical countries that are really scared, there are some tricks while you have it. First and foremost: drink insane amounts of water. Dengue will take all the water out of you thru its constants diarrheas. You need water more than you need food, drink more water. You will have very high fever, control it with meds but be aware that it won't go away. You will have pain in the extremities of your body (fingers, hands...), you can try to mask it with meds but you learn to live with it for a while, makes it hard to sleep.

Here in Brazil we have something we call "Soro Caseiro" which everyone learns to prepare at home, its one of your main ally against dehydration. You mix 1 liter of water with 3.5g of salt and 20g of sugar. You drink this to prevent dehydration or in the initial phase of your dengue. If things get really bad, you will need a hospital.

On my personal experience with this nasty disease, I've found that drinking Pedialyte helped me a lot. You may think it is dumb to drink baby fluid replacement med but it works and doesn't taste as bad as "Soro Caseiro", here in Brazil we have Pedialyte flavored like orange juice, so makes it easier.

Remember dengue is a bitch and can be very serious. When you get it, you need to see a doctor. All the tips I've placed above are useless if you get the more worrisome types (which are more rare), so go see a doctor.

And remember: don't despair

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the Pedialyte tip, never heard about it but sounds helpful. Will try when I get dengue next time!

<comment><USER4> Just as an FYI, at my local grocery store (Whole Foods), you can buy Electrolyte Water by the liter. It's essentially pedialyte for adults. There's also Gatorade, which is an electrolyte drink for athletes, etc.

<comment><USER5> _There's also Gatorade, which is an electrolyte drink for athletes, etc._

Note: If you're dehydrated, raw Gatorade will probably not help you, since it's too concentrated. A 50/50 mixture of Gatorade and water is much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also worth to mention is that on Madeira (Portugal) the biggest outbreak in Europe happened since 1920. Experts say that it will spread to the mainland soon..

[http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=...](http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.welt.de%2Fgesundheit%2Farticle111380176%2FGroesster- Ausbruch-von-Dengue-Fieber-seit-100-Jahren.html&act=url)

<comment><USER7> I'm Portuguese and this has been on the news for a few months now, it's quite scary to think of the consequences this can have when it reaches the mainland, especially in the USA, where over 200 million people live.

<comment><USER8> Dengue has always been around in the tropics and subtropics.

"There are around 50 million cases of dengue fever around the world each year according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Of those, about 500,000 people contract severe dengue, which is a potentially life-threatening." [1]

It's a nasty disease, but it's no Ebola.

[1] <http://www.health.qld.gov.au/dengue/info/worldwide.asp>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ugh. A dive instructor friend of mine caught this in Thailand and was weak/sick for months. It's scary. If this becomes endemic in the US, going outside will be taking your health in your hands, and we'll probably end up draining a bunch of marshland, re-introducing DDT, etc. since on balance losing birds is better than losing people.

<comment><USER10> Much as I want to, DDT isn't the wonder-pesticide it is sometimes seen as (it affects not only birds - the german article has more info on wildlife, the english more on human health effects): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT> Also, I want to see how you drain Florida :-)

<comment><USER9> It doesn't seem anywhere near as bad as malaria or dengue. It does seem to disproportionately affect children, but doing something like spraying border areas with low population density would probably still be a win.

I think in the US we could afford to just use malathion.

Draining Florida would best be accomplished by just declaring it an exclusion zone from human habitation :) (Florida basically terrifies me more than any other state in the US, even California)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I never understood why people want to live in Florida. It gets unbearably hot, you get hurricanes every year, and you're susceptible to tropical diseases. Seems to me that there are a lot better places to live in the US, where you don't have a tropical climate.

<comment><USER12> Strictly speaking, Florida is unfit for human occupation. Even when hurricanes aren't blowing, it's the thunderstorm capital of the country. Runner-up in the uninhabitable sweepstakes is New Orleans, which is mostly below sea level and only "dry land" because of unreliable dikes that periodically fail. Over time, because of land subsidence in New Orleans itself, and because of a gradual increase in worldwide sea level, New Orleans becomes more and more dangerous.

When you perform an economic analysis, you discover it would be cheaper to pay everyone in New Orleans to move away, than to let them live there and pay for the disasters that inevitably blow in from the sea. Florida is only slightly safer on average, and that only because the northern reaches are sufficiently above sea level.

<comment><USER9> Oh, my problems with Florida are the crime rates and percentage of fraudulent businesses based there, plus huge number of retirees and associated transfer payments.

New Orleans (and Florida) both are necessary port logistics areas, but shouldn't be heavily populated. New Orleans is gateway to the Mississippi which is basically the industrial/agricultural 60% center of the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One can always hope that this leads to innovation in mosquito repellents and mosquito targeted insecticides. Either would also have the added benefit of helping prevent the spread of malaria in other parts of the world.

I've been in SE Asia for around 6 months now and Dengue is one of the few things that truly frightens me.

<comment><USER14> Whatever happened to the mosquito laser?

[http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20120903/07...](http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20120903/07334520256/forget- death-star-anti-mosquito-lasers-heres-how-nathan-myhrvold-can-help-tackle- malaria-improve-his-image.shtml)

<comment><USER15> That was a show trick, very impressive on paper (or Youtube, as it were). At most it could be commercialized as an expensive gadget for first-worlders, if even that. Maybe in twenty years, when Moore's law will make it dirt cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Related News:

Hundreds of thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes set to be released into the Florida Keys in experiment to fight dengue fever

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244272/Florida- offi...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244272/Florida-officials- consider-releasing-genetically-modified-non-biting-mosquitoes-battle-dengue- fever.html)

<comment><USER17> The main resistance to this idea here in the Keys, is that nobody really wants to be bitten by a genetically-modified mosquito (even though the odds of it happening are miniscule, the released skeeters will be males). We have a very well-funded, state-chartered Mosquito Control District, but it is unable to enter property and conduct standing-water investigations by people who won't let that gosh darn gummit on their property without a warrant. I'd prefer both genetically-modified mosquitos, and special warrants from the governor to check standing water, to getting Dengue. Some of my friends have, and they were very sorry for weeks.

<comment><USER18> I lived in key west and always had random people in my backyard inspecting for standing water. Even woke up to a helicopter one morning overhead spraying for mosquitoes. I got dengue in 2010 and it suuuucked, the eye pain is incredible, you can't move your eyes without extreme pain. And at the time I had no idea what it was, and it turns out the awareness of it is still low because many people work in the service industry and don't have health insurance so most people avoid the doctor (like myself) didn't know I dengue until afterwards.. like the article says 5% of people in key west have had it at some point which sucks because if you get it again (and a different strain of it) anytime after in your life then you have a 20% chance of dying.. which I hate thinking about when I travel to costa rica. I got a bug zapper and have been massacring mosquitoes nightly. I dont know why there isn't one on every lamppost. /rant

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We've already gone through West Nile in the DFW area this year. A very mild winter followed by a wet spring helped increase the number of serious cases. There is some thought that climate changes plus increased migration to the area is creating a rich environment for health challenges like these.

</comment><comment><USER20> A friend of mine caught this, it's common in Indonesia where he was.

It's not that dangerous if you are educated about it. Never take Aspirin for example, this can be life threatening, but people tend to use it here when they feel bad.

It's so difficult to educate the general population about things like that.

<comment><USER21> There are four strains. If only one is common in Indonesia, then you're right - once through is more or less like the flu.

In Puerto Rico there are three strains endemic. The more different strains you get, the worse the disease (i.e the worse your systemic reaction).

One of my son's classmates died last year of it, in Ponce, Puerto Rico (about a year after we left PR) - he was home from the hospital, posted to Facebook "I'm not 100% yet but feeling much better", and died that night. He was 11.

Dengue sucks.</comment></comment>


Announcing TechStars Austin - <AUTHOR> http://www.techstars.com/announcing-techstars-austin/

<comment><USER2> Anybody else seeing the technology startup business creeping ever-closer to emulating an American Idol mentality? The "startup" seems to be getting smaller and smaller. These are more like paid internships than "funding."

What is really going on here is some people with access to money and zero new ideas throwing micro stuff at the wall to see what sticks. The best advice I ever received was "don't take on investment if you don't need it." This message consistently from a wide variety of successful people then running anything from Angel-funded companies to post-IPO NASDAQ listings.

<comment><USER3> "don't take money unless you need it" is not an unusual bit of advice inside of TechStars either. One of the top companies in the last TS Cloud class is bootstrapped and on fire - <http://drifty.com>

They could have raised tons of money but don't need to. Most mentors steered them toward growing their business financing free.

Another way to look at seed stage investors is not that they are sprinkling their money everywhere hoping something works but instead that the limiting resource is they don't have enough time to pursue all their ideas and want to back people who are working on things that align.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TechStars really seems to be going for breadth, but I guess each location only has a class of about 12 startups per cycle.

