Magnet doubles hydrogen yield from water splitting - <AUTHOR> https://cen.acs.org/articles/97/web/2019/06/Magnet-doubles-hydrogen-yield-water.html <comment><USER2> > it roughly doubled the current density at the anode without requiring any > additional voltage

Do I understand correctly that the magnet just makes the anode behave like a bigger anode, and does not make the process more energy-efficient?

<comment><USER3> Good question. Energy efficiency is what's really important.

<comment><USER4> For generating hydrogen for use, total cost is most important. Cost reductions are just as important as energy reductions since they both bring total cost down. This is a potential cost reduction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since this thread is about water splitting and woo, I thought I'd share my favourite example of using radio wave resonance to burn saltwater. [https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a2840/4271398/](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a2840/4271398/)

Because that sounds so absolutely nutty, nobody seems to notice the published evidence that it actually works. The energy efficiency is so-so -- but the point is that the woo-connection creates a sort of forcefield around the topic, preventing scientific study.

You'd hope it would produce the opposite effect. E.g, "wow, this has public interest, let's test and disprove -- and maybe make a practical discovery"

<comment><USER6> If you want it to be taken seriously, why do you - and Popular Mechanics - describe it in such woowoo terms?

" _using radio wave resonance to burn saltwater._ " ; " _had discovered a seemingly impossible phenomenon: a way to burn salt water by exposing it to radio waves._ " \- The salt water isn't burning, burning Hydrogen isn't seemingly impossible, separating Hydrogen from water isn't seemingly impossible. The description is nothing like what's actually happening.

 _the effect can be achieved with a much lower energy catalyst: radio waves are present in everything from microwaves to televisions._ \- ??? is this trying to imply you can mine radio waves from a television and use them for this? What a bizarre sentence.

 _" Nobody is claiming that you get more energy out than you put in," he says._; _They even envision a future in which a vehicle can run off its radio 's frequency waves._

.. is that not getting more out than you put in? A vehicle which generates radio waves, uses them to split seawater, burns the gas, uses that power to generate the radio waves, and also motion? Then the burnt H and O turn into ash (H2O) and drip back into the "fuel" tank to be burned again? That's not water as a "fuel", that's an overunity machine, perpetual motion.

If they're not claiming you get more energy out than you put in, _stop claiming that_. In the video the inventor is talking about how their Sterling Engine "could be a car engine if you wanted" but if you're putting in mains electric power to this, you'd be better off connecting that to an electric motor and saying "that could be a car engine" \- it couldn't, it's mains electric powered.

This is a neat electrolysis without electrodes idea, but why(??) is it being presented as the woowoo idea "water powered car"?

<comment><USER5> I presented it in woo woo terms to make my point. Popular Mechanics put it in woo woo terms to sell copies.

The point here is: holy crap, radio waves can provide electrodeless water splitting _and physicists don 't care_ because it sounds like woo.

Of course the public and the press will see salt water burning and freak out -- but that excitement shouldn't be a reason for physicists to ignore the phenomena.

<comment><USER7> > radio waves can provide electrodeless water splitting and physicists don't > care

Probably they don't care, because as soon as that water is split, it is ignited and burned again, so you can't have any hydrogen, you have just changed some rf energy into heat, losing some energy into heat in rf setup... It's easier to just heat something directly with elecrticity. Now if someone invented a way for oxygen and hydrogen split that way to remain split for more than milliseconds, physicists would be more interested.

<comment><USER8> >> Now if someone invented a way for oxygen and hydrogen split that way to remain split for more than milliseconds, physicists would be more interested

Sounds exactly like a cool research area for physicists.

<comment><USER9> Isn't that exactly what this does? [https://youtu.be/r3_UdBvyicU](https://youtu.be/r3_UdBvyicU) There has been a few videos about it on the Cody's Lab YouTube channel

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is one of the magnetic field effect on radical pairs recombination.

Once you put a magnet near the site of a chemical reaction where radical pairs are formed, the rate of the reaction may be changed, due to the additional energy levels introduced by the spin-magnetic field interaction.

Anyway, in order to have such kind of effects, you need an energy intensive process responsible for the radical pairs creation.

<comment><USER10> This is a good introduction to the topic: [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cr00033a001](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cr00033a001)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article says that "about half" of the world's hydrogen is made by steam reformation of methane, and only 4% is made by electrolysis of water.

Where does the other 46% come from ?

<comment><USER12> Interesting, from Wikipedia: There are four main sources for the commercial production of hydrogen: natural gas, oil, coal, and electrolysis; which account for 48%, 30%, 18% and 4% of the world's hydrogen production respectively.

All the hydrocarbon sources are apparently processed by steam reforming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there any chance a similar magnetic effect could be used to improve performance of rechargeable batteries?

<comment><USER14> I don't think those have chemistries with triplet states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would this make hydrogen fuel cells (the reverse of electrolysis) have double the power density as well? That would be meaningful for reducing hydrogen fuel cell weight and cost per vehicle.

<comment><USER16> I doubt it. The reason this works is that when combining oxygen atoms from two water molecules to produce an oxygen molecule, they need to have parallel spins; the magnet aligns the spins and therefore speeds up this process. However, when breaking the O2 molecule to combine it with hydrogen (in a fuel cell), the atoms are already parallel in spin and are going to an unordered state, so there's no benefit to attempting to align them.

<comment><USER17> Ok, thank you. How about lead-acid battery charging or discharging?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > After testing a variety of different anode materials, the ICIQ team found > that the effect depended on the degree of anode magnetization and did not > work at all with nonmagnetic anodes. This suggests that the effect is linked > to the electron spin states of oxygen intermediates bound to the catalyst, > says Galán-Mascarós.

So how do the production rates of magnetic versus non-magnetic anodes compare?

<comment><USER19> Sounds like non-zero vs zero

<comment><USER20> No, that is just referring to the magnetic enhancement. A nonmagnetic electrode will still work for electrolysis. The op has a fair question -- what is the quantified gain of this magnetic effect over traditional electrolysis?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is very interesting, but at the same time it seems like something the "free energy" people would have done and found a long time ago?

Maybe they did, but were dismissed out of hand due to everything else in their woo-based world?

Or maybe they tried it and saw no (or little) difference; the article did say that the effect wasn't shown to happen with every non-magnetic anode material - and I doubt that the "free energy" researchers tried a particular nickel- coated foam type of anode...

All of that aside, I do wonder if there are any "off-the-shelf" anode materials whereby one could experiment with this effect?

<comment><USER22> Short answer: Yes.

If you take the time to trawl through Rex Research you would find this and a bunch of other stuff. _Most_ of it is BS but the bits that aren't... there is some mind-blowing stuff that just hasn't reached critical mass in the collective consciousness yet.

For example, the device of Przemyslaw Lagiewka, which has to be seen to be believed (there are videos):

> A small Fiat 126p, going 45 km per hour, was driven into a concrete wall. > The bumper was not damaged. The driver wore no seatbelts. The inertial > reaction, which should have thrown him onto the hood, did not occur. The > stopping distance was only 16 centimetres.

[http://www.rexresearch.com/lagiewka/lagiewka.htm](http://www.rexresearch.com/lagiewka/lagiewka.htm)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ6_bjnxeco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ6_bjnxeco)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-h56N_A3rY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-h56N_A3rY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> so what is the actual efficiency now - ie what is the energy content of the h2 produced, compared to the energy input??

<comment><USER24> Sibling comment has the info. This is not an increase in energy efficiency just conversion efficiency. You pump in more amperes over the same voltage and manage to split twice the amount of water with the same size array. Still great thou. Anything that reduces the infrastructure needs to produce H2 is a good thing.

<comment><USER23> thanks, and in fact the wikipedia entry for electrolysis also has lots of interesting info.

It seems efficiency is between 70-85% depending on method.

Interestingly it seems there is potential to be >100% electrical efficiency if the water is also heated.

I can envisage concentrated heat-and-PV electrolysis plants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So we know what happens when you put the magnet at the anode, now what happens if you put it at the cathode? Hell, what happens when you put magnets on both?

