First Look at the Wikimedia Content Translation tool - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/07/16/first-look-at-the-content-translation-tool/

<comment><AUTHOR> according to [https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:La_taverna/Nov...](https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:La_taverna/Novetats#ContentTranslation_s.27estrena_oferint_traducci.C3.B3_d.27articles_de_castell.C3.A0_a_catal.C3.A0) it uses (the FOSS RBMT system) [http://www.apertium.org/](http://www.apertium.org/) for Catalan-Spanish :)</comment>


Creating Passionate Users: How to host a product/feature design party - <AUTHOR> http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/how_to_host_a_p.html#comments <comment><USER2> dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=4913>

<comment><AUTHOR> Guess I missed it the first time around... still, kind of a neat idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds complicated. Anyone tried this?</comment>


Ask HN: Any system architecture paradigm inspired by functional programming? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Stateless endpoints which can scale because they don't have states(duh) is a given in a pure functional language. No variables no problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hadoop/MapReduce/Spark and distributed computing comes from the concept of map and reduce functions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Event sourcing/streaming.</comment>


Issue 570685 – nest.com consuming 4+GB of RAM on Linux (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=570685 <comment><USER2> Someday we will get rid of all the layers of web client stack and streamline it into something small and easy to implement. I don't know when that will happen, though, seeing a myriad of preprocessors and compilers that produce CSS and JavaScript and then work around HTML by reimplementing parts of the browser in JavaScript, realizing one feature but breaking many others like standard browser features of HTML pages.

The actual bug on nest.com sounds like Chrome should prevent allocating that much memory in a single tab, especially given that any content can be thrown at a browser and it's a not a controlled environment like a game where the engine doesn't have to handle edge cases like this because the level designers take care.</comment>


Yahoo returns acquired startup to founders - <AUTHOR> http://e27.sg/2012/07/24/yahoo-resurrects-indonesias-foursquare-koprol-sign-of-a-more-mayer-ish-approach-to-talent-appreciation/

<comment><USER2> The article doesn't make it clear; Do they get their code also? Presumably the original acquisition was of the "product" but the article REPEATEDLY points out the original founders have gained the rights to the trademark and the domain.

What good is the domain without the code? They could rewrite the code from scratch. Though, that maks me wonder... If I single handedly write a piece of SW that does "X" and sell it to Yahoo. Can I then make a new site / app that dose "X"? Is it copyright infringement (a la the android / oracle Tim Sort) since anything I write that is an identical app is likely to have very similar, if not identical, code?

How much of what is in my head is mine and how much is covered by copyright if I've written it before?

<comment><USER3> _If I single handedly write a piece of SW that does "X" and sell it to Yahoo. Can I then make a new site / app that dose "X"?_

One example that comes to mind is Miller Puckette, who wrote Max, and then a few years later wrote its main open-source competitor, Pure Data. It seems quite possible to write a clone of your own software without literally writing the same thing, especially if it's been a few years and you have some new ideas about how to do it now. My guess is that doing so would most often be sunk, if it is, by software patents or explicit clauses in the sale terms, rather than copyright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Odd sentence construction:

 _a rockstar team ... successfully exited the company to Yahoo_

I assume this is trying to invoke the jargon use of "an exit", but in this context it has a garden-path reading implying that the team succeeded in quitting the company. I probably would've just said "successfully sold the company".

<comment><USER4> A somewhat more subtle example of what my friend refers to as "vouns" (ie. nouns used as verbs) - regularly "gifted" to the English speaking peoples of the world by the Americans.

Although exit is of course a verb, it's use in this sentence is pretty confusing given the fact that they're undoubtedly referering to "an exit".

<comment><USER5> Verbing weirds language. -- Calvin

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How weird. Does anyone know if this is indeed connected to Marissa Mayer? If so, looks like she's off to a pretty good start when it comes to mending Yahoo!'s broken image.

<comment><USER7> This was already in the works pre-Mayer...

<comment><USER8> I just hope that MM values inside talent and does not go on a startup shopping spree. Yahoo has great undervalued, underutilized assets, and with Yahoo's distribution and reach it can do great things without overpaying for "frothy" startups with dubious value/products.

<comment><USER9> "Yahoo has great undervalued, underutilized assets"

Such as? I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious to know.

<comment><USER10> I always thought Yahoo Pipes[1] was an amazing product - especially for when it was first released.

If Amazon had developed it they'd have called it 'Data Processing Services' and charged for how many cycles it took up.

1 - <http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The next time I'm involved in an acquisition as a founder, I'm going to negotiate clauses to reverse the acquisition based on milestones by the acquiring company. While I would like to think that this should only happen under severe circumstances that one would not usually predict, shit happens. I wasn't prepared or experienced enough to protect myself.

Talent acqhires needs to be clear and not overpromise and under deliver. There's nothing I respect more than transparency, and there's nothing I despise more than koolaid. Koolaid works for some, necessary evil for uniting a company during hard times, but not for the guys (and gals) who've been in the trenches and understand the game. Maybe this is part of the game, but who wants to go through the legal headaches to make an acquisitions and then go back to HR to find human capital replacements 1-2 years in because they got frustrated and left?...

</comment><comment><USER12> Will be really great if they returned Flickr too. And come back to the acquisitions table once they've figured out their purpose!

[Edited for my stale information on what they did with Delicious, last summer. Phew!]

<comment><USER13> delicious was sold over a year ago to youtube founders

<comment><USER14> _delicious was sold over a year ago to youtube founders_

Who, it pains me to say, proceeded to make it horribly worse and then do nothing with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> another article about Koprol: [http://dailysocial.net/en/2012/07/24/yahoo- returns-koprol-to...](http://dailysocial.net/en/2012/07/24/yahoo-returns- koprol-to-its-founders-koprol-2-0-may-yet-survive/) and this one about the company that will relaunch Koprol [http://dailysocial.net/en/2012/07/24/from- the-ashes-of-kopro...](http://dailysocial.net/en/2012/07/24/from-the-ashes-of- koprol-rise-barito-labs-and-ice-house/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Transferred what to who?

First I've even heard of this thing

<comment><USER7> Tranfer the Koprol domain and trademark back to the founders - the code they are trying to sell back to the founders...</comment></comment>


Why do so many Egyptian statues have broken noses? (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/egyptian-statues-broken-noses-artsy/index.html <comment><USER2> The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists the etymology of "defaced" as "Middle English, from Anglo-French _desfacer,_ deffacer, from des- de- + face front, face". This doesn't really explain why the middl english and anglo-french words focused on the face. I wonder if down through history, the habit of destroying statue's faces (or Egyptian noses) led to this word.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no answer on why the Sphinx lacks a nose:

[https://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/blog/photo-what- happened...](https://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/blog/photo-what-happened-to- the-sphinxs-nose-180950757/)</comment>


AT&T nailed the future, in 1993 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYNUcFMCIzw

<comment><AUTHOR> Consumers see something that they haven't seen before and immediately conclude "they are geniuses!". They never even consider that they're possibly looking at a copy-cat. Or seeing an idea that has been tried before but failed. Or an implementation of ideas prevalent in academia for years. Or in science fiction.

We need to get over this quick-to-praise attitude. Ideas don't appear out of nowhere and are not owned by any one entity. They progress gradually from all over the world and thus belong to the world.

(N.B. This probably applies more to the general Apple/Google/Samsung/Microsoft consumer than the HN crowd)</comment>


7 Lessons Learned While Building Reddit to 270 Million Page Views a Month - <AUTHOR> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HighScalability/~3/ln51YtOyCVY/7-lessons-learned-while-building-reddit-to-270-million-page.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is high-scalability, not google. Sorry, I submitted it directly from my RSS reader, and it appears as though HS is using google for their feed (feedproxy).

<comment><USER2> It's a dupe.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1354542></comment></comment>


Dear Facebook: Stop Wasting My Time(line) - <AUTHOR> http://craigormiston.com/2011/09/24/dear-facebook-stop-wasting-my-timeline/

<comment><USER2> Funny. That's exactly how I felt about your blog post. Definitely not useful. And definitely not world changing. I really like the new FB Timeline though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am excited to see how the timeline performs for 800 million people, because maybe I'm very wrong about it. It feels pretty sleek, but I found it laborious to curate. Perhaps that will bother few people.

I truly am sorry I wasted your time.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A fluent REST client that runs directly in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bitonator/flowrest <comment><USER2> Using it, what do I gain over a simple fetch call like the one below?

data = await fetch("http:://api.example.com/...").then(r => r.json());

<comment><AUTHOR> You get a more natural interface to your resources. The usage you're describing is pretty simple, but once you start getting into things like headers, parameter substitution etc., flowrest offers a very convenient way to manage them.</comment></comment>


Rubygems down? - <AUTHOR> http://rubygems.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> This would explain what is going on - <https://twitter.com/dnsimple/status/341538008941613056>

</comment><comment><USER2> It is down! (Stuttgart, Germany)

</comment><comment><USER3> No problems for me in the UK.</comment>


Show HN: My new documentaries website - doc.umentari.es - <AUTHOR> http://doc.umentari.es/

<comment><AUTHOR> Long time lurker first time poster. I created this website in Ruby on Rails 3.2.8 and am hosting it on a VPS with Linode. It uses Bootstrap but im guessing that is obvious to anyone on HN. Im also using Google Cloud Storage for my assets.

