Can Uber Ever Deliver? Even After 4Q Cost Cuts, Uber Lost $4.5B in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/02/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-thirteen-even-4q-cost-cuts-uber-lost-4-5-billion-2017.html <comment><USER2> _" Uber released new financial data this week, showing full year 2017 GAAP operating losses of $4.5 billion, and an operating margin of negative 61%."_

Finally, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles numbers from Uber. And they're awful. Lots of startups whine about having to produce GAAP numbers (all US public companies have to) because they can't exclude "extraordinary expenses". But GAAP numbers are real, not "earnings before all the bad stuff" numbers.

Right now, Softbank is keeping Uber alive. They put in $10 billion at the end of last year.[1] Softbank is now Uber's largest shareholder.

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding_rounds/...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding_rounds/funding_rounds_list)

<comment><USER3> How much of that $10B was secondary sales that didn't put anything into the company's coffers?

<comment><USER4> I think the 10b isn't sales but it's to fund whatever insurance policy that they have on their cars . They probably add that to the price of their rides or something .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only thing Uber can ever deliver is people and things to their final destinations. When Uber shuts down and goes out of business I as a consumer will just roll into the next service, and will not shed even a single tear for all who invested in Uber.

Sorry, but thanks for all the cheap rides.

<comment><USER6> Yes, they are a pure commodity.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but we need commodities and there are tons of profitable commodity businesses. If Uber is able to deliver ride cheaper than everyone else, they can make a ton of money, and the logistics and scheduling competencies can be applied to other verticals. That being said, I'm still pretty bearish on Uber's longterm success, and their current numbers do look pretty bad.

<comment><USER6> "If Uber is able to deliver ride cheaper than everyone else, they can make a ton of money,"

They are repeatedly demonstrating that they are not able to do this profitably.

<comment><USER7> I am not saying they will or won't be able to do it profitably, but saying they won't be profitable because their product is a commodity seems wrong. People need and are willing to paying for commodities, it's a matter of whether or not Uber can execute.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. It looks like Uber is not Walmart or Amazon who can thrive in low margin markets though. They are producing huge losses right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How are Lyft's financials? Are they losing money just as fast or what? If they aren't, seems like the answer is that yes, Uber can deliver.

<comment><USER9> Probably not great, but what if the model of both businesses just isn't actually viable without massive injections of funds?

<comment><USER10> Then apparently it is impossible to run a SaaS app connecting drivers and passengers for a ~25% cut of current prices.

That seems pretty unlikely. We need to move on from this unsupportable "ride sharing pricing is unsustainable" narrative.

<comment><USER11> The expensive part of Uber isn't the SaaS app or even the engineers. It's the overhead of running a law-avoiding lobbying business that explicitly seeks out to just do everything as evil as possible.

Hell, Uber tried being a predatory car loan business for quite some time, which you would think would be one of the easiest ways to make surefire money, but they lost on that one too: [http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-subprime- auto-loans-runn...](http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-subprime-auto-loans- running-it-off-the-road-2017-8)

<comment><USER10> Even if your claim were supportable, it wouldn't explain how competitors not "seeking out to just do everything as evil as possible" have competitive prices.

<comment><USER11> There can be an argument that Uber's expensive policy-mongering is enabling the competition. Lyft doesn't have to do any lobbying, it just has to lie in its wake while Uber does everything for it pretending to be the nicer company. As long as Uber is out there wreaking regulation havoc, Lyft is happy to sit back and let Uber do that. Perhaps Lyft doesn't want Uber to die, since they're basically the ones spending money to make Lyft viable at all.

<comment><USER10> Then it's very polite of Lyft to price competitively to allow Uber to stay relevant when they could easily undercut them, due to their much smaller line item for "expensive policy-mongering."

This is conspiracy-theory level evidence and rationalizing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Giving things away at <cost is good for growth and not much else.

<comment><USER9> Well, the idea is that they kill off every competing service and then can raise prices. Also that they can beat everyone else to self-driving cars and eliminate the cost of labor. Other articles on NC have called the feasibility of both of those into question.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like a terrible idea given that this would just open the door for another company to do the same to them. They don't produce anything novel which can't easily be replicated.

<comment><USER14> Once they acquire a dominant position, the cost to assail it will be astronomical. It already is in fact, which is why Lyft is burning so much cash just in the US market alone ($3 to $4 billion in red ink just in the US).

You're going to have to convince venture capitalists to put in $10 or $15 billion and be willing to watch it all burn, on the nearly impossible task of unseating the market winner. That will never happen. That is not how VCs operate. Which is why Google search has gone almost entirely unchallenged by VC over the last decade, despite being an extraordinary cash cow.

The reason there isn't another Uber competitor getting $7 billion in VC across multiple rounds in the US right now, is the same exact reason there won't be another Uber after the dust settles.

<comment><USER15> You are making the incorrect assumption that a company has to try to compete with Uber everywhere all at once. They don't. Once Uber raises prices to the point where they make a profit, cabs will just come back and undercut them - because they will have less expenses (they don't have to support a massive organization and shareholders). This will happen independently in every city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The main value prop for Uber hasn't changed for quite some time, probably not much since UberX, the innovation there is pretty much done.

This puts Governments in the perfect position to disrupt Uber, if they build their own version, feature for feature (let's face it, it's a complex app but not that hard to copy) and mandate it on their already regulated taxis / ban uber, their user acquisition costs and marketing costs will be almost zero. They can run it without making a profit and keep fares lower or close to the current Uber position. Win win for everyone

<comment><USER17> Did you just earnestly advocate for a government mandated ride-sharing app ? And you main argument is that if it's government mandated, "user acquisition costs and marketing costs will be zero", so the users get lower fares ?

That's brilliantly lawfully evil. Why stop there ? That argument applies for all services. They would all benefit from having zero acquisition costs. Just nationalise everything. Could anything go wrong ?

<comment><USER16> If there's no innovation, why not? Why give returns to shareholders if their investments provide no value?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the claim in the article that they're inflating top line revenue growth, is the argument that they're selling a $100 ride but giving a $20 discount and calling it $100 in top line revenue?

<comment><USER19> According to the article they are not only doing what you describe, but if due to an error or customer service reason they refund the ride later that day, they still count it as $100 of revenue.

<comment><USER18> Couldn't they "double" their revenue by doubling their prices and giving everyone a 50% discount?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Help me

For every 100,

Driver gets x Uber cut is y X+y = z

Z ÷??? = 100

Where does the 100 go?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your life? - <AUTHOR> Do you have a process for managing your finances, health, fitness, learning new skills etc ? <comment><USER2> I've suffered under a complete allergy to any form of organization for my whole life, having almost no native abillity to form even the most basic habits, remember things, or plan ahead. By habits, I even mean things like smoking (which I did on and off, liked it, but found it challenging to keep cigarettes on my person). By memory problems, I mean I am completely incapable of remembering stuff like the pin number on my credit card, my phone number, and so on.

So, to cover these deficiencies, I've resorted to technology. I use:

\- Taskwarrior. It's a good todo list, fairly straightforward. I organize everything onto different projects.

\- A python script that tells me what I'm supposed to be doing at any given time (it even asks taskwarrior if it has any todo items that are planned for the timeslot). It notifies me, and plays a sound every time I'm supposed to be doing something else, like eating lunch.

-Emacs org-mode. Just started with this. It's pretty fun, and covers some of the gaps that the other two don't fill.

I'm not the biggest fan of smartphones, since I inevitably either lose the charger, forget to charge it, or lose the phone - but I'm hoping that a cheap, long-battery life one will come out at some point.

With taskwarrior, I basically add items to any number of lists for different projects, like 'household', or 'work', or 'hobby', or 'learning german', and so on. Then I set out in my timetable how many hours per week I'm going to devote to each project. Then my computer tells me what I'm supposed to be doing at a given time. This is nice, because it means you can do something like devote 1hr per week to something like learning about vector calculus, and you don't forget you meant to do it, then feel guilty after a month has passed.

<comment><USER3> I don't think I suffer from a disorder like you seem to have, but I, too, can't keep any habit, regardless of my motivation. The most annoying 'habit' that I can't keep is sleeping. I never fall asleep and wake up at the same times. Trying too hard to setup a sleeping schedule only worsen the issue.

This is kind of frustrating when you see all those self-improvement books and people saying they 'achieve success' by twisting their will and forming the right habits.

I also use taskwarrior, this is really a wonderful to-do list manager. Along with Khal[0] to plan things (even if I can't stick to what I schedule, this is still stimulating to layout tasks in a calendar), it gives enough confidence to keep the head high and not sink under all the work that awaits me everyday.

The last sentence sum it up for me, these tools just help me to accumulate confidence and get things going.

[0]: [https://github.com/pimutils/khal](https://github.com/pimutils/khal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One day at a time.</comment>


Bachmann: Hawking Blunder on Black Holes Shows Danger of Listening to Scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/stephen-hawkings-blunder-on-black-holes-shows-danger-of-listening-to-scientists-says-bachmann

<comment><USER2> It's satire -- it's from The Borowitz Report section of The New Yorker, by Andy Borowitz [1], who, among other things, created The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (yes, really).