One thing that irks me about TS is that there are different managing directors for each location...I mean there has to be given the number of locations TS is now at, but it makes me question whether or not there is even a 'TechStars' culture that exists throughout the programs or if each city operates individually and do things differently from others.

I promise I'm not trying to criticize TS, it's just a thought that came to my mind when I saw that they had opened another location.

<comment><USER5> It feels more like their franchising. Find a local incubator/ seed/ VC opportunity with good local roots, and brand a program there for 3 months. It benefits both sides, TS portfolio grows and the local shop gets a big nod of legitimacy from outside their market.

It adds momentum to the local scene, expands their portfolio with minimal costs, and hasn't seemed to drastically water down their image. Or maybe it has - I'm not quite sure... There are many times I would have loved to go through TechStars, but I feel that the key benefit of the program is the networking & 'friction' with other great entrepreneurs & the top VCs, I'm not so sure how it will keep scaling without degrading those key aspects. As in, I imagine it was easy to get the most high profile mentors or VCs to Boulder or NYC once/ twice a year. Now, they're supposed to hit up like 7+ programs? Different demo days...

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure I'd call it franchising.

Even with the recent TechStars Cloud class in San Antonio, about as non- startup a city as you can find, the program didn't seem to have any trouble attracting mentors and VCs. Demo day was packed with VCs from around the country and AFAIK a lot of the companies from the latest batch have had no trouble raising seed.

(I'm not a TS alum, but I work out of the coworking space TS uses in San Antonio)

<comment><USER5> Point taken, maybe the wrong term/ my lack of specific knowledge.

My personal thoughts though are in this industry (and this side of it), a huge advantage to TS & YC is relational. I'm not sure how well or how long relational scales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I did TechStars as a 'HackStar' in NYC in 2011. It was a great experience where I ended up joining one of the portfolio companies full-time for the next 2 years. Originally I had applied as a solo-founder and was rejected on the basis that solo-founders can't handle the emotional roller-coaster of doing a startup.

Fast forward 3 years and I'm now a successful solo-founder and am launching an incubator for individuals this Summer in NYC check out: <http://microha.us>.

<comment><USER8> How does free office space help develop a business?

<comment><USER7> Seriously?

<comment><USER8> Yes, I am serious. I want to know how having an office space helps a business. More so a tech startup. I'm not being pedantic, just genuinely curious and interested.

<comment><USER9> Because the milk steamer at Starbucks is loud as shit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Went to check out the application page, was greeted with a Sign Up modal (what the hell is f6s?) that would absolutely not go away unless I signed in with Facebook or LinkedIn (not going to dig into console hijinks for this). I just wanted to look at the application. You can technically read it behind the modal, but still. Getting really tired of these aggressive in-your-face Sign Up tactics.

edit: Ok, the console fix is really easy, but I feel like I shouldn't have to resort to that.

<comment><USER3> Good feedback, thanks we'll modify.

We are using social sign up for applying, but you should have to click through that to just see the application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Late to the thread, sorry.

Jason Seats here, I'm running the Austin program and ran the last 2 TS Cloud programs. Also co-founded slicehost and helped build Rackspace Cloud.

Happy to answer any questions here. Will also hit some of the existing questions in thread.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't know, I think PG's quote about TechStars here:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lcp0uZsY7k> @ 9:00

probably tells you everything you need to know.

<comment><USER3> I'm replying to this comment on a forum that PG built, so he deserves the courtesy of me being in his house.

Also I'll say that he was a phenomenal inspiration to Matt Tanase and me when we started Slicehost. I've learned so much from his writing. The guy is a giant. I had the great pleasure of meeting him one time at the YC office on a random Rackspace visit that I tagged along on and I considered it to be a 'bucket list' item.

That being said, YC just has a different strategy than we do. And in addition when you are talking about the act of creation there really aren't limiters, so the net-net is that they can kick ass and we can too.

The most important point on the topic to me is the one he made at 9:30- "even though we've funded a lot of startups it's still only a small percentage of the total number of startups".

There is a lot of work out there to do on building great businesses. Given historical evidence, not all of it is going to originate from Mountain View.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of tech is moving into Austin. I was just there for 2 months after being in NYC for 2 years. Anyone going down from SF or NYC will be disappointed with the public transportation.

<comment><USER9> To get around in Austin you use either a bicycle or a car/truck. There is bus service, and a one-track commuter rail link, but if your expectation is something like the connectivity of NYC then you will be sorely disappointed.

Personally, I'm holding out for the city to build sky gondolas.

<comment><USER12> I laughed the first time I heard the sky gondolas idea. I doubt it will ever take off. Yes, having a car is just about required in Austin, I tried the bus and it wasn't so great.

I would love to see them add more rail lines though.</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing K9 Ventures II – A $40M technology-focused micro-VC fund - <AUTHOR> http://k9ventures.com/blog/2012/07/19/announcing-k9-ventures-ii-a-40m-technology-focused-micro-vc-fund/

<comment><USER2> Manu invested in Torbit and is on our board. He's been great. One of the things I've grown to appreciate is that he wants founders to continue to lead the company. With Manu you don't have to worry about being replaced with adult supervision. That's not true with all VC's.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like all of the criteria laid out for portfolio investments, save #5: _The entire team should be located in the SF Bay Area._ I'm seeing this requirement more and more often among venture firms. Clearly K9 Ventures has had success with their investments, so they are free to allocate their money as they choose.

I have nothing against the Bay Area. I went to school here, live here, and started my company here. However, if I want to start another venture down the road I feel like I'd have no choice but to start it here. And not having choice only hurts the entrepreneur.

<comment><USER4> Those are his criteria, not yours. He lives in the Bay Area and wants to be close to all the companies he invests in. As an entrepreneur, you'd have to start a company here _if_ you'd like Manu to invest in you. If you want to start it someplace else, then he may not be the right investor for you. It's that simple.

What I like about Manu's criteria is that they are very clearly laid out. Not all investors make it so easy to know what they expect out of companies, so they end up wasting a founder's time.

Disclosure: I've known Manu since the late 90s, and he invested in my company (IndexTank).

<comment><USER3> I definitely appreciate how clearly everything is laid out. Some VCs have ridiculously wishy-washy copy on their website. If I had a nickel every time I read about "investing in big ideas" I'd have a $1M seed round in no time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome. I remember discussing Rapportive with Manu back when we started and although we didn't end up working together (maybe he didn't want too many companies that would sell to LinkedIn :p ?), the quality of his insights was off the charts.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, this is great news. It was the same for us at MobileWorks: he was one of the first investors we spoke with during this process, and his advice was terrific – it led us to where we are today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> On first glance, I assumed "K9 Ventures" was going to be Kickstarter's new micro-VC fund that invested in their own users' projects. Then I counted the letters and realized the "Kickstarter" would be "K10" or "K9R". <:)

</comment><comment><USER8> Manu invested in card.io and is absolutely fantastic. He is extremely tactical, constantly pushed us to focus on the numbers that matter, and most importantly, provided gobs of awesome counsel. He should be your first call if you're looking to raise money.

</comment><comment><USER9> I love this thread: it's populated either by founders of Manu's portfolio companies, or entrepreneurs who pitched him and got valuable advice instead. I fall into both categories: the former in my current company, the latter in my previous one.

I think anyone who knows Manu can attest that a great investor provides so much more than money. In fact, this is part of his investment thesis, and, in my opinion, helps to explain why his first fund was such a success.

So if you're raising your seed round and you haven't talked with Manu, you should be asking yourself: why?

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats to Manu! (we were classmates)

</comment><comment><USER11> Manu and I started the PhD program the same year at Stanford and it's been my privilege to know him. He's consistently constructive and intelligent and I'd encourage anyone who is thinking about starting a business meeting his criteria to talk to K9.

</comment><comment><USER12> At an event I had the chance to talk to Manu and quickly came to the same conclusion as many posts say, he is a great guy. Good to see the micro fund happening and I expect many more great and interesting investments. Someone to follow.

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome news Manu, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats Manu!</comment>


I Freelanced On Halo 4. It's Time For Gaming's Contractors To Strike - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/sCSjhn5P <comment><USER2> One guy had one bad experience as a gameplay tester, and now it's time for all gaming contractors to strike? That's a pretty big leap.