</comment><comment><USER18> Aren't there field lines between the anode and cathode in an electrolysis system? You have current moving, so there must be. I wonder how those affect the process.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a fairly obvious thing to try, and indeed one of the commenters writes that he discovered this already sometime after 1982 (too bad he is not more precise).

</comment><comment><USER27> Water splitting? Why didn't they call it hydrolysis?

<comment><USER28> No idea, but the complaint sounds like hairolysis. :-p

<comment><USER29> I see what you did there. Well-played.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Jesse would be happy.

</comment><comment><USER31> Geez makes you want to put a magnet on just about anything to see what happens.

<comment><USER32> I walk around all day on hard concrete and my feet hurt at the end of each day. Found some ankle bracelets with little magnets in them and started wearing them, and my feet quit hurting entirely. I stopped taking pain killers altogether!

<comment><USER33> Placebo is one hell of a drug.

<comment><USER34> It's effectiveness also correlates positively with our belief in modern medicine; it's becoming more effective over time. Truly fascinating.

<comment><USER35> Indeed. But we've got to ask - is the increasing effectiveness of the placebo effect correlated with a dumbing down of the population (eg the increasing prevalence of anti-scientific views and the mistrust of authorities)? If so, one could foresee a time when the underlying anti-scientific views are cemented by some kind of widespread "scandal", at which point one might expect the placebo affect to start diminishing in efficacy (if it is related to a belief in modern medicine). So, long-term it may be a bad sign.

EDITED: spelling and grammar fixes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Always with the magnets.

[https://getyarn.io/yarn- clip/b0c0a501-221b-4d7b-9336-0cd0e84...](https://getyarn.io/yarn- clip/b0c0a501-221b-4d7b-9336-0cd0e848affb)

I know someone who was telling me with great sincerity about how she just puts a couple of magnets in with her wash and far less soap is needed.

I told her that I only go with things where I can look up the science behind it.

<comment><USER37> Meanwhile I find that clothes wash just fine with 1/2-1/4 of the recommended amounts unless they're soiled.

Makes the colours last longer too.

<comment><USER38> There are scam products - "laundry disks" or "laundry balls" \- which take advantage of the fact that clothes still get pretty clean without using any powder. You use the thing (which costs $50+), don't use powder, and it something something magnets something something ions and wow your laundry gets clean!

<comment><USER39> Meanwhile, wool dryer balls are fantastic low-tech solution to static cling!

<comment><USER38> Most dryer balls also claim to reduce drying time, which is also untrue, although at least the claims are more grounded in physical possibility than the washing machine ones.

<comment><USER40> Your wet sheets aren't going to dry if they're effectively tied in a knot. It's not some sort of mystery of physics.

<comment><USER41> If the toss a brick in the dryer, that will prevent your sheets from getting tied in a knot.

<comment><USER42> It'll instead prevent you from visiting the local laundromat ever again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> not kidding here, but could this shed new light onthose homeopaths/acupuncturists who put magnets on their wrists, etc. to increase blood flow?

<comment><USER44> I actually talked to one of their sales people a while ago out of idle curiosity, and within five minutes felt like my head was going to explode from "that's not how any of this works".

I went into it with as open a mind as I could muster, and was told the following:

\- The magnets are arranged so that there's a positive magnetic field in the middle surrounded by a ring of negative magnetic field

\- Blood cells are clumped and this arrangement of magnetic fields pulls apart the clumps, making the blood cells more efficient

\- The magnetic field also ionizes your blood, giving the cells a positive charge so they can hold more oxygen (!)

\- They don't claim that it's a medical device because pharmacies won't let them (so as to get more money from doctors prescribing medicine)

\- The sales girl's pet cat is way more friendly since starting to use one of their magnet things

I checked their website which yielded further such gems as:

\- Magnotherapy has been used for centuries by humans and animals to aid healing

\- It is reported that Cleopatra wore a small magnet on her forehead to preserve her beauty and youthfulness!

\- Our magnets use a strong, multi-directional force of magnetism called 'Central Reverse Polarity®' also referred to as 'CRP®', to mimic the expensive professional equipment used by physiotherapists. Molecules that exit a CRP® field are more efficient than those produced by standard magnets.

\- The use of a Central Reverse Polarity magnetic field therefore has a three- fold effect on the body's energy levels (talking at a molecular level);

\-- It activates the release of energy

\-- It boosts the volume of stored energy

\-- It acts as a catalyst by providing energy to increase the rate of chemical reactions.

tl;dr no.

<comment><USER45> Reminded me of this episode of Patient Zero, which covers some fringe treatments for Lyme disease: [https://www.patientzeropodcast.com/podcast- episodes/episode-...](https://www.patientzeropodcast.com/podcast- episodes/episode-5)

Spoiler: Don't try to fight bacterial infections with lasers.

<comment><USER46> Eh, with a big enough laser, I'll guarantee a 100% success rate at killing any bacteria infecting you.

<comment><USER47> Yep, like the boast on bottles of bleach: "Kills the AIDS virus!". So does sunlight, soap, drying up, in fact almost anything besides "being kept in a body fluid at ambient temperature"

<comment><USER44> Obligatory XKCD quote: "When reading that a particular compound kills cancer cells in a petri dish, remember so does a hand gun."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My first thought was that it works because it aligns the molecules in the anode, making it more efficient?

</comment><comment><USER49> Remember:

At this point in our technological competency, all easy advancements are gone.

Oh wait.</comment>


FTC votes to block DraftKings, FanDuel merger - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2017/06/19/feds-vote-to-block-draftkings-fanduel-merger.html?ana=twt <comment><AUTHOR> In the US and Canada, 57m people play and spend an average of $556 per year, which makes it a ~$32B market. (Source: [http://fsta.org/research/industry- demographics/](http://fsta.org/research/industry-demographics/)) That's 10^2 more than I would've guessed.</comment>


Mistakes C/C++ Devs make writing Go - <AUTHOR> https://about.sourcegraph.com/go/gophercon-2018-5-mistakes-c-c-devs-make-writing-go <comment><USER2> Here's a newbie's bit off topic question: As a C++ dev who wants to write "slightly less low-level code", should I go for RUST or GO? My intuition says Rust is more like a safer version of C++ while Go is more half way to Python/Julia. Do you agree with this sloppy assessment?

(Please, don't start a religious war on programming languages. We are all grown ups)

<comment><USER3> Yes, you're right. The Go team was originally targeting use in C++-like applications, but was surprised to see Go catching on more among Python programmers than C++ programmers.

I would also suggest trying Python itself (why not go all the way?). Personally I write quick hacks in Python and real code in C++, and find Go to be an interesting middle ground. Python will do more to stretch your idea of programming. Maybe someday Go will get numpy and tensorflow.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but there are actually supported Tensorflow bindings for Go. They're quite usable (at least for me when I used them for inference), relatively idiomatic, and well documented. See [https://godoc.org/github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tensorflo...](https://godoc.org/github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tensorflow/go)

<comment><USER5> Also I'm not sure exactly what Numpy is but Go probably has an analog as it already has a suite of scientific computing libraries (check out gonum as a starting point).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> re: "# channels < # goroutines"

      func doSomethingTwice() error {
          // Issue occurs below
          errc := make(chan error)

          go func() {
              defer fmt.Println("done wth a")
              errc <- doSomething("a")
          }()
          go func() {
              defer fmt.Println("done with b")
              errc <- doSomething("b")
          }()
          err := <-errc
          return err
      }

> When one routine writes to the channel, the program exits and the other > goroutine is lost, building up memory use as a results

I'm not very familiar with go, but my guess would be that since the two goroutines send to an unbuffered channel that is read at most once, the "slower" of the two goroutines will sit there blocking attempting to send to a channel that will never be read. So this would "leak" a goroutine that would consume resources while the process was still running, but it doesn't have anything to do with the program exiting.

[https://golang.org/ref/spec#Channel_types](https://golang.org/ref/spec#Channel_types)

[https://golang.org/ref/spec#Send_statements](https://golang.org/ref/spec#Send_statements)

> How do we fix this? We simply increase the number of channels to 2

The fix is okay but the language is a bit hazy, there's still only one channel, but now it's a buffered channel with capacity to hold up to 2 messages, so the two goroutines don't need to block waiting for a receiver to be ready to synchronously receive the message they are sending.