Now, you'd think, even if one isn't aware that The Borowitz Report is meant to be satirical, that the word "humor" in the URL would tip people off, but apparently, this isn't so -- in fact, it's enough of an issue that _The Awl_ has a piece entitled "The Borowitz Problem" [2], which is an interesting read. It starts with this statistic:

 _According to Thompson, "The Borowitz Report" was responsible for six percent of all of NewYorker.com's traffic last year._

And then makes this point:

 _But when you publish a fake headline that sounds almost real, place it on top of satire that 's soft enough to skim without really reading, give it a newyorker.com URL, and promote it on Facebook, where basically every headline sounds like satire now, you know what you're really doing.

Not always, but frequently, these posts are going to go viral as the result of people who don't know they're jokes; as a bonus, every few months, a foreign outlet will aggregate them as if they're genuine. That Travolta story had, at one point, over ten thousand Facebook shares, not because a sophisticated joke flew over thousands of heads, but because its form is intentionally misleading._

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

[2] [http://www.theawl.com/2014/07/the-borowitz- problem](http://www.theawl.com/2014/07/the-borowitz-problem)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know whether to laugh at the ridiculous (and almost obligatory) ad- hominem science denial or cry because there are people who are ignorant enough to actually take this seriously.

</comment><comment><USER4> How very bizarre. Bachmann's point seems entirely based on some view that we should only listen to authorities, and we should only listed to authorities that are correct all the time.

If your view of truth doesn't stem from "what I was taught", that is, from taking some Big Kahuna's word for it, then what Bachmann says seems nonsensical.

</comment><comment><USER5> Surprisingly, this is not dated April 1.

</comment><comment><USER6> Satire? Seems like it.</comment>


Head-up display coming to a car near you - brown9-2 http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-head-up-prize-munich.html

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty sweet. There are a few exciting technologies that are going to make the future of cars very different from today:

\- HUD's \- Driverless cars \- Siri or siri like voice control

Forget iTV, Steve Jobs should have been working on public transportation.</comment>


How 'Weird Al' eclipsed most stars he parodied - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2017/02/16/how-weird-al-eclipsed-almost-every-star-he-ever-parodied/ <comment><USER3> I think it's a rare combination of genuine talent, being genuinely likeable (and being able to easily communicate that through a short song or video), having the qualities needed to promote himself and struggle for a long time, and good luck to be there at a time when he could enter the consciousness of so many young people.

Generations of kids (and the rest of us) have enjoyed this man's work, and that of course gives him some staying power too. How often does something we feel nostalgia for continue to reinforce those good memories? Here's a case of someone who still does.

There have been others with greater or lesser success... Mr. Rogers for example (I think) had a similar kind of impact, but obviously not the financial success.

<comment><USER4> Mr Rogers defines the pinnacle of "good human being" to me. There are so many stories of him doing really nice things (wearing the sweaters his mother made for him on his show, describing what he was doing on the show because a blind child wrote in, speaking to the funding of PBS; the list goes on and on). Add to that the impact he had on my life (and the impact the newer Danial Tiger show based off his work has on my daughter's)... I just can't say enough good things.

<comment><USER5> I was pondering to myself recently that if Jesus had returned in secret, my best guess would be that he was Mr. Rogers. A bit of a joke but I sure wish people could say the same about me!

<comment><USER6> IANAL, but the thought once occurred to me that if Jesus lived today, he would be a public defender. The public defender tells his client: it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what you've done, or whether you're guilty or innocent; I'm here to help you.

<comment><USER7> It's too bad public defender programs are so often understaffed and underfunded, to the point where some have only minutes to spare per client [0]. This contributes to statistics like 90-95% of federal and state court cases being resolved through plea bargain in the US [1].

[0] [https://www.nacdl.org/reports/misdemeanor/](https://www.nacdl.org/reports/misdemeanor/) page 21

[1] [https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSumma...](https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf) page 1

<comment><USER8> Well, most people arrested are guilty anyway, statistically. People get too many ideas about the legal system from TV shows, and then when reality doesn't match their TV shows they assume it's reality that's fucked.

<comment><USER9> > Well, most people arrested are guilty anyway, statistically.

But aren't those statistics based on a system that's incentivized for them to be guilty? That's like trusting an environmental study funded by an oil company.

<comment><USER8> A shitload of crimes are committed, and most criminals are pretty stupid.

<comment><USER9> I think it's only most criminals that get caught that are stupid.

That aside, you're assuming that because most criminals (that get caught) are stupid, that most people accused of crimes must be guilty. What if we consider an alternative theory - the police are stupid? Is that any less likely than criminals being stupid? Another possibility - the police don't care and just want to meet their numbers. And another possibility - people have underlying prejudices which they use to justify their actions.

In order to reach your conclusion you need to make a lot of assumptions, for which you provide no evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Old enough to remember when "My Bologna", "Eat It" and some of the other early 80s videos came out. But it was his polka medleys (1) (which do not have accompanying videos) that showed another side to his talents ...

One of them is referenced in the article. Another one is "Hooked on Polkas" featuring Twisted Sister's "We're not gonna take it" and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax" (2), and then he did an even earlier medley with classic rock (3). The heaviest riffs and lyrics from the likes of Iron Butterfly and Hendrix turned into a goofball accordion medley ... pure brilliance.

One other thing to mention about Weird Al ... he is the only pop musician I like that my kids also appreciate. The videos for Eat It and Amish Paradise really hooked them ... still working on them with the medleys, though.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic_polka_medleys)

2\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8OtFR24ZR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8OtFR24ZR0)

3\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS5Dc6u1j8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS5Dc6u1j8o)

<comment><USER11> I'm a younger Al-fan but I've always loved the Angry White Boy Polka.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY- oili63QQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY-oili63QQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most of his parodies are more clever than the originals, IMO. I say this in an objective sense because there have been multiple instances in my life where a song came on in some circumstance, and someone started singing the Weird Al version. I don't know about his more recent albums, but half of his songs were original and I liked many of those even better. "Good Old Days" is absolutely hilarious.

<comment><USER13> Yeah - "The Saga Begins" and "Tacky" have completely replaced the originals for me :)

<comment><USER14> I remember seeing the "The Saga Begins" video and realizing what an underrated and great singer he is. Very flexible in style too - like the best voice actors.

<comment><USER15> It uses auto-tune quite heavily, so who really knows how good he can really sing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The original authors of /The Onion/ had a dislike of Yankovic which was strangely intense [http://www.theonion.com/article/weird-al-yankovic-nears- comp...](http://www.theonion.com/article/weird-al-yankovic-nears-completion- of-livin-la-vid-697) , even using _his parents ' tragic death_ [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/music/2004-04-11-weird-a...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/music/2004-04-11-weird- al-parents_x.htm) as an opportunity to take a shot at his song parodies [http://www.theonion.com/article/weird-al-honors-parents- memo...](http://www.theonion.com/article/weird-al-honors-parents-memory-with- tears-in-heave-4654) .

<comment><USER17> The usatoday link lead to a page that would not render on my mobile device but this latimes link worked [http://articles.latimes.com/2004/apr/11/local/me- weirdal11](http://articles.latimes.com/2004/apr/11/local/me-weirdal11)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In other Weird Al news, there's a Beatles parody ("Pac-Man", based on "Taxman") that he wrote in 1982 that he has just this year received permission to release.

[http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/18/14658500/weird-al- unreleas...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/18/14658500/weird-al-unreleased- beatles-parody-pac-man)

<comment><USER19> It always amazes me to hear stories about artists that won't give him permission to do parodies (Prince, Weezer, Eminem, and the Coolio debacle).

One of my favorite stories about a Weird Al song was that Madonna actually floated the idea for "Like a Surgeon" through a mutual friend.

<comment><USER20> When I was a kid, I remember hearing about Weird Al's practice of always seeking permission from the artists he parodied and assuming it was just to avoid any legal unpleasantness later (even if any such case would be thrown out). It wasn't until later that I understood the motivation to truly have everyone in on the joke together, which this profile describes wonderfully.

<comment><USER21> Yeah this is great.

The fact he asks shows that he respects other artists and respects their feelings. Not everyone is happy about being parodied, especially if their work holds very personal sentimental meaning for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> White And Nerdy shows a very impressive amount of genuine nerdiness. I mean, rapping in front of Schroedinger's equation for the hydrogen atom?

<comment><USER23> His entire discography has blatant gems of nerdiness peppered through it (also fun fact about the MV: when he vandalises a wikipedia page, it's the one for Atlantic Records, and is a reference to Atlantic refusing to bless the commercial release of "You're Pitiful", the parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful")

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Weird Al is a national treasure.

He has a great touch with lyrics and generally manages to stay on the right side of the line between goofy/funny and uncomfortable/cringeworthy.

</comment><comment><USER25> His "Word Crimes" is one of the more entertaining videos I've seen, because not only is it a "ha ha just serious" kind of song, but the animations in the video are just spot on.

<comment><USER26> That indirectly reminds me of "Bob", another favourite: [https://vimeo.com/44024588](https://vimeo.com/44024588)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Weird Al is really brilliant. One of the things I think he does so well is capture the _spirit_ of the artist when he writes an original "in the style of" song. If I didn't know better I'd swear that Dare To Be Stupid was a song by Devo. He matches their musical style so well!