This sounds like a typical story of poor management in any industry: Lack of communication, failure to follow through on performance review policy, hostile work environment, inability to recognize and allocate talent, etc. Then again, we're relying entirely on this guy's self-assessment for that last part. This bit in particular set off some alarm bells for me:

> _I took the job by the horns and ran with it. I did everything I could to > stand out. I asked a ton of questions about code, the debug, the game modes, > everything. I talked to all the producers and developers and level designers > I could to ensure we were on the same page and also so they would know my > name._

Despite his good intentions, he might have inadvertently gone too far and turned himself into "that guy". You know, the one who people see coming from a mile away and think _"Shit, here he comes to bug me with a million pointless questions again."_ Ambition is a good thing, but sometimes they just want you to do the job they hired you for and stop distracting other employees, and those other employees only have so much patience for the new guy who keeps asking questions.

<comment><USER3> _> One guy had one bad experience as a game tester (most kids' dream job)_

I have a friend who was a game tester. It's not just a kid's job. If you ever see someone who is good at being a game tester do his thing, you will find out that they are very skilled and many have a wealth of experience in terms of where to look for bugs.

EDIT: Now my friend has moved out of the game industry and into corporate life. The pay is better and the job is more secure.

<comment><USER4> I think Irregardless meant that this is a job that a lot of people dream about having when they are children. Landing such a job as an adult would serve to realize that dream. This makes it pretty devastating if the job turns out to be a disaster.

<comment><USER2> Right, also trying to reinforce the fact that we're talking about actual gameplay testing and not something code related (a lot of people might assume the latter since this is on HN).

I'm sure testing games is far more demanding and tedious than kids imagine it to be.

<comment><USER5> > One guy had one bad experience as a game tester (most kids' dream job)

You might want to rephrase this then, your original wording comes off in a condescending "playing games? for money? he should be _glad_ to have a job!" sort of tone to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure that I feel this guy has much of a point. He got to do something he loves for $11 an hour, when many people are taking any job they can for minimum wage. I know it's a false equivalency, but the real point is there wasn't some big conspiracy to keep him down, he just didn't really like the conditions (common, vague problems - a couple crappy coworkers, some bad management, phony atmosphere) and he didn't get the raise he wanted and didn't get hired full time, when neither of these were promised. I sympathize, but this also smacks of entitlement.

Organizing is probably a good idea, there are already freelancer unions out there. But is that going to fix temps not being treated like employees who have been there for years, or make them more likely to be hired on?

I'm not saying we shouldn't all work together to make a better workplace for workers of all stripes. But this guy just doesn't seem to have much to complain about.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure why contractors or freelancers need a real "union". It kind of runs counter to the whole point of being an independent worker. Part of being a freelancer or contractor is that you already have all the power and you get to set the terms. If you don't like it, you walk away and go somewhere else.

Things like the Freelancer's Union are really about getting group benefits.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that you have an entire industry set up to push people into contracting who really should be employees. In other words, there are lots of "independent contractors" out there who have one client they work on full- time, which really does not fit under any reasonable definition of an independent businessperson. The companies just prefer to have these people defined as freelancers so they don't have to pay for the types of benefits (health insurance, retirement, etc.) that employees get, and to make them more easily disposable.

 _Part of being a freelancer or contractor is that you already have all the power_

This is a joke, right? How much power does a single independent contractor have by themselves over (say) Electronic Arts? Especially when they have no other clients to fall back on should EA tell them to go pound sand?

<comment><USER9> QA does not have a lot to do during most of the production so they should not be employees. If your job is to play the game what are you going to do while there is no game to play?

<comment><USER10> There is a _lot_ more to QA than just execution. On any normal team I'd expect them to spend considerable time creating a test plan and start figuring out the ways to test specific things, well before the game is in a playable state.

<comment><USER9> Do you expect the planning to take more hours than actual testing? In a typical title I have seen there are about 20-50 contract testers working for few months. With 2 year development cycle they need to spend 5-10 times more time on planning to justify employing them full time. For reference the entire game art and tech planning takes about 100 times less resources (dozen people over 1-4 months).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Strange. His description of the situation sounds like the company treated him exactly the way it should treat contractors. They payed him an hourly wage to do a job, and kept him at arm's length.

That's what contracting is.

They asked for lots of hours, which is fine. They paid for them. They asked for some weekends, which is fine. As long as they pay for them, which they did. And as long as the contractor agreed to work them, which he did.

In short, it sounds like a completely amicable gig. Except for the part where the author is upset about it. He doesn't really explain what he thinks the company did wrong.

I can see lots of places where he did _himself_ a dis-service. Agreeing to work in the software industry for $11/hr is one place, as is agreeing to work hours he would have preferred not to, as is misunderstanding the relationship and expecting mentoring, recognition, training, promotion, etc. But none of that is the company's fault.

You hear a lot of horror stories from the gaming industry. This doesn't seem to be one of them.

<comment><USER12> I believe that he was told that "people who do well get brought on full time" was a lie from the start. I can imagine the HR/agency people trying to sell candidates on how great it will be in the future, if some of the conditions are crappy now. We've all been there right?

But at 32 I never ever would have taken a job for $11 an hour. If he was paid $40 an hour, would he have been happier in the end?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> IMDB credits... even I have IMDB credits (<http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5111059/>). It's not that hard. Get yourself a camera, get a few friends to dick around in front of that camera, submit your shitty film to one of the myriad of film festivals that readily advertise themselves as valid for IMDB credit, and then submit the forms. Anyone can get on IMDB.

And his feeling if isolation as a contractor rather than an employee, especially in a department full of contractors, is his own damn fault. I've never had a contract position that felt isolated for long. But then, I don't ever treat anyone differently than respected coworkers, so they quickly learn to treat me nicely, too.

"I talked to all the producers and developers and level designers I could to ensure... they would know my name." People see that shit coming from a mile away. He got pegged as a slimeball early, that's why he didn't make any progress.

"Once, I worked an entire weekend on a voluntary basis." As a contractor, this is the surest way to lose everyone's respect.

The article title is just inviting the Prisoner's Dilemma. Ain't going to happen. For every shmoe who calls for a strike, there's another shmoe ready to fill his spot. Games won't get better until they stop being made by-and-for petulant children, be they 13 or 30.

<comment><USER14> Can you elaborate on your comment about why working a weekend as a contractor is a sure way to lose people's respect? I don't understand.

<comment><USER15> I expect it's because he made a big whiny deal about working _one_ weekend, in a culture where 60-hour weeks are the norm.

Flip side, working for free on an hourly job is...baffling. The arrangement is: you work an hour, they pay you for an hour. You start working more than they want to pay you for, they get concerned that you're going to bill them for it. If they're willing to pay for whatever you can put in, they get concerned that you're not being compensated - nay, _refusing_ compensation - when you should be. Was the time he spent really something they wanted him to do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's a weird repeat and a whole section missing in the pastebin.

full source article: [http://kotaku.com/i-freelanced-on-halo-4-its-time-for- gaming...](http://kotaku.com/i-freelanced-on-halo-4-its-time-for-gamings- contract-510353357)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the full source.

This is also why banning by domain is crap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And the point is...?

He gave up a viable career in music because of one failure. Lacking more productive alternatives, he took on play-testing games. Lacking any inherent forward momentum, not standing out in an abundance of similar applicants, he quit that too.

Supply-and-demand rules. There's a lot of kids wanting to get paid to play games. There's probably a bunch like him, older looking-for-something-anything types overqualified but willing. There wasn't an apparent upward-mobility path, and while he may have been better than average he didn't sound outstanding in a room full of easy-come-easy-go high-turnover types. With so many applicants for a short-learning-curve job, the company has little incentive to keep 'em happy.

Don't mean to bash the guy. He, and his situation, are not horrible - and not outstanding. Work is work, some jobs have a certain degree & type of suck, do it or move on ... he moved on.

What's to strike about? $11/hr to play games? Industry won't pay more because there's plenty willing to work for that pay. Crappy conditions/treatment? High-turnover positions in a high-stakes industry tend to. You're doing a low- training task (playing games) in a rather safe & comfortable environment, paid a decent wage considering the job, and have otherwise little stake in the project; it's not like you risk falling into a sausage grinder or have your life savings tied up in the product's success. Strike? You don't show up, somebody else will be happy to take your seat.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have known a number of people that work in Quality Assurance for games and they all have pretty much the same story. Though treating employees like this may not be ethically ideal, it is certainly not to be unexpected when considering a few points:

* The gaming industry has far more people that want to work in it than there is need for. This gives the employer a LOT of leverage.

* The type of Quality Assurance that this individual speaks about is not a position that could be considered "highly skilled". Though there are QA positions that require a higher level of expertise and knowledge, the people doing regression testing on a game are not them. Because of this, there is a mentality within the industry that "if you won't do the job, it will be trivial to find someone else that can".

* This type of QA the writer speaks of tends to have a productivity curve that is concave. The difference between a really great QA tester and an okay QA tester is probably less than 2x. The type of management style described in this article tends to be pervasive in professions with the aforementioned productivity curve.