<comment><USER7> > The fix is okay but the language is a bit hazy, there's still only one > channel, but now it's a buffered channel with capacity to hold up to 2 > messages, so the two goroutines don't need to block waiting for a receiver > to be ready to synchronously receive the message they are sending.

I was very disappointed with this explanation as well. The documentation is less than direct on this point, and suggests goroutines "execute independently", so my only conclusion is that the author doesn't understand channels very well, and was perhaps led to not understand them well.

        01  func doSomethingTwice() error {
        02      // Issue occurs below
        03      errc := make(chan error)
        04
        05      go func() {
        06          defer fmt.Println("done wth a")
        07          errc <- doSomething("a")
        08      }()
        09      go func() {
        10          defer fmt.Println("done with b")
        11          errc <- doSomething("b")
        12      }()
        13      err := <-errc
        14      return err
        15  }

If the programmer understands the control flow is something like: 03, 06, 07, 10, 13, 14 then they're not going to be confused, and they're certainly not going to "fix it" by increasing the _buffer_ , they'll fix it by reading from the channel twice, and guarding against this by closing the channel. The real question is how to explain to the programmer what the semantics of channels is:

A goroutine blocks on read or write of an unbuffered channel (what we're seeing here).

The garbage collector is for simulating an infinite memory machine only. It is not for "cleaning up" after you.

The issue comes up when go programmers learn about runtime.GOMAXPROCS much too early, so they _learn_ goroutines as threads, and they _guess_ that the thread will be cleaned up when "garbage collected" because that's how Python works (or some other "garbage collected" language they might be familiar with). They're further confused because golang values have a "finalizer" so they might just _assume_ that the thread finalizer (somehow) kills the thread, or the channel finalizer (somehow) closes the channel.

Perhaps if they noticed that writing to a closed channel causes a run-time panic, they might think these semantics are unlikely.

The point about buffering is to be able to write twice without blocking. Yes, you get 03, 06, 07, 10, 11, 13, 14 but how important was that really? If you did it just because you don't want to "leak memory", then you still don't know what's going on.

<comment><USER8> Increasing the channel size to 2 is the correct fix.

You don't want to read twice because then you would block waiting for both messages.

When the channel size is two the two inner writing goroutines can succeed on their write to the channel even if nothing reads from it.

The channel has three references, the outer receiver, and the two inner senders. The receiver finishes as soon as its able to receive the first message.

So what happens is one of the messages is sent and received, the other is sent and just sits in the channel. Then the channel has no more references and is garbage collected, so there's no memory leak.

Also goroutines are scheduled onto threads. So these orphaned goroutines that can't complete eat up memory (their call stack + the channel which can't be completed) as well as put pressure on the scheduler. (though the scheduler is efficient and can handle millions of goroutines) That's why it makes sense to refer to this as a memory leak.

<comment><USER7> > Increasing the channel size to 2 is the correct fix.

Sometimes. Sometimes it is not. For a trivial example, a unix-style wait would be done by reading twice. A job queue would be another.

It is not, for the reasons specified in the article, which falsely states that the buffer length and the number of goroutines has some relationship (# channels < # goroutines).

<comment><USER8> The channel size needs to match or exceed the number of producing goroutines. Anything less and the some of the goroutines will block attempting to send to a channel with no receiver.

The example in the article is a common issue that comes up in go programs, and the suggested fix is what is usually recommended.

The other way to solve it would be to read the first error and then up another goroutine to read the remaining error, but that seems more complicated to me.

<comment><USER7> > The channel [buffer] size needs to match or exceed the number of producing > goroutines

This is not true, for the reasons I outlined.

> The example in the article is a common issue that comes up in go programs, > and the suggested fix is what is usually recommended.

That may be, but it doesn't change the fact that go programmers that take this advice are creating a kind of cargo-cult around channels and goroutines that will hold them back.

> The other way to solve it would be to read the first error and then up > another goroutine to read the remaining error, but that seems more > complicated to me.

If all you ever do with channels and goroutines is simulate threads, you're missing out. Erlang programmers might more-easily appreciate this given that they have to go through an incredible contortion to get this feature that go provides for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This has no c++ content. only C. the mistakes highlighted are just not representative of a team of C devs. the resource leak is specially a bad example because there better examples where go safety is a real benefit.

<comment><USER10> A reflection of lots of "C++" code I see in the enterprise, what I call "C compiled with C++ compiler", because usually it doesn't even make use of C with Classes kind of features.

Also why the C++ community has started to focus on teaching C++ the right way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can't leave comment in blog, but the first two listings are broken - it looks like there is no empty line after ``` in listing line, and before the same in listing two. So enumeration isn't rendered correctly

</comment><comment><USER12> Good tips, unfortunately, the explanations are not very clear and it's written in poor English, this gets very distracting.

<comment><USER13> Which part are you looking at? It all reads quite clearly to this native English speaker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Regarding the defer statements in loops. It is better to just not ever do that.

Instead, move the defer outside of any loops, and have the defer check the state of the variable to decide action. For example, in the case of an open file, the loop should close the file and nil out the reference. In the defer, if the reference is not nil, it closes the file.

<comment><USER15> The issue outlined in the article is not defer in a loop, it's defer in an _infinite_ loop.

</comment></comment><comment> dis-sys for goroutine leaks, I have been using the leaktest package made by fortytw2 [1] in all my tests, pretty useful for my day-to-day dev work.

the article is pretty cool, especially when the author actually has a family name Check. :)

[1] [https://github.com/fortytw2/leaktest](https://github.com/fortytw2/leaktest)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wouldn't want to use a language that I cannot predict how memory allocation would work. I'd like to have every inch of performance in my disposal for the tasks I am interested in (video games, simulations, data mining).

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds more like design mistakes of Go.

</comment><comment><USER18> 1.There is no such language as C/C++.

2\. There are no developers of C/C++.

3\. C and C++ are distinct languages.

4\. Anybody advertising for a C/C++ developer is insufficiently aware of software requirements to provide meaningful employment.

5\. C++ programmers and C programmers have different responses to unfamiliar languages.

6\. Some C programmers would like to be thought of as skilled "C/C++" programmers. There are none. Thus, they are not.

7\. Many C++ programmers are capable of altering C code. They, also, are not "C/C++" programmers. When altering C code, they are programming in C, not C++.

8\. C++ programmers and C programmers make different kinds of mistakes.

9\. Anyone titling an article about "C/C++ programmers" make is making a fundamental category error, and has self-identified as lacking insight.

10\. Anyone titling an article about mistakes "C/C++ programmers make" refers to an empty set of programmers.

11\. People new to Go make mistakes. (One such mistake might be using Go at all; that is not decided.)

12\. There will be some intersection between mistakes made by any two groups of programmers.

13\. The intersection between mistakes made by Java programmers and Javascript programmers does not define a "Java/Javascript" language, nor a set of "Java/Javascript programmers", despite any similarity of names or surface syntax between the two.

<comment><USER19> I guess you're being downvoted for tone, but I agree with you.

I program professionally in C++. Waltzing into a non-C++ C code base requires a strong mental shift. I work with embedded programmers new to our team who have a strong history of C programming, and for them, C++ is a very steep hill to climb to become proficient.

They are two languages with interoperability and semantic similarities that share a compiler infrastructure and a runtime and memory model.

But modern C++ programming differs in drastic ways from C such that I don't think you can call them a unified language and brush over it with 'C/C++ programmers'

<comment><USER10> C/C++ Users Journal

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/C%2B%2B_Users_Journal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/C%2B%2B_Users_Journal)

Yes the languages are different, I would like to have C nuked instead of having to use it from time to time, but I agree with using C/C++ instead of writing _C and C++_ all the time.

It is a matter of English style only.