<comment><USER28> Yea his style parodies are my favorite. Frank's 2000 Inch TV[1] is a song in the style of REM and Waffle King[2] is like a Peter Gabriel song? I think that's what it is either way great talent.

Also about the Dare to be Stupid song this is a fun tidbit from the wikipedia article[3] of the song:

Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh stated in reaction to the song that: "I was in shock. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. He sort of re-sculpted that song into something else and... I hate him for it, basically."

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

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8t4Smunp1U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8t4Smunp1U)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dare_to_Be_Stupid_(song)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dare_to_Be_Stupid_\(song\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I also have to mention UHF. If you haven't seen this film, run and go watch it now. It's hilarious.

<comment><USER28> man this comments thread is making me realize I'm a closet weird al fanboy. UHF is getting a rewatch this weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For those who haven't seen it, Weird Al's song "It's All About The Pentiums" should be required Hacker News watching: [https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos](https://youtu.be/qpMvS1Q1sos)

</comment><comment><USER30> Weird Al goes in the same bucket as The Muppets and Homestar Runner - <USER2> good clean fun.

<comment><USER31> I think this is an underappreciated aspect of his work. He occasionally strays from the path (see e.g. "The Night Santa Went Crazy"), and some of the polka medleys do incorporate some pretty dark songs about sex and violence (e.g. Stone Temple Pilots' "Sex Type Thing" or Foster The People's "Pumped Up Kicks") but it's a good rule of thumb that if a parody/comedy song is particularly profane/offensive/mean-spirited, it's not his work.

<comment><USER32> "Rice rice baby", a notable parody from the 90s that can be seen as racist, is very often missattributed to him but isn't his work.

<comment><USER31> If Napster taught me one thing, it's that _every_ song parody has been attributed to Weird Al at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> this guy doesn't age. i remember him from when i was a kid. a while ago i saw some elementary school kid talk about weird al, and was like "that guy still alive?"

and checked out his latest, he looks exactly the same!

<comment><USER34> I remember when he was much larger . He actually went on a diet and lost a bunch of weight and now has to wear a fat suit for his parody of Michael Jackson.

<comment><USER23> Er… he always had to wear a fat suit (and a mask) for Fat!, there's no way you can dance that choreography and be basically round. Hell the second scene of the MV is him literally ballooning up.

Not to mention, "eat it" is from the same album and he's not exactly heavy in there: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcJjMnHoIBI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcJjMnHoIBI)

<comment><USER35> not from same album unless it's a greatest hits collection...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > At Sketchfest, Yankovic sits on a panel about the late, great IFC show > "Comedy Bang! Bang!" He served one season as Aukerman's musical sidekick, > against his management's advice. They thought he was too big for a low-rated > cable show.

Something makes me respect famous artists a lot more when they're willing to take jobs that are destined to be ridiculous and obscure. It shows that they don't take themselves too seriously. Take Weird Al as "Uncle Muscles", for example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lM3k_pBSjE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lM3k_pBSjE)

</comment><comment><USER37> My sister-in-law got us tickets to go see him about 10 years ago. I went, thinking that the "concert" was just going to be him dancing around and goofing off to pre-recorded music and things like that. WOW, was I blown out of the water.

He has one of the tightest bands I've ever heard. I mean, they played live and hit everything almost perfectly. I later find out he's been touring with the same people for decades, and they are at the top of their game musically. I went in being a fan of his music, but came out with so much respect for him as just a shear musician.

<comment><USER38> Decades ago I was one of a handful of regulars in a Weird Al IRC channel. His drummer John "Bermuda" Schwartz (who is still a member of his band to this day) was also a regular and would set up occasional Q and A sessions with Al himself. Those were amazing times to be a Weird Al fan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The man is genuinely entertaining.

I got the pleasure of seeing him last year. Being in Norway, it was a small crowd compared to what it might be in the US - and absolutely wonderful. Serious talent, and the costume changes are quick.

Some songs are nearly cult-like: Tin foil, for example, and folks brought their own. His older songs are now parodies of classics to a younger generation (My first memory of Weird Al was his song, "I'm fat").

<comment><USER40> I'm not sure what you mean by small, but years ago he played the smaller state fair here, a couple thousand people tops.

(but I think of a "big" show as an arena or stadium)

<comment><USER39> Well, I think there were maybe a few hundred folks. It was held in a large room at a hotel instead of an arena or stadium. No seating and the room was at least 1/3 empty space and no matter where I stood, I had a grand view. Plenty of Indiana high school gymnasiums have more visitors. Of course, if he were playing there, it would most likely be at an arena or stadium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I love Stevie Wonder, but it is only in the last year, courtesy of binge listening on Spotify, that I realized where Yankovic got the base melody for 'Amish Paradise' (See 'Pastime Paradise' on 'Songs in the Key of Life'). When Weird Al is where I get my introduction, I know I have some cultural depth to grow in :)

<comment><USER42> Awesome song! Though I think it's more likely that Coolio got the base melody for Gangsta's Paradise from Stevie Wonder, and Amish Paradise grabbed it from Coolio since Amish Paradise is a parody of Gangsta's Paradise.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, but Weird Al must have been aware of both songs, given the lyrical shout-out (not to mention his general nerdiness).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What is up with the scrollbar on this page...?

<comment><USER44> yeah, i cant even read it. all i see is a full screen slideshow of weird al pics. no way to scroll down. nice job wapo!

<comment><USER43> I found I could scroll with the keyboard, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Some of the songs he parodied were utterly unknown to me. I remember how White and Nerdy was a massive hit before I finally heard the original: Riding Dirty. Of course the really big hits he parodied (Michael Jackson, Coolio) he never eclipsed, but he parodied a lot of songs that weren't really all that famous as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER46> Just looked back, Wikipedia shows that "Ridin'" was at the top (#1) of the Billboard top 100 chart for 2 weeks. That speaks to it being fairly well known.

<comment><USER45> Well, I hadn't heard it before White And Nerdy. Though it is of course possible that it was successful in the US but didn't manage to cross the Atlantic until after Al parodied it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> BTW, it was rumored (or often just _assumed_ ) early in his career that he was the son of "The Polka King" Frankie Yankovic[0], but they are not related at all.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Yankovic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Yankovic)

</comment><comment><USER48> I still have several episodes of his ill fated children's show recorded on Betamax.

<comment><USER49> +1 for just admitting that you owned Betamax (vastly superior of course to those VHS ninnies).

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> A good article. But the article doesn't seem to discuss "how Weird Al eclipsed most stars he parodied." I think I know the answer to that, but it'd be nice if the headline matched the story.

</comment><comment><USER51> WaPo should have removed the word "How" from the headline

</comment><comment><USER52> For a second I thought this was an article about a Weird AI.

</comment><comment><USER53> He's genuinely funny, very competent musically, respects the artists he parodies and has always worked hard. But his real genius that shines above all is his lyrics. He's an outstanding lyricist, perhaps the finest of the last fifty years along with Sir Tim Rice. Al's lyrics are so good that more often than not, they supplant the original material in people's memories.

<comment> david-given I think my favourite of his is _The Hardware Store_ --- which I think is completely original? --- which demonstrates lyrics, musical ability, and the fact that he's also a damn good singer...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYzo6NJBKco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYzo6NJBKco)

I mean, the chorus alone is a thing of beauty... and then you get to the breakdown in the middle!

<comment><USER54> Listen out for the automatic circumcisers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Al is one of those rare celebrities who everybody likes. He deserves his success.

</comment><comment><USER56> So.. similar to Jesus

<comment><USER57> We've asked you repeatedly not to do this here.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13677427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13677427) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Commerce – Drop in e-commerce for any website - <AUTHOR> Hey HN. I'm Matt White, co-founder of Commerce, along with Nathan Martin (centipixel) and Daniel Newman (over-engineered). Commerce is a drop-in e-commerce platform for any website from a single line of JavaScript. You can find us here: https://static.tools/commerce
With this single include, you get a shopping cart, account registration and login (Email, Google, Facebook, etc), live shipping quotes, invoicing, and the ability to sell complex product variants (composite/configurable products, delta pricing, fractional pricing, wholesale pricing, etc). Much of this is configurable via an administrative interface we've built up alongside the product.
From individual clients we've onboarded onto the system, we've already processed over 2 million dollars in transactions - a drop in the bucket compared to most of the other players in the market, but we're proud of it!
Before Commerce, the three of us consulted full-time as a team with a focus on static/Jamstack sites. We have over 30 years of agency and consulting experience between us (we're all mid-30s). Commerce was born out of a need to supply an e-commerce solution to a client, while still maintaining a static build. It was so successful, we decided to split off the product as it's own business, and Commerce was born.
As a company, we applied (late) to YC's W19 batch and didn't make the cut - and are currently working through Startup School as we work towards a full public launch. We're hoping to follow-up with a Launch HN in the coming weeks, but in the meantime this is our first time exposing the product to anyone who isn't a direct client of ours, so we're happy to take questions. And if it's a product you're interested in, we'd love it if you hopped over to https://static.tools/commerce and signed up for our launch announcements.
Thanks!
Site: https://static.tools
Demo: https://demo.static.tools
Docs: https://docs.static.tools <comment><USER2> I tried building commerce systems in a few Vue/Nuxt js sites and figured out that building the backend part of that is in a very bad shape right now.