On a personal level, I do feel for the individual. That being said, the best solution to his problem is to gain a skill set that gives him more leverage in the work force, and get out of low skilled quality assurance testing.

<comment><USER3> _> Though there are QA positions that require a higher level of expertise and knowledge, the people doing regression testing on a game are not them._

I suspect that's a self fulfilling prophecy there.

 _> The difference between a really great QA tester and an okay QA tester is probably less than 2x._

If you're going to treat people like QA people like they're low skilled, and that they really make no difference as people, then you're going to get wind up with people like that. QA can be more than just kitty on the keyboard button pushing. Customer service has been thought of this way, and unsurprisingly, companies got lots of mediocre and bad outcomes. Zappos shows that this doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

<comment><USER17> > If you're going to treat people like QA people like they're low skilled, and > that they really make no difference as people, then you're going to get wind > up with people like that.

I wasn't saying that. What I was trying to say is that this style of Quality Assurance tends to have a throughput that scales linearly. There are a lot of professions like that, even highly skilled ones. For example, traditional hand drawn animation (think Bambi or any other classic disney movie) requires highly skilled artists. And though some of those artists maybe faster than others or more proficient, it is nowhere on the scale of what you might see with a profession such as software development. A few A+ developers can probably build a system that can support just as many users just as fast as a much larger C team. The same isn't true for a feature animated film, in which a single person will hit a physical limit to the number of drawings they can create in a day, or for QA'ing a game, where the number of areas that can be tested or bugs that can be found is also bound, and where the quality of the product created does not directly influence productivity by orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER3> _> The same isn't true for a feature animated film, in which a single person will hit a physical limit to the number of drawings they can create in a day, or for QA'ing a game, where the number of areas that can be tested or bugs that can be found is also bound, and where the quality of the product created does not directly influence productivity by orders of magnitude._

This makes me wonder how Valve does QA. Also, note that QA of this kind has the same kind of scaling as customer service. The raw measured throughput may not vary that much. Quality could vary a lot, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _Now, at this time I had no degree to speak of (as of this writing I am an > undergraduate at the Art Institute of Austin, majoring in a BS of Audio > Production) so I knew I probably had to start back at the bottom of the > ladder. I felt that, if I could get my foot in the door, within a year, > whatever studio that hired me would realize that I would be quite an asset > for their audio team._

This kind of sadly smacks of someone putting too much credence towards the myth that you need a degree to get hired. Or worse, the kind of person who believes that a degree entitles you to a job.

Also,

> _In late 2010, I closed shop on my business, sold off every bit of music > equipment I had, and sold off all of my possessions, except for my Xbox 360. > I moved in with my sister and decided I needed to start over. With all of my > free time, I managed to pick up Battlefield 3 on release (I was already > playing Bad Company 2, and played the BF3 Beta to level cap). I would play > it about eight hours a day, and eventually saw that I was ranked 3,338 on > the Xbox leaderboards. I then made the decision to try and get back into the > gaming industry._

Or, he quits his job and plays videogames for the majority of his day. Instead of, perhaps, writing his own scores or producing audio for an open project or a game mod to put into a portfolio (maybe he did do this, but I'm assuming not, since he sold off all of his possessions except his least useful thing - an Xbox).

This doesn't sound like a story about getting screwed over, it just sounds like he doesn't want to put (the right kind of) effort towards something he really wants.

</comment><comment><USER19> Note: this isn't the full article. I finished the text thinking "hmm, that didn't sound so bad", but just before commenting, I searched for the article -- there is a lot more content in the Kotaku article than what is posted here (From "One of the cool things we did..." to "I felt like I was a part of something special.")

<comment><AUTHOR> Drat, it looks like I missed a section. (first time using Pastebin. My fault completely.)

If a moderator could change the article URL to the Kotaku article, or a fixed Pastebin (<http://pastebin.com/JHP8yCk4>) that would be appreciated.

The missing section for reference:

\---

 _One of the cool things we did at CA were playtests. A lot of playtests! For nine months I literally played Halo 4 every day for money. We would grab the newest build and go into a closed room with 16 Xboxes and play various modes, checking code and, most importantly, monitoring host and client frames per second.

These playtests would always be a mixture of QA, developers, coders, producers and artists. It was not uncommon to see Max hang out and observe or even play.

Most of the sessions were fun, but there was also a nasty air of "nerd- dickdom" competitiveness. Controllers were slammed; F bombs were dropped; homosexual slurs were tossed about (and I know for a fact we had some gay workers in the studio). So yeah, it was grown-up nerds making a video game.

At this point in the article, some readers may be thinking, "Well what is the problem here? This sounds awesome!" Truth be told, it wasn't, and it was because I was a contractor. It was like being Jon Snow or Theon Greyjoy under the Stark roof. Yes, people may talk to you, or relatively like you, but you are not accepted. The smiles, and jests and "bottle talk" always seemed phony, and the reason was because I was temp—in fact, my whole department was.

One of the reasons I took this job was because they sold me on the fact that, if I did well, and showed promise, that it would be a real possibility to get hired on full-time. I sure as hell did not accept it for the whopping pay rate of $11 an hour. So being older and a bit more experienced in the work world, I took the job by the horns and ran with it. I did everything I could to stand out. I asked a ton of questions about code, the debug, the game modes, everything. I talked to all the producers and developers and level designers I could to ensure we were on the same page and also so they would know my name.

Once, I worked an entire weekend on a voluntary basis. Halo 4 primary developer 343 wanted to cut our signature mode: Dominion. At that time, it was broken as hell and really unbalanced. The concept was outstanding, but there were a crap load of balancing issues. 343 was always tinkering with kits and available weapons, so the devs were having a hard time balancing ordnance drops.

We worked all weekend while coders would cook up frankenbuilds, and even Max stayed for the majority of the sessions. After long playtests he would take us in the kitchen and personally ask everyone in the group their thoughts. I felt like I was a part of something special._

<comment><USER20> Why did you use Pastebin instead of linking the original article?

<comment><AUTHOR> I attempted to post the raw Kotaku article but it did not appear at all. I know Gawker network links are auto-deaded, so I figured that was the case.

I did search through the archives to see if there were any recent kotaku.com submissions and couldn't find any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _> I felt that, if I could get my foot in the door, within a year, whatever studio that hired me would realize that I would be quite an asset for their audio team._

I know several people who've been pretty successful in the gaming industry, none of them started out in QA.

Generally, they just worked on small bad/games eventually moving up to bigger and better ones. They all had solid track records of being active in various communities writing FAQs/guides or modding before finding a way to do those things for a living.

<comment><USER22> Near the end of a fairly successful and long programming career I made the mistake of taking a QA job (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5785759> for some details) and boy, was it a mistake. No matter how sophisticated the work, QA people get no respect.

It might be better than no job, but I suspect if you start out with one it could have a long term detrimental effect on your career (I escaped that because my QA job ended with a demanding software project and the company was independantly of my group going down the tubes, Lucent made a bad bet on next generation technology, and in trying to catch up, shipped a ton of equipment that didn't work ... and financed too much of their equipment sales, which ended badly when too many of those companies went bankrupt; see [http://www.amazon.com/Optical-Illusions-Lucent-Crash- Telecom...](http://www.amazon.com/Optical-Illusions-Lucent-Crash- Telecom/dp/0743226674/) for lots more details).

<comment><USER23> Very good point. QA doesn't get respect.

As a result, QA does provide one thing earlier than other areas: management responsibility. Because churn is so high, it's important to put in good processes. Additionally, very few people stay. As a result, it isn't uncommon for QA managers (in any part of tech, not just games) to be in their mid-20s. This is demonstrated in the story, with the managers being in their mid 20s.

That said, as you say, it can be detrimental for software development careers.

<comment><USER24> Why does QA not get any respect? This is something I have trouble understanding.

I work in QA. I am fully able to read and write code. The engineers I work with have a background in computer science, and I have a background in the domain. The engineer is learning about the domain as he does his job. I am learning about computer science as I do my job. QA and engineering have to operate as a cohesive unit. It's not supposed to be one group against the other. Both groups are there to make the product better. The two groups are just approaching a better product from different directions.

The engineers I have the easiest time working with are the ones that leave the ego at the door, realize that both sides bring something to the table, and are simply concerned with solving the problem at hand.

<comment><USER23> I think it is a self fulfilling prophecy.

But companies in markets that value quality can use QA for competitive advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I agree with the organizational sentiment, but almost everything else reads of woeful naiveté for a 32 year old person in the work force. Not trying to hard hearted, and I sure as hell don't know the rest of this guy's story, but I think maybe his expectations were a bit overblown to begin with.

