Using Atomic Transactions to Power an Idempotent API - <AUTHOR> https://brandur.org/http-transactions <comment><USER2> Is it common for people to solve concurrency problems in the database by using serializable txn isolation? I'm genuinely curious. I realize you should always measure these things for your specific use case, but I've always thought that was a non-starter from a performance perspective. What are the real tradeoffs these days with it?

<comment><USER3> Check out the TPC benchmark: [http://www.tpc.org/information/benchmarks.asp](http://www.tpc.org/information/benchmarks.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I fail to understand the need to re-use terms from other fields in a completely twisted way. For those like me wondering what an "idempotent API" is: making multiple identical requests has the same effect as making a single request[1].

Then you have other people using the exact same term to refer to a (seemingly) totally different concept: An idempotent operation completes no more than one time[2].

Maybe I'm thicker than the average web developer, but I think that there must be a simpler way to explain this concept. Specially without reusing a term that, formally, means something completely different[3] than any of the possible interpretations that I have come up with so far.

[1] [http://www.restapitutorial.com/lessons/idempotency.html](http://www.restapitutorial.com/lessons/idempotency.html) [2] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/Run_In...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/Run_Instance_Idempotency.html) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotence)

<comment><USER5> I teach a lot of pretty middling software developers about idempotence when discussing configuration management tools, and it seems pretty graspable. Idempotence is `f(f(x)) = f(x)` and nothing but. This is your #1.

Upon a second read, what AWS is saying is "if you pass a token and this has already been done with that token, return the original result." That token is just setting part of `x`.

<comment><USER4> By your definition, how can a REST API be idempotent? Say that GET(user) = john so, what I'm interpreting is that: GET( GET(user) ) = GET(john) = john. That doesn't seem valid to me.

<comment><USER6> GET requests are a bad example because usually GET(x) will always return the same thing, unless x was updated in some fashion

Let's work with the classic TODO app example. Say the user adds a TODO item, and makes a POST request to the server to store it. If the user POSTs their TODO, but due to your front-end being overly-eager to hear back from the server, it sends the request twice because the first one took too long to respond.

This should not create two identical TODO items, but instead only create one. This is the concept of idempotence; performing the same operation n (n > 0) times should be the same as performing it once.

It's slightly notationally inaccurate to say f(f(x)) is what the client is performing in this case, it's more like f(x) * f(x), but these details surely are unimportant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do my posts keep getting stealth banned? - <AUTHOR> I just posted an ASK HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20502789) but it doesn't show up on /newest in an incognitor window. This happens every time I post something. Am I being banned? someone said that it won't show up unless someone upvotes it within a few minutes but I see plenty of 1 point posts in /newest all the time.<p>Is this normal behavior? <comment><USER2> Contact email@example.com, they're quite responsive. I see you asked a similar question last month and I clicked the 'vouch' again. Being able to see the 'vouch' button requires 100 points (can't remember exactly).

I'd say some anti-spam score is negative. It doesn't happen often. Usually it's brand new accounts that get flagged by some algorithm, maybe they shared an IP address with another group of account that got banned, and then when the first submission isn't a good quality one, let's say a youtube video without summary, nobody vouches.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like you got hellbanned when you mentioned Trump.

<comment><AUTHOR> hah! I made a microsite a few years ago. it was just a big button that would unfollow him on twitter. I guess that was a bad thing to post on HN.</comment></comment>


Google Acquires Marratech; Gets Into WebEx Territory - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/20/google-acquires-marratech-gets-into-webex-territory/ <comment><USER2> This is exactly the kind of application my firm is looking for for project meetings with remote participants. We tried using festoon through skype, which worked reasonably well except that only one person could share an application and the others just watch. So you would share your application, sketch on it, then unshare it. The next person would have to share, sketch, etc. It was awkward. This, however, looks great.

