Ask HN: What features do you think Hacker News is missing? - <AUTHOR>

I like Hacker News a lot. I almost spend 1-2 hrs daily but sometimes I feel it is missing something. For example, I wanted to search for something but there is no search option.
Without these also people will come here but may be these features will make life little more easier.
What you guys say? <comment><USER2> Blockquote. There are many times I would like to do a blockquote and have to either "quote" the quote, _italicize_ the quote, or use

      preformatted quotes.

Each of the alternatives has drawbacks.

I would humbly request pg to add the email convention "> " at the beginning of a line to format as a block quote.

> This would be a block quote. It goes on as long as the paragraph goes on. > Note that each line does not start with "> " - that would be unnecessary > since that is already done with the preformatted syntax.

This would no longer be block quoted.

<comment><USER3> Quoting is also my top request. I find it strange that using > as blockquote would have been removed - What markdown interpreter does HN use?

<comment><USER2> The lisp one. :-P Seriously, HN has its own very limited markup syntax and blockquote has never been in it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>

<comment><USER3> > HN has its own very limited markup syntax

Just what we need, another subset of Markdown :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you looked at the list of links at the bottom of every page?

Particularly "Search", "Feature Requests", and to some extent "Guidelines" and "FAQ"?

Meanwhile, here's a shortcut: <http://searchyc.com/>

Certain feature requests are a perennial feature of life on HN. You are carrying on a classic tradition.</comment>


KDE and the Menu Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.ocsmag.com/2017/08/25/kde-and-the-menu-crisis/ <comment><USER2> I don't see the authors point.

Use the menu for discoverability if you even need that, any of the options work.

For launching just partially type the application's name and press enter. Don't even need a menu, just use KRunner (Alt+F2, there are equivalents in all desktops).

My SO isn't confused by menus despite having little to no experience with desktop computers, and neither am I, but I don't even have a full blown "menu" because I don't need one; I just have dmenu installed.

<comment><USER3> Can you make dmenu sort by most used? I want to switch over due to it's awesome minimalism but that's a feature from rofi I can't go without, mostly because to open my browser I can just go mod-d enter

<comment><USER2> I'd say stick with Rofi. I had considered moving to it but dmenu2 just works well enough for what I want it to do to bother switching. If I was certain I wanted more features, I'd go with Rofi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Question: How do you present the user with a list of all the applications on the computer?

Answer: With a list (of icons + text) or list (of icon tiles) or a couple of lists (same as the others, split by categories.)

You can slice and dice things however you like, but you are fundamentally presenting a list of things, and I don't think we can fundamentally improve on the process of presenting a list of things above and beyond literally showing lists of things.

Search-ability is great, but it is only good for people who know the names of the programs that do what they want. Icons+text are compact, but don't give any indication of program functionality and don't scale well. Categorized lists give both names and indication of program function, but require more user button-pushing to find the program they want.

I think the only real improvement possible in this field is an application search function that lets user search for what they want to do, rather than for specific applications.

If the author wants to find a more realistic opportunity for improvement in the "show all applications" direction, he should look at the "help" command output, as compared to compgen -c.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think this is a good start at looking at some of the human factors issues with menus but it doesn't even seem to get out of the "known issues" on to something more.

Menus have been an issue for a long time, ever since XDE[1] at least. The original Mac "global menu bar across the top" was one shot at it, Xerox (and XFCE it seems) had the menu popup when ever you hit the right button. Windows of course had the 'start' button which did a 'menu reveal'. But there are other interesting ideas in menus as well. One of my favorites in terms of ingenuity were the pie menus[2]. I saw a demo which I believe was Don Hopkins work and it demonstrated how quickly and accurately you could select things. That speed and accuracy derived from converting menu disambiguation using a bunch of possibly overlapping rectangles, to using only vectors from the current point.

One of the challenges that has added to the problem has been ginormous screens. When menu metaphors are attached to the physical screen boundaries the amount of mouse movement needed is quite large. Of course with touch screens it is compensated for by just moving your finger, but as we've seen on iPads and Surface Pros that can limit menu density due to fat fingers :-)

[1] The Xerox Development Environment - [https://web.archive.org/web/20041204132344/http://www.apears...](https://web.archive.org/web/20041204132344/http://www.apearson.f2s.com/xde.html) (no doubt kens can fire it up on the Alto :-)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu#History)

<comment><USER6> It may be a rather weird test case, but one instance where I've seen radial context menus used really well was Neverwinter Nights (the 2002 Bioware RPG). It uses context menus to provide a variety of actions when applied to objects in inventory and in the world (including the character itself) - e.g. inspect/open/bash/lockpick the chest. Once it gets to spells and magic abilities, you often have to go through many nested levels to pick the right spell and parameters.

The beauty of their design was that the same action always had the same position in the radial, regardless of how many actions were there overall, and how many were not available in that context. Thus, picking the right item in a series of cascade radials always took the same path. Eventually, your muscle memory picked it up, and a frequently used action became a mouse gesture, performed without even looking at the menu itself. But for those things that are rare, you still retained the advantage of discoverability that menus offer.

Here's an example, with someone showing off the gestures that they remember (it stacks the actions up, so the character continues to perform them even after the player stops providing further input):

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

One interesting thing that you might notice is that the subradials actually replace the main radial, instead of the more usual expanding mode. I suppose this is to allow essentially arbitrary nesting level without worrying about screen estate. Every subradial had a "Back" command in the center.

<comment><USER7> It's interesting to look at how BioWare---back when it was BioWare---used radial menus to great effect in multiple games. In addition to Neverwinter Nights, the radial conversation menus in the original Mass Effect trilogy come to mind. By assigning "Paragon" and "Renegade" dialogue options to standard directions on the wheel, the system made it possible to pick a conversation choice so quickly that the scene would run at a dramatic pace without the awkward pauses in many other games as you scrolled through dialogue choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> my win95 clone menu works just fine, thanks. go reinvent something else.

<comment><USER9> This is being down-voted, but it's a relevant point. The cascading-menu style of application launchers is from the 90s, yet is still very common for lack of a better method of offering access to a potentially very large number of applications.

If you think about it, even the homescreen of Android or iOS is basically the same, although of course optimized for a touch interface. You have a long list of apps, and you can group them into folders that open when you tap on them, same as how a cascading menu opens when you hover its entry. The only difference to the launchers included in Plasma is that folders on Android/iOS are created and managed entirely by the user, whereas Plasma _insists_ on using the application metadata to group stuff together.

Is there any other way? The only thing I can think of right now is search (either via text or voice; all launchers in Plasma have text search over name and description, so they're good there) and whatever the commandline does... Stack Overflow, I guess? :)

<comment><USER10> >all launchers in Plasma have text search over name and description, so they're good there //

I find this a bit lacking, for example there's a lot more apps listed under "audio" than "sound" yet for menu purposes, particularly discoverability, they should be treated as synonyms; one can't be expected to remember the precise adjective/noun used in an app description.

The thing I'd most like for the plasma menu is just to be able to alter it's size, corner drag hasn't existed in KDE menu for a long time now. I do a config file fix, which gets overwritten every update.

<comment><USER9> This should work in Plasma app launchers. (If not, file a bug.)

A .desktop file (which, among other things, registers apps with these launchers) has a GenericName field for precisely this purpose. For example,

      Name=Firefox
      GenericName=Web browser

A possible source of error might be that the application developer did not enter a GenericName (or one that is not helpful, like "KDE clone of $gnome_app").

<comment><USER11> Ugh. That gets me thinking about how Gnome seems to play games with this.

Take File Roller for example. Their git repository is names thus, the tar- balls are names thus, even the resulting binary is named thus.

But the desktop file insists on calling it Archive Manager.

<comment><USER9> Haven't checked, but that's probably the GenericName. The question is what the launcher displays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I require menus. I dont want dozens of icons and i certainly dont want to employ a keyboard. I dont care that the full menu is ten layers deep. Ill move the dozen programs i use every day into a top layer. i dont judge a ui on simplicity or artistic merit. Let me launch my software via my mouse and then get out of the way. Everything beyond that is overthinking.

</comment><comment><USER13> Plasma is probably not the best example to illustrate this problem : should everybody be happy with menus, you would probably still have 3 alternatives in Plasma, because it's all about offering highly configurable experience.

Personally, it's extremely rare that I use the menu. I do everything through Krunner, which is way more integrated and useful that it may look at first glance. You can look for application by their name, of course, but also for application by their description, for file by their name, for windows by their running program or window title, etc. One cool underrated feature : you can try to launch applications you haven't installed yet, and it brings up package manager to install it (on KDE Neon, at least, not sure for other distros).

</comment><comment><USER14> The first comment in the article hits the nail on the head.