<comment><USER26> I agree. Welcome to being a contractor. In this case, since the skill required was very low, the reward is low. If you were a high skilled contractor you would be paid handsomely, but the hours would still be awful in most cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I get that HN doesn't do Gawker, but I find something distasteful about taking Kotaku's content and putting it up on another site. If HN is too good for Gawker Media, then it should stick to that.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can't say I'm incredibly surprised: any time you're a temp worker (especially through a third-party agency), you're disposable. It's the nature of the beast.

It's upsetting that this man didn't have a fulfilling experience with the studio, but there are a couple of things to consider. I'm not trying to be harsh, just realistic:

\- He was contracted through a third-party, and was never an official employee of the studio.

\- He was paid relatively little (as evidenced by asking for a $1 raise), so was probably not a senior member of the QA team.

\- He is still able to say to any future employers that he worked on Halo 4, and even had influence on map names, etc. Presumably, he did good work there and they might even act as a reference.

\- The gamedev industry is very competitive, even in QA roles. This man has now worked at Activision and Certain Affinity, and will hopefully be able to get a full-time staff position at his next job.

I know it seems blunt, but a lot of the problem here is just supply and demand. There are a _lot_ of people trying to get their foot in the door at game studios, and a _lot_ of people that think they'd love to play video games for a living (even buggy ones). That makes studios able to pay very little, and hire temp workers for ramping up their projects.

</comment><comment><USER29> Supply and demand. The barriers to entry to be a QA tester are very low. Everyone with no art or programming skills that loves games and wants to get into the industry applies as a QA tester. If people unionize and prevent employers from hiring at the organic wage, that job will probably just get pushed to casual/part-time workers or outsourced overseas.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why the pastebin?

If it's because you don't like kotaku it seems like a weird way to protest: if you consider this article insightful enough to post here don't you think you should give them the page hits to "positively reinforce" them?

I really don't know much about kotaku and they may be more evil than I suspect, but it just seems awfully childish and passive aggressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> As said below:

I attempted to post the raw Kotaku article but it did not appear at all. I know Gawker network links are auto-deaded, so I figured that was the case.

I did search through the archives to see if there were any recent kotaku.com submissions and couldn't find any.

<comment><USER30> Ah, my mistake, I didn't know that. I apologize for the attack then :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think it is a bad thing to tell people that their contract position is contract-to-hire. For one, I feel that is always implied. For another, it maybe something that is well-intended but eventually can't happen due to bad circumstances. Lastly, it creates this entitlement feeling of the contractor which he/she doesn't deserve (maybe it is a good thing because it can help weed out potentials... same for interns).

This is something beyond just the games industry. The other issue I have is from the position that he was in. To have clout as QA takes a lot of work. Especially when you are basically doing black-box testing. He has to be on his very best to show that he should be hired. This post doesn't seem to reflect that.

</comment><comment><USER32> It seems to be as though you may be seeking reward from the wrong places. Yes you weren't treated great and yes you didn't become part of the team, but you WERE part of something special. The work you did there contributed towards 2012's most successful video game! If you really want to be part of a team you should push for a permanent position somewhere.

On the other hand... if you're confident you're dang good at what you do and don't need to seek outward approval (from the wrong sources) keep being a contractor, keep blasting those projects and eventually someone will notice how you're a common denominator of success.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hiring contractors with irrelevant fps experience and a lack of understanding of core halo flow at $11 an hour, now I understand how Halo 4's multiplayer failed so hard.

<comment><USER3> As I've pointed out elsewhere, this is what results when you discount experience and treat personnel like they're just mindless button pushers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yep, software developers need to organize. Will they?

<comment><USER7> Really? Organize for what? In today's market, people who can write good code are getting poached left and right. It's one of the easiest, if not THE easiest, market to move around in. Don't like your current gig? Quit and go somewhere else.

The demand far outstrips the supply. You already have the upper hand on pretty much every employer.

<comment><USER29> QA testers are not in the same boat though. I think the post is about QA testers.

<comment><USER35> Maybe QA testers should, but not software developers at large.

<comment><USER36> There are a lot of benefits to organization beyond simple salary negotiations. Other professions in very high demand like doctors organize themselves to an incredible extent, and are able to have significant pull with both employers and governments as a consequence. They have meaningful input into the laws and regulations that apply to their craft. Doctors don't have organizations with the word "union" in the title, but the AMA, essentially the doctors' trade association, was maybe the second most powerful player who opposed meaningful healthcare reform (and they won).

An equivalent association of developers could basically dictate terms for software patents/licensing/ownership issues and software-related IP regulations in the US. They could secure absolute limits on the length of their work week. They could easily block Zuckerberg, et al.'s H1B visa expansion garbage.

And yeah, on top of all that, they could include QA in their little club and maybe get them some health insurance or job security or literally anything approaching just and fair employment terms.

<comment><USER35> An industry wide political interests group (not a labor union) could be useful, but to be honest I expect there would be far less common ground than you might expect or hope.

For every Bay Area programmer that is really into sane standards, open software and minimal surveillance, there are probably half a dozen programmers throughout the rest of the world that work 9-5, have a few patents in their name, and primarily care about their family and (consequentially) their employers stability. They are the people participating in most of the stuff the rest of us think is wrong with the industry, and they don't hate themselves for it. On another end of the multidimensional spectrum you have armies of STEM graduates working/contracting for the Federal government who _really do_ buy into "nothing to hide". (For an example of this attitude, see Bob Metcalfe's recent reddit 'AMA').

I'm spinning these perspectives very negatively because I don't share them, but regardless of my bias the fact remains there are _a lot_ of programmers that the diversity of "what programmers think about stuff" is underestimated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> fyi: just skip to the part that starts with "Towards the end, things started to fall apart..." the rest isn't really relevant.

</comment><comment><USER38> When you are hired from a temp agency there is no ladder to climb. There may be a step stool buried somewhere under all those feces but you're still only going to be knee deep in shit. I remember doing this and it was soul crushing. You're not an employee until you sign a contract or have a badget with your face printed on it.

</comment><comment><USER39> Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't see anywhere that gives a clear timeframe of how long this person contracted for a company.

For starters, you're doing play testing for a game. Is it really that difficult to see why you're hired on contract? When the game has been released, what are you going to play test? Sure, there will be other games, but unless you have a crazy EA-style development house (doesn't sound like it's the case), it doesn't make sense to be paying people to twiddle their thumbs for 9-12 months waiting for the next upcoming release to be tested.

Adding to that, the fact of the matter is that _every_ job has a pay ceiling. It may seem like a cold business practice, but there _are_ pay thresholds where an employee's compensation exceeds the maximum value the employee's position brings to the company. Adding play testers full time is a poor business practice for this very reason -- the ceiling is very short, and at a certain point it will no longer be "worth it" to pay higher wages to even high-performing play testers.

The issue of the length of employment is a big one. A good friend of mine JUST got hired full time at a large company after freelancing for them for 5 years! Getting hired out of a contract isn't something that just happens after a few months. Companies that work on fiscal years might have to wait for budget approvals before hiring people. Furthermore, it's not just the title that changes: companies are often paying thousands of dollars more when an employee goes full time to cover retirement and health care benefits.

One last thing: even if you had a shitty time at this company, not showing up to work is literally the WORST thing you can do if you have any interest in working in a particular industry. Your reputation really does follow you and can make it _very_ hard to get anywhere. I personally would never hire a candidate that I knew pulled something like that -- I expect that, when an employee doesn't get what they want the first time, they keep working hard while still being persistent when it comes to compensation. Giving up and slacking off isn't the answer.

</comment><comment><USER40> That position definitely does not seem to pass the "independent contractor" test.

</comment><comment><USER5> Video game company mismanaged, film at 11.</comment>


The Telegraph: MEPs to vote on EU 'ban on all forms of pornography' - <AUTHOR> http://freedom-or-safety.com/blog/the-telegraph-meps-to-vote-on-eu-ban-on-all-forms-of-pornography/

<comment><AUTHOR> "...Kartika Liotard, a Dutch left-wing feminist MEP, is seeking "statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic products and sex tourism", including measures in the digital field.."

Interesting that this attack on the internet is coming from the far left. Traditionally it's the far right that most people would think of as wanting to control pornography on the net.</comment>


Prepared statements and their surprising performance implications - <AUTHOR> https://blog.soykaf.com/post/postgresql-elixir-troubles/ <comment><USER2> Prepared Statements are a place where 'correct' and 'fast' intersect in a big way. If all databases would detect when you're done with them and close them automatically, they'd be just about perfect. But you can't have everything I suppose. A few programming languages have designed or re-designed their APIs to try to detect this at the library level, and I appreciate the efforts to do so.

I was stunned to learn that the most popular database mapping tool in NodeJS did not use Prepared Statements. Due to an accident of their compatibility matrix it was going to be tricky to achieve, and so they had kicked that can down the road several times.