[https://www.grammarly.com/blog/slash/](https://www.grammarly.com/blog/slash/)</comment></comment></comment>


145 of the Internet's 10k top websites use hidden scripts to extract information - <AUTHOR> http://www.kuleuven.be/english/news/2013/several-top-websites-use-device-fingerprinting-to-secretly-track-users

<comment><USER2> hopefully using adp + noScript + ghostery on firefox make it "safer"</comment>


How to find an English teacher using Data Science. Part 1 - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/post/509114/ <comment><AUTHOR> How about using Data Science for something that is more... down to earth. For example for case when you are looking for an English teacher?</comment>


With Friend Wekan - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/friendupcloud/with-friend-wekan-707af8d04d9f <comment><USER2> looking forward to seeing this integrated with FriendUP APIs</comment>


Vue.js vs. React: Which JavaScript Framework to Choose for Your Project - <AUTHOR> https://da-14.com/blog/vuejs-vs-react-which-javascript-framework-choose-your-project <comment><USER2> _Vue.js has also displayed an ability to handle higher frame-rates (10 frames per second as compared to 1 frame per second typical for React) which makes it a better choice for development of applications involving animation._

I'm working on a React app that runs at 60fps at the moment.</comment>


Show HN: Unofficial Sonos Controller for Linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pascalopitz/unoffical-sonos-controller-for-linux/releases <comment><AUTHOR> Maintainer here. I'd really love some feedback, but even better would be people contributing, especially if you know about Sonos and the way it deals with Services, auth tokens etc.</comment>


Building a TypeScript Roguelike, Part 1: Tilemaps - <AUTHOR> http://benaiah.me/posts/building-a-typescript-roguelike-part-1-tilemaps/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, if you have any questions.</comment>


Ask HN: What Are The Top 3 Non-Tech Challenges Your Startup Faces? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> 1\. Founder bandwidth

2\. Sales

3\. Founder bandwidth

</comment><comment><USER3> Hiring good people. Ensuring good communication between people. Getting the team to perform to its potential.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Location (country) 2\. Sales and Marketing Plan 3\. Hiring good people</comment>


Stellar – Astronomy Photo of the Day (iOS) - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stellar-photo-of-the-day/id1450763206?ls=1&mt=8 <comment><USER2> Or, just use your browser for the real thing:

[https://apod.nasa.gov](https://apod.nasa.gov)</comment>


Ackee v2: Privacy-focused website analytics - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/electerious/Ackee <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone!

This is the first major rewrite of Ackee since I've launched the project. It's now in active development for quite a while and gets better with every release. New newest version brings a brand new dashboard, GraphQL API, keyboard shortcuts, active visitors counter and more.

It's also the first time I'm giving GitHub sponsors a try. The number of sponsors is still very low, but it's great to see people supporting the development of a free product. This means a lot to me and I can't wait to bring the project forward together with the community.

Let me know if there're any questions!</comment>


Can Entrepreneurs Fix the Job Loss Problem? - <AUTHOR> http://www.smallbiztrends.com/2008/12/can-entrepreneurs-fix-the-job-loss-problem.html/

<comment><AUTHOR> Well isnt "Startups" one of the simple answers?</comment>


Ryman Eco – The world's most beautiful sustainable font - <AUTHOR> http://www.rymaneco.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> Awesome idea. Unfortunately the claim about being 100% free is about price and not speech:

      3.2 You shall not alter, merge, modify, adapt, translate or decompile,
          reverse engineer, disassemble, or otherwise reduce the Licensed Fonts
          to a human-perceivable form.

</comment><comment><USER3> If the authors really want to sell us on the font, they'll use it in the body of the text that describes it. I really don't think this would work for body text, which is where the majority of the ink ends up.

The font is too jarring, so I guess if you wanted to advertise how sustainable you were being by using it, people would notice from the font alone.</comment>


How we are using Android to increase government transparency in Rwanda - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nyaruka.com/bringing-minister-mondays-to-the-general-publ

<comment><USER2> Wow. This is really impressive.

I am surprised that RapidSMS (the python framework it was built upon) is not given as much props as it deserves. We used it for collecting election info this last April.

I wonder how the tech scene is in Kigali.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using an Android SMS relayer opens up the door for some pretty interesting projects that can be easily launched in any country without having to fight with telcos.

Add to that RapidSMS and the django smartmin project and you've got an extremely agile framework for building services like this very quickly. (I should also mention that if ever there was an argument to use a vanilla twitter bootstrap style, projects like this are definitely it).

The tech scene is definitely growing in Kigali. We recognize we've got a long way to go, but there is a strong desire to raise that profile. We've been taking steps to create a real tech community here.

<comment><USER3> It looks like nyaruka's Android SMS relayer app isn't yet publicly available or open source, but in the meantime people can also check out EnvayaSMS (<http://sms.envaya.org/>). Notably, EnvayaSMS also relays incoming MMS and allows you to exceed Android's limit of 100 outgoing SMS messages per hour.

<comment><USER4> [Sorry for the self plug, but this is too cool to pass up] 435 days ago I first publicly "launched" KalSMS in an HN thread - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1759871> \- the codebase was later picked up by Envaya, greatly improved and morphed into EnvayaSMS. Cool to see people recommending it :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Undercover Agents Target Citizen Lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/01/25/us/ap-cybersecurity-undercover-operatives.html <comment><USER2> From the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: 'Revealed: Israel's Cyber-spy Industry Helps World Dictators Hunt Dissidents and Gays'

"Within a few years, the Israeli espionage industry has become the spearhead of the global commerce in surveillance tools and communications interception. Today, every self-respecting governmental agency that has no respect for the privacy of its citizens, is equipped with spy capabilities created in Herzliya Pituah."

[https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE- israel...](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israel-s- cyber-spy-industry-aids-dictators-hunt-dissidents-and-gays-1.6573027)

</comment><comment><USER3> > "I know what I'm doing," Lambert said, as he put his files — and his pen — > into a bag. Then he stood up, bumped into a chair and walked off, saying > "Ciao" and waving his hand, before returning because he had neglected to pay > the bill.

> As he paced around the restaurant waiting for the check, Lambert refused to > answer questions about who he worked for or why no trace of his firm could > be found.

My god. This would be perfect comedy if wasn't so concerning that it happened at all.

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of the time the _Silicon Valley_ writers met with the head of GoogleX: [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how- silicon-v...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon- valley-nails-silicon-valley)

> _Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a > dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He > wobbled to the door in silence. "Then there was this awkward moment of him > fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open," Kemper said. > "It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while > it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use > this?" In the end, the joke was deemed "too hacky to use on the show."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Like FlameTech, CPW-Consulting was a fiction. Searches of Orbis and the > French commercial court registry Infogreffe turned up no trace of the > supposedly Paris-based company or indeed of any Paris-based company bearing > the acronym CPW. And when the AP visited CPW's alleged office there was no > evidence of the company; the address was home to a mainly residential > apartment building. Residents and the building's caretaker said they had > never heard of the firm.

This obviously doesn't mean anything, but the IPs associated with cpw- consulting.com are riddled with malware.

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5684892-Gmail- Kite-A...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5684892-Gmail-Kite-Aerial- Photography.html)

[http://archive.is/K54Ax](http://archive.is/K54Ax)

[https://www.virustotal.com/#/domain/cpw- consulting.com](https://www.virustotal.com/#/domain/cpw-consulting.com)

[https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip- address/220.127.116.11](https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/184.108.40.206) [https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip- address/22.214.171.124](https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/188.8.131.52) [https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip- address/22.214.171.124](https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/126.96.36.199)

</comment><comment><USER6> One interesting thing to point out is that all of Canada is a single-party consent jurisdiction for recording of conversations. You do not have to notify the other party.

CBC's investigative journalists have used this extensively, in all sorts of scam/fraud/corruption investigations, if you watch the past twenty years of output from The Fifth Estate and other reputable documentary series.

The Citizen Lab researchers would be smart to bring pocket sized recording devices with them to meet with these sketchy characters, and then publish the results.

<comment><USER7> This isn't quiet as clear cut as you're saying. There are instances where you cannot record conversations. For example, in the bedroom or other places where someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy like a therapist's office.