You either have to custom code everything or use woocommerce or Magento APIs.

Getting woocommerce or wordpress system to work as API is very difficult and poorly implemented with multiple plugins to manage register, cart, orders, payments etc.

Implementing a full blown Magento install for this is just overkill.

I looked into couple of hosted SaaS in this space and they were too new with limited functionality.

Glad this space is picking up. All the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks subhashchy. Our opinion is that there are a lot of products that get you "half way", but that still leaves the last few miles to trudge through to have a complete solution. Let me know if there's anything that you think Commerce doesn't provide that would still be missing on your end - we want to make sure we're not just bikeshedding things to death without any outside input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What would the benefits be for this compared to Magento or Shopify?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey sarora27, Magento is certainly more of a monolith - so if you're building a Magento site you're very much _building a Magento site_. Shopify is similar in some respects, although their headless offering has certainly opened the doors up a bit.

The real benefit at the moment is that you can get Commerce running with the site you already have - you don't need to replatform in order to start selling things. Additionally, the cart is entirely real time - so a user can go from their laptop to their phone without needing to refresh the page to see any changes to the cart. Finally, the core of the cart is vanilla JS - so there is no inherent need to use React/Vue/(enter JS framework here) - although you certainly can by hooking directly into the API if that's where your tooling is at.

It's also ready to rock for static websites - no backend required - that was the initial drive for the product itself and it's grown from there.

<comment><USER3> This makes alot of sense. I think you're on to something. (Disclaimer: I worked for Magento and on a team responsible for turning the Magento monolith into a suite of microservices).

Are you targeting any key segments, use case, or GMV merchant-wise?

Happy to share what I know if it would be relevant. Feel free to DM!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, appreciate it. I'm @kaishir0 over on Twitter and the rest of my comms are in my HN profile. Would love to chat sometime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting. What technology stack is this based on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey victor106 - we beat around a bunch of things earlier on, but ultimately decided we wanted to produce a product that was platform agnostic. The core of the product is all vanilla JS, and the backend is entirely cloud-based - primarily via GCP.</comment></comment>


People Staring at Computers - <AUTHOR> http://peoplestaringatcomputers.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER2> This guy was arrested today.

<comment><USER3> Why was he arrested?

<comment><USER2> I guess it was raided but not arrested. Apparently Apple was not pleased and had their private police - the US Secret Service break in to his appartment

[http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/07/09/0250237/Apple- Store...](http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/07/09/0250237/Apple-Store-Artist- Raided-By-Secret- Service?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29)</comment></comment></comment>


The Invention of the Cardboard Box - <AUTHOR> http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/02/invention-cardboard-box/

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of "The Box", a book about container shipping.</comment>


Learn C in Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/c/ <comment><USER2> Learning C takes a bit more than learning than its syntax. Feeding someone this and telling them they now know C is a recipe for disaster. The "Best to find yourself a copy of K&R" line is the only line that should be there.

<comment><USER3> I was brought up on K&R. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone anymore. Much like a Java certification, most of it will have to be unlearned in real life. It's littered with holes and land mines and misses a massive chunk of the surrounding tooling and all the idioms which make for a good C program that won't kill you or your immediate successor who has to maintain what you've written.

I'd go with Zed's Learn C The Hard Way, then 21st Century C and go from there.

<comment><USER4> Zed made a really good intro to C. I was surprised. My only issue with it was he introduced readers to bstring instead of something UTF, but still better than vanilla chars. I wouldn't even know an UTF library for C with permissive license and lightweight on top of my head. C coding is all about memory management and data structures layout.

<comment><USER3> Agree but Unicode is a rather complicated diversion. In a lot of circumstances it's not really required as well. It's definitely a reading on subject.

Also, bstr stops a lot of simple tasks looking impossible and therefore motivates people.

Further to that, if you consider Java, Python, C# etc, you're using massive libraries at a very high abstraction level and it is considered normal. There isn't anything built into C like that.

<comment><USER4> I agree completely with you on all counts. He didn't made a wrong choice with bstrlib by far. I just felt there was a strong movement in recent years to move towards utf in general, so why not expose beginners to it as well, just as a part of overall strategy. It's not a trivial issue to tackle though for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > chars are guaranteed to be 1 byte

No they are not, assuming a byte as defined in ISO/IEC 80000-13 (8 bits, the most common accepted definition). In fact other types are defined in terms of the size of char, and sizeof(char) is always 1 by definition. These are not 8 bit bytes though. Some machines don't have byte addressing, for example DSPs. CHAR_BIT will tell you how many bits are in a char.

<comment><USER6> > assuming a byte as defined in ISO/IEC 80000-13

C uses a different definition of byte. The C standard defines the size of a char as 1 byte.

<comment><USER5> What is defined as a byte in the C standard is irrelevant to this article. A person reading this awful article(?) hoping to learn C wouldn't be aware of the C-standard definition precisely because he doesn't know C! He would only be familiar with the common definition of 8 bit bytes. ISO/IEC 80000-13 defines 8 bit bytes precisely because this is the common definition.

<comment><USER6> If you are going to use the common definition instead of the C-standard definition, why not use the common implementation characteristics of C as well? A char is one byte both in the context of the standard and in the context of common usage. It's only when you mix the two contexts haphazardly that the two aren't the same size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do I run my C code?

How do I pass commands to my app?

How do I read/write a file?

What is a "compiler?

What is "the preprocessor"?

What is "linking"?

What is a "linked list"?

What is a "Makefile"?

What are "C89" and "K&R"?

What are those strings in ALL_CAPS?

Why is there a segfault and where is it coming from?

Why does printf() wait to display stuff not ending with "\n"?

</comment><comment><USER8> I have seen the similar doc for python and that seemed very interesting and would've been a great resource for any beginner, but I wonder if such a format would work for C programming. Being able to actually make up in C would take a lot more effort than just that I would say.

But yes, a great effort nevertheless.

<comment><USER9> This is more of a "cheat sheet" that a learning resource. For a complete beginner this has no value. To learn c, minutes are a 3-4 digit number.

I would recommend C Programming: A Modern Approach (Second Edition). It is pretty much an updated K&R for C99.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> love the idea, would be cool if this can be extended like :

\- play with youtube api in 5 minutes \- learn how to integrate Facebook/twitter oauth in minutes \- create a flask/monogodb API in 20 seconds

etc ..

<comment><USER11> I'll start working on some :)

<comment><USER12> In every language?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Comments starting with // are not valid C89.

<comment><USER14> Why should tutorials cater to a spec which was ratified over twenty years ago and has been superseded by two subsequent standards? Sure, VS only supports C89... but anyone writing serious applications in C avoids VS if at all possible anyway.

As an aside, even VS allows // comments.</comment></comment>


How to Kill Start-up Distractions - <AUTHOR> http://andygcook.com/2011/10/how-to-kill-start-up-distractions/

<comment><USER2> Er, Ev Williams was probably not the best example to use for "it's better to focus on one thing." Would the author have told Ev to focus on Odeo rather than work on that crazy, silly side project called Twitter? Perhaps Billy Chasen shouldn't have been "distracted" by Turntable.fm?

The article is essentially one big tautology: don't be distracted by distractions! Well, the problem is no one knows what's a distraction and what's the next Twitter. That's the skill that matters - not ignoring "distractions" altogether.

It's perhaps important to remember that Clay Christensen remarked that nearly all disruptive innovations look like toys at first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment and you make a good point. I guess what my main point was that you should pick one thing to focus on once you know what the optimal thing to focus on is.

Imagine the Odeo team split their efforts between Twitter and their first idea? I doubt Twitter would have became the site it is today if that happened.

<comment><USER2> Well, by your own logic, they would have become perhaps an even better site, right? That they were less "distracted" by the sub-optimal Odeo?

No one could ever disagree with the assertion that you shouldn't devote time to sub-optimal outcomes - it's strictly irrational. "Distractions" arise not from founders making irrational decisions, they come from misjudgements about the expected future value of these "distractions." I'm not sure the solution is to ignore altogether things which have uncertain future value (which I believe is what you're proposing?) because our judgement about these issues is often so wrong.

"Hell yeah or no" and the like make for great rhetoric and catchy blog posts, but they assume our off-the-cuff intuition on such matters is correct. In my experience, it usually isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The author writes: _Usually side projects help you learn something new that you can incorporate back into your start-up._

How true is this! I'm on the side learning Django (because I want to use its admin feature to do a lot of CRUD) and on another side stint I'm dabbling in MongoDB, which also can come in very handy for my main projects.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article is a (well written) startup distraction.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you get your first paying customers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You should have customers before launch. Read the first four chapters of: [https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve- Blank/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve- Blank/dp/0989200507)

</comment><comment><USER3> For my latest business (a productised service that provides unlimited UI design for software teams [http://fairpixels.pro](http://fairpixels.pro)) I simply contacted my previous customers.

It's surprising how many of us are always looking for _new_ customers, when sometimes, contacting people who you already have a relationship with works best.