The start menu's are broken because everyone is trying to fix a non-problem with the old win95 style hierarchical menu and creating things with worse problems. Particularly, once the half dozen programs the user clicks frequently are pinned in a quick launch area or at the top level of the menu. For touch screen users, just bump the clickable area size for each menu and it would present a better solution than iOS, Android or win10 currently provide.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been using the Kupfer application launcher for years. Haven't touched the KDE menu since :-)

<comment><USER16> Same here, but Albert on Ubuntu MATE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use Kupfer -[http://lifehacker.com/5344158/kupfer-launches-linux-files- an...](http://lifehacker.com/5344158/kupfer-launches-linux-files-and- applications-quickly)

Just ctrl+space and start typing in the name of the application you want to launch. Works great. I very rarely use a menu.

</comment><comment><USER18> On macOS everyone I know uses some sort of search, be it Spotlight or Alfred or QuickSilver, to open apps. This generally works well–I can open most apps in under a second.

</comment><comment><USER19> Too many menus. Too many applications.

      Applications:

Web Browser

Email

Text Editor

Terminal

      User:

Switch User

Log out

Restart

Shutdown

<comment><USER20> Plasma's default setup starts with the favorites tab, which for me was prepopulated with web browser, e-mail, and file manager (no text editor nor terminal, which is sane for non-programmers). Pressing left goes to the "leave" tab which hass all of the options you suggest, plus suspend and hibernate. Pressing right goes to the "all applications' tab which is ordered as a hierarchy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you hate this stuff try dmenu... although it's not really target at DE people.

</comment><comment><USER22> > However, as hard drives became larger, users had to scan more and more > applications to find the one they wanted.

Not really. I only use a handful of desktop apps due to the rise of self- hosted and browser apps.

</comment><comment><USER23> /molehill/mountain/g</comment>


Brazen Attempts by Hotels to Block Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/brazen-attempts-by-hotels-to-block-wi-fi.html?rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article

<comment><USER2> There is a technical basis for concern, although ultimately the problem is of the hotel's own making.

You simply cannot have 500 mifi-type devices transmitting data (along with the hotel's actual WAPs) in the same room without major problems. There are only three non-overlapping channels for 2.4Ghz 802.11b/g/n, and mifi devices that I'm familiar with pick a "good" channel on startup -- they don't limit themselves just to the three non-overlapping ones.

5GHz is better, and the decreased ability to pass through walls is likely desirable here. However, your mifi is still broadcasting in 2.4GHz, and wifi clients will fall back to that if they don't like the quality of the 5GHz signal. OS X, for instance, is very finicky about using 5GHz on an SSID that broadcasts for both 2.4/5\. Right now I'm approximately 6 feet away from my AP, and my laptop has switched to 2.4GHz.

Ultimately though, this whole mess is the fault of the hotel's poor implementation. If their wifi was free or low cost, and worked well, then why wouldn't everyone use it? That people are using their mifi devices says they are being ill served by the existing solution, not that they were just dying to pay AT&T more money and carry around yet another black plastic brick. By providing crappy service, these hotels have created the problem they're complaining about. Either don't do it at all (and save money / hassle to boot), or do it right.

<comment><USER3> Think this is pretty absurd move by the hotels as well.

fwiw though, I believe a bunch of the higher end hotels can't implement free wifi, because they set up Wifi a while back and got locked in to contracts with the companies that set it up for them--which haven't expired yet.

<comment><USER2> I don't have any knowledge of contracts that hotels might have for wifi, but it strikes me as strange that this is the way the hotels are going about dealing with that situation.

Hotels first started deploying wifi in what, 2002-4? How long were these contracts exactly?

If they contracted with a firm to provide bed linens, and haven't seen the performance of these linens in service, would they sign 20 year iron-clad deals? If their customers complain that the per-night cost of the linens are equal to buying them, or hate them to the point of bringing their own sheets, would they still stick to their guns?

Would they appeal to the Federal Sheet Commission for help blocking third party sheets?

Or would they say "this isn't worth it"? They're in the business of accommodating guests, not antagonizing them. So then find a way out of this contract or just eat the termination fee. After all, if the deals are so bad, the minimum + a reasonable modern deal may break even or come out ahead. Every contract has a way out, particularly when performance goals are not met, and I'm just skeptical that an entire industry of multi-billion dollar companies got so thoroughly taken for a ride by upstart wifi installers in 2003.

<comment><USER4> The hotel industry is pretty fragmented. Most hotel chains are franchises run mainly by independent franchisees. The quality of hotels varies wildly depending on location, even within the same brand/chain. There isn't as much oversight or centralized management as one might think. The hotel industry is also big on low wages, high employee turnover and pushing people in and out of the door as quickly as possible. Proper implementation of wifi is an afterthought. The experience is usually better in 4-star or higher hotels, but those come at a premium.

<comment><USER2> I can't really speak to their quality, but I do find it interesting how different tiers of hotels price their in-room wifi.

High end charges, low end is free or non-existent, and then there's a mid- range where it's specifically called out as a free amenity and quality is pretty decent (Kimpton, Joie de Vivre, etc.). The theory that I've seen passed around is that high end hotels know that you're good for it, and their clients are accustomed to various upcharges already.

It also seems to be extremely uniform for different hotels in a chain; e.g. I have never seen a non-conformist Hyatt that doesn't charge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Marriott and the hotel association say that if the commission rules against them, some hotels might prohibit guests from checking in with Wi-Fi devices or restrict such equipment from some parts of their properties, a move that would only alienate their customers."_

IOW, it has nothing to do with "protecting customers from roque networks" as mentioned elsewhere in the article. No, they simply don't want you using equipment that bypasses their usury for WiFi use.

<comment><USER6> _" In October, the F.C.C. fined Marriott $600,000 for preventing customers from using their own Wi-Fi devices at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville. The commission said the hotel was charging people attending and exhibiting at a conference $250 to $1,000 per device to connect to the hotel-operated Wi-Fi service. Previously, the F.C.C. prohibited Boston's Logan International Airport from blocking Wi-Fi networks set up by airline clubs."_

It's pretty heavily implied by the article that this it intended to prevent circumvention of exorbitant rates.

<comment><USER7> And also that it's intended for conference exhibitors, where exorbitant rates for every little additional thing in a booth is part of the deal. A $100 wastepaper basket, for example.

Now, if it were up to me they would just price the booths at a fair price per square foot rather than try to make a profit on "extras."

<comment><USER8> You tend to find this kind of pricing structure in industries where consumers don't want to pay fair up-front prices. Transportation, Keurigs, video games, phone apps, to some extent wireless cell service. You're forced to provide basic access to your service at rates that don't allow you to make a real profit. So you try to make it up in extras.

Customers mumble and grouse, try to get by on the minimum level of service, but it's really their fault. You don't have to pay the exorbitant extras, when I fly, I find the lowest fare I can find and limit myself to a small bag with the bare essentials. I do my homework. I don't mind it at all because I'm getting a service I want at a lower price, that I might not have been able to afford otherwise.

Capitalism is wonderful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it humorous their solution is to block other people's wifi. How about you just provide wifi that doesn't suck? Stayed at a Hilton in Memphis that I think had 10gbit uplink. It was fast enough that I wouldn't have even considered tethering instead. In most hotels, you're lucky to see 1mbit worth of speed at less than 500ms latency. With a connection like that, it's literally highway robbery if they're allowed to block access points.

If I'm traveling for work and need to download an ISO overnight, and I'm unable to because they're blocking it, it should be criminal.

<comment><USER10> Forgive my lack of a source, but I read a while back that hotel wifi is often so bad because they signed short-sighted contracts in the past that locked them in to these terrible data rates for many years. And now they pass that terrible deal on to their guests.

Edit: well I found the 'source' \- turns out it was a Hacker News comment, so take it for what it's worth. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8082519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8082519)

<comment><USER11> The other reason it's so bad is that they run hotels, they're not network engineers. Few people know how to set up wifi so it doesn't suck.

Most hotels don't ever have the IETF to stay.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771876)

[https://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032812-ietf- makeover-...](https://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032812-ietf- makeover-257762.html)

<comment><USER12> Hotel managers aren't plumbers either, yet they seem to handle running water in their rooms without much of a issue. The problem isn't that they are hotel managers per se, the problem is that hotel managers tend to be older and so unable/ unwilling/unaware to adapt to new technology. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the quality of wifi has a strong correlation to hotel manager age for hotels that aren't part of chains.

Chain hotels, on the other hand, can fix this problem through the normal franchise methods: Determine best practices for the entire chain, and then provide standard instructions and help for each franchise.

<comment><USER13> Don't oversell their plumbing ability. I stayed at a pretty expensive hotel (unfortunately built in the 1970's when the world became stupid with respect to construction) where the toilet exploded. I heard this gurgling noise, went to check it out... and there was old faithful!

The maintenance guy told me when the place was full, if people flushed simultaneously, "bad" things would happen.

Wifi is a similar thing. Best practice for Wifi is "it depends". You need to hire somebody with a clue and do surveys. Hotels have been traditionally build around sound and fireproofing, and the methods used to achieve both make Wifi difficult in some places.