Any feedback welcome!

</comment><comment><USER2> Love it - I watch a ton of docs on netflix and this was really cool to click around. Thanks for showing it!

Some feedback:

1\. I searched for food and it only returned one result. This made me curious whether your search was full text of description or other things? I like the auto-complete feature on the search, though it seems to be on titles and not on movie tags?

2\. Under "economics" there are two RBS videos. This made me wonder how videos/docs are selected. Perhaps putting a how docs are selected link would be good.

3\. I clicked on "Submit" and it tells me that I should log in. Which means that I then have to make the extra step to go and click on the log in button. Perhaps you take me to the log in screen immediately if I'm not logged in with the same type of flash message? That way it saves me one click and it's functionality that I would expect.

4\. As you have ads on your site on the right hand side, what if you included them as tiles in the doc tiling? That way i'm more likely to look at them and it will let the very right hand column move up so you can put more information there.

5\. Below each doc description, perhaps you can put how many times the page has been clicked into? It would definitely help me take a look at some that might not be my immediate taste if I see that it's the one page that has been visited the most.

6\. When you have a flash message, if you could include a closing x so that I can close it that would be really helpful. (<http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/javascript.html#alerts>)

7\. I'm torn on the homepage link at the top of the nav bar. It has the same functionality of the "logo" and it doesn't really add to the website. On the other hand if it's a very non-tech friendly audience you're going after then it could make sense to have that link. I think you should remove it because people can navigate facebook and/or twitter without having to click on a "home page" link.

8\. Spacing in the tile above the picture of the movie would be good. For the ones that have the full picture, the border of the tile and the border of the picture are a bit close and they look a bit crammed.

9\. In the actual pages to the videos, I might switch the description with the advert. I'm still going to be compelled to look at the comments, so I'll definitely glance over the ad and it helps me see the bigger description on the video.

10\. <http://doc.umentari.es/watch/liquid-rising> 1\. I like the "watch" url!

11\. <http://doc.umentari.es/watch/liquid-rising> 2\. Check out your html code. Both the H1 tag "Liquid Rising" and H3 tag "User Submitted Comments" show up as exactly the same size on chrome. I would have expected these two things to be different sizes which is why I looked at your source.

12\. Careful with your twitter login / sign up. Here is what your app wants to do with my twitter account: Read Tweets from your stream. // See who you follow, and follow new people. // Update your profile. // Post Tweets for you. // ..... Other than read tweets from my stream and potentially post tweets about what movies I've watched, I would definitely not feel comfortable with the rest of the things you are requesting.

Great work! Really help and bookmarked for the next time I want to watch a movie.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just added suggestion 5 as well.

<comment><USER2> Fantastic work and really quick turnaround. I'm really impressed! I've watched a few already and have some on my bookmark list so you've definitely convinced me.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Complex Human Cultures Are Older Than Scientists Thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/a-deeper-origin-of-complex-human-cultures/555674/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I just thought there is a pattern on the "Are Older Than Scientists Thought" part to make a discovery exciting (it seems to be what is indeed exciting here), a quick search on "are older than scientists thoughts " you get

Universe Older Than Thought... The moon is older than scientists thought.. Land plants are older than scientists thought... Written zero 500 years older than scientists thought -... Your dog is 10,000 years older than scientists thought... Human Species May Be Much Older Than Previously Thought ...

Some [adjective] [commonly known subject matter/celebrities]'s [attribute] is/are [older/newer/bigger/smaller/...] than scientists/we thought.

<comment><USER3> Scientists usually (hopefully!) try not make bigger claims than the evidence supports. Occasionally new evidence emerges that allows them to make bigger claims. Theoretically there should be an asymptotic effect but we're not there yet in some fields.

<comment><USER4> It would be very intersting to see an analysis of the evolution over time of those claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given how fast the discovery dates of different technologies are being pushed back across the globe, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the ideas that Graham Hancock has popularized about advanced civilizations existing before the ice age get validated within the next few decades. Even in the five years since he was banned from TED, a ton of new research has come out about Gobekli Tepe, the Younger Dryas impact theory, etc.

<comment><USER6> I had to look up who Graham Hancock is. The wikipedia article on him is less than complementary ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock))... I wouldn't put any stock in his "theories" whatsoever.

<comment><USER5> I mean if the Wikipedia article said otherwise then my comment wouldn't really have been worth writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whether you're exploring this idea, or more far-out ideas like Graham Hancock's, one must admit there's a profound romance in this premise.

It excites me to consider that there were once entire axioms of culture, intellect, technology, spirit, and society as a whole that we have forgotten. Who knows what sort of mysteries we unlocked through entheogen-enabled consciousness exploration. Who would we be if we could find reconciliation?

<comment><USER8> I think a bunch of sources would add a lot to your comment. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is something that I have guessed is true for a long time based on the fact that humans have been genetically modern for hundreds of thousands of years. It makes sense that they would behave the same, at the same level of technological development.

<comment><USER10> No we haven't. We aren't even the same genetically as people living in historical times. There has been a huge amount of human evolution since the rise of agriculture. Living humans are much better adapted to modern society than our hunter gather ancestors.

What is probably more accurate is to say most human traits have very long genetic histories. Much the same way as human-like traits can be found in our great ape relatives, traits quite close to modern traits can be found in our ancestors.

<comment><USER11> I'm a complete layman regarding biology, so I'm aware my question might be completely stupid. I understand that the genotypes within a species change in response to environmental change. What I do not know is: is the amount of difference between the genetic difference between two random modern humans and the genetic difference between a random modern human and a random 100,000 year old human significant?

<comment><USER10> This is a very complex question and it depends on what traits you are looking at. A single nucleotide change at a single loci can cause a very significant change in phenotype. On top of this most evolutionary charge is not caused by new mutations sweeping through the population, but changes in the relatively frequency of different alleles (genes) in the population.

Also what makes this a difficult question to answer is we don't have a good idea what genes contribute to what human traits. We know that individual humans differ, and we know that a large amount of reason for this difference is genetic, what we don't know is what genes are responsible for this difference.

This is a long way of saying we know that the people living 100,000 years ago were genetically different to modern humans, but we don't know how different and in which particular ways. Evidence points towards us being calmer in large groups (domestication), better able to digest agricultural foods, and better at abstract thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The team found obsidian tools that came from sources dozens of miles away — > a sign of long-distance trade networks.

Dozens of miles is something a person could walk in a few days, so I don't see how that signifies a trade network, let alone a long-distance one.

Not that I'm doubting other things from the article, but this sentence seems a bit far fetched to me. I'm not an expert though - am I missing something?

<comment><USER13> From the article:

> Many of the tools were made from a black volcanic rock called obsidian, > which was brought to the site and processed there. But from where? There > aren't any obsidian outcrops near Olorgesailie. The chemistry of the tools > suggests that they came from sources up to 100 kilometers away. But "these > are straight-line distances that, in some cases, go over the top of a > mountain," says Alison Brooks from George Washington University.

> "There's an occasional piece in the Acheulean that gets transported these > distances," says Brooks. "But we have thousands of pieces in this one site > that's smaller than most people's kitchens. There has been a really major > import of raw materials."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I almost made it through the introduction before the commercials wrecked my interest.

<comment><USER15> Then install uBlock Origin</comment></comment>


Should I learn C++ or Python? - <AUTHOR> https://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/2017/02/should-i-learn-c-or-python.html <comment><USER2> Learn a language you can immediately do something fun with. If you're excited about desktop 3D video games, pick up C++ and, say, the Unreal Engine.

If you're excited about web servers, pick up Ruby/Rails - or if you think you might want to create a client side application, pick up Javascript and some framework like Angular or React and build something that you can deploy as soon as possible.

If you're into Machine Learning, pick up Python and start going through ML tutorials and jupyter notebooks while attempting to solve some problem in ML that you find interesting.

Don't pick a language based upon some esoteric development principle that undergirds it. Pick a first language based upon its ability to keep you banging away at the keyboard all night, doing something you think is cool.

<comment><USER3> > If you're excited about desktop 3D video games, pick up C++ and, say, the > Unreal Engine.

Or get Unity and learn their built-in scripting language. No need to spend years learning C++, OpenGL, etc. if you're not planning on being the next Carmack.

<comment><USER4> Even better. Many people start learning C# with Unity and can move on to other things from there if they wish to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "Should I learn saws or screwdrivers?"

The answer to this question is unequivocally "screwdrivers". The answer to the original question (if you find yourself asking it), is "Python."

The analogy is perfect for this situation, but the answer provided here is wrong.

The original question [1] is unqualified, so I will take a liberty or two here and assume that they're new to programming and want to learn more. And since there's no real dichotomy here, I'll infer they're really asking "should I learn C++ or Python [first]?"

Well, C++ is indeed a saw and while they're incredibly capable, injuries are included for free. Python, like a screwdriver offers maximum utility. Learn Python first.

> Do you think someone could be a top-flight carpenter knowing only one?