Even if it's your first business. Maybe you know a few folks from your previous job, an internship. These people already trust you, know you and interacted with you before... the easiest way to get your first customer, I think, is through the network you already have.

Browse through your phone and email contacts. Your first customers and users might be sitting in your pocket as we speak :)

<comment><USER4> And how did you first get your previous customers? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A recent HN discussion which may help: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191161)

</comment><comment><USER6> I had an ongoing relationship with a company and got them to pay a deposit for a product before we even started the company.

We would not have started the company without that deposit and I would have done something else in that case.

Anyway I think you should know who your first paying customers are going to be before you start anything. But don't take anyones word for anything. Lots of people will say "yeah I'll buy that if you make it" but not everyone will follow through.

</comment><comment><USER7> I built up a list of early access users for www.sanitycheck.io from a small Twitter following, small podcast listenership, and two seo Facebook groups I was a member of. Got about 50 users in total. 9 months of being in beta and then switched on pricing and got first 10 customers from that.

</comment><comment><USER8> I found the first few customers for my SaaS problem archive -[https://www.oppslist.com/subscribe](https://www.oppslist.com/subscribe)

Through running a newsletter that provided similar content and promoting there.

</comment><comment><USER9> B2B SaaS - Used networks, cold emails and showing up (cities, events, conferences). For everyone you meet, ask for a referral to someone else at the end. When you have an idea that has some level of product-market fit, that should be enough to get traction.

</comment><comment><USER10> My very first startup I was naive and just did cold calling. Got a huge number of no's (200+) before getting a yes.

Next time I'm much smarter, seek partnerships and even better if your product is an upsell, then you can have others sell it for you

</comment><comment><USER11> I the first costumers almost by just releasing the app, because the community was small and anything "new" would definitely sell at least 1 copy.

The product(s) being of high quality still have sales after some years.

</comment><comment><USER12> I found people who shared content from my competitors and sent them cold emails using BuzzSumo [http://buzzsumo.com](http://buzzsumo.com)

</comment><comment><USER12> I used social media to find influencers who could help promote my product using tools like CrowdTangle and Followerwonk

</comment><comment><USER13> Met a guy on a relevant reddit :)</comment>


Trump Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself - <AUTHOR> https://antidotezine.com/2017/01/22/trump-knows-you/ <comment><USER2> The first line of defence against Facebook mining is not to run FB apps (because they can harvest your likes).

But is it possible for an app to retrieve the likes of a user's friends?

</comment><comment><USER2> If psychometric analysis is so good, it did not matter whether the Russians hacked or not the DNC.</comment>


The Most Important Organization In Silicon Valley That No One Has Heard About - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/19/the-most-important-organization-in-silicon-valley-that-no-one-has-heard-about/ <comment><USER2> Once again, Techcrunch misses a prime opportunity to write about my startup.</comment>


Server Side changes to make your app ready for Facebook's OAuth 2.0 upgrade - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sociablelabs.com/2011/09/19/server-side-changes-facebook-oauth-2-0-upgrade/

<comment><AUTHOR> This follows the previous post on the client-side here: [http://blog.sociablelabs.com/2011/09/16/javascript- changes-f...](http://blog.sociablelabs.com/2011/09/16/javascript-changes- facebook-pauth-2-0-upgrade/)</comment>


Edward – A Turing-Complete Language for Deep Probabilistic Programming - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.03757v1 <comment><USER2> Speaking of which, check out Michael I. Jordans work on Probabilistic Graphical Models [https://www.google.com/search?q=michael+i+jordan+probalistic...](https://www.google.com/search?q=michael+i+jordan+probalistic+prrogramming&oq=michael+i+jordan+probalistic+prrogramming&aqs=chrome..69i57.17982j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

Mentor to Andrew Ng, former head of Google AI, Baidu and a few other things. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_I._Jordan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_I._Jordan)

Saira, Mina and David worked on some interesting stuff related to using ML/AI in extending human life span, nematodes a while back. Statistical modeling of biomedical corpora: mining the Caenorhabditis Genetic Center Bibliography for genes related to life span - Blei DM, Franks K, Jordan MI, Mian IS. - [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1533868](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1533868)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is also ZhuSuan which also leverages TensorFlow.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.05870v1](https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.05870v1)

[https://github.com/thu-ml/zhusuan](https://github.com/thu-ml/zhusuan)

[https://i.imgur.com/gzfhS29.png](https://i.imgur.com/gzfhS29.png)

</comment><comment><USER4> The software library is located here: [http://edwardlib.org/](http://edwardlib.org/) . Notably, Edward is layered on TensorFlow.

Regarding the significance of the authors, David Blei first described latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), an important algorithm for generative topic modeling, in ~2003. Interestingly, the last I checked, LDA couldn't be done in Edward (yet).

<comment><USER5> I also briefly tried it out, being drawn to the claim of Turing completeness, but I wasn't able to get inference working over any model with interesting control flow (e.g. loops). It seemed to have about the same expressive power of PyMC3, albeit running over Tensorflow which seemed neat. It would be very cool to see something with the expressive power of, say, Church running on tf.

<comment><USER6> In complete sincerity, I think that speeding up Turing-complete probabilistic programming to the kinds of inference speed we can get in the gradient-descent training of deep neural networks would be a "change the world"-level advance for ML/AI.

<comment><USER7> We already have that - variational inference based algorithms like BBVI use gradient descent for training

<comment><USER6> Variational inference also only works for continuous probability models, so it can't be used for most interesting use-cases of probabilistic programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll have to read the paper to see what makes it "deep"...

A cursory skim suggests that it is much faster than Stan, but I suppose the more significant question is if it provides the correct results. Stan might take longer, but I'm usually pretty confident that with some simple diagnostics I can see whether the results are what I really need.

<comment><USER8> One thing that looks cool is the tutorial for probabalistic PCA. That is a b __ __of a thing to do in Stan. It really only works under some very limited conditions. Edward has this ability to combine in a KL divergence minimization in there. Not exactly sure how it works. I should look into it more. I don 't really have a good sense of it just from reading the paper and a tutorial or two.

<comment><USER9> As someone who just implemented hierarchical probabilistic PCA in stan, I agree that it takes finesse, but it is no means impossible. Doing this sort of work efficiently in stan seems to require a some degree of understanding about how the sampler works. It also may require really thinking through your model. It saves you from deriving your own conditional distributions and writing a gibbs sampler, but you're going to have to do some analysis if you want to fit models of certain complexity.

KL divergence minimization (variational inference) is typically a weak approximation to the model you specified. I have seen it produce inferences on simulated which are just plain wrong. These "wrong" models are still often good predictors, so whether variational inference will work well for you depends on whether you care about making valid inferences or just doing prediction.

<comment><USER8> I would be very interested in seeing how you implemented the hierarchical PPCA.

My problem was that I couldn't identify the coefficients. So for instance, the first principal component could be [x, x, x, ...] or [-x, -x, -x, ...] and the result would be some bimodal distribution. So if you placed restrictions on the first PC it would work (like only positive), but those restrictions may not make sense for the next PCs.

<comment><USER9> Yes, multimodality is often a problem for mcmc clustering or dimensionality reduction. However, if you use the SVD method to estimate PCA you only have a bimodal distribution since SVD is identified up to the sign. Asymmetric initialization is usually enough to solve the problem.

This thread has some good examples of PCA implementations in STAN. [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/stan- users/5R2-QUDiy...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/stan- users/5R2-QUDiyME)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A nice beginner friendly book about Probabilistic Programming is the book by Avi Pfeffer: "Practical Probabilistic Programming" (published by Manning). The only downside of the book is that it used Pfeffer's own Scala library called Figaro, which does not seem to get as much attention as projects such as Stan and Edward.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone recommend any good resources for learning to use Edward?

The tutorials on the main site are good? [http://edwardlib.org/tutorials/](http://edwardlib.org/tutorials/)

<comment><USER12> Yes. I would start there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is another Tensorflow bayesian programming library called Aboleth - [https://github.com/data61/aboleth](https://github.com/data61/aboleth)

</comment><comment><USER14> #not related but:

Maybe nobody else cares, but the name does matter. Edward, Stan, Cassandra. Have we run out of computer (or programming) sounding names?

This is Computatrum Antropomorphicus.

<comment><USER15> This is bikeshedding at its finest

<comment><USER16> I know people who got stuck at picking a name and gave up writing the program. What can you do, when there is no name that makes you happy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like the syntax</comment>


Pylon – Declarative layout primitives for CSS and HTML - <AUTHOR> https://almonk.github.io/pylon/ <comment><USER2> I enjoy seeing other people's solution, but since I really learned the power of grid, most of this is overdone with flex.

As an example, here's how you can make a vstack with grid.

      vstack {
        display:grid;
      }

It's ridiculously simple and clean, works with all the elements without extra wrappers, no margins, no cleaning up trailing spaces, etc... add spacing class using "grid-gap" and it's the near perfect solution.

The hstack example is more complicated, because you simply have to choose widths, there is no getting around this, even with flexbox. (unless you want to totally give up control of the layout to "auto".)

The spacing classes are clever, and I may adopt some of this method. (I use grid gap, I only have 2 sizes) With the "Spacers" example, a width of 1fr works using grid.

Flex beats grid with some natural overflow capabilities (row wrap), but other than that, flex is not great for this kind of thing.