</comment><comment><USER3> Okay, now I would say that the folks behind Zenter should definitely be worried about Google's predictable move into online presentation software. E-meeting software is going to be killer whether it empowers project collaboration or remote presentation broadcasts.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think this is a vary interesting aquisition for Google. I wonder if its going to be part of Goog Office. If you think about it suite of products office products integrated with remote meeting software can be what Office 2.0 is all about</comment>


Ask HN: Early stage employees, how much was your equity worth? - <AUTHOR> Please shed some light with numbers about equity, employee number, exit & timeline <comment><USER2> Left the company 8 months ago but if I could sell everything right now (which I would) I could be getting 3-4M pre-tax money. However my board is rather inflexible and won't allow any secondary sale, even though I went ahead and found many buyers and even got into sale contracts... So I am pretty much sitting on paper money until the market crash and I get screwed along with the other employees while the founders were able to sell anytime :)

<comment><USER3> Curious to hear your process when discussing with the Board and how you sourced buyers for your shares. Are you on the board? Were the buyers personal relationships?

Has the company recently received outside investment?

<comment><USER2> I mainly found buyers from inbound emails and via SharesPost, EquityZen and Equidate (Forge). I am not on the board. The way I approached this, was to be upfront with the potential buyers and letting them know that the board is not allowing any transaction as far as I know. Then we would draft a contract with their broker team and I would be sending it to my previous company's general counsel or CEO. Each time it was received and responded to with "We do not authorize any transactions for now. Thanks, bye" which was very frustrating. No recent outside investment AFAIK.

<comment><USER4> Hi there, at the ESO Fund we can get you liquidity without a full transfer! Feel free to reach out at [https://www.esofund.com](https://www.esofund.com)

<comment><USER2> I don't want to get into some funky forward contract and would prefer to do it with the consent of my board. But if the problem persist I will likely be interested in the future.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Law-School Scam - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-law-school-scam/375069/ <comment><USER2> Law school grad here (top 10 school). Anyone asks my opinion (which seems to happen an awful lot -- I guess lots of people consider law school at some point or another), I tell them I think it's a pretty bad idea.

1) The cost (direct and opportunity) is ENORMOUS. And even with special federal govt repayment plans, if you don't get that big firm job, the debt will potentially weigh you down well into middle age (with the possibility of a nasty tax bite at the end if you have any assets and the law isn't changed).

2) The likelihood of getting a high paying job is slim. It's even pretty risky from top 10 schools.

3) Even during the boom times, when people from top schools were getting jobs at top BIGLAW firms left and right, people were HATING LIFE at the firm because they didn't realize what it was going to be like. And more broadly, lots of people get all the way through law school and realize they don't wanna be lawyers. This is super common.

4) Non-big-firm opportunities are either super competitive (like govt or public interest), super low paying (also includes lots of govt and public interest), or not a great value proposition (how'd you like 200k in debt to try scratching out 50k a year as a solo?)

Lots of the reasons people want to attend law school are pretty dumb/false (stuff like: like to argue, wanna be prestigious, think its a safe/good-paying career track). The people that should attend law school are those who:

a) won't be financially ruined by the decision,

b) actually want to be a lawyer, and

c) have _some real sense of what being a lawyer actually means_ (e.g. they spent at least a couple years working at a firm in some non-lawyer capacity, or they have a parent who was a lawyer and told them lots about their job, or they spent tons of their time researching law and legal practice. In other words their knowledge of legal practice is not based entirely on fictional TV and movie lawyers).

I'd say that describes under 1% of the people enrolled in law schools nationwide.

<comment><USER3> Engineer turned law student here.

I am just finishing my term as a summer associate at a top IP boutique. I deal with patents everyday and it is literally soul crushing at times.

Especially with software patents, it is the most ridiculous thing I have ever spent time on. After I get called to the bar, I am going back to my programming roots. Unfortunately, I've been rusty while attending law school and basically have to relearn everything.

That's okay though, because I'd rather do it and become an example to other people so they won't make the same mistake I did.