Who cares about being a top-flight carpenter? Just figure out how to open up the battery pack for your kids' toys and you will be a hero. Whether you're starting a career in CS or you just want to cleanup the data in the office's mega-spreadsheet-that-has-all-our-critical-info, start with Python. Get that productivity that enables a positive feedback loop of design/test.

I started with C/C++ before Python existed and it was just so easy to get stuck on several classes of failures that were difficult to understand without outside help. Python has some of those but IMO far fewer.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Should-I-learn-C++-or- Python](https://www.quora.com/Should-I-learn-C++-or-Python)

<comment><USER6> I would actually disagree if you're learning programming. C++ will teach you far more. Python, for all it's advantages, is C++, with all sorts of restrictions imposed on what you can do (e.g. shared_ptr for everything, with the pros and cons of that).

It'll be hard for a while, but you will have learned a lot when you get there.

Python is what everyone's switching to because it's easier. If that's your goal, just build stuff and don't care about how it works, then sure, go python. And I would encourage you to learn Python (and Java, and Go, and Haskell, and Prolog, ...) to get more tools in the toolbox eventually.

<comment><USER7> At many Universities and Colleges, Python is taken as their first programming course. Then for the second and/or third course you study Java and/or C++.

<comment><USER8> The Java course is a waste of time, the language does not bring anything new against Python when compared to C++.

Only a few Java specific things and an emphasis on patterns and workarounds for things you cannot do directly because the language is so limited.

Java is a decent first choice, but not a second one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "Should I learn saws or screwdrivers?"

I think when we talk about languages we talk about 2 different things. Some people talk about syntax and some about paradigms. Computer languages and some claim human ones too (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)) shape how we think about problems. They are not simply tools. Languages withing the same paradigm can probably be interchanged as tools. I programmed in C++, Java, Python and C#. I can switch between them effectively after a few weeks of remembering "how things are different", well ok maybe not C++... But I cannot switch easily to logic programming like that though. Even if it had a C like syntax instead of Prolog or LISP, because it requires a different way of thinking.

One you learn a paradigm you start solving problems differently and potentially a lot more efficiently, (Well and some less efficiently too). And also it may be hard to switch to another paradigm, because once everything is an object, and you keep state there, switching to functional language can be trickier than just starting with functional to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER10> A craftsmen is never disserviced from having multiple tools in their toolbox and mastery of them all. With experience comes the wisdom and intuition of knowing which tool is appropriate for the problem at hand. Whether it matters how quickly you need to deliver or what level of performance is needed. Inevitably in any engineering problem, there are always multiple solutions, but having appropriate information to make a qualified judgement to provide a sufficient solution as cheaply as possible (often, in software, this may be qualified in terms of time to market) that meets stated requirements (functional requirements, performance - i.e. load, latency & minimal hardware requirements).

</comment><comment><USER11> > "Should I learn saws or screwdrivers?"

The analogy is bad. One cannot use a screwdriver to cut boards. Those two tools serve completely different functions. But most of the things that one can do with C++, one can also do with Python. And considering you are just starting out, that "most" is virtually 100%.

A better analogy would be, "Should I learn band saws or circular saws or hand saws?" To become a master carpenter, one will of course need to learn them all. But when just starting out, picking one kind of saw is just fine.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not Java? I tend to find that anything larger than parsing and data collection Python/Nodejs becomes a bit of a maintainable mess for me.

Java/C# are boring, but once that little script grows into a massive beast you will be glad you can rely on the compiler doing a basic unit test of your program.

This is even considering that even though you have a huge amount of advantage with a dynamic type system most people don't end up using it. ([http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/06/13/polymorphism-in- pyth...](http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/06/13/polymorphism-in-python.html))

<comment><USER13> > once that little script grows into a massive beast you will be glad you can > rely on the compiler doing a basic unit test of your program.

Not if I bother to write a few suitable unit tests, which I should really be doing anyway. Typechecking is absurdly far from substituting for checks that my code actually does what I intended it to do.

<comment><USER12> Tend not to write unit tests as most evidence show they have little or no impact ([http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/10/05/test-driven- developm...](http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/10/05/test-driven- development.html))

<comment><USER8> Treat unit tests as a form of documentation in an executable format. It is invaluable in long running or larger projects.

(As opposed to automated functional tests or pure regression tests.)

Also that evidence was comparing test driven against test later, not against no test. That project tested was small enough and short enough to be ran by a single dev.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A programming language is a door. It can be easy to open (Python) or take more effort (C++). The reason to open a door depends on what is on the other side.

The Python door opens to a large and playful room with about 100,000 packages ready for download on an incredible range of topics.

The C++ door opens to a room of lower level tools that can help you understand how your machine "thinks" about problems and how the data flows. It gives you more low level control but takes it also takes more effort to write multi- featured applications.

IMO, programmers should know at least one high level rapid application development language (such as Python, Ruby, or Perl) and at least one lower level language (such as C, D, Go, or Rust).

In addition, it is worthwhile to learn Javascript because it has a near monopoly on an enormous ecosystems of client-side tools.

</comment><comment><USER15> You should learn to program and then get experiance using C++ and Python.

The language is fluff around the concepts. Get the concepts and you can go to any languages.

</comment><comment><USER16> Learn C++.

If you learn C++ you will understand the collection of tradeoffs that go into making Python surface-level pretty and below-surface as ugly as anything else.

If you learn Python you will be wildly productive until you paint yourself into a corner.

<comment><USER17> After a few years playing around with BASIC I tried to teach myself proper programming with C++. I quickly ended up confused and bored at not getting anything non-trivial working that I gave up on programming all together. It wasn't before years later I when was introduced to Perl and then discovered Python before I started programming again. When I few years after that again took another stab at C++ it was so much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was always told if you could be competent with C++ you could learn just about any other language, so wouldn't learning C++ make the most sense?

</comment><comment><USER7> What's nice about Python is it so easy to get up and running. Plus its syntax is very expressive. If you're a Computer Science student, like you actually want to learn about data structures and computer organization, then you'll definitely want to study C++. Even as a secondary language to Python. However, you can start with Python to get any idea of what it means to be a programmer.

<comment><USER19> Python has many solid example's of properly applied data structures, with nice encapsulated high-level interfaces. It's a good language to learn if you're interested in the application of data structures.

For instance you have your standard list, which IIRC is implemented as a dynamically allocated array of pointers to Python objects. This gives very fast append and pop operations on it's right side, making it a wonderful stack. However it's interface specifically lacks a dedicated prepend/appendleft operation, because appending to the left of the array involves shifting the entire structure over one place in memory. This is a very slow operation, because it must copy the entire structure to simply insert a single element. Python get's away with append on the right, by allocating a bit of extra "padding" memory on the right side, to avoid having to copy the structure. For the situation where you want to append to either side, Python offers `collections.deque`. This structure is implemented with a linked list of pointers, IIRC. Which gives very fast append operations from either side, because adding a new element only involves "hooking" the new element to the preferred side, kind of like a chain.

However for understanding how these structures are implemented C based languages are the way to go.

<comment><USER20> > For instance you have your standard list, which IIRC is implemented as a > dynamically allocated array of pointers to Python objects. This gives very > fast append and pop operations on it's right side, making it a wonderful > stack. However it's interface specifically lacks a dedicated > prepend/appendleft operation, because appending to the left of the array > involves shifting the entire structure over one place in memory. This is a > very slow operation, because it must copy the entire structure to simply > insert a single element. Python get's away with append on the right, by > allocating a bit of extra "padding" memory on the right side, to avoid > having to copy the structure.

Not quite sure I get this. What's this got to do with Python? Arrays, or more specifically resizing arrays, are supposed to work like what you just described. Appends are constant time and you almost always have extra memory because of the resizing nature. Is this different in other languages?

<comment><USER19> Basically Python offers many nice interfaces, which encourage relatively efficient use of the underlying implementation. It would be trivial to implement an `appendleft` method for Python's list type (you could compose `list.insert`), but its omission was a good design choice, in my opinion. The language tries to guide you toward using the more appropriate data structure for the task, in this case a dedicated queue type. There're are numerous other similar examples scattered throughout the language. The way Python applies it's data structures is really well though out, and shows a great deal of attention to detail. There's a lot of wisdom wrapped up in Python's design choices, which I believe helps aspiring coders pick up solid techniques.

This isn't to say that Python is somehow, the be-all end-all language, but it's a very nice language, with many nice aspects to learn from.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the explanation. I think I might have slightly misunderstood your original comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> C is something you should learn because it is the foundation for so much of the industry.

C++ and python are something you may want to learn depending on your needs.

<comment><USER22> One should learn C if one wants to enter the world of highly resource constrained computing. Once the community matures and the ecosystem matures I'd recommend Rust for that domain, if they are serious about competing at the systems level.

<comment><USER8> Modern C++ does constrained resources better again than C, giving you more expressive options and compile time computation.

Rust might have a future or it might be dead in 10 years. Its main focus is a very narrow definition of safety (memory safety and partial data trace safety) at low cost.

<comment><USER22> C++ can do constrained resources better than C, it really depends on the context. In general, C will almost always be usable, though, even in cases where the use of C++ doesn't add anything because of severe constraints.