Since there's only a few examples, I suspect this person will be adding more in the future.

Edit: For declarative things like this, I think there should be one assumption. I use vertical in web interfaces. This means one less option to remember. (ie, by default everything is vertical)

Edit2: With an unknown number of items, flex is probably preferable for horizontal items for simple columns. But that is only if you don't care about the widths of the columns too much as well.

<comment><USER3> Only problem with grid vs flex is browser support. I opt for flex still because it's got better support.

<comment><USER2> Since the topic is "new framework", I would not advise investing in a system that is not ideal long term just because of a very minor support percent difference today. (looks like 6% of the world based on caniuse.com, but your audience may vary of course)

The benefit of an assumption like "everything by default is vertical", then the few people without grid support, but with flex, will have a "mostly" ok display.

Also, it's not hard to have a fallback to flex for horizontal items. (the only place it would really matter)

<comment><USER4> I feel like this would actually be one of the strengths of using a framework. I can abstract away my own styling to the framework, and the framework can upgrade from flexbox to grid without requiring me to change any of my own code.

<comment><USER2> Yep, I agree, seems like we are on the same page. I made my own framework based on my specific uses, so I even get to control when the fallbacks are removed, and deal with any of the fallout if there's issues.

I kind of think that at one point, everyone that works a lot with front end web development should make their own framework. It helps you learn to make long term decisions, deal with design iterations where you have lots of wide spread use of older systems and many other things that help you make wiser decisions in day to day interface design. But also it can help you see where things like Bootstrap are helpful and where it is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like this, but my 20 years in web dev can't help but chuckle. Remember when tables were declared evil for layout, so we had the shit show of trying to use CSS floats for everything, so then we added flexbox, and then grid, and here is a nice set of elements that is basically, well, somewhat less useful than tables for layout.

Don't mean to bash the poster, I just think it's interesting in the "everything old is new again" vain.

<comment><USER6> I work on an older project with some folks that never got the memo about tables being evil for layout. In my experience, they've actually been quite easy to work with. Granted, we develop for a fixed screen width. Why were tables declared evil?

<comment> shaki-dora One answer reveals itself by just switching two lines around:

> Why were tables declared evil? > Granted, we develop for a fixed screen > width.

Personally, I was always more disturbed by the anti-semanticism of the layout use of tables. But I guess at some point the web developer community just really stopped caring about such issues. Or at least that's my takeaway of the common atrocity of style attributes on individual elements that css-in-js approaches frequently produce.

<comment><USER7> I think the people really pushing for the Semantic Web kind of gave up. You hardly ever hear that term anymore.

I guess the value proposition of "You can add a whole bunch of complexity to your webpage that won't affect what people see so robots can scrape your page easier" didn't really resonate with developers. Also, the proposals I saw were much too granular and focused on people writing scientific papers on the web. It wasn't a good mesh for the "garbage" web, which is like 99% of everything.

<comment><USER8> "Semantic Web" and using the semantically correct tags for HTML aren't really the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. So many kill-joys in this thread.

I think the project is neat. It certainly is an opinionated way of doing a layout and it reads quite nicely. If CSS classes were provided as an alternative I think the project might have more adopters.

Good work :)

<comment><USER10> Most of the critics seemed to be about pita caused by layout methods in general when rendering them on variable size screens, and not necessarily the Pylon methods themselves.

I agree with you, I think this is clean and easy to use.

Personally, I've stuck with Bootstrap for quite awhile now. It's not perfect but it's pretty good, well documented, and I work to keep it simple. So I don't really use a lot of what Bootstrap does and that's why this project appeals to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me very much of XUL, Mozilla's XML-based language for UI. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL)

In a prior life I developed a slew of XUL apps, including a full-suite medical record system and billing system. It had its quirks, but for a developer-heavy (and design-light) firm it was a great way to build standard, predictable, and accessible UIs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fun idea. The naming is weird as pylon used to be a python web framework but since it's not going to have any chance to become popular, overriding it seems alright.

<comment><USER13> I don't know. Any package name that contains the string _py_ makes me assume it's python.

<comment><USER14> I felt the same way, I was thinking this was some sort of rendering engine to use with python to generate html layouts

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The resulting HTML is not great, but the dev experience looks super nice.

Maybe we need to introduce HTML transpilers now :)

<comment><USER16> I've been building and using various forms of HTML transpilers for several years, as part of a build step or "JIT" during server-side rendering.

The main advantage I see is the ability to extend HTML to have layout/templating functions, building up a simple DSL for frontend devs and editors. Since the target userbase is already familiar with HTML syntax, it's easy to learn and gives them "super powers" \- for example, an <include> tag that imports another HTML file/partial.

Another use case I've used in a number of sites/applications: chaining a Markdown parser, an HTML transpiler, and a React renderer for the HTML "AST". Among other things, it renders internal links  as <Link> components of the router.

And the rabbit hole goes deep: the XML/HTML syntax is actually able to represent "programs" in a Lisp-like manner. If the angle brackets are too noisy, one can use Jade/Pug syntax to generate the same AST.

In the end, the traspiler should render the result in standards-compliant HTML. This Pylon project doesn't transpile anything, so the result contains undefined tags which the browser treats as HTMLUnknownElement [0]. The bottom line though, is that it works - and I've seen numerous projects in the wild taking advantage of this behavior.

I'd also like to mention the posthtml project [1]. I haven't used it myself, but a generic HTML transpiler has great potential in my opinion.

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/HTMLUnknown...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/HTMLUnknownElement)

[1] [https://github.com/posthtml/posthtml](https://github.com/posthtml/posthtml)

<comment><USER17> > And the rabbit hole goes deep: the XML/HTML syntax is actually able to > represent "programs" in a Lisp-like manner.

XML was always a poor man's s-expression.

And for all the sins of SGML, tags lend themselves beautifully to templating because they can represent code as data just as Lisp does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very cool, but I'd like to point out that unless/until this gets very popular to where Google changes their practices, it wrecks certain SEO perks (though so do a lot of fancy practices). Google still really likes plain old HTML primitives like
 or
 for lists,
 for tables,
 for paragraph. Their featured snippets appear to be capable of extracting info that isn't in that form and bumping it to the top of results, but to prefer not to. My $.02 from starting to learn that game.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why have the alignment done relative to the direction of the stack? I've wondered the reason for this with Flexbox as well.

It's very hard to remember and unintuitive. My guess is something to do with responsiveness?

To me, alignX and alignY (with an align shorthand) are always clear. And the amount of times I'm changing between the two is nearly 0 so far in a large app.

</comment><comment><USER20> The intent is nice, in fact this is what React Native for Web does as well with the difference that accessibility and semantics are preserved because JS comes to the rescue.

That said for pure layout stuff I actually think that this library is cool. <view> is totally fine.

<py-view> (or a sexier prefix) would even be valid HTML

</comment><comment><USER21> I think this seems pretty cool. I can see using it for all sorts of projects with minimalist needs, e.g. quick prototyping, interview coding assignments, admin consoles.

</comment><comment><USER22> You must construct additional Pylons!

</comment><comment><USER23> SwiftUI should go more the jsx/HTML way. Not the other way around!

<comment> yoz-y Why? I think both approaches are valid. SwiftUI separates data from representation. jsx+css is comparable. Pure HTML always contains some representation so the boundary is less clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This most likely breaks accessibility especially in lists.

But it does look nice :)

</comment><comment><USER25> So basically you're abusing the fact that (modern) browsers treat unknown tags more or less as divs and built a small CSS framework with these names.

I understand how that it can feel familiar to Swift devs, and also realized by reading the source that the upside of using unknown tags means they don't have any base style that you'd have to override.

But really, you're breaking all HTML semantics and your markup is not accessible. It could work as a set of React/Vue/Whatever components or even Web components (probably the best way to achieve what you're trying to do), but as bare HTML it doesn't.

<comment><USER26> > So basically you're abusing the fact that (modern) browsers treat unknown > tags more or less as divs and built a small CSS framework with these names.

The spec allows custom elements[0] and pretty much requires this behaviour.

> you're breaking all HTML semantics and your markup is not accessible.

Calling the markup non-accessible is defensible[1], but it doesn't break HTML semantics in any way.

[0] [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom- elements.html#...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom- elements.html#autonomous-custom-element)

[1] though it wouldn't be more accessible as a stack of divs and the custom element can be aria-tagged[2], in the browsers supporting it it's also possible to use _customised_ elements but here there's little of interest

[2] [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom- elements.html#...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom- elements.html#custom-elements-autonomous-drawbacks)

<comment> matt-tingen Custom element names must contain a hyphen for forwards-compatibility, and these do not.

[https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom- elements.html#...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom- elements.html#valid-custom-element-name)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This looks great!

</comment><comment><USER28> This has issues:

        <list>
            <hstack spacing=s>

                <text>Westminster</text>
                <spacer></spacer>
                <text>0.5 miles</text>
            </hstack>
            ....

It is more complex then it needs to be, it puts the styling into into the html, it kills all semantic meaning and pollutes the global namespace of element names.

It should be:

        <my-cities>
            <my-city>
                <city-name>Westminster</city-name>
                <city-distance>0.5 miles</city-distance>
            </my-city>
            ....