<comment><USER4> Why finish?

I left law school in the middle of my second year to start a business. Typically, when I talk to non-practicing lawyers now, they say "I wish I did that".

If you're sure you don't want to do law, then finishing it + passing the bar is pure waste. Time is precious. Your 20s are especially precious.

It sounds like you've got a year or two left on this path. That's 10-20% of your 20s. What does it get you?

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm doubting myself, but I'm not ready. My programming skills have deteriorated so much. I'm also utilizing law school as a safe haven where I can try to fully grok combinators, functional programming (Haskell), and meta- programming (macros in Lisp).

Since I only aim to pass in law school, I don't go to any classes at all. It is almost exactly the same as not having school or a job. Having this kind of free time and the (temporary) lack of financial pressure is valuable and I can use it to grok more hipster things that will hopefully help me code better later on.

On another note, I am in Canada but want to move to the US. I'm thinking of building a good portfolio and then grabbing a job down in silicon valley to get into the US. I'll need time to do that, law school gives me time.

<comment><USER4> Oh, you're in Canada. Your situation is far less dire. Though articling adds to the time required to pass the bar.

But lack of financial pressure is an illusion. Unless you've got family support that will end with school, you're running up debt, not getting income, and not learning a skill that will be of any use to you.

If you're truly certain law is not for you, the only thing finishing really gets you is an ability to not look silly to others when you describe what you're doing with your life.

You'll value that now, but feel silly about it later.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with you. But when every single person in your life is telling you to just finish and article, it is really hard not to. I feel silly about it already, I only wish I had the balls to disregard the opinion of everyone in my life, but I really don't have it in me.

That's also why I want to move to the US, so I can get away from these risk- averse people who have my "best interest" at heart. Because they end up living my life for me, and enough is enough.

I also think people are more open to entrepreneurship in US, whereas people in Canada feel pretty comfortable with their situation.

<comment><USER4> It's tough. I still remember calling my dad to tell him I didn't want to go to law school anymore. "Oh shit" was his reaction.

For the first few months, everyone thought I was nuts. For the first two years, I still heard constant doubts.

But then the doubts ceased, and people started to say "hey, that's pretty cool what you're doing" and they asked how I did it.

There's no getting around that discomfort. Right now you're prioritizing present comfort over future regret. Would you be comfortable sending this discussion thread to yourself five years from now?

What got me around that block was reading the Four Hour Workweek, especially the first couple chapters. I'd check it out – buy it right away.

(I do LSAT prep, incidently, [http://lsathacks.com](http://lsathacks.com) is my site, and I run the LSAT subreddit. You may have seen my stuff.

Also, Canada is supportive of entrepreneurs too, you just need to find the right neighborhood and social group. I live in the Plateau in Montreal, where a good quarter of the neighborhood is a student or self employed. I don't feel out of place.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are way, way too many lawyers in this country.

Back in the good ol' days, law was a profitable endeavor. It was limited to the elite, and as a result there was a great scarcity of people who were able to become lawyers. They could then charge a lot of money for their services and become rich.

This changed as soon as law schools became the dumping ground for people who wanted to become professionals but sucked at math. Can't do engineering? Programming's a bitch? Your lab grades suck too much to get into med school? Law school will take you! They'd better; they're charging 40k a year for it.

Then these kids get out into the working world and find out that BigLaw firms will work your ass to the bone. Why not? You can't quit; you're lucky to have the job in the first place, and you have $250k of debt. Okay, so BigLaw is out if you don't want to be driven to a nervous breakdown. How about being a public attorney? $35k a year salary. Okay, that sucks... how about being an ambulance chasing personal injury lawyer? Not going to happen, because there are tens of thousands of people just like you who went through the above options and realized that they were just as fucked. So now every billboard in town has a different grim-looking face promising the moon to anyone with a slip-and-fall case. "I don't get paid until you get paid!" There's only so many people who can slip and fall on a rogue can of peas at the Kroger, and you can't pay the bills with the few that will come to you.