At cookie cutter, modularly built hotels (ie. Hampton Inns, etc) Wifi is very uniform in quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was investigating conference locations a few years back, and many people had suggested a local big chain hotel. It was a techish conference, so I inquired about the wifi capabilities. Their 'list rate' (which I was told I could try to negotiate with the regional office) was $25 _per person_ _per day_. This was outside of whatever charge for "wifi in my hotel room" my guests would pay too.

I said "so.. for 150 people, for 2 days, you want me charge me $7500 _just for wifi access_ whether people use it or not?"

"Yes sir, that's correct".

Yeah, I know, I know, bundle it in to the ticket price, etc, but.... just... there's a line you gotta draw somewhere, and that was it for me. They were off the list at that point.

</comment><comment> ryan-c "But the best way for hotels to deal with rogue networks is to inform law enforcement agencies and help them apprehend criminals who are trying to steal information."

That's an absurd point to make. One does not even need to run a rouge access point - much traffic is in the clear, and many MitM attacks can be pulled off just using injection. Even if someone were running a rouge access point, it's pretty difficult to track down an exact location (not very hard to figure out what room it's in though) in a crowd without direction finding gear and special equipment.

They would get much more sympathy as far as security goes if they were only asking for the right to block rouge access points that have the same ESSID as their official ones.

<comment><USER15> Okay, given that the security angle is a subterfuge, but let's say you run a hotel with a network named "RyansExorbitantWifi" and I set up a WAP named "RyanWifi-Free". I think we both know it's gonna generate some interest. Then I can serve them fake versions of Facebook, Google, and their bank's login pages, which is a lot wider of an attack vector than trying to sidejack via packet sniffing.

<comment> ryan-c Enumerating some possibilities, here are things the hotel can do:

* Deauth jam nothing

* Deauth jam "evil twin" access points only

* Deauth jam above plus access points "similar" to the official wifi (have fun trying to prevent homoglyph attacks)

* Deauth jam all unofficial unencrypted access points (preventing an attack from monitoring probe requests and spinning up matching fake APs on the fly) perhaps with a whitelist of "known" nearby wireless networks to leave alone

* Deauth jam all unofficial WiFi (what they want to do)

There's not really much difference from a security standpoint between those last two, though I suppose someone could set up an encrypted rouge network like "FreeWifi - password is swordfish" and/or make flyers for their evil network.

Basically, I could empathize with them arguing to jam any _open_ wireless networks, but jamming encrypted wireless networks in the name of security is a major stretch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another discussion of this topic, though on a different article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794476)

</comment><comment><USER17> How exactly do they block WiFi while simultaneously providing WiFi?

<comment><USER18> By telling their access points to send deauth requests to all devices that aren't on their networks.

And yup, 802.11 tells devices to deauth even when receiving unencrypted deauth requests from access points the device expects to be encrypted.

<comment><USER19> I do IT for a few hotels and I've never found this feature useful. While I agree it's useful to be able to control RF noise (by annoying someone enough with the deauth packets that they turn off their tethering), it's difficult to differentiate between nearby businesses and homes vs. someone tethering on- site.

<comment><USER18> There are two approaches for hotel Wifi.

One is to make a network that's so good people will pay to use it.

The other is to make a network that's average, but intentionally make other networks worse, so that people will pay to use yours.

Since you're reading HN, I imagine your strategy is the first. Hence, you don't see the need to interfere with other users of the spectrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So if they are interrupting my communications, i should be allowed to do the same back, right? Example: Im in a hotel on business and use my mifi-type device for my colleges as my company requests me to do to lower costs. Now, if they block that signal they are interfering with my business needs. So in my book, i should be allowed to block their traffic that is interfering with mine. Or would that be illegal as its on their premises and all that BS...

<comment><USER4> Not really. You're renting a space from them, and they can dictate what you're allowed to do in that space. I would say the hotel has the right to ask guests to not use these devices in their rooms, but they should not be actively jamming public frequencies or sending malicious packets to these devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Aside from the obviously stupid on the part of the hotels, can't someone just use USB tethering instead of WiFi to connect to their cellular device?

<comment><USER22> Yep. On top of that, I'm pretty sure iPhones use bluetooth tethering by default anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hotel wifi is often flakey and slow, so blocking a potentially better connection is all the more insidious of them.

</comment><comment><USER24> Just travel to Canada instead and stay at one of the many hotels that offer free WiFi to all hotel guests. This is the way of the future. Especially for those families with multiple devices. Mom and Dad's laptops, tablets and phone, plus the kids tablets...

</comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like material good enough to start a boycott movement?

<comment><USER26> Indeed. I don't see why laws should be passed when we could simply boycott them.

<comment><USER27> Laws against willfully or maliciously interfering with authorized wireless communication already exist.

Marriott wants a new law passed with a loophole for their specific brand of willful or malicious interference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hotels should be able to charge whatever they want. If you don't want to pay for wifi, chose another hotel for your conference.

<comment><USER29> Then by the same token they should block cellphones and charge $10 a minute for calls.

Also how about bringing the water you purchased outside back to the room? Should be confiscated.

<comment><USER30> If there weren't protectionist regulations that create massive barriers to entry in the hotel industry, neither of those things would be an issue, because any hotel that implemented them would get eaten alive by competitors.

<comment><USER31> Are you implying the hotel market isn't competitive?

I don't know about the US, but I remember a European hotel investor claim that he usually only invested in hotels after they'd been through 3-4 bankruptcies, because it was first then that the price and debt load had dropped enough for the hotel to have a decent shot at becoming profitable.

<comment><USER30> I'm implying that the more competitive the hotel market is, the less of a problem customers will have with blatantly ridiculous policies like those mentioned.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yanis Varoufakis - Confessions of an Erratic Marxist - <AUTHOR> http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/12/10/confessions-of-an-erratic-marxist-in-the-midst-of-a-repugnant-european-crisis/

<comment><USER2> It is positive that economists are starting to "get it".</comment>


Cyril Connolly and the literature of depression - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/on-melancholy-essay-brian-dillon-cyril-connolly/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me that before Prozac and such there was a more robust "depression" culture. People tried to make meaning out of their persistent sorrow and anxiety. Maybe that's for the better that that's somewhat of a relic of the past, but I would like to be convinced otherwise.

<comment><USER3> That was a 1950s thing. "Death of a Salesman", "Krapp's Last Tape", "Waiting for Godot", and most of Harold Pinter's works. They're either about depression, or after you watch them, you'll be depressed.

Tom Lehrer on this, in the 1960s: _" The characters in these books and plays and so on spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up."_

<comment><USER4> > I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to > shut up.

For most people it requires some practice.

<comment><USER5> Practice, or mentally inhibited. Either way Lehrer's response is a selfish and horrid thing to say, as it attacks those who are already unable to defend themselves (can't communicate).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't read "Cyril Connolly" without it coming out as "semi-carnally".

</comment><comment><USER3> This is what the slush pile from the New Yorker must read like.</comment>


FlixBus is testing VR on certain routes to Las Vegas - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/29/flixbus-is-testing-vr-on-certain-routes-to-las-vegas/ <comment><USER2> Having a bunch of headsets that get reused for each load of passengers seems like a great way to give passengers pinkeye.

<comment><USER3> The face cushions on pretty much all available VR headsets are easy to swap. Besides that a VR headset doesn't touch anywhere near your eyes.</comment></comment>


Fasttext and Torch: A fasttext implementation based on Torch - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kemaswill/fasttext_torch <comment><USER2> Is this significantly different from the Facebook implementation or is it just something you did for the sake of it? Either way, good job :)</comment>


Ask HN: Forums with quality discourse - <AUTHOR>

What other forums have the same quality of discourse as HN had (and on occasion, still has). The topic doesn't necessarily have to be start-ups. I want a site that has, like HN's guidelines state: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
Academic Hacker News had potential for a place for a good community. Arc Forum has good discussion, but I'm looking for something more general.
I read that, after the quality of HN fell heaps, some elite users left HN for some greener pastures. Where did they go? <comment><USER2> I used to be a fervent seeker of intellectually stimulating "general" forums/communities too. I've found a few and two things are apparent to me because of the experiences:

\- without specific focus, you get overrun by people that desire "general" intellectual discussion because it's easier to be general than it is specific and generality always dilutes the culture of a group by introducing subjects that not all are interested in (contrast that with specificity, where a specific focus is shared as a common interest between the participants)

\- without specific focus, one is arbitrarily created by the."popular" contributors and shuts out any one (by creating a point of focus) that isn't in sync or interested.

My advice: figure out what _specifically_ it is that you want to have a dialectic exchange about and find a community for it. Any sort of off topic discussion will occur in their cafe or off topic areas where the same intellectuals will do some cognitive "offload" by talking about other things that are interesting.

Philosophy, physics, mathematics, programming, DIY, electronics, space advocacy, psychology, etc... are all subject areas I can think of that have many (stimulating) communities built to serve the sole purpose of exploring and developing ideas and thought for the subject matter.

Get specific!

</comment><comment><USER3> _I want a site that has, like HN's guidelines state: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"._

MetaFilter - <http://metafilter.com/> \- meets this description, but the definition of "intellectual curiosity" is somewhat wider than on HN - that is, it's more literary and cultural and far less "techie." It's been going over 11 years though (disclaimer: I've been a member for 9).