For Rust, I agree 100%, and that's why I qualified my statement the way I did. It's too immature a language used mainly by people who are vested in it and few others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you want to pick one to learn first, then whatever you decide will be the right choice, as long as you are committed to learning more. As the article states, being just a JavaScript developer, for instance, is a lot like being just a screwdriver operator. It's not easy to compete in the job market with just one skill and just one facet of understanding.

</comment><comment><USER24> Neither; learn OCaml

<comment><USER25> C or Lisp would be better choices if maximum learning is the goal, or Haskell if hard core type fundamentalism appeals.

<comment><USER26> I was going to suggest Go for its utility usefulness while not being quite as complicated as C or Haskell, though Python serves that well too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yes.

On a serious note: these are the 2 primary languages at companies like Google, so it can't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER28> Pick one, learn it. There are libraries to do what you want to do in both languages. If you get good at one, you'll figure out a way to shoehorn it into the problem you're trying to solve.

</comment><comment><USER29> the answer is "the one you've heard of/touched upon first", or "the one you're familiar with", or "the one you're comfortable with".

typically, those new to programming have written in some language prior. it's usually just a few lines, but it's enough to get them hooked!

encouraging them to explore what they've already touched upon gives them something to latch onto. they presumably already had the tools set up, so what's wrong with continuing?

</comment><comment><USER30> You should learn C++ and Javascript;

<comment><USER8> I'd recommend PHP instead of JS of you want to learn the truly worst language and ecosystem in the world. JS is just second place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great answer I completely agree.

</comment><comment><USER32> Obviously, the most important skill for a programmer to learn is dogma. Dogma provides a perpetually frictionless path back to the primacy of your own ideas. Dogma obviates the need to become self aware, allowing you to pop out such gems as "So, stay out of this quasi-religious controversy", while portraying your own method as the One True Way.</comment>


Ask HN:  App clearinghouse/graveyard? - <AUTHOR>

I have a client who wants to quickly put an (iOS) app together but doesn't have the resources to build one.  So they'd like to take an app that didn't quite make it and re-brand it.  Most likely a game that they could replace with graphics, etc.<p>Ignoring the business-sense of this approach, is there a place where apps go to die?  I'd imagine just going through the app store, finding free apps and then contacting the developers, but is there a "stock photo" place for applications? many thanks! <comment><USER2> Not that I know of (not to say it doesn't exist, though).

I would probably troll the App Store - look for paid apps with few reviews. Odds are, they aren't selling that many, but people leave them up there because it's cheap to do so[1] and there's always the off chance that someday they might be found and "make it big."

1\. It doesn't take too many downloads of a $2.99 app to justify paying the $99/year to Apple to keep them live.</comment>


S&P 500 to exclude Snap after voting rights debate - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-snap-s-p-idUSKBN1AH2RV <comment><USER2> I think this is a perfect free market reaction to companies not having voting stock.

Last week the FTSE Russell index announced the same thing.

As a minor point, dual/triple class shares are still allowed so FB, GOOG and BRK are still ok.

If you really want to own a stock that gives you no profits, no income from dividends, no voice in how its run, and actually no value what so ever other than the greater fool theory then go ahead.

I mean, Google could come right now and offer to buy SNAP for 10x what its currently valued at and Evan Spiegel could say no, even though its almost a certainty that the company will never be worth that much.

On the other hand if you don't like the fact that a company goes public and declares that its ownership is in for life no matter what, then you'll probably view this as a positive measure.

All this means is that ETF funds will have some recourse to hold management accountable.

One thing is for sure now ETF investing got a bit less passive.

As a side note on SNAP in particular, Even though the first Lockup has just expired, most employee's, are in lock up due to earnings coming out on August 10th and a subsequent lock up at the end of the month.

By mid September we should have a clear picture on just how the markets value SNAP.

EDIT

To give an example of what companies like SNAP are foregoing by not allowing voting rights is access to, of the 7 largest owners of google stock, 2 are the founders, the other 5 are mutual funds/ETF fund firms.

<comment><USER3> How is this a perfect free market reaction? It's explicitly a reaction not by market participants, but by the relatively minor players who make up part of the rules of the game.

The "free market reaction" is that if these capital structures suck, active investors don't buy them or short them, and the stock price goes down. That is, if shareholder control was actually valuable, it'd command enough of a premium to discourage SNAP's behavior.

<comment><USER4> Why don't you just buy SNAP directly? S&P 500 is just an index, like a phonebook. They can list or not list whatever they want, and ETF's can follow or not follow those indexes.

<comment><USER5> They don't arbitrary choose however. They have published and objective criterias, and they're not singling out SNAP but it is literally the first big stock without ANY voting rights so theyve decided to draw the line now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "What happened here was not that the pickiest and most careful investors scrutinized Snap closely and made the bold decision not to buy its stock. Instead, the very least picky possible investors -- the index funds, whose mandate is to buy all the stocks in the market -- are the ones who won't be buying Snap. It makes no sense: In a reasonable world, you'd expect the passive funds to be passive buyers of whatever the market provides, while active funds would make active decisions about what the market should provide. In our actual world, though, the passive funds have all the power, and the active funds are constrained to follow their lead" (Matt Levine, [1]).

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-27/the- end-o...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-27/the-end-of-libor- and-non-voting-stock)

<comment><USER7> This misses a key distinction: A passive fund has a mandate to buy stocks in proportion to the stock's market cap.

Do you rank a company's market cap by the market cap of each class of shares? If not, you can essentially trick passive investors into buying a large proportion of worse stock.

<comment><USER6> Indices have been handling _e.g._ Berkshire Hathaway's two classes of listed stock for decades.

Some buy proportionately ( _i.e._ if Berkshire Hathaway is 10% of a market and 15% of its value is in Class B and 85% in Class A--making up numbers for illustrative purposes--then the index puts 1.5% into B and 8.5% into A) and others defer to a single class based on judgement and rules ( _e.g._ 10% into A). But it's a trivial problem of index construction.

<comment><USER7> Ah, I stand corrected.

I tried to look more into the decision. These seem to be the two relevant quotes:

>Companies with multiple share class structures tend to have corporate governance structures that treat different shareholder classes unequally with respect to voting rights and other governance issues

>S&P Dow Jones Indices also said that the S&P Composite 1500 indexes, like the S&P 500, follow "more restrictive eligibility rules," such as positive earnings based on accepted accounting rules whereas its other index groups were "intended to represent the investment universe."

So I suppose they aren't really "the very least picky possible investors". Their mandate seems to include actively curating the S&P 500, despite its tendency to be used by "passive" investors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This title, "S&P 500 to exclude Snap after voting rights debate" is wrong. S&P 500 is moving to bar all stocks with multiple classes with different voting rights. Existing stocks in the S&P 500 are grandfathered.

Personally I'm a fan of this. Multiple voting classes seem to be abused. Take the recent Ford case where the Ford family owned a very small percentage of shares, but had an overwhelming share of the voting power. If I understood it correctly it took basically unanimous voting from all other shareholders to remove this imbalance.

<comment><USER9> SNAP is not an existing member of the S&P 500

They were already unqualified until now, because they lack positive earnings.

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies)]

<comment><USER10> Good point, because the chances of arriving to profitability are not much higher than the chances of non-voting shares being granted voting rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are multiple classes of shares really that bad? Here in Germany a possible concept is the _Vorzugsaktie_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stock#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stock#Germany)) where you have no voting rights in exchange for a higher dividend than the normal stocks. If you're just a small investor with no desire to exercise voting rights anyway it's actually the better deal.

<comment><USER7> That sounds fine. I think the problem is with the relatively recent trend of not paying out any dividends at all. If you have no voting rights to change that, there isn't really any value inherent in the shares other than the trust you and everyone else places in the company. It especially throws a wrench in the notion that the value of a security is the net present value of all future cash flows.

It's similar to when the US government stopped allowing trades of bills for silver. In both cases, you stop being able to get "real money" from the financial instrument and have to just trust that the rest of the world will treat the financial instrument as real money.

<comment><USER12> Similar but not the same. You are obligated by law to accept US dollar bills (any denomination) for the satisfaction of debt. Whereas you're not obligated to do so in the case of these non-voting shares. In a certain sense, by buying these shares, you are assuming there will exist other people who want them too (a market) whereas US securities guarantee a market (300 mil + US citizens).

<comment><USER7> It is true that the US guarantees liquidity for US dollar bills, but liquidity is hardly an issue for a public stock large enough to be listed on the S&P 500...

<comment><USER12> You are correct of course. My intention was to point out that this is a great step so that the S&P 500 _remains_ that way. That you don't let in companies offering such shares in the same index (and thus market) as ones that don't.

Of course the ones that are already listed can continue to do so. But still a good step in the right direction IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a probably naive question. I just learned about the concept of non- voting stock today. Is there typically some contractual obligation for companies that, if they do a stock buyback, some fraction of the shares bought must be non-voting shares?

If not, what is the value of a non-voting share? Particularly for a company that doesn't pay dividends and doesn't have substantial material assets to sell in the event of liquidation (my impression is that this describes many or even most modern publicly traded companies)?

<comment><USER14> > If not, what is the value of a non-voting share? Particularly for a company > that doesn't pay dividends and doesn't have substantial material assets to > sell in the event of liquidation (my impression is that this describes many > or even most modern publicly traded companies)?