But the general thrust of what you're saying is true. Phone calls, and interviews or conversations in public can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> States and large companies routinely try to understand who is behind journalistic endeavors, to influence them, and to counter other state's influence over them. This stuff is never going away, and it is very likely to get worse and more complex.

Influence and counter-influence operations: [https://www.rand.org/topics/information- operations.html](https://www.rand.org/topics/information-operations.html)

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Citizen Lab are an outstanding bunch of people, really love the work that they do.

A pity, though not surprising that they are being targeted this way. This sort of thing happens all the time with many of the NGOs we provide security for. Many of the infiltration attempts are much more sophisticated though, with far wider efforts to build better cover.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you'd like to support Citizen Lab you can donate here:

[https://donate.utoronto.ca/give/show/84](https://donate.utoronto.ca/give/show/84)

</comment><comment><USER12> This appears to be an AP news story, so here's a link:

[https://www.apnews.com/9f31fa2aa72946c694555a5074fc9f42](https://www.apnews.com/9f31fa2aa72946c694555a5074fc9f42)

In addition to presumably being a more direct / original source, this doesn't appear to have a paywall like the NY Times site.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! I routinely avoid articles that I'm interested in, because of the NYT paywall and instead have to ration out my views for the most intriguing stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> They messed with shady people's livelyhood and with even worse people...like secret services from all corrupt countries that used that spyware. Dangerous. But brave.

No matter what we think, for them its perfectly reasonable to get even and to protect their thing. Watch our for drugs slipped in your car or whatever. Setting you up is extremely easy

<comment><USER15> This all started with what I assume was a murder, so they're well aware of the risks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >"Work drama? Tell me, I like drama!" Lambert said at one point

Who goes to a meeting with a stranger and spills the beans on "work drama"?

<comment><USER17> Depends on nature of the drama I suppose. In complex corporate environments, I tend to brief new team members on some of the "work drama" background their first week, to equip them to handle, process, and react appropriately.

<comment><USER18> How do you do that without compromising yourself politically?

<comment><USER17> Good question; two parts I think: 1\. I try to present the situation as neutrally/objectively as possible (inasmuch as any one of us can do so of course:). At the very least, present both aspects of the conflict or situation; 99% of the time, disagreements and politics are not because people are evil, stupid, or actively trying to sabotage - underneath it are differing goals and priorities which create competing or conflicting situations. By presenting the potential underlying differing goals and perspectives, I can prepare those coming in, without necessarily discussing something I cannot/would not be prepared to face in the open.

2\. At the end of the day, I need to trust people coming on my team :)

<comment><USER18> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why would an agent be afraid of dine & dash?

<comment><USER20> It sounds like that would be a very trivial way to reveal their identity. Get locked up for something minor but now the agent has to go through booking and post bail. I don't think the local police would look too kindly on someone providing a false name either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It will be very easy for Canadian officials to trace the person if they have:

1\. Face

2\. Assumption that the guy fled the country ASAP as soon a he was spooked

<comment><USER6> You're assuming the person isn't traveling on a totally false passport, Israeli intelligence has been caught in the past stealing identities of real new zealanders to obtain legitimate, issued by NZ government passports, for instance.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel–New_Zealand_passpo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel–New_Zealand_passport_scandal)

<comment><USER21> > You're assuming the person isn't traveling on a totally false passport,

Face recognition, unless they passed the border at the only remaining paper only checkpoint in the country

<comment><USER6> The Russian intelligence offers traveling on fake passports involved in the recent Skripal poisoning case didn't care one whit about the UK's customs face recognition, or omnipresent camera systems, and they were up to something far more nefarious than this.

<comment><USER14> Ummm...the Russians are on a suicide mission of sort. Do this and stay in mother Russia for the rest of your life, if you don't get arrested. They have a powerful nation state behind them and one that does not extradite its citizens. Even if regime changes, its very unlikely that they will be surrendered due to bad precedent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Intelligence agents are by far some of the most infamous people.

</comment><comment><USER23> Everyone loves a good spy story but this one just misses a lot.

Creepy people with seemingly fragile LinkedIn profiles setup meetings to ask questions in fancy hotels and restaurants.

It could be something, it could be nothing. Either way the story doesn't seem to provide much one way or another. Maybe it's just me, not expecting James Bond but some evidence of something sinister would have made this more compelling

<comment><USER24> Some evidence of something sinister would have the other side incompetent.

The problem with this sort of smoke and mirrors business is that it's borderline impossible to tell an appropriately-sophisticated adversary from paranoia.

<comment><USER23> You put what I was getting at far more eloquently. If there are bad guys up to no good then there needs to be more evidence to counteract the possibility of paranoia.

<comment><USER25> a stranger asking about workplace rivalries and drama suggests to me that they were looking to sow discord between the employees or identify one they could flip for dirt about the others. recording the meeting and asking weird leading questions seems to imply some kind of james o'keefe-style attempt to portray them in a negative light in the press. both together, by someone using a fabricated identity, leaves little ambiguity about ill intent imo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is the OpenSocial API dead? - <AUTHOR> Is the Open Social standard dead in the water? I notice the last release of the standard was five years ago? Is it still a going concern?<p>This question comes off the back of an article in the current issue of the Economist, which apparently (I am told) suggests that legally mandated Open APIs might be the solution to the monopolies of Facebook, Google et. al. <comment><USER3> As far as I know, the consortium who originally created and backed OpenSocial is pretty much dead. That doesn't necessarily mean the standard is "dead dead" though. Some products still implement it and there are still products coming out that will support it. I can say this because we're working on one of those products at Fogbeam Labs.

Sadly the open-source reference implementation, Apache Shindig, fell into a state of inactivity to the point that the ASF project was moved to the Attick, but the code is still available and can be forked anytime.

Likewise for the standard itself... if people are interested in this sort of thing, a group can always create a new version of the standard, or - <USER2> on copyright / license / blah - create a successor standard.

If anyone reading this is interested in either Shindig or the OpenSocial spec, or both, feel free to drop me a line at firstname.lastname@example.com. I'd love to keep in touch with anybody still interested in / working on stuff in this area.

Edit: just found this:

[https://www.w3.org/blog/2014/12/opensocial-foundation- moves-...](https://www.w3.org/blog/2014/12/opensocial-foundation-moves- standards-work-to-w3c-social-web-activity/)

Looks like anything current going on with OpenSocial is here now.

[https://www.w3.org/Social/WG](https://www.w3.org/Social/WG)

</comment><comment><USER4> micro.blog implements a few of those protocols, websub & micropub, kudos to Manton Reece. He links to an interesting group that seems to be more relevant than the W3C: IndieWebCamp <[https://indieweb.org/>](https://indieweb.org/>), and info about the connections between the two groups <[https://indieweb.org/W3C>](https://indieweb.org/W3C>)</comment>


Ask HN: How Blog/side projects helped you land a job - <AUTHOR> I would love to hear from people who a got job through their side project or got recognized through there blog. What was the experience like and how much leetcoding did you do? <comment><USER2> While I was working on my "startup" one guy wrote me the following: "I lost my internship due to COVID. I'd like to help you guys with your project".

So, it was hard to us to find some job for the guy but we were open sourcing our job. I told the guy to work on a next version of our open-sourced Python package[1].

After we released it, it went #1 on Hacker News. I put him everywhere in the credits. You can still see him in our "Team" section[2].

The next day he got 2 offers.

[1] [https://github.com/kotartemiy/newscatcher](https://github.com/kotartemiy/newscatcher)

[2] [https://newscatcherapi.com/team](https://newscatcherapi.com/team)

<comment><USER3> Hey I remember your package! Why did you write startup in quotes?

<comment><USER2> Because it is business. I think we all should stop calling "startup" any project. But. That's how people like to talk these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I was early in my career I would do a variation of this. I would read the job descriptions for something unique that I could write a demo app for the show that I actually, A. Had the skills to do the thing they wanted, B. Had the dedication to do something like this.

It got me to the interview stage often and then it was up to whether I knew the nonsense whiteboard leetcode situation, which I've never been particularly good at.

If I got the job it was because they were pre-sold on step one's effectiveness I've always felt like.