And then simply style the custom attributes to your liking via css. If these "primitives" would use classnames instead of element names, their styles could be added like this:

        <my-cities class=pylon-list>
            <my-city class=pylon-hstack>
                <city-name>Westminster</city-name>
                <city-distance>0.5 miles</city-distance>
            </my-city>
            ....

<comment><USER29> Are those custom elements just divs by default or do you need to define them somewhere?

<comment><USER30> Modern browsers indeed treat unknown elements as equivalent to divs, but it's officially undefined behavior, up to implementation.

<comment><USER31> Just tried in firefox and as mentioned above they are not block elements but inline:

        <foo>foo</foo>
        <bar>bar</bar>

div1

div2

Results in:

        foo bar
        div1
        div2

<comment><USER30> You're right, they are indeed considered inline elements, not blocks. My bad.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Waiting Is Torture - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waiting-in-line-is-torture.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I'd seen the elevator example, but didn't know the airport one. Sort of diabolical but I guess it works.

The agony of waiting also extends to software. One thing I truly despise is waiting for web pages/apps to load or update, but I've noticed that I'm measurably less irritable when the app I'm using includes an "interesting" waiting/loading indicator (eg a hamster running in a wheel).</comment>


Building a CPU from Scratch: Jcore Design Walkthrough [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZGHbMS882w <comment><USER2> Why is it hard to implement USB 2.0 on an FPGA? (See the 22:40 mark of the video for context.)

<comment><USER3> Well, if you want to fully implement the USB PHY on a FPGA: it's impossible, you need high speed circuits which can only be implemented in ASIC (such as PLL, VCO, DCO, etc).

If you want to reuse the already existent USB PHY in the FPGA, you would need to implement the whole USB hardware stack, which requires deep knowledge of the spec, and a lot of time and effort to get it right.

<comment><USER2> Let me rephrase the question: why is USB 2.0 so much harder to do in an FPGA than USB 1.1?

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that USB 1.1 is slow enough that you can get away without a analog/mixed signal PHY. I have not done it personally but I've read that you can even do USB 1.1 by bit-banging with a cheap micro controller.

<comment><USER5> Bit-banging is definitely possible. The Digispark, which is a tiny Arduino- alike, does this. It comes on a small board with contacts on one side that can plug into a USB port. The data lines are connected directly to two of the IO pins of the microcontroller, which then handles USB stuff directly. This makes for a small and cheap package, although the tradeoff is that you can't use those IO pins for USB if you want them for something else, and the USB doesn't work if you reduce the microcontroller's clock speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just the fact they make use of VHDL and Clojure makes me wish that they get very successful.

Very interesting presentation of the current work.

</comment><comment><USER2> The non-video version: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471)</comment>


Disavow-above-repository: a repo to help you disavow contributions on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/disavow/above-repository

<comment><USER2> I checked out both repos but still...not sure what this does. Is there an example of what's supposed to happen when you run these scripts on an example project?

<comment><USER3> I believe the idea is as follows.

1\. Suppose you have contributed to projects A, B, C, D, and E.

2\. When someone looks at your profile, they see A, B, C, D, and E listed in a vertical list, apparently sorted by how many contributions you have made to each.

3\. You decide that you want the world to know you disavow your contributions to one of these, say, B.

4\. You fork the project disavow/above-repository.

5\. You make a branch, make some commits, and push them, and then make a pull request. Apparently disavow/above-repository will accept your pull request.

6\. disavow/above-repository then appears in your contributions list.

7\. Keep making commits to move disavow/above-repository up the list until it is between B (the project you wish to disavow) and C.

8\. Now when people look at your contributions list, they see:

       A
       B
       disavow/above-repository
       C
       D
       E

I'm not sure what you are supposed to do if you want to disavow a second repository. Maybe they need to make a disavow/below-repository project too.

The idea of disavowing contributions is an interesting one, although it is probably something best handled by convincing Github to support a mechanism for it. More generally, it could be useful to have a mechanism to explain your relationship to a repository you have contributed to. On a project page, you should be able to view the explanations from all the contributors, and on a person's profile, the list of projects they contributed to could also list their explanation.

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/disavow/below- repository](https://github.com/disavow/below-repository) looks like they have that too</comment></comment></comment>


"This Article Is A Must Read" (Dumbest article in TC history) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/19/this-article-is-a-must-read/

<comment><USER2> I think you're selling them short, I've seen features with far lower useful content posted on that website.

</comment><comment><USER3> unless it will be followed with an article that presents the distribution of the number of clicks per user on the link till understanding the joke/giving up.

</comment><comment><USER4> "This is a Great Article on Recursion"</comment>


Open Source is awful - <AUTHOR> https://steemit.com/opensource/@crell/open-source-is-awful <comment><USER2> I agree with the core idea of the article - that open source developers often get abused by "freeloaders" and that their time shouldn't be used "for free".

I think that the best way to show respect to the developer is to contribute time and/or money to the project.

At the very least, be thankful and don't act like a jerk!</comment>


What should I do with http://snort.co.ke? - <AUTHOR>

I'll do anything you suggest, within reason, at http://snort.co.ke Anyone? <comment><USER2> You own the domain <http://co.ke>? and you're wondering what to do with it?

Sell it and roll around in the cash...

<comment><USER3> co.ke isn't a domain name it's a country code like in bbc.co.uk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Single serving site that takes the visitor's location (via skyhook, IP Address, or whatever technology) and returns a google map with bars and Universities highlighted.

Heck, add Yelp integration and use whatever method you can think of to select the seedy local bars and highlight them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sit around and wait for The Coca-Cola Company to take co.ke away from you.

<comment><USER6> Start a company called "Snort" in Kenya.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. pictures of scarface from movie

2\. ???

3\. profit

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. kinda done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Upovoted for the pure randomness of it all.</comment>


Mixergy Interview: Guest - Andrew Warner, Host - Jason Cohen - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/jason-cohen-wpengine-interview/ <comment><USER2> Great quote from Jason: [paraphrased] "Startups are more like Rocky than The Social Network - it's nothing but work and in the end you don't win until the sequel."

</comment><comment><USER3> I was spurred to write a blog post I've been meaning to get out there after watching:

[http://cemerick.com/2011/05/20/stymied-from-within-an- entrep...](http://cemerick.com/2011/05/20/stymied-from-within-an- entrepreneurial-experience/)

        As a solo entrepreneur / business owner, I feel like I
        face an uncertain, massive void every day, through which
        I must find my way, avoiding all sorts of pitfalls.
        Sometimes, that void is the outer world, filled with
        challenges of all sorts related to technology, business,
        customers, and money.  However, that void is usually
        myself, where far more difficult riddles await: What do I
        want to achieve? What should I focus on now in order to
        be successful? How can I break out of unproductive habits
        and cycles? What do I not know today that would save my
        ass tomorrow?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love the fact that Andrew shares how he thinks when interviewing guests and isn't judgmental. He understands that their are a bunch of different approaches to business and not just one correct method.

</comment><comment><USER4> I always enjoy listening and reading stuff from Jason. He always provides value in what he does. Not to mention he is a pretty cool guy.

</comment><comment><USER5> I haven't seen the interview yet, but I think I can still say that this is an extremely smart visibility coup for Jason Cohen (who was a new name for me).

I wish I'd thought of it!

</comment><comment><USER6> I have to agree, this is an awesome interview. I feel that Jason Cohen really has that same hunger for knowledge that Andrew exudes in his other interviews.

</comment><comment><USER7> Please don't editorialize in your submission titles. A better title would have been "Mixergy Interview: Guest - Andrew Warner, Host - Jason Cohen"

</comment><comment><USER8> I dont know why, but I always seem to have a GAG reflex every time I try to watch mixergy videos. I really want to watch it.. but I just cant get pass the gag reflex and I end up tuning out and turning it off.

<comment><USER9> I'm not a fan of watching video interviews in general, so I get a lot of value out of listening to the audio versions. Maybe you could give those a shot? They're full of really valuable information.</comment></comment>


The Tau Manifesto Launched on Hacker News on Tau Day, 2010 - <AUTHOR> Today is the 10th anniversary of the original publication of The Tau Manifesto, which I launched on Hacker News on Tau Day (6/28), 2010:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1468341
Thanks to everyone for your support! <comment><USER2> Amusingly, the domain in which I used to work (physically-based rendering) primarily computes hemispherical integrals that would all conveniently be tau (the solid angle of a hemisphere). The only downside is that tau is almost always used for optical depth in scattering / Lambert-Beer's law, but as that's a distance tau always seemed a weird choice anyway.

mhartl: feels like you should organize Wikipedia editing parties to make alternate equations in terms of tau. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle) would be an easy target :).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the latest tau updates, see this year's State of the Tau newsletter:

[https://tauday.com/state-of-the-tau](https://tauday.com/state-of-the-tau)

</comment><comment><USER3> Once again I suffer from time-zone-ism, where someone on the internet announces it on "28 June", but it's actually already 29 June and it's too late for me to fully enjoy Tau Day.

<comment><USER4> I guess you live at least 3𝛕/8 radians east of me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mmm, time for some pie!</comment>


H-1B visa use cuts U.S. programmer, software engineer wages by up to 6% - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Careers&articleId=9131729&taxonomyId=10

<comment><USER3> There are a few major problems with this article.