Why would a voting share in a firm without dividends or with no assets be worth anything? Voting just gives you input into a future course which will hopefully give the firm assets (from which it may or may not issue dividends), but the voting shareholders will presumably pursue that anyway, and if you don't have better ideas than they do on _how_ to do that, your vote isn't actually netting you any additional value.

All stock is based on the (possibly expected future) value of a share of the net assets of the company. There is nothing else that could provide it value. Voting rights are just a way to have input on how the company will try to realize value and how and when it will distribute it to those entitled to it.

<comment><USER13> My impression is that modern firms "pay dividends" by doing share buybacks, which are equivalent to dividends but taxed less (I'm nowhere near an expert here, if that isn't clear). If you don't have a voting share or some kind of contractual guarantee, though, what's to stop the voting shareholders from deciding to just buy only voting stock in the event of a buyback?

<comment><USER15> Note that the dividend effect is dependent on the share price, and may only be valid if you sell shares within a short time of the buy back.

<comment><USER16> Outside of taxation, a buy back is essentially equivalent to a dividend that you're forced to reinvest. At the end of the day, all of your shares are worth a smidge more of the company. Certainly, the price could go down after a buyback, same as if you reinvested the dividend.

The benefit for shareholders is that the shareholder can decide when to recognize that as a capital gain; the negative for shareholders is that they can't recognize only the portion of their capital gains related to the buy back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >"Companies with multiple share class structures tend to have corporate governance structures that treat different shareholder classes unequally with respect to voting rights and other governance issues," the index provider said in a statement.

Good. Reminds me of the thing with Zenefits where they basically screwed the (loose cannon, fired) CEO out of his shares by offering heavily discounted new shares to everyone but him.[1] I know, not quite the same thing here, but a good measure to hold the line against dilution trickery that might get that far.

Edit: According to this recode piece[2], the shares on the stock market (class A) have no voting rights, B have 12%, and the C class have 88% and are held by the founders. Yeah, I'm surprised the exchanges tolerated such weak offerings to begin with, let alone the indexes.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12013321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12013321)

[2] [https://www.recode.net/2017/2/21/14670314/snap-ipo-stock- vot...](https://www.recode.net/2017/2/21/14670314/snap-ipo-stock-voting- structure)

</comment><comment><USER18> Now to see if the next big startup to IPO (AirBnB, Uber, etc) learns their lesson about issuing these bullshit shares to the public.

$SPY alone is a significant chunk of total equities ADV - and there are other SP500 ETFs that hold significant assets. By not being eligible to be part of these indices pre-IPO shareholders are ignoring a _huge_ and growing segment of the market.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you actually believe in passive index investing, this seems like a bad thing. You want lots of little pieces of various companies, _especially_ ones that protect from distractions/meddling by activist investors.

<comment><USER20> If you believe in passive investing, it might make more sense to buy something like the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index rather than the S&P 500, which has inclusion rules and isn't a true broad-market index. (Although the S&P 500 performs almost exactly the same as a total market index).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just don't get the whole non-voting shares thing for established, profitable companies like Google.

AFAIK, the idea behind non-voting shares is to be able to continue to raise money by selling stock. Selling non-voting shares allows the founders to maintain control. For an established, profitable company like Google that does not need to raise additional funds, why even bother with non-voting shares? Is the purpose just for compensation in the form of stock grants / options?

Why not just increase salary or bonuses, and get rid of stock grants? At least at my level, I never thought anything I did could have a dramatic impact on the stock value, so holding stock did not provide motivation (and most of us were on auto-sell anyway). Is it just to provide executive level motivation? Why not just have meaningful performance targets and performance bonuses to motivate execs?

<comment><USER22> Well when you give out salary or bonuses (or even a dividend) taxes are paid twice (once by company, once by employee/investor).

By playing stock tricks (buying back shares, non voting shares) the company never pays taxes, just the employee/investor.

That's probably not the whole story, but part of it I think.

<comment><USER21> I should have thought of this. It all comes down to avoiding taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So there's going to be a time where Snap gets snatched up for real - I don't care about the current promises from the founders, reality has a way of making itself happen.

The real problem is to get in a bit before the snatch up because there's usually a stock boost then. It'd be a quick, low-yield safe return.

The risk there is sometimes the captains do go down with the ship and you're going to just have to write things off when things get bought for peanuts (aka my SUN holdings) so I don't know if it's a farm-betting strategy.

And finally, this strategy has some weird consequences, like when I bought Apple stock in the late 90s after Jobs publicly said they had a couple month runway. I thought Compaq or Gateway would come by and get them (and no, I sold it off at a reasonable double digit percentage profit and am damn happy about not being greedy). Crystal balls are very cloudy.

This is not financial advice.

<comment><USER24> "The real problem is to get in a bit before the snatch up because there's usually a stock boost then. It'd be a quick, low-yield safe return."

If you know the future, one can certainly get quick, safe returns. Until you get kidnapped.

<comment><USER23> I can draw the future stock market price of many companies with pretty high confidence as long as you grant me the permission to not label the axis. Turns out not to be very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is so strange. Multiple classes of stock are commonplace. Nonvoting stock is for people who want to invest in the company, but not be real owners of it. That sounds like why most people buy stock. Was there a lead up to this that I missed?

</comment><comment><USER26> Carl Ichan is just angry that vote-free shares aren't useful for corporate raiding and pillaging. No casual investor cares about voting power.

This move is bad for employees and founders, and good for Wall street. Don't buy into the narrative.

</comment><comment><USER27> Surprising, but excellent news for America's 401ks. Bad news for Uber shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER28> Give up control of the company to short-term minded public investors vs. losing access to passive funds? Seems like an easy choice.

I believe Snap has what it takes to grow another 10x under its current leadership, while S&P could prop the stock up 20% without actually creating real value.

Glad Snap is going down this route.

</comment><comment><USER29> Good rulemaking, but any thought as to why it isn't retroactive?

<comment><USER10> Because then it would be bad rule making.

<comment><USER5> And also, good luck convincing people that you're dumping alphabet and Berkshire Hathaway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I guess SNAP doesn't want easy money.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's just an index. I'm sure there will be many index funds with SNAP in them if you want to buy them.

<comment><USER32> Not really. It's one of the, if not the top index. A lot of passive investors (myself included) put a large chunk of their investment funds in ETFs and/or index funds that just track the S&P500. Not being included means a massive reduction in the number of people indirectly holding their shares.

Index inclusion/exclusion is something that must have been studied by some academic - I wonder what their conclusion is. My hypothesis is that the stock price would be lower given the significant reduction in quantity demanded.

<comment><USER33> And not just S&P, also FTSE Russell: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-27/index- pla...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-27/index-plan-to-dump- some-dual-class-stocks-would-bar-snap-hyatt)

This is a big deal (in a good way, IMO). Companies have a very real disincentive to go public with a shareholder-rights-unfriendly listing now, since a large portion of the passive investment universe will be prohibited from ever buying.

I see this as a case where everybody wins: the default option ends up being friendly to shareholder rights, but if you really want to and are in an advantageous position you still have the option to list go public with non- voting/less-voting shares if you want to gamble.

<comment><USER12> Well...kinda. I don't know if they were invented for this specific purpose, but preferential shares do prevent activist shareholders from imposing their will on public companies, forcing them to take actions that are very short term. Preferential shares actually prevent that from happening, which is great.

This is a new dimension in that struggle. I don't know how this will pan out...

One thing I don't understand is why don't index funds take preferential shares into account when deciding which ones to buy/sell? Couldn't that be factored into the decision engine's rules/algorithms?

<comment><USER5> Passive funds should have consistent and binary rules. Either you're in, or you're out.

Anything more than that is "smart index" aka active.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


So, you want to provide an API for the world to use?  - <AUTHOR> http://design.canonical.com/2010/12/so-you-want-to-provide-an-api-for-the-world-to-use/ <comment><USER2> On the same subject I've found very useful "The Little Manual of API Design" by Trolltech (the makers of Qt): <http://chaos.troll.no/~shausman/api- design/api-design.pdf>

The documents start stating some characteristics of Good APIs:

      1. Easy to learn and memorize
      2. Leads to readable code
      3. Hard to misuse
      4. Easy to extend
      5. Complete

</comment><comment><USER3> While not an attribute of an API itself, providing libraries in a variety of languages or supporting libraries developed by your users also plays a critical role in uptake.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Most use case scenarios will involve a code library wrapper around the API. There's some unique challenges in building the library as well though - in a small & quick start-up, it might be hard to find experienced programmers in the 7-10 languages you'd want to support. When you get an experienced PHP developer to write the Java API, it will work, but will it "work"? In other words, will it follow the conventions that Java programmers are used to (classes, objects as parameters, static methods, etc.), or will it simply be ported PHP code to Java (hashtables as parameters to every method, fewer objects, etc.).