<comment><USER5> This is a very good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> During the interview for my current job (Machine Learning & Deep Learning Scientist), I didn't get any theoretical questions on machine learning, but only questions on my projects.

I didn't study machine learning per say, I followed dozens of online courses but no diploma in this exact field, and my last job was in traditional software engineering.

Despite this, I managed to do two small projects (one of music genre recognition [1] on my own iTunes library, and one of eye motion recognition [2]). For both I had published the code on my GitHub, and written a small Medium article to expose the problem I was trying to solve, the data available, the issues I faced and how I overcame them.

I personally believe that this is all the recruiter wanted to know, and why I encourage interns and candidates to work on their side projects.

References of the projects: [1] [https://github.com/despoisj/DeepAudioClassification](https://github.com/despoisj/DeepAudioClassification) [1] [https://medium.com/@juliendespois/finding-the-genre-of-a- son...](https://medium.com/@juliendespois/finding-the-genre-of-a-song-with- deep-learning-da8f59a61194) [2] [https://github.com/despoisj/DeepEyeControl](https://github.com/despoisj/DeepEyeControl) [2] [https://medium.com/hackernoon/talk-to-you-computer-with- you-...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/talk-to-you-computer-with-you-eyes-and- deep-learning-a-i-odyssey-part-2-7d3405ab8be1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Side projects really help you but don't you think it would be better to leetcode if your aim to land a position at FAANG

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While the creator of Buttondown [0] and Spoonbill [1] wasn't trying to get a job, I really like the philosophy he talks about in this post about side projects [2]:

> If you are going to find a project, I encourage you to find something > particularly small and particularly durable (which is to say, does not > require constant or near-constant attention), so that you give yourself the > ability to take a break from the project for weeks or months while it > accumulates interest.

*edited for formatting

[0]: [https://buttondown.email/](https://buttondown.email/)

[1]: [https://spoonbill.io/](https://spoonbill.io/)

[2]: [https://jmduke.com/2020/06/26/atypical- success](https://jmduke.com/2020/06/26/atypical-success)

</comment><comment><USER8> Not really a side project, however:

I wanted to make the jump from system administration to devops engineering. As i started started learning ansible i noticed that something was a little off and submitted a small pull request about one of the core ansible modules.

That didn't get very far because the maintainers didn't like the way it was and also i hadn't time to fix it the way the maintainers wanted it to be (not having time was also one of the reasons for me wanting to make the jump).

Despite this, I included a link to that pull request in my cv anyway (along with other OSS contributions) and that definitely helped, in two ways:

1\. during the technical interview i was asked about that pull request and that meant i was able to direct the discourse where i wanted and where it was most favorable to me and basically talk about stuff i knew about (i mean, i did the stuff).

2\. as i have been told much later, their gut feeling when taking the decision about my hiring was that i wouldn't have had much problem in figuring how stuff work even though i wasn't technically qualified for that position (in my opinion I was like ~30% qualified). Worst case scenario, i could have been let go during the probation period (I was not).

That was my experience.

Needless to say, that helped me getting hired. I then had to work my a.. off to fill the gaps in my competencies and learn a lot of the new tools. It's been almost a year now and I'm fairly confident with most of the stack, even though there are a few components that I still have to properly study and learn.

So far, it's been a pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER9> I started writing blog 5-6 years ago. Initially, there was no tracktion. With time, as the content grew and a few of my posts got attention on HN and StackOverflow; I started getting requests from companies to work for them. A few of them were small gigs but I have been working with 2 companies as a freelancer since last 6 years.

A few of the posts were research based and therefore they wanted to know more about my insight. A few of them were tutorials and they wanted me to build something for them. Hope this helps. If you have any other question, send me an email. (in profile)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've never worked a day in my life as a developer, but I've been offered positions multiple times because of side projects.

My mantra to everyone is to just build things. Don't wait to be asked. Build things. Makers make things.

I built an ecommerce site out of curiosity using some of the lesser documented PayPal APIs and services for micro-transactions (even talking to their developers to get concrete answers.) While relaying this to someone at a tech meetup I was offered a job on the spot from a fintech company CTO because he'd been trying to solve the same problem and was impressed with how far I went to solve it out of curiosity.

Another time I got invited to beta a product from a company and was able to show them a variety of uses cases by building small projects around it, which lead to a job offer.

I wasn't doing particularly sophisticated coding, but I knew enough to build everything from mobile apps to server-sided apis.

I never would have made it past the recruiter for either company had I taken the traditional route because I've never formally worked for anyone in tech. However my habit of learning all kinds of frameworks and outside thinking was something they realized they wanted.

P.S. In the latter instance I also blogged about their technology which helped showcase its potential.

<comment><USER11> +1 on this. Trying to get back that hacker velocity that doing professional software engineering seems to put a drag on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, here in Austria, I applied for a few software development and architecture jobs in 2015. Went for interviews at 3 different companies. Was sad not a single one had asked me about my blog as I'd written quite a few posts over the years.

On the 3rd interview I asked to look at the CV that they'd been given by the recruiter. It turns out the recruiter had deleted both my blog and my GitHub link.

Presumably the recruiter feared the company might be able to contact me directly via those links. Or maybe just didn't understand what they were.

A classic case of the recruiter looking after their own interests instead of those of their customers.

So - in conclusion - the last time I searched for a job - my blog with > 250 posts [1] had _zero_ influence on the outcome of my job search :-)

It's a good thing I wrote the posts for the fun of it, and not with the intention of improving my job chances.

[1] [https://www.databasesandlife.com/newest/](https://www.databasesandlife.com/newest/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I started my blog in 1999, so it was a different world. I guess it's a story of right place, right time more than anything else. At that time it took some REAL effort and at least a little bit of skill to get a blog going. But I'm here because I started that silly little blog. I got my first real programming job because I was able to show that I could do real programming from having that blog. My second job, more or less the same thing. That blog led to me starting my own tiny little hosting company. And because I had some decent tech cred on my resume, I got yet another job. Then, finally, that got me here. That didn't happen over night, it took from 1999 until 2013. I couldn't be happier with my current position and hope to never change jobs again.

Almost every professional job I've had since the 1990s was because I liked Slashdot in 1999 and wanted a site just like that. So, thanks CmndrTaco!

</comment><comment><USER14> I created an app for helping people find parking at my college. It was really simple, each parking lot had a traffic light color corresponding with likelihood of being full (Red: likely full, Yellow: possibly full, Green: unlikely to be full).

It was based off of class times, so when more classes were in session near the buildings of those parking lots, the color would change.

I put it on my resume, and had it in the Google Play Store during my time at university. Got asked about it during interviews and every interviewer really liked the fact that I saw a problem, proposed a solution/assistance, and published it to the world.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was working at a larger R&D firm (BBN Technologies, since acquired by Raytheon), and had some intriguing projects involving Semantic Web technologies (DAML: [http://www.daml.org/](http://www.daml.org/)). I got interested in how that technology might support my separate interests in the completely unrelated field of digital technologies for Bible study. So i started:

* blogging ([http://semanticbible.com/blogos/](http://semanticbible.com/blogos/), now rather moribund)

* creating hobby projects (like The Composite Gospel Index: [http://semanticbible.com/cgi/cgi-overview.html](http://semanticbible.com/cgi/cgi-overview.html) and New Testament Names: [http://semanticbible.com/ntn/ntn-overview.html](http://semanticbible.com/ntn/ntn-overview.html))

* submitting talk proposals to biblical studies conferences, though I had virtually no formal education in that field.

It was a classic "FieldA + FieldB = Innovation" strategy: but at the time it wasn't a deliberate strategy, just what interested me. I met some folks at the conferences who made a software package I'd never heard of (Logos Bible Software), which led to discussions and a job offer. 13 years later, i'm the Director of Content Innovation there. My side projects were responsible for the original connection, as well as demonstrating my interests and competence, and the novel contributions I could make to the company.

</comment><comment><USER16> I created a few open source Opera (presto) extensions. Didn't even put it in my online profile as I considered it a work in progress and wanted to improve the code more. One got prominent because Opera featured it on their extension site (something like "Editors' Pick", don't remember). Another became popular with users. Somebody looked up the code, found my email ID, invited me to eLance and paid me well to create a few Firefox extensions. It was unexpected as I hated javascript, and was in love with Python. (Still do.)