There's also the Joel on Software boards and the just-launched "Gravity" - <http://www.gravity.com> \- has some interesting discussions kicking off already.

Other than that, the "programming" sub-Reddit isn't that bad: <http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/>

<comment><USER4> Joel on Software boards are closing. Closest thing I'm aware of now is StackOverflow but opinionative discourse is usually frowned upon there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Similar question: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=290733>

Also, <http://lesswrong.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link :D

It has been discussed before, but 2 years ago is a long time on the internet - sites die but many more are born.

Oh although lesswrong is awesome, I'd love to find a "lesswrong" on technical matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For high-volume general discussion about a broad range of topics, Metafilter is almost always still best, if you ask me.

<comment><USER7> Seconded. Best $5 you can spend on the internet (to be a member, reading is free).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check out <http://overcomingbias.com> and <http://lesswrong.com>.

There are some good discussions on Eliezer Yudkowsky's articles: <http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~andwhay/postlist.html>.

</comment><comment><USER9> I really enjoy flyertalk.com for travel and frequent flyer discussions. Their subdomains for particular programs are ripe with really detailed info how to maximize value from any miles you accumulate (even if you earn the miles through methods other than flying). This was the home of Pudding Guy, the miles hacker who collected yogurt tops and earned something like 10 million frequent flyer miles for < $2,000. That's a lot of free flying.

</comment><comment><USER10> Lambda the Ultimate (<http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/>)

</comment><comment><USER11> Quora (<http://quora.com>)

</comment><comment><USER12> Straight Dope message board <http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb> is pretty good

</comment><comment><USER13> Fluther (<http://www.fluther.com>)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why not start your own?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd rather join an already established community than spend a lot of time building up a culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dude, internet forums will never be places of quality discourse so long as any random person off the street can post a comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> A read-only (invitation) forum with quality discussion would be fine too. I've heard the vast majority of forum users are lurkers anyway.</comment></comment>


The Crazy Lady Speaks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2010/10/the_crazy_woman_speaks.html <comment><USER2> I actually had a similar experience on a flight from London to LA a couple of weeks ago.

Was dreading speaking to a man next to me who was reading through some self- help guide for Christians and underlining and circling words and phrases on every page.

I have no problem with religions (though I myself am an atheist), but I _really_ can't stand the type of religious person who insists on never shutting up about that topic (in my experience, normally born again Christians.)

After an hour or so of the eleven hour flight we did start talking, and not once did he mention religion in any way for the next ten hours. Instead we just talked about our lives. Turns out that, after joining a gang, dealing drugs from 13, and going to jail three times before he was 20, he then discovered God, and now spends time helping disadvantaged children, at home in California and in third world countries, and none of his work involves trying to convert the children to believe in God.

It was really nice being reminded that finding religion _can_ turn a person's life around, and make him a better person (yes, my general view is biased heavily against religion.)

<comment><USER3> Seems like he did mention religion.

<comment><USER2> No, he didn't. I only discovered that he became a Christian at that time in his life a few days later - we had swapped twitter usernames, and from that I found a few sites of his (personal page, facebook, myspace...)

Reading about him online and the book he had on the plane were the only things I had connecting him to religion.

<comment><USER3> Ah. You said you talked about your lives, and described his. It seemed as though that was what you talked about on the plane.

<comment><USER2> I should have been more specific in the first place :)

<comment><USER4> To find conversations like these on the internet makes me happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can have the same experience when it goes the other way: someone who is a good friend ends up with a startling revelation that makes your jaw drop.

My case in point was this week: I was hanging out with an academic friend of mine at a conference. He lives somewhat far away, and when I do roll through town, we usually just grab a beer rather than see his house. This week, however, he revealed something that hitherto I had not known. We were talking about how the town the conference was in was sort of shady (sorry Reno) and he mentioned "Yeah, I should have brought my Glock, just in case."

"Pardon?"

"Oh yeah. Did I not tell you? I have guns. _Lots of guns_."

As a leftie even in Britain, and someone who is scared of even the mention of guns, this was a bit of a surprise. The difficulty/trick, I guess, is to reconcile the person you have with the person you are now presented with, and realize that they are really one and the same, just with one minor change that makes no difference to your interactions.

This happens to me much more in the US than in the UK; UK people are much of a muchness. Americans run a full-spectrum. I guess this is why politics here is so polarized.

<comment><USER6> _UK people are much of a muchness. Americans run a full-spectrum_

I suspect in the UK you've unconsciously constructed an echo chamber around yourself, it's easy to do, especially in London where you can easily fall into a demographic/subculture and never interact with anyone else. Whereas when traveling you are out of your "comfort zone" and interact with a greater range of people.

People are people, and the UK has a reputation for eccentricity for a reason...

<comment><USER7> Don't you think that most people from western countries would be shocked when an acquaintance casually mentions that he should have brought a gun in case he needs to shoot a criminal?

<comment><USER8> Only because it's illegal to do so in most western countries.

But to be shocked by that _in America_ seems to show a rather high degree of cultural illiteracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's crazy is thinking that someone necessarily agrees with the contents of a book she's reading.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Last weekend I watched UFO conspiracy videos all day, just for the entertainment value. I see people reading Marx and sometimes even Hitler's stuff, and they're neither Commies nor Nazis obviously.

<comment><USER11> I wonder what people would think if I sat next to them on an airplane reading _Mein Kampf_ , actually. Marx is academic-trendy enough that people won't look down on you for reading him, but Hitler's a different story.

<comment><USER12> I would think that anyone reading Mein Kampf is an avid student of history, maybe WWII history in particular. It seems much more likely than them being a Nazi.

<comment><USER13> Maybe. I don't know about the US, but in Europe, reading this book in public would provoke a strong reaction in people. (I think selling or even owning the book is illegal in several countries.) So I think somebody doing that would be more likely to be making a statement of some sort. What kind of statement, may vary... (They could have Nazi sympathies, or be vehemently anti-censorship, or just like to shock people, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Assumptions. Too many of them. The real message of this article is that people will silently judge you.

<comment><USER13> While it has many unfortunate effects in society, the ability to make up your mind about something/someone in a split second is actually a survival mechanism.

<comment> mkr-hn It's very rare that I run in to a situation where the initial impression is accurate. How's such an inaccurate metric supposed to be a life saver?

<comment><USER13> In modern society it usually isn't, but it was a survival mechanism for early humans, and still is for animals. If you're an animal (or human) in the wild, and an unknown creature approaches you, you don't have time to think, "hm, I wonder if it's dangerous; let's not be prejudiced and wait until it gets here so I can see what it does." If you do that, and your guess was wrong, you're dead. On the other hand, if you chose to flee or hide, you'd be more likely to still be alive (and you can still choose to come out again once you've decided that the other is not a threat).

The same mechanism still exists in today's humans. Fortunately many of us are not in situations where our immediate survival is at stake. The mechanism is still there though, it just takes different forms, like having an opinion about people or things in a split second, based on what you perceive at that moment. (The reaction is likely to be different too, not fight-or-flight like in nature.) As you point out, it's often wrong, so it's much less useful to us than it used to be (although not _completely_ useless).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lots of homeless people I've come across are usually looked down upon by other people for god knows what; silent assumptions suck.

I've talked to a few of them and I've been amazed, every single time, what sort of stories they bring to the table, and the sort of intellect a lot of them possessed.

After talking with an old homeless guy at length over a period of a year about literature and various other things, he carted over a basket full of books to give to me and a few of my friends - he was a huge book nerd and talked a lot about McLuhan, life, and literature.

It was pretty obvious that many people didn't have much of a high opinion of him - it was only after you've decided to so much as look at him and say something that you'd find out the truth.

I don't know what the hell happened to him, but I didn't see him after that year.

I miss him dearly.

<comment><USER16> Sadly there's also the opposite side. I always try to talk to homeless people begging in the street, getting their attention by giving them a small amount of money. A few weeks ago I came to talk to this girl coming from a different country who was just visiting friends in mine. I was looking for that special spark you found in your acquaintance but I simply couldn't find it. After about 20 minutes I had to admit that she was just plain stupid in the normal sense of the word and brainwashed enough to reject the help society offered her. It was a bit depressing to see that she really was just a homeless person and that there wasn't that much more to her.

<comment><USER17> You saw what she chose to show you.

<comment><USER8> Ockham's Razor: is the stupid homeless woman (a) stupid or (b) an evil genius who is pretending to be stupid for some unknown reason?

<comment><USER17> No, she's not an evil genius, but let me spin you a yarn.

She's a homeless woman, so she was perhaps raised by a demanding and misogynistic father figure, from whom she learned to act helpless. Then she figured out in high school that acting dumb makes boys like her. She sort of fell into the identity because it was easy -- her family, friends, and society at large fully expected her to be a dumb slut, so it was easy, even for her, to believe she was, plus she liked the attention.