As a result, almost a majority of people who go to law school don't end up as lawyers. The ones who do almost universally say that they wouldn't do it over again if they had the opportunity.

The organizations that profit from this? BigLaw and the law schools. BigLaw firms profit immensely because they have a massive supply of new lawyers who will take anything that's given to them. 90 hour weeks? Thank you sir, may I have another! I have student loans to pay!

The law schools also make a killing because, like many other colleges, they've managed to convince people that a college degree is The One True Path to attaining the American Dream. The people who get shafted, of course, are the newly minted lawyers.

<comment><USER6> I've been seeing a lot of "DUI attorneys" advertised lately. Maybe that's become lucrative?

<comment><USER2> That's a bread and butter practice area for lots of criminal defense attorneys but I'd imagine its just as glutted as the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since getting a law degree here (Denmark) is tuition-free, and the incoming class is regulated to be approximately in line with the annual demand for new lawyers, everything in this article reads like bizarro-land. Yeah, it _would_ be a mess if students paid for educations out of pocket, and also were the ones who decided how many people were needed in a given field (a field in which they did not as of yet have any expertise). That does sound like a good recipe for a bunch of people in debt not able to get jobs. Here is a solution: don't do that.

<comment><USER8> "the incoming class is regulated to be approximately in line with the annual demand for new lawyers"

There are dangers with trying to predict demand for individual goods and services for larger countries/markets.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but market signalling in a profession which takes years of education and training can lead to the same issues.

And this article shows that market signalling is largely not working in this case (because people do not approach education on a rational market basis).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I [semi-foolishly] graduated from law school in 2008. I was fortunate, as an employer paid for the cost of my law degree (and for my bar exam), and then laid me off in 2010 due to the economy tanking (and forgave all of my debt).

Since graduating, most of my friends (including myself) have all moved to careers where the law is not the primary driver; most are saddled with a mountain of debt, make between 40 and 80K/year (most first year law grads make less than 60K in their first year).

People think that lawyers are glamorous, due to the fictionalization of their career (law and order). You have attorneys who are either left or right wing whackjobs (I went to law school with a woman who was only going to law school so that she could overturn Roe v. Wade) who have no sense going into law, let alone practicing with clients.

I'm much happier as a programmer/nerd. Even with being on call, I still sleep much much better at night. I'll still do legal things (contract law, estate planning, and not giving legal advice to drunk people), but, I never call myself an attorney and I rarely admit that I'm a lawyer to anyone outside of my friends and family.

With that said, Law school is something that plays on the dreams of these kids. They're saddled with debt from undergrad and post-grad, thinking that they're going to be the next Erin Brokovich or Jack McCoy. My friends joke that Law School made them better drinkers, better readers, and that their 6-figure student loan debts came with a great group of friends. Sadly, that's where most kids come out of law school with these days -- a drinking problem, a mountain of debt, and nowhere to go.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yet there are hidden gems like like CUNY Law, which really should get more looks, particularly if a student is truly interested in doing public interest work. [http://www.law.cuny.edu/admissions/tuition.html](http://www.law.cuny.edu/admissions/tuition.html)

Though I don't truly regret going through law school then transitioning after, I really should have looked at financing the education like buying a home with a 30 year mortgage. A 20% downpayment would have defrayed quite a bit of the cost, and the path to saving that money would have given me time to consider the decision further. This doesn't have to be the rule, but it's an excellent guideline for anyone making such a big financial investment.