But in the meantime they had done just heaps of work on input validation to prevent SQL injection attacks. They were confident they had no attack surface. Bunches of test cases to prove it.

It was sort of impressive but also really sad, because creating Prepared Statements with bound variables gets all of that for free, and they're much faster on some DBs. The main exception is for freeform text search, but we seem to have pushed that problem to external tools anyway (I'm not sure the two facts are unrelated...)

<comment><USER3> In MSSQL prepared statements are not really used because its unnecessary. MSSQL hashes incoming SQL statements and looks for them in the plan cache and reuses automatically. It also looks at connections setting and does parameter sniffing to decided whether to use existing plans.

You can still do prepared statements with MSSQL but its mainly there for backward compatibility.

I was actually surprised to find PG didn't do this recently and only had prepared statements and can't share plans across connections.

<comment><USER4> I'm a bit confused to read that because whilst they are hashed for reuse (requires optimising for ad hoc workloads to do this?), unless the text of the query is an identical match it will need to compile another separate query plan and won't reuse the existing plan. This means you can end up in a situation where you have many ad hoc requests causing significant memory consumption. Would you be able to speak as to why prepared statements aren't necessary in MSSQL - I'm happy to link to some blog articles that are arguing the total other direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Long ago, we brought in a consultant to tell us why we couldn't max out our very fancy Oracle 9i database hardware. Nothing we did could get us much above 50% saturation on the disk array, CPU, or networking. We were stumped.

I don't know where Oracle is on this issue these days, but in that version there was a query cache for solved queries. And for a query to execute, it had to be in that cache. That dictated how many queries could be in-flight at once. Or rather, how many _unique_ queries. If you used Prepared Statements, it would be happy to run as many configurations in parallel as you wanted. We were using Prepared Statements, so that shouldn't have been a problem. Right? ... Right?

And then he showed me the log of queries.

Less than 2 years earlier (oh, you can already tell this is going somewhere, can't you), a newer team mate was trying to scrub all of the query string arithmetic from our code. Someone had settled on some sort of Builder pattern, but this guy was getting stuck. The guy who had instigated this had to tag out for reasons that I cannot recall, so he asked me to sub in. I got a little briefing, then we went through the problems and I sorted him out, and then I very carefully explained to him what we expected of this code.

If you're gonna bind variables, bind all of them. Solving part of a combinatorics problem isn't solving it, solving part of a SQL injection problem isn't solving it. Bind. Every. Variable. Got it? Got it. You good? I'm good.

And then, dear friends, I made a fateful mistake: I went back to my other tasks and fires, and the other engineer oversaw the rest of the work and the code review.

18+ months later, I'm staring at a bunch of nearly identical queries in the Oracle query cache that have half a dozen bind variables and then a couple of distinct AND clause near the end. Plot twist: he was now my boss. The answer to 'why is our fancy hardware slow?' was, "because of you, Mike, because of you." Fuck a duck.

I guess maybe the reason he was so awful at giving orders is that he never learned how to follow them.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure i follow the punchline. If the queries need different where clauses then they aren't interchangeable. Or are you saying they were semanticly the same and only syntacticly different?

<comment><USER2> dantillberg has the right of it.

We were doing some complicated fitness tests on our data to return appropriate rows to the user.

Actual:

SELECT * FROM things WHERE ... AND columnA>? AND columnB<5;

Expected:

SELECT * FROM things WHERE ... AND columnA>? AND columnB<?;

These sorts of mistakes tend to sneak back into projects that previously had this handled, so you do have to watch for regressions. (But that's not what happened in this case, if anyone is wondering.)

I don't know if there are any good ways to audit for these sorts of problems these days. At one point I joked that I was going to write my own database library that _only_ accepted Prepared Statements and nothing else, but barring a full SQL query parser, I'm not entirely sure how I thought I was going to prevent someone from doing that.

<comment><USER6> You really want this to be an SQL mode that the server enforces. Give me a query where anything that could be a parameter wasn't and I'll fail the query, write a nasty log, and maybe disconnect your client.

I think as an opinionated library, you could build a minimal parser, and fail queries that had values or didn't meet your parsing. I'm not super familiar with SQL these days, but I'd guess you could make a reasonable subset and have confidence that you would have false positives, but no false negatives.

<comment><USER7> Oracle, at least, has/had the problem that it can't use the values of parameters to affect the execution plan. So sometimes it's good to write in the values in the SQL statement.

If you write "select .. where account_id=?" then the query plan will probably be the same for any account_id, e.g. use the index, so that's fine, working as intended.

However, if you write "... where active=?" and active can only be true or false and there are a few thousand active entries but tens of millions of inactive ones, the query plan might be quite different for active=true and active=false. (Active=true would use an index, but active=false would make more sense to just sequentially read the whole table, as most rows will be used anyway.)

So if you have very few distinct values, the selection of the value influences the execution plan, and the value doesn't come from an untrusted source, it can be better to not use query parameters.

That is to say, 99% of the time you'll want to use query parameters, but rejecting queries which don't use them isn't a solution either, as you do need to avoid them sometimes, unfortunately.

<comment><USER8> That's not entirely correct. A hard parse causes the optimizer to do bind variable peeking, i.e. it chooses the execution plan based on the bind variable value.

[https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e41573/optim...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e41573/optimops.htm#PFGRF94588)

<comment><USER9> From the same source:

 _When choosing a plan, the optimizer only peeks at the bind value during the hard parse. This plan may not be optimal for all possible values._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh my goodness, you're my saviour. I spent a whole day last week debugging what looked like a caching issue with Ecto + Postgres. When the application ran a query, it'd eventually slow down to 600ms.. when I ran it in psql, always 10ms. My solution was to convert the query to SQL and run it manually which bypassed the plan caching Ecto does.

THANK YOU. I will absolutely be testing this tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks like ecto went too far by using named prepared statement by default? Should work just fine with unnamed prepared statement: [https://github.com/elixir- ecto/postgrex/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/elixir- ecto/postgrex/blob/master/README.md#pgbouncer)

Postgres planner is very fast, so there will be no noticeable performance difference by having to plan the same query again and again. This is unlike, say MSSQL, where a semi-complex query may take more than 0.5s to parse/plan, thus requiring the rather lousy query plan cache.

<comment><USER12> > Postgres planner is very fast, so there will be no noticeable performance > difference by having to plan the same query again and again. This is unlike, > say MSSQL, where a semi-complex query may take more than 0.5s to parse/plan, > thus requiring the rather lousy query plan cache.

That's not true. For a simple read only oltp workload (postgres' pgbench -S), the difference between prepared and non-prepared is significant:

pgbench -M simple -P1 -n -S -T 10 -j72 -c72

...

tps = 585582.911949 (excluding connections establishing)

vs

pgbench -M prepared -P1 -n -S -T 10 -j72 -c72

...

tps = 1010152.078646 (excluding connections establishing)

For more complicated queries the difference can be considerably bigger.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the numbers. Can you run it for -M extended as well? That would be the case when using unnamed prepared statement.

Anyway, as there is no way for a query plan cache to be one-size-fit-all, as shown by both TFA and some comments in this HN discussion, that slight overhead is more than acceptable IMO, especially when compared to MSSQL.

<comment><USER12> > Thanks for the numbers. Can you run it for -M extended as well? That would > be the case when using unnamed prepared statement.

Those are worse, due to the increased number of protocol messages (parse/bind/execute vs exec).

tps = 491218.039129 (excluding connections establishing)

> that slight overhead is more than acceptable IMO, especially when compared > to MSSQL.

I wouldn't call a 2x performance difference slight... That's also with a lot of context switching overhead - if you have a client using pipelined execution, the difference also gets bigger.

<comment><USER11> Good point about the "slight" wording, though I don't necessary agree that it can get much worse than 2x, with actual workload that:

\- could be more I/O bound than when just doing PK lookups with pgbench

\- could be getting a wrong plan from the query plan cache if named prepared statement is used

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We experienced a similar orders of magnitude of performance at Hasura by using graphql plan caching and also postgres prepared statements at the same time.

This thread is quite timely as we recently published a post about this here: [https://hasura.io/blog/fast-graphql-execution-with-query- cac...](https://hasura.io/blog/fast-graphql-execution-with-query-caching- prepared-statements#postgresql-prepared-statements)

<comment><USER14> Making some query optimization expensive (ie parsing the query in GraphQL, parsing SQL statement, calculating resource with HTTP call) to make it flexible but then caching the results to recognize that even with flexible API any (sanely designed) application will have finite actual queries is oft- recurring pattern in software engineering.