That's a pretty common thread, and people are WAY more complicated than that. I've found people have rich and varied experiences, even dumb ones. That you couldn't glean anything from this girl other than that she was "stupid" maybe says more about you than about her. She has thoughts and feelings that maybe she either can't express in a way you understand, or that she doesn't care to express to someone who is clearly an outsider.

I'm just saying that people surprise me, and I have a hard time believing some girl is just irredeemably "stupid" and that's all there is to know about her.

There are plenty of people who think I'm whatever they think

<comment><USER8> I tend to think that if she were that crafty she'd probably have found a way off the streets by now. The only people left on the streets are the worst of the worst.

<comment><USER15> Look at my post above about a story where homeless people aren't exactly scum?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> People who tend to accept things authority figures tell them without some sort of critical analysis I feel are the most threatened by unfamiliar ideas.

I'll listen to just about anybody talk about anything. I don't find other people's beliefs particularly threatening no matter what they are. I often have people open up to me and tell me all sorts of strange stuff that I don't think they'd mention to anyone else. I have certainly had some interesting plane conversations.

</comment><comment><USER19> "There is a principle, which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." \-- Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903

</comment><comment><USER20> eh, another thing to remember is that the books you read don't define you. I've got a little red book on my bookshelf "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse- Tung" 1969 printing. and, uh, I'm not sure I'd call myself a Libertarian, but I'm probably closer to being a Libertarian than I am to being a democrat or a republican. I've also got some Skinner on my bookshelf. I'm an athiest, but I find Jack Chick to be fascinating. I mean, I think he's completely batshit insane, but he's definitely not a boring read.

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh, and 'crazy conspiracy theories' is an oxymoron. It's the NON-conspiracy theories that are crazy. The world operates primarily by conspiracies. Maybe the lady passenger was just practicing her skills at grading conspiracy probabilities.

</comment><comment><USER21> I love conspiracy theories, and read them avidly. That doesn't make me crazy.

</comment><comment><USER22> What a beautiful post.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I make the transition from being a Python beginner? - <AUTHOR> I've learnt all the basics of Python, the data types, functions, classes and iteration.
I've started a project to create Breakout using pygame.
I'm done with Learn Python the Hard Way and the other basic tutorials and need to know why you make certain things classes, when to create functions, how should the program be designed, how should it flow and so on. Ideally according to best practices.
I feel like I have all the pieces of Python but don't know how to start putting them together to make something that works.
Any advice? <comment><USER2> Build a small project and start working up.

Here's a simple example, and I and some of my compatriots would be willing to pay for someone to build, maintain, and possibly open-source it:

Build a parser that can read logs in the NASDAQ OUCH 4.1 format ([http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/content/technicalsupport/specifi...](http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/content/technicalsupport/specifications/TradingProducts/ouch4.1.pdf)) and generate compliance logs. One example is OATS format ([http://www.finra.org/Industry/Compliance/MarketTransparency/...](http://www.finra.org/Industry/Compliance/MarketTransparency/OATS/TechnicalSpecifications/)). I currently use a unmaintainable perl regex-happy monstrosity, and would like a clean python version with which I could quickly make changes.

The python workflow should be straightforward and this should not require any esoteric or nonstandard module (but since this is a learning exercise, I won't spoil it)

<comment><USER3> Not to hijack the post, but this sounds like something I'm interested in. If OP is swamped, would you mind dropping a line? email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Playing around with projects and making stuff is a good start.

Here's a warning though. Doing a lot of projects will help but be careful in considering this as a silver bullet. You will probably pick up some bad habits as well as future stuff people will go crazy over.

I would try to do something that involves working with other people. You'll probably have a headache, have an awful time at first but it will teach you a big lesson - how to structure your code in a way that it's more a diplomat that plays nicely with other people's code rather than a war mine that nobody wants to touch with a 1000 foot poll! Once you done that, then choose something in a completely different area (e.g. if you did client-server, try UI desktop application as an example). It doesn't have to be a big project but it will teach you how things can be similar and different.

So in short, solo projects then find your way into a team project of some type.

Just my two cents. Take what's useful and throwaway what you think is bad.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm in exactly the same boat you are. I recently finished one book and am now mostly finished with LPTHW. I feel like I have some of the basics down but I don't really know what to do next. It feels like there is this big gap and I don't know how to cross it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately after you get past the basic learn a language stage, it more or less dries up. There are a couple of books that are polarizing like Design Patterns, but that is about it. From here on out it is trial and error.

As far as best practices go here is my list:

Automate everything you can.

Keep it coherent.

Rewrite when you find yourself building a house of cards.

When to create a function: anytime something is complicated enough that you think about it abstractly, anytime you use something more than once.

When to create a class: I haven't really nailed down a logical description for how or why I would make a class. Anytime you have a conceptual entity you have a candidate for a class, a player, a socket, a button, a window, a file.

</comment><comment><USER7> Dive into Python has several chapters on test driven development, refactoring, and performance tuning.

I'd also read some of the best books in general development if you haven't already: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/02/recommended- reading...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/02/recommended-reading-for- developers.html) Also learn about the SDLC. Applies to every language.

Next, dig deep into the source of a large well-maintained projects such as Django or perhaps pygame. Learn mercurial, and start contributing via bitbucket, github, etc.

Find the right project and you should get valuable feedback for your efforts. ;)

<comment><USER8> There are few books on the list that I don't know of, it's pretty interesting to know about them... Thanks for sharing that.

Do you know about "Structure and Interpretation of Coputer Programs" ... IT'S A CLASSIC! <http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/>

<comment><USER7> Yes, yes, another great choice.

(( What kind of maniac downvotes a friendly response? ))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cristina (Crista) Videira Lopes started a list of programming or programming- related tasks like this: [http://tagide.com/blog/2011/06/things-ics-students- should-do...](http://tagide.com/blog/2011/06/things-ics-students-should-do- before-graduating/)

I'm in the same boat. On section 28 of LPTHW. Luckily, I am working with a startup where I hope to cut my teeth helping more with building our product instead of just being a customer guy. I promise to follow up when I get a better answer. Feel free to contact me.

</comment><comment><USER10> +1 for more projects. You also might try refactoring projects you already have, it's a good learning process.

I found projecteuler.net to be a really good source for tough programming/math problems. If you want a never-ending supply of puzzles, that's a good place to go. When I was first learning Python, my classmate & I challenged eachother to see who could do problems 1-50 first. (It took us about a month-- we were also working full time and taking night classes. My classmate finished his 50th a few hours after me.)

</comment><comment><USER11> Keep working on real projects and experimenting. Only so much knowledge can come from reading. You should also try dissecting some open source projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> "don't know how to start putting them together to make something that works"...try a Github search?

Design patterns is a great next step, but it sounds like you're not quite there yet. Something intermediate-level like Dive Into Python will give you more ideas.

I made apps with WxWidgets and Django after learning the basics, but there are a million directions to go in. They just all involve building things and learning as you go.

</comment><comment><USER12> for i in range(1, 1000): print "Do a project.\n"

I know this is rather rude, but doing projects is the only way to learn.

Take it from me, someone who wasted a lot of time trying making it click by study alone.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would recommend you check this online book: <http://htdp.org/>

"How to Design Programs" is a great resource for newcommers and professionals alike. It's a good revision and a good start.

Enjoy.</comment>


Friends Don't Let Friends Take Education Advice From Peter Thiel - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/friends-don%E2%80%99t-let-friends-take-education-advice-from-peter-thiel/

<comment><USER2> What price is too much for a degree? If there's a good return on that $50K liberal arts degree, what if it cost $500K or $5 million?

College costs are rising at a much higher rate than inflation. I've received an excellent ROI on my liberal arts degree but its total cost was less than $10K.

Without changes we are rapidly approaching the point where its a poor investment. Those disagree are like those who said your house would always be the best investment you could ever make ;<(.

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually went to the 20 Under 20 selection event (I'm one of the "100+ mentors"), after hearing the director of 20 Under 20 speak at an event at Sunfire.

I think they are "stacking the deck" by picking 40 students (from which they will pick 20) who are going to succeed regardless, and who they can then point at as examples of dropping out being worthwhile.

It's clear that the biggest harm from effectively compulsory higher education is to those on the margin -- high school only students who fail to get a solid education in high school (because it is assumed that college will provide this), and students who either fail to graduate from college, or who are relying upon a degree program to prepare them for a career and who either can't or don't get a degree which leads to a suitable career. (if you're a smart computer person, a degree in philosophy is probably fine, if that is your interest; if you're barely able to make it through college, and want your degree to get you a job after, you should take a degree which directly prepares you for a job). Plus, the crippling debt of anyone in the middle or upper middle class who goes to an expensive school.

20 Under 20 doesn't necessarily solve these directly, but will probably provide a useful but not really applicable example which students, parents, and teachers can use in discussing whether college is appropriate for a marginal student.