</comment><comment><USER12> For-profit law schools aren't the problem, law schools are. For-profit students at schools like the one in the article may be "subprime" as far as earning potential or the ability to pass the bar goes, but for graduates of schools outside of the top ten or fifteen schools your debt is likely to be nearly as high as from the school in the article without much better job prospects. Florida Coastal's tuition and costs are a lot, but they're not out of line with private law schools and a number of public ones (UPenn-$55k per year/UVA-$48k per year for in-state) until you get past the top 25 schools (and if you're not going to a top school, you really need to do some deep thinking about why you are still going to law school at all). All of the disadvantages of student loans apply to not-for-profit law students, as well. That's a lot of money to pay for a job market that is not great, and the warnings about poor earning potential and high debt load that they cite for students there are just as applicable to non-profit students, too. Law school --for profit or not-for-profit--isn't a bad idea for _everyone_ , but it's hardly a good idea for most, either.

Based on the title I fully expected this article to be about the larger law school market and graduates' debt and job prospects. "The Law School Scam" is a lot broader than for-profit schools.

<comment><USER13> I think the article addressed this very squarely:

> It is important to note that while InfiLaw's abuse of the student-loan > system may be egregious, it is far from unique. Ultimately, this story is > about not only for-profit law schools, or law schools, or even for-profit > higher education. It is about the problematic financial structure of higher > education in America today. It would be comforting to think that the crisis > is confined to for-profit schools—and indeed this idea is floated regularly > by defenders of higher education's status quo. But it would be more accurate > to say that for-profit schools, with their unabashed pursuit of money at the > expense of their students' long-term futures, merely throw this crisis into > particularly sharp relief. To see why, consider the regulatory and political > mechanisms that have allowed InfiLaw to make such handsome profits while > producing disastrous results for so many of its "customers."

[...]

> What, after all, is the difference between the InfiLaw schools and > Michigan's Thomas M. Cooley, or Boston's New England Law, or Chicago's John > Marshall, or San Diego's Thomas Jefferson? All of these law schools feature > student bodies with poor academic qualifications and terrible job prospects > relative to their average debt. In recent years, as law-school applications > have collapsed, all of these schools have, just like the InfiLaw schools, > cut their already low admissions standards. And, like Florida Coastal, > Arizona Summit, and Charlotte, all of these schools now have a very high > percentage of students who, given their LSAT scores, are unlikely to ever > pass the bar. Ultimately, what difference does it make that none of these > schools produce profit in the technical (and taxable) sense, because they > are organized as nonprofits?

> The only real difference between for-profit and nonprofit schools is that > while for-profits are run for the benefit of their owners, nonprofits are > run for the benefit of the most-powerful stakeholders within those > institutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Relevant:

Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a popular restaurant located on a street with many restaurants. You do your best to provide the best experience to your customers while staying ahead of the competition by keeping your prices down. You try to avoid spending too much on labor, and do as much of the work yourself as you can, often putting in long hours. Although there is a good wholesale market nearby, you drive an extra hour to another market just to get your ingredients a little cheaper.

One day a wealthy patron who is a big fan of your cooking announces a new idea. Because he wants as many people as possible to enjoy your food, he is going to pick up the tab for most of your customers. You can just go on doing what you always do, but when the check arrives for many tables, this wealthy patron will pay the tab. The next day, your waitress complains that there are too many tables and you should hire more help. What would you do?

Normally, you would try to find a way to avoid hiring another person as it would eat into what little profits you make. But now you realize there is another solution. You can just raise prices. Since most of your patrons are not paying for their meals, your place will still stay popular and you won't have to worry about losing business to your competition. So why not hire another waitress? While you are at it, why not hire a manger so you don't have to be there all time, and stop driving to the further market?. Whatever increase in costs you suffer you can make up for by raising prices more and more.

Now imagine all your competitors also have wealthy benefactors picking up the check for many of their customers. You can all raise prices constantly without losing any sleep – or business.

This scenario is effectively what America's higher education financing system has turned into. There are many reasons why college tuition is rising faster than virtually anything else, from more applicants than ever to state budget cuts for public universities, but all of those factors are allowed to persist because often times the person getting the degree is not the person paying the tab – not for today anyway.