I've often said you can tell how good a code library is for an API based on how often the user needs to read the API documentation - ideally, they would never need to even read the API. After all, why have a code library if the users still need to look up the exact spelling and capitalization scheme of string parameters, or look up the numerical codes in return values?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I liked Joshua Bloch's point that during development there should be at least two-three different apps that excercise the api preferably developed by different developers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've found this talk by Joshua Bloch about "How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters" very inspiring and and helpful: <http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design></comment>


Don't Be An Ass About Airport Security - Trey-Jackson http://www.slate.com/id/2276166

<comment><AUTHOR> Dup from days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974192></comment>


Discourse with Docker on DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-digital-ocean.md

<comment><AUTHOR> Following these steps in putting together a discussion board for Coding for Interviews was truly painless. I've been very impressed with Docker and DigitalOcean.</comment>


Banning E-Cigarettes Could Do More Harm Than Good - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/opinion/juul-vaping-bans.html <comment><USER2> Yeah, duh. E-cigs were recently completely banned in India. Now everyone I know with a nicotine addiction has been forced to switch to traditional tobacco cigarettes. Amazing.

Furthermore, the page asking for public comments on the policy [0] has a banner for a "tobacco free youth"!? Clearly they have no idea what they're doing.

I'm like 90% sure this move was pushed through by the tobacco industry because traditional cigarettes have no been banned.

[0]: [https://pleg4life.jotform.com/93080556523457](https://pleg4life.jotform.com/93080556523457)</comment>


Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2019? - <AUTHOR> Inspired by the 2018 version here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286939
I'm curious if there have been any new developments or changes in thinking since the sentiments expressed in that thread about a year ago.
Have the Pros and Cons changed much? Any new considerations? (e.g. Softbank, M&A patterns, potentially looming economic slowdown)
In general, what do you think in 2019 HN? <comment><USER2> I'm the head of engineering for a startup, was 3rd engineer at Eventbrite, built my own startup valued >$1M, turned down 2 offers at Google. Been doing startups 10+ years.

I do startups because I have a problem communicating my ideas in a way to influence larger organizations to do the things that interest me. Simple as that.

If I have a theory to move the needle, in a startup, I can do it, analyze it, and launch it with very little buy-in, although my impact to an industry may be less. In a BigCo, my impact on the industry may be more but the battle isn't about product-market fit, it's about corporate alignment and buy-in before I can even test product-market fit, which I just don't enjoy.

<comment><USER3> This x 1000. At the end of the day, I get joy from building things that people love. At a startup, there isn't much in the way of making it happen if it aligns with the vision of the startup.

At a big co, you're mostly playing bigco politics and ass kissing to climb up the career ladder.

I love startups and growth stage companies. There's a ton of opportunities to make impact and learn new things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It depends what your alternatives are.

This thread will fill up with comments saying start-ups won't pay as well as Google et al, but that's only relavent if you can get hired by Google (and you want to be). Comments that state "start-up wages are less than the best paying tech jobs" aren't very useful.

If you can't get a job at Google then you need to compare a start-up role with a job you can get. If that's a junior position in a small city tech co then it's probable the start-up salary will actually be similar or possibly even higher if it's done a round or two. And, if that's the case, the start-up is going to be far more interesting, fast moving, and fun. Just don't join a start-up thinking it'll make you rich because it (probably) won't.

<comment><USER5> It's not that start-ups don't pay as well as Google, it's that they don't pay as well as mid-range companies, like insurance companies, payroll tech companies, auto manufacturers, newspapers, etc.

Start-ups are just other businesses. The relevant pool of peer companies to consider for salary benchmarking is _all other companies your desired candidate might work for_. Nobody cares about the funding situation, age, cool new tech, meaningless options, or meaningless job titles. You just have to pay competitive market salaries and benefits, period.

<comment><USER6> Yes, exactly! I don't care about your mission or your "key values". What's the comp? What are the benefits? That's it.

<comment><USER5> The other big problem is that start-ups will sweet talk you regarding freedom to choose tooling, getting greater responsibility, etc., but none of that is enforceable and subject to change on a whim.

You'll go in believing you traded off some salary in order to get freedom or seniority you wouldn't get at a traditional company, but it's just a big lie. "Flexibility" will quickly give way to a bastardized "wear many hats" failure mode where you are being grinded into a burnout by supporting a bunch of shitty tooling with no capacity to hire people to handle the workload. You'll quickly find that growth start-ups == nobody gives a shit about craft or even basic maintenance to keep a product healthy, they just want a small number of overqualified, underpaid people to absorb that headache on a permanent triage basis like employees are band-aids to constantly stop the bleeding.

<comment><USER6> So true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not much of a change. It's still suboptimal from a financial point of view to join an early stage startup: yes, you will be screwed out of the fruits of your labor even on the off chance that your company hits a jackpot. There are people much more sophisticated than you or I whose entire job is to figure out how to steal equity from you.

To the extent there's been a change, the economics of startups and tech are more precarious nowadays. GOOG and FB both have their business models under significant threat, aside from cyclical concerns. And if a recession happens, both they and companies at all stages will have substantially reduced budgets for compensation. This means fewer jobs and more layoffs.

It's also more unclear nowadays what the next unicorn is. You're not going to become a quick multimillionaire by joining Uber or AirBnB at this point--there was awhile a couple years ago where they were a pretty reasonable choice to maximize comp. No such candidates exist nowadays.

<comment><USER8> The current Uber/Airbnb is, without question, ByteDance.

<comment><USER9> Why is this downvoted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe I'm just looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but I feel like the golden years of startups are behind us. But I'll do my best anyway.

Pros:

1) Startups are still more willing to hire people with "nontraditional" backgrounds into technical roles. English major who bootcamp'd or self-taught yourself coding? Never attended college? Most startups aren't going to turn their nose up at you.

2) Assuming the company has product-market fit (or is nearing it): A great way to gain a holistic understanding of how software is made, delivered, consumed, and ultimately changed based on market response. This is both a technical _and_ business learning experience.

3) You won't be pigeon-holed, as everyone has to wear more than one hat in startup land.

4) Doesn't apply to everyone, but if there's a particular niche you're into, it's _much_ easier to get hired by one of those niche's startup's than to join a bigger tech firm and then hope you get assigned to one of those groups (which are probably highly competitive and extremely sought after... so good luck with that.)

Cons:

1) They fail, sometimes spectacularly

2) They often operate at such a small scale that you'll never encounter entire classes of interesting technical challenges

3) If it's early stage: You _will_ ship crap code. Constantly. Can be frustrating if you're a perfectionist or even just looking to push your craft forward

4) Equity offers are stingy, but even if they weren't, it can take 7-10 years for a big exit. Will you stick around long enough?

5) Because these companies are small, any toxic people in the org will feel omnipresent

6) There are now some fairly active "problematic" investors (Saudi Arabia). You may not like the idea of taking so-called "Blood Money"

</comment><comment><USER11> My view is only a data point, but what I've observed is that while comp at startups has not evolved much in the last 5 years (seeing roughly same salaries + stock packages), total comp at later stage startups or bigger companies has sky rocketed.

The comments on the 2018 post you mention are all still true and relevant today.

My experience has proven than as an employee, joining a post series B will usually be a better bet with if you want to have impact + leverage on stocks, and joining a bigger company is the better bet if you want to maximise your income.

Earlier startup are just as risky for a new employee than founders, but with much less leverage, offsetting making it interesting.

<comment><USER12> I think one thing to consider with an early stage startup is the potential to advance in terms of responsibility / role far more quickly than a large company or even a post-series B company.

If you join a 20 person startup and are a good performer, it's not at all unlikely that by the time the startup is at 60-70 people (which isn't going to be a long time at all for a funded startup), there's a high likelihood that you'll be in a director / manager / other senior position.

In terms of equity though, I'd say you should value your equity at 0, since that's what it's overwhelmingly likely to be worth even in most positive outcomes and only join if you're comfortable with your base comp.

<comment><USER13> > If you join a 20 person startup and are a good performer, it's not at all > unlikely that by the time the startup is at 60-70 people (which isn't going > to be a long time at all for a funded startup), there's a high likelihood > that you'll be in a director / manager / other senior position.

If you're looking at this from a compensation perspective, that's only helpful if the company also starts paying competitive wages at that point. If you end up wanting to switch to a big tech company as a director with only 3 years of total experience, you'll probably be hired at L4 which you likely could have gotten within a year if you started your career at that company.

Of course if you think you'll like the job and it's not a question of compensation, then this can be a big benefit of startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Start ups will give a chance to junior with a weak resume if he/she can demonstrate skills. You may very well end up with a mission above your skill set as well, and grow because of the challenge and responsability. Less bureaucracy and smaller size also mean a quicker hiring process, direct access to most interesting people in the company and a wide overview of the entire product.

<comment><USER5> Usually this is false. Startups are some of the most aggressive users of whiteboard trivia, live coding, etc., to filter out candidates who don't fit precisely the mold of people desperate to work at FAANG companies.

<comment><USER14> That seems to fit exactly what I said:

> Start ups will give a chance to junior with a weak resume if he/she can > demonstrate skills.

They don't hire you on a resume, you need to demonstrate skills. Wether it's a good way to do so is another matter.

I had interviews with startup not even asking for my resume, or testing my skills. But I never had a startup getting me through many hoops in the hiring process. 4 steps over a few months was the max, while FAANGs are known for using more than 10 steps, dispatched over as long as a year.