What would be more useful is improved K-12 education, improved non-school educational resources (wikipedia, khan, ocw, etc., maybe combined with online study groups or some kind of testing/certification?), non-college schools and training, and not using a degree credential as an artificial employment barrier.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best statically typed language for back end development? - <AUTHOR> I am tired of scripting languages and want to know what the best language for modern backend development is. Golang looks good to me. <comment><USER2> The JVM is a good platform for back end development due to its having a plethora of mature frameworks and libraries available to do anything you need. You have several language options then depending on what it is you're wanting to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go is the new darling child, and once wasm is in Chrome, it's going to get very big, very fast. And if they manage to polyfill to regular js (assuming that's still the plan - I haven't kept up), that's the end game maneuver.

For front-end, well, TypeScript 3.0 just came out...

<comment><USER3> Sorry, didn't mean once wasm is in Chrome; it's already in Chrome. Meant once wasm is officially in Go. That version (1.11) is due to be released soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For small projects or truly micro services, consider Java/Spark, Crystal/Lucky, or Go/stdlib.

Ensure that it has a fast edit/compile/test loop, ideally with hot-reload for web apps.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, if you like C's performance, Python's syntactic elegance, and Lisp's macro system, then you should definitely try Nim language.

</comment><comment><USER6> Of course the real answer is "it depends".

I like golang and am very interested in TypeScript. Depends on your RAM/Multicore needs.

</comment><comment><USER7> It depends, but I have enjoyed Scala and Go.</comment>


Ask HN: Has there ever been a bubble that didn't burst? - <AUTHOR>

If you read up on the lifecycle of a bubble, one key property is that people will claim "this time it's different" because of several reasons, which turn out to be incorrect when the bubble inevitably pops.<p>Has there ever been bubble-like growth without the bursting at the end? In other words, has it ever been that "this time it's different" turned out to be true? <comment><USER2> One of the defining characteristics of a bubble is that a threshold-clearing percentage of people don't know it's a bubble.

Thus, there's no such thing as "a bubble that didn't burst", there are only either things that weren't bubbles in the first place... or bubbles that haven't burst YET.

An example that comes to mind is petroleum. There are those who believe that oil-based energy, which is a key underpinning of our economy, military, lifestyle, etc., has been part of a "long boom" following coal but has reached a peak and will cause our economy to burst like a bubble when it finally retracts... and there are those who disagree and think we'll find economical substitutes as incentives warrant our doing so.

</comment><comment><USER3> One could argue Gold is a 6000 year old bubble. Desperately digging it up to bury it somewhere else. Only because it's the particular element that doesn't react chemically and is just the right amount of common/rare.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment. Growth was negligible over human lifetimes for as long as their were humans, yet in the last 200 – 250 years most people in the Western world and Japan become orders of magnitude richer than our predecessors, and much of the rest of the world is catching up.

<comment><USER5> To play the devil's advocate, this could be interpreted as bubble-in-progress (what with "Peak $someResource imminent" etc.)

<comment><USER6> to add to Piskvorrr's point, if population isn't a bubble waiting to explode I don't know what is ... <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> fiat currency?</comment>


Ask HN: Will 2012 be Bitcoin tookoff? - <AUTHOR>

In terms of transactional volume and product development (i.e., 3rd party products, services, apps, etc.)?  And, if so, how will "the man" react? <comment><USER2> It depends upon how events unfold. If some countries leave the Euro I can quite imagine Bitcoin, or a customized version of it, being seen as a temporary solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. I sense, in the Malcolm Gladwell, "Blink," kind of way, that this will be _big_ year, or even tipping point, for Bitcoin and related _things_.

PS: This is the best recent article I've noticed: Wired: "Bitcoin's Comeback" <http://goo.gl/LYNkk>. Funny how it came a month after they wrote this: "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin": <http://goo.gl/OMeiC> . That second article likely marked the bottom, I'll wager (and I did, with Bitcoin purchases). See [http://seekingalpha.com/article/109470-magazine-covers- as-a-...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/109470-magazine-covers-as-a- contrarian-indicator) for the analogy. Of course, a lower low is still possible, such as if Bitcoin was outlawed or something else moved the earth under its feet.</comment></comment>


Looking Back, is College worth it? - <AUTHOR> http://lukethomas.com/looking-back-is-college-worth-it/

<comment><USER2> _In college, the answer is almost always found in the textbook. Unfortunately, there's no textbook for life._

It all depends on what you study.

<comment><USER3> I assume you are referring to life sciences?</comment></comment>


Manage your applications and infrastructure the Kubernetes way - <AUTHOR> https://crossplane.io <comment><USER2> I like that it treats the infrastructure the way Kubernetes treats volumes. Claim/Class/Resource model works well for infrastructure self-service and allows fine-grained RBAC for infra resources.

However, except database resources, most of the CRDs seem to be in v1alpha stage. I'd play with it and see how it unfolds but probably not depend on v1alpha resources in production.</comment>


Career Advice for Engineers and Designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.breakoutcareers.com/ <comment><USER2> I clicked one of the links [http://calacanis.com/2015/07/04/the-most- important-piece-of-...](http://calacanis.com/2015/07/04/the-most-important- piece-of-advice-for-folks-starting-their-careers/)

The 6th piece of wisdom this particular thought leader has for us is "NEVER GET INVOLVED IN POLITICS & NEVER BE NEGATIVE."

Which is followed immediately by this:

"The people who are killed, the deer, tend to huddle around the kitchen or go on cigarette breaks and bitch and complain about everyone and everything at the company. The tigers are too busy killing it to be bothered with such things... Deer: "Bitch bitch, moan moan, blame blame, cry cry. Tiger: "Hmmm…that's an interesting take on things. I gotta get shit done, good luck with that."

Apparently turning himself into a killer tiger who just fucking kills all the time has left him without a sense of irony.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the other pieces of advice -- work super hard (for your employer), don't ask for money... doesn't sound very tigerly to me.

<comment><USER4> >Never leave work before she does, respond to her emails quickly and without excuses. Here are things to say to her when she gives you amazing responsibilities that will make her love and trust you more.

>Don't bust your ass and sharpen your skills for your boss alone, do it for yourself and your boss. Taking on all the problems at a startup is not being taken advantage of — it's taking advantage of.

>Don't worry about your salary, just get enough money to live in a closet close to work.

Is this guy serious? Is this satire?

From the sidebar:

>If you're a winner please email email@example.com

The more I read the more I hate this person.

<comment><USER5> 100%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For actual careers advice from real people, not the looking-back-from-my-yacht type, try [https://www.somewhere.com](https://www.somewhere.com).

Yes, I'm the founder, but this is what we do best - asking questions about work and getting responses from people who are right there, right now, e.g.

[https://www.somewhere.com/provocations/latest](https://www.somewhere.com/provocations/latest)

<comment><USER7> It looks pretty and all. How is it different from LinkedIn? I'm always weary getting myself on another "social network" thing instead in the end getting my data sold - or worse - stolen. (actually I'm not sure which is worse...)

<comment><USER6> I could talk a lot about how we're different from LinkedIn, and how looking pretty as a website is a hindrance at times, but we're less about what you've done and more about how you do it.

For a lot of people things like job titles and descriptions are out of sync with what we do, and we don't really have any good tools to show or share our work. Developers have Github, designers have dribbble, but for everyone else there's not a good tool out there.

But, I hear you on the YASN problem, and we're not solely a social product as a result of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very startup centric. Maybe should say that in the title.

<comment><USER9> Very, very. It worries me sometimes - and I know we're on HN and that's the audience here, but still - that people see "a startup" as the one and only way. This will inevitably lead to pain and heartache for many.

I've worked contract jobs through my 20 year career and have done very, very nicely out of it. (I started in the UK and am now in AU - our rates are healthy and consistent.)

Now, with my 20 years' experience, am I thinking of branching out and doing my own thing? Sure. Would I have recommended that to my 18 year old self? Hell no.

<comment><USER10> How do you get into something like that, if you don't mind me asking? What's your specialty, and where were you in your career path 20 years ago that set you up for it?

<comment><USER11> In my experience (in the UK) you start by submitting your CV to loads of recruiters saying you are looking for contract roles. If they think they can make money from you they'll give you a call and ask for your rate etc.

I'm not the OP, but I just do plain front-end development. Contract length can vary, sometimes it's one week in a digital agency, sometimes it's a few months in a large company. You can also find contracts that are 12months, and they can be extended after that.

I was freelancing when I started out, so I had some income but was also available for full-time contract work during the day.

<comment><USER12> >I was freelancing when I started out, so I had some income but was also available for full-time contract work during the day.

and companies were cool with it? I'm trying to do the same (data scientist) but I only get offers for perm or full-time contracts.

<comment><USER11> I was lucky to get a 3-day a week contract, but still had to do my freelance work in the evening/weekend for a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me or does anyone else think that any advice that relies on a 19 year old's ability to pick successful tech startups is rubbish?

<comment><USER14> I'm interpreting your comment to mean that because an engineer won't be able to pick a successful company anyway, it is useless that they follow any career advice.

If that's a correct interpretation, then no, absolutely not. Most engineers (you see this if you sift through linkedin) make far less optimal (I believe) choices than they would by simply picking a Series A/B company backed by a tier one firm like Sequoia/A16Z/Greylock/Benchmark.