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/why-tuition- keeps-r...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/why-tuition-keeps-rising- spoiler-alert-government-intervention)

<comment><USER15> > often times the person getting the degree is not the person paying the tab – > not for today anyway

The same thing -- only an indirect connection between buyer and seller -- could be seen as a primary cause of the rise in healthcare costs as well.

<comment><USER16> In theory, the wealthy patron who _is_ paying the tab would be the one to control the rate of price increases. We seem to get into these perverse situations by balancing our desire for the government to provide beneficial social services with our desire for the government to avoid manipulating prices in ostensibly private industries. Libertarians and socialists may be right that each of their extremes are better than the middle ground, but it's much easier to get support for a compromise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting piece. A couple local law schools here in Florida tried to double their enrollments in the last 5 years. What ended up happening was they had to bankroll bullshit clerkship jobs for the students to be able to get any sense of a job, lest their rankings tank. By having these 3-6month clerkships underwritten by the school (presumably paid for by the ridiculous tuition), the school was able to say that 90% of their students had a job within 6 weeks of graduation.

I at one point in my life thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I even took the LSAT prep stuff while interning at a law firm while in college. That was the most boring, time wasting 3 months of my life. I RARELY meet a lawyer who loves being a lawyer.

<comment><USER18> Lawyer here-- graduated in the 1990's. I do enjoy being a lawyer, but I have a solid job working for a government agency where my particular skills and area of expertise (a relatively obscure set of federal regulations) are valued and I have interesting co-workers. I would not want to work for a large firm, however, even though I theoretically could be paid much more.

Before I went to law school, I worked for over a year in a small law office, where I was taught the old fashioned way how to do legal research; I enjoyed the heck out of it. All my life I've been the kind of person who likes to look up stuff just for fun.

Funny what you say about LSAT test prep-- actually taking the LSAT was one of the most enjoyable, exhilarating moments in my life. For those who haven't taken it, it's basically a test of reading comprehension and logic puzzles, all taken at breakneck speed. I've always been able to read more quickly than most, and I enjoy logic and mathematics so it's not like these skills were new to me, I felt like I'd been preparing for it my whole life. It was like doing a speed run down a mountainside, but with my mind. I scored at the 99.3%.

I also really enjoyed law school, and I wound up graduating at the top 5% of my law school class.

However, it really, really isn't for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I went to a for-profit law school and it is not a "scam" as the article suggests. The law school described itself as the school of last resort for those wanting to go to law school but not able to get into more exclusive schools. They would take almost anyone into the program, but the grading was rigorous: 1/3 flunked out the first year, 1/3 flunked out over the course of the program, so only 1/3 of entering students graduated. At least they were given the opportunity to try.

The problem identified in the article is not the for-profit schools. It is rational for private enterprise to respond to government incentives. The problem is the excessive government incentives. There are too many lawyers, so the government should not be subsidizing legal educations. That is the solution.

By the way, my for-profit law school has a four-year part-time night program so I worked as a paralegal to pay for my tuition. I only took out a small loan to take time off to study for and take the bar exam, which I passed on the first try.

<comment><USER20> What idiotic politician(s) thought that unlimited guaranteed law study loans was a good idea? I guess if you own such a for profit law school it is a good idea. But it's dreadful governance. I'm not against helping people get a decent education but infinity is not a reasonable limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Imagine the irony of clicking on this article and then seeing this ad:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/smy9xlxvdynr91f/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/smy9xlxvdynr91f/Screenshot%202014-08-15%2000.08.03.png)

<comment><USER22> I got the same thing. Amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Georgetown law grad here who maxed out loans, worked during school, and put the excess capital into my first startup (cheaper than a small business loan!), which was law/tech-related. Not that I recommend that approach... I'm now back in software product management, which is what I did before law school.

I tell people law school is a bad book club. You read a crap-ton of mostly boring books, talk about them, and usually take a test at the end of each course. Occasionally there's an amazing instructor to make a subject enjoyable.