<comment><USER5> But whiteboarding / algo trivia are not activities which are capable of demonstrating skill apart from rote memorization and superficial rapid pattern matching.

<comment><USER14> > Wether it's a good way to do so is another matter.

Do you really read the comments you answer to ?

<comment><USER5> It's not _a_ way. Nothing to do with bad vs good: it simply fails to satisfy the properties the parent comment attributed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have tried recruiting many of my close friends from FAANG companies to my well funded startup.

It starts with them talking about feeling miserable in their jobs and that they badly want to quit.

I then ask them to try something new, join my (or another) startup (or another company). Then they get paralyzed by the pros/cons of various options, (salary, stock, commute, role, title etc. etc.) they end up not making any changes at all and continue feeling dissatisfied.

I have come to believe that dwelling on these pros/cons doesn't help anyone and just causes analysis/paralysis related misery that is completely unnecessary.

It is better to pick one thing and then focus 100% on making the most of it. After a while, if you notice it has stopped giving you joy/learning/growth, make a switch, try something different and again focus on making the most of that.

Being clear in your head about what you want to do, why you want to do it and aligning your actions/efforts 100% with that clarity is the most valuable thing there is to have in life. The rest is noise.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are 3 potential reasons to join a startup:

      1. You're the founder
      2. You have no other choice
      3. You think it'll be fun

Just switch-case that.

<comment><USER17> You need your default case :)

<comment><USER3> You have no other choice should be the default case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd say in my experience, atleast in the Bay Area unless you are a co-founder, dont bother joining an early stage or that's not as late stage as Airbnb or Uber. The problem is the base salaries are good. But, startups try to be too stingy with your equity valuing themselves at a pretty high valuation. IMO putting in the hours for someone else and getting almost nothing in return is not worth the effort. Saying this having worked at one of them for ~3 years.

<comment><USER19> Why did you work there for 3 years? Was there any particular reason why you accepted bad terms?

<comment><USER20> A bunch of possible reasons:

\- A lot of people don't know what they are actually worth and undervalue themselves

\- or they do not understand the caveats of things like dilution and classes of stock

\- or they were offered stock in units of shares without knowing the valuation

\- or they accept a job and relocate to the Bay Area from a reasonably- affordable place and mistakenly think that a $100k/year salary is hitting the jackpot

\- or they were persuaded by the founders that the company was going to be a rocketship without fulling knowing how to judge potential in companies or in the personal traits of the founders themselves (we're not all superstar VCs) and then it didn't turn out to be the case but they didn't want to eat the sunk cost with their unvested shares (takeoff was always just ostensibly around the corner!)

\- or they didn't realize just how much more FAANG actually pays than late- stage startups or even other top-tier companies (even Glassdoor is wrong)

\- or they preferred to take on more risk without fully understanding the reward aspect (the survivorship bias here in the Bay is real, as enforced by a tough housing market)

\- or they previously worked for a big company with poor culture and were turned off by it and decided to only work for startups

\- or they weren't prepped in the art of negotiation

\- or the founders acted against their employees' best interests and took an early buy-out offer that brought everyone in as acquihires of BigCorp for cheap

\- or the founders took money off the table for themselves with zero intentions of ever doing anything favorable to the employees that would actually let them to liquidify such as trying to go public or sell the company, while still keeping up the whole carrot-on-stick shtick

<comment><USER13> > or they didn't realize just how much more FAANG actually pays than late- > stage startups or even other top-tier companies (even Glassdoor is wrong)

This is true for a lot of people I talk to. It seems very odd that there's not more compensation transparency from these companies, because I know several people who would have jointed FAANG if they knew what they'd be making 3-5 years into their career.

<comment><USER21> I had a roommate that was frustrated by a startup who left for Google. Once I heard him talking numbers I was shocked! Also using Blind (of all places) for comp data was eye opening.

Ultimately though you have to find out for yourself. For me, I found out I was leaving $90k/year on the table. I love startups, but I don't know if I love them that much.

<comment><USER19> You're leaving $90k/year with its compounding interest on the table. Trust me, $90k/year is nothing compared to what it will worth in 20 years if you invest it.

I'm 36 and my life is just getting easier every year while I see people around me working their asses off and being stressed over time.

<comment><USER13> Plus the opportunity to get promoted and make significantly more in a couple years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Financially speaking, the odds are incredibly against you as far as equity goes. One advantage. of working in startup is what Paul Buchheit calls working above your correct level, a kind of Peter principle in reverse ([https://triplebyte.com/blog/interview-with-gmail-creator- and...](https://triplebyte.com/blog/interview-with-gmail-creator-and-y- combinator-partner-paul-buchheit)). E.g. if you are one of the few seniors in a team, you can fairly quickly become head of eng, that kind of things, and that definitely helps your career in general.

If you want to stay an individual contributor, and can get into one of the famous companies, then I would say there is not much advantage working for a startup today.

</comment><comment><USER23> Either start one or join one close to IPO. It's not worth being first employee etc, too much risk for no reward(dilution through rounds , no payout in small acquisition, low salary, etc)

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't think this is anything 2019 specific, but working in a niche startup is probably the only plausible way of working on anything niche like say blockchain or serverless.

<comment><USER25> There are many big companies wasting money on the latest fad.

Hell, there are many big non-tech companies throwing money at blockchain

<comment><USER24> I don't disagree but their rate of innovation is rather slow because it isn't something their survival depends on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cons:

\- Startups are disorganized

\- Most startups fail because they make a stupid product no one wants and the team is awful

\- Startups pay below what a large company can afford and often pay below market rate

\- Startups will try to low ball you on equity. Don't start with me about negotiating. If they refuse to negotiate, you have your choice of no meaningful equity or working somewhere else. This is often the case.

\- Insane sociopath founders who also are terrible at their jobs

\- Startups are full of startup bros who are fucking insane sociopath assholes in general. Why the fuck would you want to play ping pong during normal business hours, you stupid fucking asshole? We're trying to build a business here.

\- Startups idolize hustle porn

\- Startups are increasingly choosing to not even exit which defeats the entire fucking purpose of working there

Pros

\- Things are so disorganized that you if you accidentally fuck up, no one might even notice

\- If you win the lottery, you'll almost make up for the money you could have made working at Google or some other big company

<comment><USER27> What do you have against ping pong?

<comment><USER28> It's noisy and distracting when it's taking place ten feet away from your open plan workspace.

<comment><USER29> This is far more compelling as an argument against open plans than against table tennis.

Taking a break from a problem can be really valuable. Personally, I skew more "take a walk" than "table tennis", but having some indoor options for people who prefer those (or rainy days...) doesn't seem such a bad thing.

<comment><USER28> "Should I work at a startup?" Eh, maybe, but be skeptical of their promises.

"Should I work at a startup that puts developers in private offices?" Hell yes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ironically, it's become even less likely you'll find people at startups who tie their self-esteem to money and more likely at big cos.

</comment><comment><USER31> Particularly deadly are alleged heroes. So-called JavaScript gods who push nothing but bad code into bad infrastructure. People who shoot against everything and everyone, but always celebrate themselves as heroes for night actions. To succeed leads a heterogeneous team that pursues the same goals. Mood killers and finger pointers belong in no startup.

</comment><comment><USER32> While not new, maybe [https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/startup-early- employee...](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/startup-early-employee/) might be useful to have a look at.

<comment><USER33> I find 80,000 hours to be an interesting website. It has useful information for reflection and critical thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Don't do it unless it's your startup.

If you want to join a startup, make sure you know everything about their background.

I would say most startups are mismanage and only a few are truly good.

The longer you do startups, the harder it is to re-join corporate. a) because you don't want to be a cog again, now that you have seen the light b) because hiring is broken, and recruiters could care less about your startup

I would say doing startups is a lifestyle choice. Constant stress, but ultimately, you wouldn't want to do anything else.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm really disappointed (?) that nearly all of these answers are about money. I strongly prefer smaller companies for the larger impact you can have, the intimacy between a smaller team, and more freedom for self directed work.

That is worth a lot of money to me, to each there own, but I definitely prefer less money but a more enjoyable work experience.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pro: You will have larger responsibility.

Con: The same.

</comment><comment><USER36> To me, the only benefit of joining a startup is in startups you're usually given tasks for which you're not qualified for. But I wouldn't join a startup if startup doesn't offer me compensation package (salary + stock option) at least at market average.

<comment><USER37> Engineers generally have worse data about market averages. It's better to get some offers and get a feel for what _that engineer_ can reasonably expect. Then at the negotiation table, she can either argue for market average or provide anecdata that they are are an above average engineer as far as market rates are concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Pros: interesting(-ish) work, fun(-seeming) people, bragging rights

Cons: amateur hour 24x7

</comment><comment><USER39> I am the only software engineer at my company so here are my tl;dr;

1\. Pro: I have ownership and gaining experience in multiple areas ranging from networking, QA, Testing, design architecture where at bigger companies I may only be in one of those foci.

2\. Con: No Coding Reviews. I cannot bounce ideas of someone and trying my best to produce the best codes but I believe I need a Senior/Prinicpal above me to help me on this front.