And surprisingly, people take very little time to think about what they want, what they care about, what they believe the world needs, what they enjoy, and so on. Doesn't seem like a good idea given they'll/you'll spend 50%+ of your waking hours at work.

<comment><USER15> In life, it's often about picking from what's available to you at the time of making the choice, instead of what's optimal. Especially true of young people.

Many engineers that come to me for interview training ([http://InterviewKickstart.com](http://InterviewKickstart.com)), have been at their workplaces for several years, mostly since college. When in college, you just want a job and a job in a brand name company like Cisco is amazing. It's usually too late until you realize that you were in a team that nobody cared about.

Then you try and interview to get into a good startup, only to realize that interviewing landscaping has shifted. Your only option then, is to go join an also-ran startup because they paid no attention to the interview process. It's a vicious cycle.

<comment><USER16> "it's often about picking from what's available ... instead of what's optimal."

That is true and is good life advice. However poorly it correlates with reality, a semi-comical mythology has sprung up that startups are only for young urban white male brogrammer ivy league grads in a handful of cities but only if they have rockstar abilities. Oddly enough an aspect of the mythology is there's a shortage of programmers and no one knows why, which is also pretty funny. Note that every other employee at a startup is fairly average and thats OK, only the programmers are held to this weird standard.

If normal people want to play baseball, then the a marketplace opens based on whats available, and most of us play on parks and recs fun leagues, or the Y, or pickup games at the park. However, the mythology is that The Best Pitcher In The World gets to select what major league team he plays for, and similar individuals are the only important people worth discussing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Actually, with currently title from HN

> "Career Notes for Engineers and Designers"

My expectation is they excerpt content from real-word engineer like head of engineering or head of design some of giant tech companies.

But it seems they excerpt content from bunch of VC and i think is good from entrepeneur perspective.

<comment><USER18> And therein lies the problem.

It is in the VC's interest to push more and more people to take risky bets - this gives them more horses to bet on, while managing the risk through diversification. For the individual horse (or er, engineer), this still remains a risky proposition.

Which becomes far less risky if before you launch in the startup world, you take a couple of years after graduation to work for a well known and reputed company (say google). That will guarantee a soft landing if your startup experiment fails, which is very likely.

<comment><USER19> Yes. Though part of the crux of this advice is to choose a company that is already growing revenue at a solid rate, from a solid base. This is not as risky as you might think.

Also, generally, if you are a good engineer (as long as you learned things and improved, if you worked at a company that didn't become a big success), Google et al will welcome you back with open arms.

<comment><USER18> I agree with you. Joining a company that has a clear revenue model (or has found a decent way to monetize their user base) and is growing by leaps and bounds seems like an easy bet.

But how many of these companies are out there? Granted, we are a few waves after the deluge of social startups with gigantic user bases and no idea on how to monetize them, but what you describe is still a minority of startups.

And the suggestion doesn't seem to be "join a company that is already doing well", it's "join a startup or create one, instead of going to work for some corporation".

This is what I think: in engineering (and even more, in business), right after your graduation there is this window where you have large and famous companies with deep pockets who are eager to get the cream of the class. If you join them even for an year or two, you have significantly smoothed the rest of your working life.

Sure, you can always join them years later, and you don't need them to succeed - but statistically, the impact of taking advantage of this window cannot be denied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a great summary and analysis of the best career advice from lots of different people. Also from the same person who made the breakout list (breakoutlist.com), which I've sent to my engineer friends who are looking for something other than Google/FB. Just sent this one to a few friends as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> For something meant for designers, I felt that the site was poorly designed. The main menu makes it hard to see who each picture is of, and it's hard to tell at times if we're reading the editor's opinion or the subjects'.

</comment><comment><USER22> Very programmer centric. I was hoping to read advice that relates to all kinds of engineers, not just software ones.

<comment><USER19> Great point. Though some of the general concepts still apply, for example, on identifying who you want to be working with, what you care about, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like the "after getting hired" quotes; they're all good advice that benefit you, the only caveat is to make sure you aren't getting taken advantage of. Don't overwork yourself to enrich someone else; enrich yourself first.

<comment><USER5> What I've learned about getting "taking advantage of," is that if you're learning and growing you can't be "taken advantage of."

Who cares if your boss is getting some great deal on a $ basis if you're getting the experience to be the boss?

My advice in this piece is for people who aspire to accomplish great things in their life--not folks who want a "great life" (defined as balance, vacations, etc). So, if you're 35 and have a family this isn't the advice for you (that should be obvious).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seems like this page is open source: [https://github.com/breakoutlist/career- notes](https://github.com/breakoutlist/career-notes)

So maybe we could create pull requests with our suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER25> Great post! I think those notes are not limited to engineers and designers tho. They are interesting for marketers, finance professionals... It could be called" "Career notes for everyone"

</comment><comment><USER26> The rest of the site is a helpful database of tech companies considered to be "breaking out" which would look good on your resume/teach you a lot/maybe make you some money.

</comment><comment><USER27> Programmer is not the same thing as engineer.

<comment><USER28> That may be true, but many, many companies equate them.

<comment><USER29> I worked one Uk Telco t where "engineer" meant Lineman aka the guy in the van who climbed poles for a living</comment></comment></comment>


A2ui – Anuglar 2 Bootstrap Components and Utils - <AUTHOR> http://a2ui.codeweaver.pl/ <comment><USER2> Nice lib

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much, it have some really nice features comparing to ng- bootstrap or ng2-bootstrap.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: State of the art for web apps without trusting servers? - <AUTHOR>

A current HN front page item has once again brought up the old issue about how Javascript-implemented crypto in web apps could be modified by the web server operator at any time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8659456
That is, even if the server operator does a good job implementing the web app and the publicly-audited open source code prevents the server operator from seeing plaintext, the user doesn't know that the version served just now is the safe, audited version, as opposed to a modified, backdoored version.
So, if the server gets compromised, or the server operator decides to spy on a particular user, or a government manages to order the operator to change the code for a particular user
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/11/25/case-suggests-how-government-may-get-around-phone-encryption/
then the user is out of luck.  Of course this is a fairly well-known concern (highlighted over the years by tptacek and others) and I've heard of three or four projects to try to address it.  They have in common the concept of creating some mechanism for browsers to verify, pin, and/or require independent certification of the contents when rendering a page containg a web app, so that the page just won't load if its contents have been changed in any way.  (That also means you have to verify that the code can never dynamically load or eval new additional code, which might be enforced by auditors rather than by the browser.)
Who is working on proposals for such mechanisms, which ones are making progress, and how far along are they? <comment><USER2> I see it as if you don't have all the hardware in-office and in-house ALL the software and have the clients go to your place to do whatever it is they do, there is no 100% guarantee you will get full security. And even then you have to trust the clients aren't a risk in themselves...

If you want to be full-blown paranoid, you have to trust a) the client's pc manufacturer (including USB connected devices) b) their OS manufacturer c) their browser manufacturer d) all apps that the client runs

Then they hook their computer to the internet...</comment>


Ask HN: What was your biggest business mistake? - <AUTHOR>

Team, Investors, Marketing, Risk Management, Technology - whatever it is. What have you learned from it? What could you have done to prevent making the mistake in the first place? <comment><USER2> Where to begin? I'll pick one of my favorite mistakes: Cleverly avoiding a market that was ripe for the taking.

In the early/mid 90s I built a compressor called Quantum that outperformed PKZip by an average of 20% to 30%. For a few years it was the best-performing general-purpose compressor available.

Microsoft, Borland, Novell and a handful of other companies licensed it. Cumulatively it saved them hundreds of millions of dollars in cost-of-goods for disks.

My smaller mistake was to not apply for a patent. Quantum was the first compressor with a workable implementation of optimal parsing and about half of the improvement over PKZip was due to it. I was then (and still am) philosophically opposed to software patents but purely from a business standpoint possessing a patent on optimal parsing would have made it difficult for competitors. That said, I don't view the decision to not apply for a patent as being a mistake as much as a deliberate choice.

My bigger mistake was to ignore the retail market. I felt that PKZip owned that and going up against them would be foolish. Instead, I took the low- hanging fruit of selling to software publishers. It was a handful of boutique sales (which one man could do) instead of attempting to penetrate the retail market against a strong, established competitor (which seemed intimidating.)

Except... I was completely wrong. PKZip never made a concerted effort to build a usable Windows version of their product. Phil Katz didn't like Windows and so PKWare was slow to evolve the product from a shell wrapped around the DOS tool into a first-class Windows app.

The world needed an easy-to-use compressor for Windows. An improved UI and support for additional compression formats extended beyond the scope of my original product but I could have done it without difficulty and I rejected the idea for the wrong reasons.

The market was ripe for the taking yet I cleverly convinced myself it wasn't worth trying and settled for less. Fortunately for WinZip they didn't make the same mistake and they quickly rose to a dominant position.