I'd prefer in the US we keep law as a graduate program, but tear down the antiquated 3 year system. Law school should be one year, with optional "residency" and specialist training like medicine. You'd get the research, writing, and basic subjects in that one year, which are all you need for most actual lawyering. Residency would be the hands-on training you never get at law school unless you had an amazing clinical program. Bar exams should be 1 basic exam covering that 1-year curriculum, and additional exams if you want to be certified to practice a specialty.

</comment><comment><USER24> Prospective law students, some things to look forward to at many firms: \- Wannabe litigators, most of your cases will settle. You'll spend agonizing hours preparing and rarely see a courtroom battle. Your time will spent posturing for your client and opposing counsel, pandering to your client's aspirational fantasies of outcome, and dealing with internal office politics. When you do make it to Court inept Judges and unsympathetic clients will weigh on you. \- Transactional attorneys, your eyes will bleed from the thousands of pages of boilerplate text you're going be reading every day, and the copy & paste keys on your keyboard will be worn beyond recognition. The dissonance between helping clients manage risk (ghost chasing) and not screwing up their deals will be maddening. \- The pressure to bring in business can be crushing. You signed on to practice law, only to find out it soon becomes a sales, marketing and customer service gig.

</comment><comment><USER25> My cousin graduated from arguably the best law school in our country, got a job with a multinational firm right out of school... and six months later I (who was still in engineering school) had to go wrestle with him, AND security guards, to get him out of the office where he had barricaded himself after a paranoid breakdown. Later, he had to talk me out of demolishing the firm. I have no first hand experience with the legal profession other than paying the guy who does my patent paperwork, but from what I've read, there is way too much stress, both in and out.

</comment><comment><USER26> I dropped out after my 1L year last summer and could not be happier with the decision. I landed a job working in compliance and have time to teach myself to code or whatever else. Law school is the worst.

</comment><comment><USER27> > For-profit law schools are a capitalist dream of privatized profits and > socialized losses

Oh come on now...

</comment><comment><USER28> "...capitalist dream of privatizing profits while socializing losses" \- what a nonsense! Socialising losses has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism as an economic system. Take your stinky socialist agenda elsewhere.

<comment><USER29> > Socialising losses has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism as an > economic system.

That (and how) it socializes harms while privating profits, and thereby serves to advance the interests of the capitalist class at the cost of others, is the feature for which the system was given the name "capitalism".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was reminded of a Simpsons quote: "You let me down, man. Now I don't believe in nothing no more. I'm going to law school".</comment>


Protothreads - <AUTHOR> http://dunkels.com/adam/pt/

<comment><USER2> The "Under the Hood" link explains the mechanism: [http://dunkels.com/adam/pt/expansion.html](http://dunkels.com/adam/pt/expansion.html)

<comment><USER3> And what if I want to short-circuit "continue;" in my thread's run loop? I suspect that's hidden somewhere in a "Don't do this" set of caveats that I couldn't find. Presumably you can't write switch statements within your threads either.

Interesting pattern though. I see the similarity with Duff's device, but hadn't ever really imagined a use for that outside of confusing SOFT1001 students...

<comment><USER4> The worst one--which to be fair, is specifically warned against on the site-- is that you can't really use local variables.

The technique is useful to a point. I used a similar technique for a project and the inability to use locals threw off new hires (who usually created a bug before understanding why).

The bigger problem than educating new users though was that as the number of threads scales up (or grows in hierarchy) you burn more and more CPU time stacking/unstacking your calls just to get to the check that "whoops, this thread should still have been blocked." Between that and implementing preemption, at some point you just have to buckle down and pay for stacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is somewhat similar to how the iterators are implemented in C#, the compiler generates a state machine for the iterator</comment>