</comment><comment><USER40> The worst part of it, in my experience, is that it can be hard to tell a food founder from a bad founder until you've spent some time working with them. I think that venture capitalists have the same issue although they generally have a much larger database of wins and losses to shape their opinions.

</comment><comment><USER41> Startups? Sociopaths, psychopats everywhere. They don't have empathy, expertise, they don't even have money (for the salaries) in most cases. People should start treating seriously their mental health and how working with socio- and psychopats impacts it.

</comment><comment><USER42> Nowadays, a good startup is one that is going to run into massive legal issues: Uber, Airbnb, any cryptocurrency-related company, or any similar platform that is going to ransack vested interests. Otherwise, it will not make a difference. I mostly do it because I like the fact that the new concept may end up bankrupting entire self-serving industries. I would have loved joining Uber back then, and get a kick from pushing every taxi company on the globe into chapter-11 proceedings. There is still so much to disrupt!

<comment><USER43> First and foremost Uber is disrupting social security. Not sure why that's sth. to look forward to ...</comment></comment>


'Academic' Torrent Client Offers a Safe Haven for Pirate Sites - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/academic-torrent-client-offers-a-safe-haven-for-pirate-sites-200623/ <comment><USER2> The research portfolio of this client: [https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki#current-items- under-...](https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki#current-items-under-active- development)</comment>


The Real Heroes Are Dead (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/the-real-heroes-are-dead <comment><USER3> _" The real heroes are dead"_

This is a quote attributed to Cyril Richard Rescorla. Rescorla was British and originally trained as a Paratrooper in BA. He later found himself as a Platoon leader in AirMobile Infantry [0] distinguishing himself in la Drang Valley 1965 in the first American encounter with NVA.

Hard-core as they come.

A measure of a persons character is how they conduct themselves under extreme pressure. Rescorla would sing Welsh tunes to calm his troops in that desperate battle reported by reporter Joe Gallaway. A book was co-written with the Commander, Hall Moore and later turned into a film, _" Once we were Soldiers"_

It was reported Rescorla, a Security Officer for Morgan Stanley also present in the '93 bombings (great side story, Rescorla infiltrated and identified a radical Iman at a NY Mosque who was later charged) made his views clear that MS should have moved out of the WTC.

        Rescorla was in his office on the 44th floor
        at 8:48 a.m., when the first plane struck the
        neighboring tower. At 9:10 a.m., a plane hit
        the second building where Morgan Stanley,
        an international financial services firm,
        had offices between the 43rd and 66th floors.
        Survivors said Rescorla grabbed a bullhorn
        and cleared out 3,800 workers from 20 floors. [0]

In being unsuccessful, Rescorla organised and drilled all MS employees every three months in fire evac procedures. [1]

        "Rick could be heard saying "... be proud to be an
         American ... everyone will be talking about you
         tomorrow," and singing God Bless America and other
         patriotic and military songs over his bullhorn
         to help evacuees stay calm as they left the tower." [2]

The title of the article comes from when Gallaway put the image of Rescorla [3] on the front cover. Rescorla is reported to not have read the book, nor wanted any recognition saying, _" The real heroes are dead"_.

[0] [http://www.weweresoldiers.net/rick.htm](http://www.weweresoldiers.net/rick.htm)

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

[2],[3] [http://history.army.mil/news/2015/151100a_Rescorla.html](http://history.army.mil/news/2015/151100a_Rescorla.html)

<comment><USER4> > great side story, Rescorla infiltrated and identified a radical Iman at a NY > Mosque who was later charged

Not quite, it was his friend Daniel Hall.

<comment><USER3> Was it? yep, misread that one. Thx for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ironically, this doesn't make me want to be a hero. Instead it makes me see the thanklessness of duty. Society loves a dead hero because they can be used without asking for anything.

<comment><USER6> The hero chooses to do his duty even though he knows he won't be thanked, even though he knows he will die.

I don't know if I'd be a hero, but I hope I would.

<comment><USER5> For my family? For those I love and those who I really care about? No question. But for some abstract like society, as part of a job for a paycheck, or out of some internalized sense of duty? No.

<comment><USER7> "A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him."

\- Napoleon Bonaparte, as quoted in Civ 4

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra "He'd fought against Communist-backed insurgencies in Cyprus from 1957 to 1960, and in Rhodesia from 1960 to 1963."

Are there any reasons to think Communist influence was deciding in either case?

UPD: After reading Wikipedia, to me it seems to be the case of "Let's call our opponents communist, make Captain America do whatever pleases us".

</comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr 9/11

</comment><comment><USER9> If you fought for Cecil Rhodes, you aren't a hero.

<comment><USER7> I'm having trouble lining up the history dates exactly. It seems to have been one of the forgotten conflicts of the retreat of the British Empire; Wikipedia dates the "Bush War" to 64-79, slightly after the 63 that this guy is supposed to have fought there.

White Supremacists vs. Communists. Not really something anyone involved should be very proud of. But that appears to have been after Rick left. He would have been in the British colonial police, which was a pretty ugly position to be in but the British government was also attempting to ensure that Rhodesia did not secede as an apartheit state.

<comment><USER10> As for how it got to promoting Mugabe into turning one of the most prosperous nations in Africa into the new Weimar Germany, one interesting reading of the situation:

The Rhodesian Selous Scouts (the new, mixed race, elite force responsible for 3/4 of the enemy casualties during the Bush Wars) made the decision to go after the "moderate" party (ZAPU, led by Nkomo), weakening his troops shortly before the final election (where all Rhodesian troops were called back to the barracks and guarded by British troops).

They correctly expected Mugabe to win the election, since he could take over the countryside with no opposition, and the plan was that he had such an awful reputation that the British would not allow the election result to stand, whereas they'd be fine with Nkomo. Unfortunately, they underestimated a. how much the British were annoyed with Ian Smith and UDI and b. how little they cared about Mugabe's true nature, and generally about the fate of the "natives" in their own colonies, just wanting to wrap up the whole thing as quickly as possible and stop being the centre of global attention.

In fact you can trace Mugabe's rise to the assassination of the moderate, educated, highly competent leader of ZAPU and later ZANU, Herbert Chitepo, a national hero and the country's first black lawyer, by a former British SAS soldier working half on contract, half out of ideology for the Rhodesians. The assassination, which was followed by Rhodesian disinformation to make it look like it was a faction war, was supposed to seed dissent within the enemy camp. Instead, Mugabe took advantage of the chaos to emerge as the leader and the rest is history. For all we know, Chitepo could have been the African Lee Kuan Yew.

The rise and fall of Rhodesia is one of the most fascinating parts of 20th century history and I really recommend getting acquainted with the period. If anybody has ZANU/ZAPU/ZANLA-side sources, I'd love to read them as I could find very little on the subject and much I heard from that point of view was from Zimbabweans whose family members were fighting on that side of the conflict.

<comment><USER3> Dan Tharp on SOFREP writes a lot on the history of the Rhodesian conflict and SF units during the Bush War.

[https://sofrep.com/author/dantharp/](https://sofrep.com/author/dantharp/)

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D0K3G30/ref=cm_sw_su_dp](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D0K3G30/ref=cm_sw_su_dp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this article could have been a lot better / more touching had they chosen people who were more relatable. Both Susan and Rick pretty much embodied the stereotype of the people close to the towers --- rich and privileged, aloof and out of touch to the Everyman's concerns, etc.

Of course, that doesn't change the message of the story, but it does affect how powerfully it will be heard.

<comment><USER12> I think this comment could have been a lot better / less embarrassing had you chosen to read the article. A couple in their early sixties who live somewhere in New Jersey in a house that they didn't even own outright is not wealthy. A month after he died, she had trouble paying the mortgage on the house. That isn't very privileged.

She had a job as an administrator at a college which she took to support her children after her marriage didn't work out and she found herself without many job skills. He had a job that he'd like to retire from at the age of 62 but an inadequate retirement fund. You almost literally could not invent a more "everyman" couple in their early sixties.

<comment><USER11> I _did_ read the article, and I would remind you:

> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even > read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article > mentions that."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Let me be clear: I'm not just talking about money here. Rick clearly had money for the vast majority of his life. But even Susan was described as being part of a high _socio_ -economic class:

> It was obvious to Hill that Susan was from a higher social class, which made > him a little self-conscious.

You may have gotten a different impression, but it's not like mine came out of the blue. The article paints them as pretty well off, especially eventually.

<comment><USER12> Fair enough and apologies for saying that I didn't think you read it - <USER2> wasn't trolling, I was genuinely surprised by that reading.

I don't think it is clear that Rick had money for the majority of his life, he looks like someone who grew up in modest circumstances (his mother was housekeeper!), enlisted at the age of 16, ended up eventually joining the US army, was eventually selected for OCS, and then used military benefits to go the University of Oklahoma to study literature and law. He taught for a while, then moved to do corporate security in his 40s.

That sounds to me like a relatively clever working class boy who eventually worked his way up to a pretty good professional job.

Susan is obviously from a higher social class - note in the article, the contrast is between Rick's friend and her, not between Rick and his friend - but by the time of the article she is essentially working a non-career track pink collar job. That's not unusual for an upper middle class divorced woman of her generation of course but it's a big economic step down from her previous life.</comment></comment></comment></comment>