I wonder when this kind of pattern starts being taught more extensively than a stupid singleton which is nothing more than a fancy name for a global variable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> TNDR (Too Narrow - Didn't Read): I have a really wide monitor and this site's code is horrible to read as it's compressed to a very narrow strip (less than 600px) of text down the middle of the browser window. I tried ... I really did and it seems like the content might be worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have also been struggling lately with prepared statements and obscure query planning decisions. The developers of the mssql JDBC driver seem to be determined to force the use of prepexec in their driver, which causes high execution times for typical ORM-generated queries:

[https://github.com/microsoft/mssql- jdbc/issues/1196](https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-jdbc/issues/1196)

</comment><comment><USER17> I appreciate the use of the re-worked _Pride and Predjudice_ quote, especially as modern social networking seems just as airheaded and deadly serious as early 19th century polite society. We in tech are the majordomos of the stately manion, the scullery maids and chimney sweeps, while all look up at Dukes Bezos, Gates, Bloomberg and Zuck.

<comment><USER17> Y'all are humourless philistines.

<comment><USER18> > Y'all are humourless philistines.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

But seriously, I think the intersection of software nerds and readers of _Pride and Prejudice_ is probably fairly small. I appreciated it too, but can understand that 99% of people here probably have no idea what you're talking about. For the curious, the quote in question is _It is a truth universally acknowledged..._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great insight! And this situation illustrates why it's useful to understand a bit (especially understand how to test and explore) deeper than just the (not)ORM.

<comment><USER20> I'm getting a feeling of dread now. I'm using an ORM at the moment (Facebook's 'ent' in Go) but I don't know what the underlying queries and performance are like.

I guess I'll just build my application and review the queries / performance cost further down the line. He said hopefully.

<comment><USER19> The point is that at some point, it does become necessary to learn the complexities beneath the interface. However, you don't have to learn it until you _have_ to learn it. Just be prepared to spend some quality time when you reach that wall.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What sync software do you use? - <AUTHOR>

I have a development folder called /htdocs on one computer. I would like it to sync with a folder called /www on another computer. I want this to happen as I make changes, not once a day. I want to sync all files, regardless of the size.
I've tried Jungledisk, Nomadesk, Dropbox... They all require that you move your files to their sync'd folder. I'm looking at Windows Live Sync but it's limited to 20 folders. There seem to be 4 dozen sync products, which one do you swear by?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I use SyncBack Pro & am happier with it than any other.

You'll find these features you're asking about, and then some.

Favorites of mine?

a. Serial number based triggers & path variables.

b. Write-checksumming.

c. Pre & post job load/eject.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I use syncbackSE already for backups. I didn't even think of them for syncing. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> rsync</comment>


Chef David Chang on failure, Thoreau, and vegetarians - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1156-chef-david-chang-on-failure-thoreau-and-vegetarians <comment><USER3> "On how he feels about vegetarians: I respect them, just not in our restaurants…"

Ok, there is so much hatred in this line.

I am a vegetarian. I like good food, but most of my friends will most likely differ with regards to what they consider as "good food". But you see, I love those great conversations that can happen only over a dinner table, overlooking a busy bustling street full of new york, or by the window on the ocean front watching the sun move into the sea.

Some of us can not eat non-vegetarian food because we were brought up like that(I grew up in India). Some people think that it takes a lot of discipline and political liberalism to be a vegetarian. Fact is I cannot bring myself to swallow a piece of meat anymore than a regular American can bring herself to eat dog meat or grass hopper fries. I will throw up, it has nothing to do with conscious thought, its faar past that point.

Most of the time, when a bunch of people go to a dinner at a restaurant, I always tag along. I almost never have an opinion as to which place to go to, because I know I wont like the food anyway. But I tag along. And yes, I will ask this chef dude to pick out the meat, not out of dis-respect for what he does, but because I want to be with my friends, because I love conversations and sunsets.

<comment><USER4> I didn't really feel the hatred that you feel. As a vegetarian as well, I have come to terms with the fact that I will not be able to have the same experience that the people I go out with will have, but it is selfish to believe that people should cater to your needs and beliefs. Vegetarianism is a choice I made and my friends should not have to sacrifice their time or happiness to cater to mine. I just got back from vacation and eating was actually not that enjoyable because almost every restaurant served mainly seafood so I was left to eat various side dishes (most not too healthy). Chang is targeting a certain market and group of people and he said himself that it is NY and there are many other specialty restaurants for people to eat. Enjoy all the things that go along with the meal and experience, and then get your fill after or someone else. To expect that every place cater to your beliefs or lifestyle is selfish and he said he respects vegetarians, what more could you want?

<comment><USER3> Where did I say that people have to cater to my beliefs and lifestyle. I know language has limitations when it comes to communication. But I am really astounded as to how you came to this interpretation of what I said.

Let me write it again: My friends go to this place, I tag along because I want to be with my friends. Chef dude or friends dont have to be offended - <USER2> I am not demanding anything, I am saying please please don't mind me, and go ahed and have fun.

<comment><USER5> > I am saying please please don't mind me, and go ahed and have fun.

You already said you'd make "chef dude" pick out the meat. That requires him to mind you and cater to your lifestyle. He said he won't, that you should eat somewhere else. He's standing behind his food and that should be applauded.

<comment><USER3> Ok, I am having so much difficulty to get this across, cause I am coming to understand that we come from very different places. So I am gonna keep trying. and then more.

"That requires him to mind you and cater to your lifestyle", when I said that my vegetarianism springs not from conscious thought, you should understand that its no longer a choice for me. Now if this guy stands for his food, I will show you an architect who thinks large obvious parking spaces with blue paint smeared on them makes his beautiful beautiful building look bad. Would you consider going back on disability laws?

Now I am not going to stand and say this is how all vegetarians are. But the fact that I exist and many many more like me, should make you reconsider.

Can't passion for your food, and compassion for a fellow human being co-exist?

<comment><USER5> If restaurants were required by law to serve vegetarian dishes, you would have a point. But luckily that's not the case. I don't eat sea food, so if friends are going to a sea food restaurant I either opt not to go or make arrangements to eat before or after. It's not a big deal, I am not going to try and have the kitchen whip up something else because I can't deal with their menu.

There are people with serious food allergies, so much so that they will die if they eat certain foods, but restaurants are not required to make available optional dishes for all possible patrons (for you it's veggies, for someone else it's gluten for someone else it's peanuts, etc etc etc). No one can please everyone. If you can't eat the food, just don't go.

<comment><USER3> "If restaurants were required by law to serve vegetarian dishes, you would have a point."

It wasn't a law to have large obvious blue parking spaces before some one pointed out. Did they not have a point before it became a law? Is anything that is illegal at this point in time pointless?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can kind of see his point, but he's missing the boat if he's never had vegetarian sushi. Vegetables have long been an important part of sushi. I also find this to be a good litmus test for an itamae: the ones my fish-eating friends love the most, also make the best food without fish.

It's simply another constraint, and as much as we say we hate them, they're crucial to our work. I see "make me great food, with no meat" is not much different from "write an interrupt handler, in under 200 bytes" or "paint a fresco, on the ceiling".

</comment><comment><USER4> An influential quote that stuck with me was when Chang stated (when referring to Walden by Thoreau) that "if you really try and you want to do something, then go for broke". This means a lot to me because while growing up I was always told that you can never put all your eggs in one basket. So, accordingly, I focussed on developing a wide breadth of skills, but subsequently I never felt like I had mastered any to the point that I could develop a profession in. At twenty two I am starting to realize this fact and while scary, I am glad that I still have time to narrow my focus. I am on my last year of college so it is late to be prodigious in any field, but that does not mean I cannot be the best. I just wish I was told to go for broke growing up rather than to "not put my eggs all in one basket" because now rather than feel I have nothing to fall back on, I feel scared to dive into one particular field (but maybe that just comes with the age and the crossroad I am at in my life).

The greatest thing that you can grab from this interview, though, is the parallel (not implied) between why he stopped playing golf at such a young age and the ethos that he runs his restaurants by. Claiming to be a fairly competitive individual, he said that he stopped playing golf for mostly two reasons, 1.) it was no longer fun to do competitively and 2.) he knew that he would not be the best. Whether he acknowledges this or not, he has gone the other direction with his restaurants. He was asked by Rose if he desires to have a restaurant that is "Michelin Star" caliber but strongly stated that he did not wish to do so. The laid back demeanor and attitude reflects the way he runs his restaurant. The moment you strive to be the best, the fun and enjoyable elements can disappear quite fast (I can speak from personal experience myself playing competitive golf as well). He has simply worked hard at his trade with the focus of doing well and living by a few simple principles (not to mention a little luck thrown in). You have to decide yourself whether it is worth sacrificing some happiness to reach the end goal you desire (Chang had said that attaining a Michelin would come with a stress level they do not need).