Ask HN: How would you market PageKite, my "run web servers anywhere" service? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN!
Me and a couple of friends have been working for a few months on our startup: http://pagekite.net/
PageKite is a software & service solution for making servers (primarily web servers, but it does SSH and other protocols too) on personal and mobile devices visible to the wider Internet.  It is in many ways similar to Opera Unite, but it's far more powerful (IMO), it's open source and it's not tied to a browser.
We're bootstrapping and have reached "MVP" in that the software and the service both work, but the UI is still so primitive that it's really only useful to techies. We're working on that. :-)
But now that we have a product, we'd like to find some paying customers!
Got any advice for us? How would you monetize this service and market it? We have some ideas of course, it would be really great to get some outside input as well.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> My guess would be to start by offering a free trial to all visitors. Next on my list would be to identify the top 50 sites that you think most directly reach your target audience and work out some sort of arrangement whereby they offer their members/visitors some sort of discount or deal for using your service.

Thanks,

Bryan <http://onsidekick.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment!

We actually already do offer free trials, but identifying and reaching out to partners is something we have yet to make progress on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very nice. It took me about five minutes from reading the post to having a web server on my computer for the whole world to see.

Really glad you threw this out here! I could really see myself using it for prototypes and quick projects that don't warrant an actual server.

I think I'm going to add your script to my path or set it up as a bash alias so I can really make use of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, really glad you like it! Sorry I missed you on IRC (timezones, etc.), stop by again sometime.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, clickable link, I hope: <http://pagekite.net/></comment>


The Blind Men and the Elephant - <AUTHOR> https://gettys.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/the-blind-men-and-the-elephant/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Here lies madness. Today, we often pay for much more bandwidth than needed for our broadband connections just to reduce bufferbloat's effects; most applications are more sensitive to latency than bandwidth"</comment>


"I have cramps." – our 3-word policy on menstrual leave - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nilenso.com/blog/2016/05/16/i-have-cramps/ <comment><USER2> Good on them!

There's a cool line in the questions section in response to "But how do you know if the second day is real?":

 _" You don't measure a beach by counting the grains of sand."_</comment>


Vim Toolbox, 2010 Edition - <AUTHOR> http://weierophinney.net/matthew/archives/249-Vim-Toolbox,-2010-Edition.html <comment><USER2> I like it. I'm currently using dropbox to host my .vim/ and .vimrc, but keeping it in dvcs isn't a bad idea either.

<comment><USER3> You know that Dropbox has file revision histories too? It's no git, but you can still revert.

What I do though is store all my dotfiles in one directory, which is a git repo, and create symbolic links from their correct/expected locations.</comment></comment>


Internet Explorer users face drive-by attacks targeting new 0-day bug - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/internet-explorer-users-face-drive-by-attacks-targeting-new-0day-bug/ <comment><USER2> > The attackers embedded the exploit code directly "into a strategically > important website, known to draw visitors that are likely interested in > national and international security policy," the researchers wrote.

Anyone know which site they're referring to?

<comment><USER3> arstechnica?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The more I see stories like this, the more I'm convinced, truly security conscious people should be browsing the web in Lynx.

<comment><USER5> telnet port 80 or bust

<comment><USER6> The truly paranoid can go hard core: telnet 443

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't worry, Inori Aizawa will stop them.

<comment><USER8> We'll see what happens at the next comiket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone say (technically) what these attacks are so I can avoid reading that fluffy article?

edit: I know it is a short article.

<comment><USER10> It's the recent TIFF code execution bug found in Office 2010 and earlier. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6678957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6678957) for discussion.

<comment><USER2> That, plus a separate exploitable hole in IE/Windows.

> The vulnerabilities in various configurations of IE versions 7, 8, 9, and 10 > running on Windows XP and Windows 7 are separate from the Microsoft Windows > and Office graphics flaw that's also under active exploit at the moment.

> One flaw allows attackers to access and control computer memory, and another > leaks system information needed to capitalize on the first bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the first I've heard about EMET. Can any of our resident security gurus comment on whether it's worth installing?

</comment><comment><USER12> The image on that article really confused me.

<comment><USER13> Same. I was waiting for the article to mention how an IE bug led to a drive by shooting.</comment></comment>