Another one, I remember was a blog I started to experiment with Google Adsense. It didn't make much money, but once or twice a day made a few cents. There were some book reviews, and links to "read more" on a few article (for readers who wanted to research more on the subject). I added Amazon referral links to it. Was shocked a week later to see that I had made around $50 or so with one click because somebody who had clicked the link bought some expensive item on Amazon! While the blog was alive, Amazon ads / links made me more money than Google Adsense. That was some fun experiment, while it lasted.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wrote a blog post about hugging that a google recruiter saw and emailed me about. I probably would've been contacted anyway, but the post certainly helped with making an impression!

[https://carolchen.me/blog/group-hugging- theory/](https://carolchen.me/blog/group-hugging-theory/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This was a very small thing but in 2017 I had a tech blog on WordPress (very simple stuff). I didn't code anything. Just used a theme I bought online, and now and then fidgeted with whatever (little) I knew of CSS. I found a job description on LinkedIn for an opportunity pertaining to WordPress. What helped me was the interview where they asked me about my experience with the platform. This wasn't in the US, and my guess is WordPress wasn't big back home in 2017, so however little my experience was, it helped me get the job.

</comment><comment><USER19> As someone who hires, I can tell you it works. I hired a Go developer after finding his ebook and blog posts and he did a project that was worth $10K+ USD. If he didn't have that ebook and his blog along with his open source contributions, I wouldn't have found him and hired him.

</comment><comment><USER20> Last time i was looking for a job, i didnt do leetcoding at a big company which surprised me as im pretty junior, then in my interview with the team lead he said he looked at my two tiny PRs to an some opensource projects and thanked me for contributing, got an offer from it as well

</comment><comment><USER21> When I was applying for my first job I passed various filters and eventually landed a cool job thanks to a side project.

It helped to show case that I understood several parts of the software development cycle, my communication style and documentation. This, I believe, would be hard to describe on a CV. [1]

It also helped me a lot to practice and learn things otherwise I wouldn't have, and that I put on practice for the interview task. [2]

Here are my examples:

[1] [https://github.com/eaguilera23/miSalleScrapper](https://github.com/eaguilera23/miSalleScrapper) [2] [https://github.com/eaguilera23/ex_banking](https://github.com/eaguilera23/ex_banking)

</comment><comment><USER22> Sure. I've run in the past popular blog in the past about ERP software which for some keywords came up as third or so in Google and I got lots of offers from that.

Since I'm not working in that exact field anymore this blog has lost its rankings. I do have another blog that I'm building ([https://integrated.ee](https://integrated.ee)) which I kind of hope achieving something similar in the future. So far from the new blog there has been one contact which didn't lead to any significant co-operation.

</comment><comment><USER23> I started building two blogs about tech in 2012, in the first blog I wrote a lot about automation with WordPress, and the other one I wrote about cross platform automation with python. The main goal when I build those two blogs is to get extra income from Google Adsense. Then things started to change when I joined a few communities and getting active in there. I contribute and share what I created until the day I got few offers a month.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's great. Honestly blogs really help and this is why I believe blogging is one way of giving back to the community and I have been blogging for about 2 years now but I have been on and off. I need to start contributing actively

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I posted here (on a different account) and a VP-level tweeted it saying it was cool. I pestered them on email and LinkedIn until they responded (I assumed they were busy and was very polite). I got very lucky with who I contacted and how it worked out, but if you get on the front page you'll notice a lot of automatic tweets are sent out. Can be good to sort by popularity and find potential people to connect with.

</comment><comment><USER25> Blogging and side projects helped me land a job at Pixar! Many years later I wrote about it in an article- [https://hackernoon.com/3-things-i-learned- from-5-jobs-in-12-...](https://hackernoon.com/3-things-i-learned-from-5-jobs- in-12-years-b5a0278eac2f) Blogging about how blogging helped me get a job got me the job I have now as CTO at Tonk Tonk Games :)

</comment><comment><USER26> I had a "consultancy" website up, with basic content. Maybe a dozen posts, never kept the habit.

Because I had _something_ (even though it was crap), I was able to talk my way into being the cofounder at a startup, then a job at a FAANG at a crazy salary. The FAANG recruiter mentioned specifically that they saw I was running my own shop (even though I never landed any accounts > $10k in the 6 months).

</comment><comment><USER27> A recruiter for the company I'm at saw my github with a few Elixir projects, which was one of the reasons he reached out to me. During the interview my use of Elixir and dynamic languages came up as well since the company uses Clojure. A previous job I found out that the VP had read my blog and utilized it to work with Excel and .NET.

</comment><comment><USER28> For me it was a talking point in my interview. Helps to break the ice to talk about the architecture I used.

</comment><comment><USER29> I write about iOS development stuff on my blog ([https://fluffy.es](https://fluffy.es)), and I have gotten a few mentoring gig for junior iOS dev, and gotten job offers as well.

Didn't do any leetcoding, just keep on writing helpful tutorial

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow definitely looking up to you as my motivation

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> My web scraping related blog posts helped me to get the current job and many side gigs. All because I had written not only code related tuts but also discuss about theirs efficiency and other stuff that help non coder people like CEOs etc to learn about me.</comment>


When Judging Coworkers: People Are a Package Deal - <AUTHOR> I've seen this pattern come up so often in the work world that I thought I'd mention it here.
Co-workers[1] will say they love one thing about you, X,  but then ask whether you could also be better at another thing, Y; and often this happens when being good at X implies being bad at Y.
Take an introverted programmer.  Many introverts self select for careers like programming.  Some could argue that introversion makes you better at programming, that's your X.
But the first thing a company will want from such a programmer is to be more social, to do more presentations, to work all day in an open plan office, in other words to be an extravert[2], the Y, which is incompatible with being an introvert.
I've noticed that many qualities in a person come in clusters.  It's rare to find a person that has a random combination of qualities from all over the spectrum.  People are a package deal, and their qualities cluster.
Especially when you are really really good at something, in other words when you have an outlier quality, that outlier  often pushes aside many other incompatible 'normal' qualities.[3]
If you like one skill in an employee or co-worker, but wonder why they can't just be better at another skill, consider that it might just not be in their nature.
[1] Managers mostly.
[2] Or at least to act like an extravert.
[3] This is my theory for why really smart people are often 'eccentric.' <comment><USER2> I would encourage you to consider that we are the makers of ourselves. I hope very much that we are not simply what our nature provides.

Feedback and coaching are not simply stating opinions about people. Good managers will not simply say 'Hey, I wish you could be something you are not'. Good managers help you become a better version of you within the organization. Sometimes that better version of you has a different mix of skills. No qualities of people are incompatible (for better or worse). We are all large, and contain multitudes.</comment>


SpaceX SES-9 Mission Live Webcast - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/webcast <comment><USER2> Elon confirms 1st stage did not get a good landing

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/705917924972736512](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/705917924972736512)

Edit - text of tweet: "Rocket landed hard on the droneship. Didn't expect this one to work (v hot reentry), but next flight has a good chance."

Very impressive nonetheless. I am wondering if they had a loss of the drone ship?

<comment><USER3> It's unlikely the drone ship would be lost. The rocket is coming in nearly empty. The explosions we've seen in the past are really just the remnants of fuel briefly burning, it's not all that powerful. The rocket itself is light compared to the ship. It's a little bit like someone throwing a soda can at your head. It'll hurt, but it won't break your skull. Some of the support equipment on the deck might take damage (there are fun pictures of the ship after previous attempts with various items dented and scorched) but the ship itself should be fine.

<comment><USER2> Ah, OK. For some reason I had the mental image of a bunch of inexpensive ships which would surely sink if they got hit at high velocity. It's pretty incredible, given how large the rockets are, that the ship dwarfs them, but recalling earlier landing videos you are correct.