First, the authors say: "In this paper, we simply sought to dispel the myth that globalization generates no losers." In my experience, If you start out seeking to confirm your biases, you generally will.

Second, all their evidence is correlation not causation. I'm sure the correlations are strong, but there is no way to prove that H-1B workers actually caused wages to go down. There are too many external factors.

Finally, unless there is some relation shown between the companies' profitability and the wages they're paying, you can't rule out the possibility that the less expensive H-1B workers and lower wages for American workers didn't actually save the American worker's jobs by keeping costs down and their employers in business. Lower wages and more H-1B workers could just mean that the company is doing what it has to do to stay afloat. Less pay is better than no job at all. That's just one of many possible scenarios.

The paper isn't out yet, but as of now, their argument seems pretty weak.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I'll take the 6% pay cut over more entire projects being outsourced overseas.

I have no desire to see San Francisco become the next Detroit.

<comment><USER5> Yeah? How about a 30% cut, all your benefits, and a clause in your employment contract where you lose your apartment (wherever it may be) when you quit?

That 6% number --- which is misleading on its face --- also ignores the fact that many H1Bs are FTEs for body shop firms that lease them to big companies.

<comment><USER6> In other news, the invention of the automobile cuts horse and buggy driver's wages by 100%. Ban automobiles!

<comment><USER5> What a fatuous comment. Automobiles didn't themselves lock foreign workers into abusive contracts. H1-B worker visas aren't an evolution of the market; visa and foreign labor terms and conditions are as old as foreign relations.

<comment><USER6> that's a reason why abusive contracts are bad, not a reason why allowing foreign workers into the united states is bad.

we should allow more foreign workers into the united states for the same reason we should let automobiles overtake horse and buggy - it's more efficient.

<comment><USER5> You're arguing with a straw man. Nobody is arguing that foreign workers shouldn't be allowed into the country.

It's a market inefficiency for companies to be allowed to "capture" employees and artificially suppress their wages by keeping them off the open employment market under threat of deportation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even if the H1-B visa program did have some negative result on the average programmers' income, it doesn't affect any of us. The average programmers' income is only relevant to the mediocre among us. Just be the best so you don't have to worry about averages.

I don't care where my competitors were born; I want to get job offers and win contracts based on my merits, not based on my mother's geography. If there's a guy in Thailand or India that is better for a position than I am, then he deserves the job and I want him to have it.

Literally everybody I know that has a H1-B visa is making this country better. If I had to make a prioritized list of people to throw out of the country, most of the people on the list would be American citizens. If I got to choose 10 things to change about this country to increase my net income, the H1-B visa program wouldn't even be a consideration--it doesn't make sense to complain about an speculation of a 6% cut due to the H1-B program when the government is taking 6% (sales tax) + 6% (state income tax) + 40% (federal income tax) + 2% (property tax) and when we are paying a huge percentage of our income to insurers who turn around and rip us off when we make claims.

<comment><USER8> >> The average programmers' income is only relevant to the mediocre among us. Just be the best so you don't have to worry about averages.

I hear Lake Wobegon is nice this time of year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you really want to know salaries, take a look at the H1-b job databases (they are required to report salaries for specific job titles). I don't look because I don't want to know (plausible deniability). I'm warning you - <USER2> don't want to know what some people earn (when I looked X years ago, my eyes almost burned out)

<comment><USER10> In case you do want to know...

<http://www.flcdatacenter.com/CaseH1B.aspx>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you really want to increase software engineer wages, put a legal cap on the number of CS degrees that can be handed out every year, like med school! I can't say what this will do for the health of the US software industry, but I'm sure it will drive wages up.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would be nice to see the actual paper, and understand how they went from correlating resume's from "a leading online job search site" to employers and the wages they pay their H1-B employees.

<comment><USER13> <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1380343>

Author home pages: <http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~lhitt/> <http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~ptambe/Site/Prasanna_Tambe.html>

<comment><USER12> Right. No download link anywhere. Just abstracts and citations. Seems suspicious now...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Professor Norm Matloff of UC Davis has always been a staunch critic of the H-1B visa:

<http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1bwritings.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm assuming that someone wants us to draw the conclusion that this is a bad thing.

But I don't see why our salaries should be kept at a high level, at the expense of both employers (and thus businesses and consumers) and other humans.

Also, it seems to ignore the demographic problems that society is starting to see. Without a broader base of employed people, we can't keep paying retired people their Social Security and Medicare. An influx of employment-age people is necessary to keep these systems afloat. So in the long run, having these Visa workers will help ensure that I get out of those systems at least some of what I'm putting in.

<comment><USER16> Interesting point. But, I would guess the resulting wage deflation of opening up our markets completely (increasing labor supply) would outpace the deflation of medical expenses, and I doubt the latter would ever catch up completely. Therefore, those expensive government programs would have to be funded with much less tax revenue due to lower wages. I don't think that would fix the problem at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is that such a bad thing? The larger the pay differential, the more likely the jobs will be sent overseas.

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this the site where entrepreneurs go, those people that compete on being better. Not the site where salary-slaves go to whine about having to defend their salaries?

</comment><comment><USER19> It's simple supply and demand. H-1B increases the supply of programmers, which means that the price (wages) paid to them will decrease.

As for the whole "dispels the myth that globalization generates no losers," thing -- that's not really how globalization works. Labor and capital mobility, along with low impediments to trade allows for specialization, which may hurt specific industries like manufacturing in the developed world but helps others like services.

The extra programmers that were hired because they were 6% cheaper brought a lot into the US economy, and they brought a lot more to their home countries in forms of remittances. For some of these developing countries remittances are 25%+ of GDP, meaning that they are completely dependent upon them.

And of course, there is no discussion of methodology nor data.

<comment><USER20> Not that simple. The fact of the matter is that the H-1B is linked to only a single company and cannot be transferred, meaning that any foreigner wanting a legitimate shot at citizenship _cannot_ afford to leave their job for up to a decade or more (until green card).

IMHO _that_ is why the wages are lower - would you give your employee a raise if you knew that he had absolutely no way to quit your lousy job for something better?

<comment><USER10> _"The fact of the matter is that the H-1B is linked to only a single company and cannot be transferred"_

Incorrect. You can transfer your H1-B quite easily. However you can't transfer an L1-B (intra-company transfer from a foreign country). But even in that case, you can apply for an H1-B while you are in US and then change jobs once you have received your H1-B.

Also, all the H1-B holders I know get very good salary - often higher than 'the market'. When you leave your home, get a visa and come to work half-a- world away, you are not going to dick around. You are going to do everything you can to maximize what you came here for.

<comment><USER21> H1Bs live in two parallel universes. People in one never meet the people in the other.

The H1Bs who work at Google probably get paid a pretty decent wage (though even then, the restrictions on how and where they can work, as well as the difficult in changing professions, probably does still drag down wages _relative_ to what they would earn if they were totally free agents).

The H1Bs at the body shops are often paid miserable wages, and these visas are used without question to fire Americans and replace them with foreign nationals. Keep in mind that 7 of the top 10 users of the H1B visa are actually Indian Outsourcing companies.

Here's a link to the story about the usage of H1B (the link is msnbc, but the original story was on businessweek) <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17048048/>

Here's a link to an NPR segment

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1424156...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14241565)

According to Ron Hira (from the NPR) link:

"infosys was certified by the department of labor meeting the prevailing wage requirement to bring 100 computer programmers in at $9.15 an hour. HCL America got 75 programmers at $24,000 a year."

The real debate is how prevalent the two camps are - Microsoft and Google insist that the H1Bs are exceptional engineers who couldn't be found "at any price" in the US, and who create huge amounts of wealth. They would tend to claim that the abuses are minor, the kind of thing that happens in any complex system.

Opponents, on the other hand, tend to say that the abuses are widespread, and that very talented engineers are a small minority of the H1B workers.

For the record - I believe that talented engineers from overseas are exceptionally valuable to the US and should be allowed in without all the indentured crap. However, I believe that recent evidence demonstrates that the abuses are extremely widespread, and that the H1B has greatly reduced the appeal of engineering careers at a time when the US desperately needs to ensure a steady supply from within its own population.

<comment><USER15> My first real job (I'm a native-born US citizen) was in such a body shop. _Everybody_ there got paid chicken feed.

In fact, the INS would check that the green card applicants were getting paid market wages. When an employee reached that point in the process, his salary was actually increased as appropriate. But for those of us that had no such immigration issues, we never got such an upward adjustment.

(Things may have changed since then. That was the early '90s, the time of a big downturn in the industry)

I got paid a little extra to do technical interviews for this purpose. A green card applicant had to prove that there were no available US citizens that could do the job, so we'd run an ad in the Times, soliciting applicants for that job. I would then give them technical interviews so difficult that they couldn't pass, thus proving that our employee was the only one qualified.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft makes .Net open-source, finally embraces iOS, Android, and Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/194099-microsoft-makes-net-open-source-finally-embraces-ios-android-and-linux

<comment><USER2> I can't wait for Paint.NET to be ported to Linux, that's one of the reasons I've not made the switch to Linux yet.</comment>