<comment><USER7> Here is Thoreau's full quote in context:

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Irony is that Chang would've likely failed to get Thoreau to eat at his restaurant.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau>

</comment><comment><USER9> How is this hacker news???

<comment><USER5> Hackers are not limited to working with computers. What do you think chefs do in the kitchen when working on new dishes? It's hacking.

<comment><USER9> Seems a bit of a stretch to me. If I was interested in cookery, I'd be at a cookery site.

<comment><USER5> The link wasn't even about cookery. It was about a chef (hacker) talking about his business (startup). Quite interesting actually. There is much to be learned outside the valley.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN your embarrassing (old) code - <AUTHOR>

First I'll start off:
http://pastebin.com/ATdDUStd
That was from January 2008. I was young and stupid. I'm probably just as stupid now, but at least I can see now how stupid that was.
So let's open up the shame files, and show how far we've come by recognising how bad we used to be. <comment><USER2> Can't post it because I don't have it but at my first job I was working late(2am) to get something ready for an 8am demo that absolutely HAD to happen(people flying in from across the country, stuff like that). I found a solution that would give me the right answer. It consisted of a switch statement. In each case of the switch statement was another switch statement. In about 2/3 of the cases in these switches was a GOTO to the top of the function to repeat the process. What can I say, it worked and was pretty good for 2am work(I am not a night person.) But even my year out of college self knew the code was bad and that I would have to re-write it. Except for the fact that the demo went great. Our processes would only let me change code if there was a bug. Try as I might, I could never find one. That code is probably still in use 9 years later.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post prompted me to open up the first web app I ever wrote - a Rails 1.something app that was eventually upgraded to 2.something. It was pretty awful.

But as I went back to look at it, I found it wasn't unintelligible. It was just noobish. Lots of silly working around things that do not need to be worked around - that sort of thing. My models are mostly _empty_ , if that tells you anything.

It's a testament to the Rails structure and convention that someone with no experience and a book can write something that not only works, but is reasonably readable despite being _totally wrong_.

As a side note, I made several thousand dollars off that app before shuttering it. Had it worked (the idea), I no doubt would have done some major rewriting. But it didn't so now I sit here looking at the fattest controllers known to man.

</comment><comment><USER4> The code has long been lost to the great pastebin in the sky, but my first serious PHP project was an absolute nightmare. I built a disbursement tracking system for a local food bank/church while I was in high-school (~6 years ago).

The system was your basic CRUD application that tracked who the food bank gave money/stamps/assistance too. It also allowed them to generate some fancy reporting.

The code was so. damn. bad. This was before I even knew what an MVC framework was. The "main" control panel page was a single, enormous PHP script that was switch-cased. There was zero data validation, zero security, zero maintainability. It was a nightmare in retrospect.

To be fair, I did it for free and the church loved it, so oh well :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, I don't know how embarrassing that is, and that's pretty embarrassing already. I can say that everything I've done for school is probably a good candidate, and 1 out of 3 practices using CodingBat is as well.

I love learning!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://pastebin.com/ATdDUStd></comment>


JavaScript Prototypes Made Easy - <AUTHOR> http://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/understanding-javascript-prototypes/ <comment><USER3> Unfortunately, there's no real way to make JS prototypes easy, simply because it's a poorly-designed system with way too many "wait, what?" moments.

If you want classical inheritance, there are many tiny JS libraries that will give it to you. If you want classical prototypes, there are also JS libraries that will give that to you. Or you can write your own.

But trying to make JS behave as either one by hand will just waste your time and frustrate you.

(note: this is a good article for explaining the underlying system behind JS prototypes, I just don't recommend that you interact with said system unless you have to)

<comment><USER4> I agree that's a good article. I would have loved to read it 12, 10 or 8 years ago.

Coming from a design background, JavaScript was my first programming language at the end of the century. I simply learned programming through JavaScript's prototypal nature. I've used it extensively for many years before my first experience with a more classical language (AS3…). JS prototypes seem very natural to me. After a few years of AS3 (and a very short bit of C#), I'm not sure at all that the "classical" way is fundamentally better than JS's way.

Newcomers to JavaScript should drop their "classical" baggage before they embark. I'm starting to learn Python (2 week ends, now) and I'm not going to bring my AS3isms and my JSisms with me. Is that too hard to learn a new language with an open mind?

<comment><USER5> I also came from a scripting background (Perl) but are you seriously telling real programmers coming to Javascript from C, C++, and the like that they should change their way of thinking to fit a truly broken system originally used mostly by web designers?

<comment><USER6> Prototypes are not a "truly broken system originally used mostly by web designers". The original idea came from a rather elegant language called Self[1], not designed for web work at all. It really is a good idea fundamentally, and, even if the JavaScript implementation is not great, it's still very useful.

[1]: [http://ranger.uta.edu/~nystrom/courses/cse3302-fa10/selfPowe...](http://ranger.uta.edu/~nystrom/courses/cse3302-fa10/selfPower.pdf)

Also, people coming from C do not have any preconceptions about OO--C does not provide any OO facilities at all! They would have to change their way of thinking when transiting to _any_ OO or functional language.

C++'s model is also not particularly strong. There is a famous quote from Alan Kay (the initial inventor of OO): "I invented the term Object-Oriented and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." I personally have not used C++ much, but there seems to be a consensus that it's too complicated (especially in regards to multiple inheritance) and too error-prone. So I think it's more than reasonable to have people coming from C++ change their way of thinking!

Whenever you switch to a sufficiently different language, you have to change your way of thinking. This is not only natural but also healthy.

Finally, implying that people using JavaScript aren't real programmers is _extremely_ condescending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really nice explanation on a subject way too many JavaScript developers are ignorant about. Definitely worth a read if you've any interest in the language.

I agree with the comments that there's nothing inherently wrong with prototypes (they can be tremendously useful and powerful, and make for a refreshing change from the rigidity of classical inheritance in languages like Java), but JavaScript's particular implementation, unfortunately, does a very good job of disguising their utility.

</comment><comment><USER8> May I just compliment the author on the clever "dots" at the ends of the "J" glyphs on the website logo that stay in place as you scroll.

<comment><USER9> What on earth are you talking about, man?

<comment><USER10> I see it too, it seems like a CSS bug. The original commenter was probably being sarcastic.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't ahah. I genuinely thought it was an intentional design element.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> great article that clearly articulates js prototypes. I'd have to disagree with ender7 though, I think JS prototypes are not a "poorly-designed system" they're just different from classical forms of OOP inheritance. And contrarily, I would recommend anyone to delve deeper into prototypes - <USER2> alternative method to class based OOP.

<comment><USER12> It still could be much better designed though, compareed to othe rprototipical languages. Prototypes cannot be explicitly accessed or mutated, Object.create wasn't even part of the standard and the whole syntax with function constructors and having to set the prototype property is a very ugly hack.

<comment><USER11> I haven't used any other prototypical languages so I can't say how js compares... Can you give me the best prototypical language? - I'd like to check it out and see for myself. Still, as far as shimming up a clean cross browser API prototyping is extremely usefull.

<comment><USER13> I don't know much about this, but I've heard Self mentioned as the prototypical prototypical language many times.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language)>

<comment><USER6> It's the language where the idea came from originally. It's basically the Smalltalk of prototype-based OO :).

Here's a nice paper about it: [http://ranger.uta.edu/~nystrom/courses/cse3302-fa10/selfPowe...](http://ranger.uta.edu/~nystrom/courses/cse3302-fa10/selfPower.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I am reading this right, then you can get efficiency gains by attaching methods to an object's prototype rather than defining them directly in a constructor. This way, the method is only created once, and is just reference by all instances of whatever object.

If I am correct about all that, my point of confusion is simply that this seems like a very awkward way to design things. Isn't it easier to read a program if all of an object's properties and methods are defined together in it's constructor, rather than spread out later as attachments to a prototype?

</comment><comment><USER15> I haven't come across cases where I was forced to use prototypes. Can someone describe a situation where it would be necessary to use prototype? Or even advisable to use prototype?

<comment><USER7> Part of the problem with JavaScript is that prototypes are an inherent part of the language, but wrapped up behind syntactic sugar that hides them away on the fringes of the language.

If you've created an object in JavaScript, you've used prototypes, just indirectly.

If you want to use inheritance in Javascript prototypes are where it's at.

The ObjectName.prototype.fn = function() {} pattern is also a more memory efficient way of defining object methods than doing function ObjectName() {this.fn = function() {}}, as the method is only defined once in the former case, but is defined every single time a object is created in the latter case.

Basically for the most part you don't have to use prototypes directly, but more you know about them the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks similar to Lua's metatables with __index property

<comment><USER17> Yes, Lua is a prototypal language too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> marked 'to read this weekend'. looks very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cool! When do we get a NodeJS binding? XD</comment>