</comment><comment><USER3> I created a helpful product that 9 out of 10 users said they would recommend to a friend, with about 1,000 paying customers. I was too shy to market it or advertise it anywhere, though. I got dejected after being declined from YCombinator in Spring of 2007, and on top of that, my dad was laid off that August. I decided to make the program free to focus on a job I started, and I stopped maintaining it soon after.

Another is that I got into the iPhone Store beta program in March of 2008 due to this product, and purchased a MacBook Pro to learn Objective-C. I felt it would be correct for me to quit my job right then that March and spend the next few months creating an app to release to millions of iPhone 1G and 2G users while app expectations and competition was very low. I didn't want to deal with the stress and negativity from my dad of quitting my job just six months after starting it, having dealt with that negativity for years. I was also doing some dental work and the job had a $2,000 dental insurance. Instead, I created mockups for the company I worked for that were shown to the COO/CIO, thinking I could maybe get a bonus money. Instead, my manager was promoted. I applied to UMass that same March in case I wanted to go back to school in September, which is what ended up happening; the idea being that college was a good place to find a co-founder. Although I ended up winning one of the two entrepreneurship competitions here, the overall feel of a state school is to get a job, not do something entrepreneurial.

I'm about to make a third business mistake: trying to get into the grad school so I can continue working on the front-end of a rails app I'm already doing undergrad research with right now.

The problem with being a single founder is that there are so many people trying to tell you you're wrong, and with increasing intensity, that even if the signs are all positive it can eventually get to you. My customers love my product, and that's actually all that matters according to entrepreneurship logic. But when your parents or others don't see your customers, as well as pretend not to care in order to demotivate you from it, to them, it was like I was just home all the time.

<comment><USER4> if you're about to a make a third business mistake, then why not stop it before you do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Didn't seek product/market fit quickly. A couple years ago, a friend and I started a real-time social shopping tool that we'd hoped to pitch to online retailers.

We spent months and months just building and building. We had a small team of developers working with us as well. It took us about 10 months to get our first prototype out only to find that no one wanted it -- not consumers nor retailers. By that point, morale had already started to drop, because everyone on the team thought we were just spinning our wheels and couldn't see any traction. Instead of spending another few months building in the dark, at that point, I mocked up something quickly in Photoshop and started pitching different ideas to retailers to see what people were interested in. I was amazed that retailers could understand what kind of product I was talking about just by seeing a mock and without actually having a demo or a prototype. After going back and forth on different design iterations, (I'm not a designer, so it was even more remarkable that potential customers could understand my mocks) we finally hit upon one that was of interest to many retailers.

Although we piloted and signed with retailers, unfortunately, it was already too late. The sales cycle with retailers is quite slow, and many of the larger firms plan for their website a year in advance. So we would not have even gotten the data needed to prove out the success of our idea for at least another year.

Speed to find product/market fit was something I completely did not understand then. I should have started circulating mocks on day 1.

<comment><USER6> Hi, we are also working on a "real-time social shopping tool" that we hope to pitch to online retailers. I'd like to talk to your further about your experiences. Is there any way that I can contact you?

<comment><USER5> Sure -- email me at email@example.com. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Communication is vital. If communication breaks down then everything else turns to shit.

Also, handshakes don't cut it as much as we may want them to. I'd love to be able to trust people, but in matters where money is involved no one can be trusted.

I learned this the hard way. Please, use my mistakes to your advantage.

<comment><USER8> Seconded. It's not a done deal until the money is in your bank account. If someone offers something, you write a Memorandum of Understanding _at least_ to clarify the details.

Also, never trust anyone who asks for a little bit of work at a discounted rate in return for the promise of more work later. Even if they're a government department. They may mean well, but they're almost certainly not in a position to back that promise up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While starting a ad driven website, we relied on Google Adsense. We were trying to bootstrap the site on very little funds. It wasn't until we'd been running for a couple of months that we dared to try and find local advertisers. In 1 month we were able to make more than double with local advertisements than what we had made the month before with Google Adsense. Our traffic didn't grow very much in that time, but local advertisers were much more willing to buy space on our site than we anticipated.

If I could do it again, I would try to book specific advertisers from day one. Slap a guarantee on there if necessary, but only use Adsense to fill in the gaps.

</comment><comment><USER10> Getting into a business I didn't know enough about, that wasn't aligned with my core strengths and desires, in anticipation that I could make a stronger income than I could doing the things I actually loved. It was a very poor decision that I stuck with far too long. It nearly killed my spirit and took a huge financial toll on me and my family.

The decision to do this was the direct result of an ego that was out of check. I made a significant hourly rate for many years consulting (to one client - another mistake, btw) - when that contract ended, I didn't want to accept the lower rates and rejection found when trying to find high paying consulting jobs via the web. So, instead of adapting to the situation or finding creative solutions to it, I avoided it by doing something entirely different. VERY, VERY poor decision. I've been humbled greatly - which I actually think is a benefit of this experience.

I did learn a tremendous amount about people and business during this process, but it isn't one I would likely repeat with the benefit of hindsight.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thinking if you build it they will come. It doesn't. You have to go out and sell, you have to push harder than the other guy, who may be bigger, stronger and cheaper than you. You still have to do it. You have to get rejected and have your skin make a Rhino's hide look sensitive.

<comment><USER12> When do you know you should keep pushing and when should you pivot/move on to something else? I always seem to be battling with this question.

<comment><USER11> On the sales side I don't stop till I'm told we've lost the deal. Even then I still ask for feedback and try to see if there's anything that can be done to recover it, but direct B2B is a bit different to what most people do here.

For other stuff, to be honest I'm just as guilty of holding on too long or overinvesting time in something that won't work at the expense of something that does as much as anyone.

I just try to recognise my mistakes, learn from them, how to spot them happening again and how to avoid/evade them. I think that's all I can really do. I try to suck a little less each day, with varying degrees of success/failure :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Trying to run a service-based dev business to support creation of products. That consulting grew to consume 100% of our usable time and resulted in a period of pretty intense burnout, personally.

<comment><USER13> If you're in this situation, you might try honing your focus - if you can zero in on the most lucrative/time segments of your consulting practice, you may be able to make this work.

This does depends greatly on your client mix and financial situation.

<comment><USER8> We'd almost done that - had a brilliant marketing plan drawn up and everything; then burnout hit myself and my business partner (hard). The coup de grace was delivered by the GFC

(Even here in Australia, small businesses were hit - and all our clients were small businesses or primary industry and simply stopped paying invoices or returning calls.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Attempting to communicate a distance (or in a context lacking suitable bandwidth, otherwise: in an overly hurried fashion, in a noisy cafe instead of a quiet office, etc) in regard to a matter that really required an unhurried, face-to-face discussion.

That is, even though there've been situations where I'm (still) pretty darn sure it was ultimately "their" fault things weren't working out too well, there are still things I could have theoretically done to guide things to a smoother transition -- by waiting a day or two to have time to travel to the next city, for example -- and thus, perchance _not_ see a relationship that took years to cultivate suddenly go down the crapper, apropos of almost nothing, or so it would seem.

Again, theoretically. And all in retrospect.

In the moment, it's so easy to be (justifiably) consumed by the sheer obtuseness of what the person is doing, that it's hard to see the benefits of simply waiting things out... or perchance, simply not "leveling" with the other person, simply because it feels like the right thing to do, at the moment.

But the bottom line is, even if you do feel you have to "level", or unwind a business relationship with someone you at least once, theoretically, considered to be a friend -- email and chat are just really awful channels to have to do that in.

</comment><comment><USER15> I put in more than full time effort for three years as a partner building a small business in a country where I couldn't actually own it. In the end all I could have was a private agreement with my local partner... but I didn't realize that until I was already emotionally and financially committed to the enterprise.

In retrospect, I learned a great deal from it and am doubly motivated to become a good programmer and have a stab at the software business. It was a costly way to learn, though.

</comment><comment><USER16> discussing equity after product had been built and a bunch of code had been written.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is hardly revelatory, these days; nonetheless:

Trying to "pay my dues" as expected and/or manipulated by an older generation particularly of middle-management. That may have been the way things worked for them, but more and more of the U.S. employment space doesn't work that way anymore and hasn't for well over a decade.

Employment in the U.S. is becoming de facto class based, and if you permit yourself a) to become over "classified", and b) to let such a role mis-direct your energy in inefficient directions, you can seriously screw yourself.

Neither am I a fan of the know nothing hotshots that e.g. were being parachuted in as excessively paid management consultants. But that resentment doesn't negate the above fact.

Look for the exceptional person who really is competent, and cooperative, and build your relationships that way rather than through whatever formal hierarchy. And keep yourself prepared to jump ship; don't paint yourself into a corner, especially financially.

</comment><comment><USER18> Bad partners who didn't want to work hard. It's toxically demoralizing.

<comment><USER11> The same goes for any people who either don't fit (to a much lesser extent) or for toxic people who bring politics into the game and suck the life out of a company. Those are mistakes I've definitely had to make more than once to (hopefully) avoid in the future.</comment></comment>