<comment><USER3> Just to put some numbers on it, this barge is the MARMAC 304, modified by SpaceX. According to this page:

[http://www.mcdonoughmarine.com/recent- news.html](http://www.mcdonoughmarine.com/recent-news.html)

That ship has a cargo capacity of over 13,000 tons. I believe an empty Falcon 9 first stage is around 20 tons. Totally different scales.

<comment><USER4> I read that entire barge blog. Its interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rainbow-bars [NO SIGNAL] right when stage 1 was landing on the barge...

So suspenseful!

The last frame before video cut out [http://i.imgur.com/3HCnn7c.png](http://i.imgur.com/3HCnn7c.png)

Edit - looks like stage 1 did _not_ survive landing (this time).

[https://twitter.com/MatthewBTravis/status/705908015711518720](https://twitter.com/MatthewBTravis/status/705908015711518720)

The Drone Ship says, "Sorry guys :(" [https://twitter.com/TheDroneShip/status/705907706209693696](https://twitter.com/TheDroneShip/status/705907706209693696)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, at least this time we expected that to happen. (SpaceX webcast guy indicated the rocket shakes the uplink dish so hard on approach it's likely to lose signal every time).

<comment><USER7> I do wonder why they don't have a separate small barge with a couple fiber runs between them, to do the comms (e.g. host the dish(es)). I guess it just isn't that important.

<comment><USER6> That was asked on the spacex sub-reddit. The response was something like "you underestimate the power of a Merlin" which I took to mean that a reasonable distance to avoid the effects is too far to reasonably run ship-to-ship cabling.

<comment><USER7> That's totally reasonable, too. I had assumed that the wash from the rocket would be largely straight down, but that's probably way wrong.

<comment><USER8> It is probably pretty much straight down...until it impacts the flat surface of the ship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> They're aiming for 6:35 ET, from the page:

We're targeting today, Friday, March 4 at 6:35pm ET for launch of SES-9. The window extends to 8:06pm ET. The SpaceX webcast is scheduled to go live here (on [http://www.spacex.com/webcast](http://www.spacex.com/webcast)) and on YouTube about 10 minutes prior to launch. For rocket views, launch countdown audio and telemetry info, use this link for our technical webcast: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIkPP2LM8DU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIkPP2LM8DU)

</comment><comment><USER9> Did I see video footage of inside the fuel tank?

<comment><USER10> Pretty sure it was actually the LOX tank. But yes.

<comment><USER9> Ahh, thanks for clarifying!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another successful Falcon 9 launch. Too bad about the booster landing. The barge landing is very tough; it requires drastic maneuvers in the last seconds to hit that tiny target. The land-based landing pad is much larger.

The Falcon Heavy launch was supposed to be next month, but that's slipped to late 2016, maybe.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice "intermission" music.

I'm glad the launch is going well. After all those false starts a first stage failure would have been depressing.

</comment><comment><USER13> The only question that matters right now is: did stage 1 land successfully on the barge???

<comment><USER12> Unless you're SES, in which case the remaining 2nd stage stuff is pretty important.

<comment><USER14> After all that's what they're getting paid for. They can crash a dozen more stage 1's and they're still making money. If only other startups worked that way.

<comment><USER15> At over 13 years old, SpaceX is many things - but I don't think it can really be called a startup anymore.

<comment><USER16> This gets mentioned lot, not just with spaceX but other similar sized organizations as well . It is simply not true, for two reasons

a) The scales are not the same in aerospace as in software, they are still very much the minnows in that industry.

b) It does not matter if they have 5,000 staff or $1+ Billion revenue today,What matters is the high growth plan they are following, In the next 10-15 years they could be easily doing $100 Billion + i.e. if they are successful with cost costing and can expand the market for it support companies of that size.

Any company looking to 100x or more their revenue is a startup. Size notwithstanding, simply because whatever they do now will be nothing similar to what they need to do to get the remaining 99%. Every single business and technology process would have to be continuously innovated and thrown out to get there. That really requires a startup mind frame and startup culture

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Supersonic...</comment>


Outlook.com Bests Gmail's Filters With A New Inbox Automation System - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/13/outlook-com-bests-gmails-filters-with-a-new-inbox-automation-system/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is awesome that Outlook has brought such a simple UI to such a powerful set of tools. However, if you're looking for similar functionality in Gmail, check out Google Scripts. See [http://blog.metamorphium.com/2014/05/08/gmail- scripting/](http://blog.metamorphium.com/2014/05/08/gmail-scripting/)</comment>


EFF to Santa Clara County: Improve Police Body Camera Rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/eff-santa-clara-county-improve-police-body-camera-rules <comment><USER2>
      Our letter addresses, among other issues, limits on when deputies may record at protests...

EFF seems unfamiliar with the County Sheriff's jurisdiction: they only cover _unincorporated_ land plus a couple of cities that contract with them to be their police force (e.g. Cupertino). I doubt there has ever been a protest in their jurisdiction since they got BWCs.</comment>


Commodore 64 in a shader - <AUTHOR> https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Xs3XW4 <comment><USER2> Neat, but isn't this just a c64 text mode screen buffer fixed-font renderer in a shader? I mean, even the most basic statement "print 2" doesn't work.

Still, pretty cool to see a shader emulating a text mode screen buffer.

<comment><USER3> Shift 2 to get double quotes, and you'll need to assign line numbers

Try the example

<comment><USER2> I wasn't looking for double quotes, I was looking for printing an integer :) Actually I was going for print 2+2 but i couldn't get + to enter. I assumed there was nothing going on since print 2 didn't produce any output at all in immediate mode (no line numbers) :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This one is a Apple ][ in a shader, complete with NTSC emulation.

        http://porkrind.org/a2

</comment><comment><USER5> A shader is a thing in a graphics card, right?

Obviously that description is insufficient. What are shaders?

<comment><USER6> Yes, you're right.

Shaders are small chunks of code that run on the GPU. Usually they're used to do things like process geometry (lots of matrix multiplications), map triangles to pixels (lots more matrix multiplication), and things like that. Vector and matrix math, with some logic, sometimes.

What appears to be going on here is that the entire state of the machine, including IO, registers, and memory, is getting mapped into textures. The shader then processes the pixel values from those textures through a series of conditionals to output a new state into a new texture. Next frame, the process continues.

Pretty nifty, and a glorious abuse of the incredible compute power available in modern GPUs. I ran it on a cheap integrated Intel GPU and it was rock solid at 60fps.</comment></comment>


Shanghaiing - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing <comment><AUTHOR> > In the early 1870s, Kelly was reported to have shanghaied 100 men for three > understaffed ships in a single evening. Renting the paddle steamer Goliath, > he announced that he was hosting a free booze cruise to celebrate his > "birthday", and to say "thank you" to his fellow crimps and runners who had > helped him through the years. After leaving port, his bartenders served > opium-laced whiskey to his guests, who were then offloaded to the waiting > ships.

> His greatest concern – returning from a well-publicized event with a boat > devoid of revelers – was alleviated by a stroke of luck, when he learned > that the Yankee Blade had struck a rock and was sinking. After rescuing > everyone on board, he simply resumed the celebration, and those on the > waterfront were none the wiser upon his return.

from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kelly_(crimper)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kelly_\(crimper\))</comment>


GoDaddy not only helped write SOPA they are also exempt from it - <AUTHOR> http://donttreadonmike.com/2011/12/24/godaddy-not-only-helped-write-sopa-they-are-also-exempt-from-it-scumbags/

<comment><USER2> I've read the legislation in its multiple versions. I've never seen a version where GoDaddy is exempt. I've seen the versions where EVERY SERVICE PROVIDER WHO COMPLIES WITH SOPA is exempt from financial liability for making a mistake, but nothing that would be more specific to GoDaddy.

<comment><USER3> You are correct davidu, the blogger has pieced together their version of the truth in this matter incorrectly and has posted a very wild accusation. The truth is how the law is written, any service provider who voluntarily complies with the requests made by an IPEA agent will be granted immunity. (raise your hand if you're aware of the IPEA's purpose with SOPA)

As I've said before, this sort of backroom method of dealing certainly ignores the entire tenancy of due process. Which is one of the many reasons SOPA is ill fit for law.</comment></comment>