How to actually get a remote job as an intermediate developer? - kinetik-pro I've been trying to get a Remote job for over a month now, with 0 luck so far. I know lots of HN readers are freelancers, so I want to address you.
How did you manage to get your first Remote job?
And if anyone has some spare time and will, could you possibly help me understand what am I doing wrong?
I'm WebDev - PHP BackEnd with 3 years of experience. Cheers. <comment><AUTHOR> I see a lot of devs trying to convert to remote positions who get frustrated that they haven't landed a job after days/weeks/months.

Going remote isn't as easy as what many devs are probably accustomed to, especially if you're new to the game (as the tech hiring market has been :fire:).

If you're going to go remote, you need to realize a few things:

\- You're competing against waaay more candidates. You need to stand out, not just be another warm body.

\- You need to demonstrate, without a doubt, that you can/have worked autonomously.

\- You need to demonstrate, without a doubt, that you can/have been self managing in the past.

\- You need to demonstrate that you provide a better bang-for-the-buck than anyone else who has applied

Source: Working and hiring remotely for the last 7-ish years.

<comment><USER2> This. I work remote currently and my job was not initially a remote position. After about a year of demonstrating the above, I was offered remote as a benefit. So that's something that might also be an option: finding a company that's open to remote work and converting after working in office for some amount of time.

<comment><USER3> As a tech manager, this has worked really well for me. I have had 5 remote employees. 3 were local first, and all 3 were great. 2 were remote hires and both failed.

<comment><USER4> I worked at a place where a junior developer announced shortly after starting that he was moving 3 time zones away. The company decided to continue to employ him. It was probably doomed no matter what they did, but they also insisted he work on a VM at the company headquarters, and didn't have him visit the team in person on a regular schedule.

Edit: In this situation, he was hardly local first, given the short time between his hire and his moving far away. All of which is to say I agree with the poster I replied to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know a generic solution, I just can say what I did:

1\. I quit my office job.

Worked there for about 7 years. I saved some money and got unemployment benefits (60% of my previous salary) so I had 1 year to do nothing.

2\. I did some OSS stuff

OSS teams are almost all remote and they love contributors. So it's not hard to find some and ... well contribute?

It's an easy way to get into a remote team.

I didn't do it for long, because I don't like maintenance dev stuff, which working on Firefox stuff basically is if you a contributor for Mozilla, haha.

3\. Do some remote studying

I started a master in computer science at a remote university here in Germany. They had two mandatory programming projects I had to do with a remote team of other students.

We did much coordination via slack, hangouts etc.

This was also a good way to get into the remote workflow.

4\. Post your CV online and wait

I saved money for 2 years, so after one year of OSS and remote projects, I posted my CV on some recruiting sites (Angellist, Stackoverflow, etc.) and waited.

Took 3 months till I started my first remote job. Talked to 5-6 companies. Some never called back, some took 2 months to tell me they want/don't want me.

5\. Worked remote for 2 years

I worked remote for 2 years in a startup that was about 300km away from me. Went there every 2 months for a day or two. They were rather picky with their remote employees and always tried to persuade me into working in-office. One day they they lost a investor and had to let a few people go, since I was the only remote guy left, I guess they simply wanted to get rid of me, haha. So I got fired.

6\. Started freelancing

With >2 years of remote experience and >10 years of general developer experience, I started freelancing.

Got 2 projects. One I found by pure luck online in some project small directory and one in the company where my girlfriend works. Both don't care how and where I work.

<comment><USER6> Unrelated, but in Germany you get unemployment benefits after you quit a job? Wow.

<comment><USER7> This is one of the most important social networks that exists today and nations all over the world should copy & paste this idea.

It is incredible to see how underdeveloped social networks are especially in the US.

It starts by reconquering the words of the language we speak.

<comment><USER8> Bullshit. It's very easy to get kicked out of the system, while one is still required to pay full contributions while employed in Germany. Let's say e.g. one works in Germany for years, moves to another EU country, ends up without a job within couple of months. German benefits are forfeit, that's about it regarding their social security. Money sunk in a black hole.

<comment><USER9> While the system is not perfect, in the scenario you describe times worked in another country can be recognised within the EU (by filling out form E 301).

<comment><USER8> What if one relocated to a country with very limited social support? Paying the highest (e.g. German) social contributions and getting the lowest (e.g. eastern European) social benefits. It's like getting spat in the face. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honestly, I didn't even know my first remote job was going to be remote. I applied for it like any other job, and it wasn't until the end of the 1st phone interview that they told me it was a remote position. Their take on it was they wanted people applying because they wanted the job, not because they wanted remote work.

In other words -- if you are looking too hard for remote work, that could be exactly what is holding you back. Look for the jobs that match your skills and background first. Then from those jobs that you know are a good match, prioritize the ones that are remote.

</comment><comment><USER11> Network. Getting a remote job is similar to getting any other job, and people hire those they like and trust. If the term "networking" scares you, just think if it as making friends. You can do this any number of ways: participating in online forums, attending meet ups, engaging people on social media, etc. Figure out where the people that are doing the hiring for whatever position you want are hanging out and just be friendly towards them. That's my 2 cents!

</comment><comment><USER12> Specialize - how can you compete in a market of PHP backend devs when you want to work remote?

Be a Distributed systems specialist. Or a machine learning guru. write a book, go talk at meetups and get them posted online. You need a differentiating factor.

If you think people are going to trust you to work remote because you have 3 years of PHP backend experience, you're wrong. You need to be trusted in the greater community, to have presence. If anything you should be landing gigs through referrals, not applying with your CV. So how do you get from point a to b? network. Meet people. Go to lots and lots of meetups and talk at them.

</comment><comment><USER13> I worked on-site and became a Very Valuable Individual. I then told my manager that I'm moving out of the country and would love the opportunity to continue my work remotely.

In other words, I controlled more bargaining chips. I feel that is going to need to be true for any remote position. You need to be experienced and valuable enough that letting you work remotely is worth having you over someone on-site (for non-remote cultures).

For remote-cultures, the talent pool interested in remote work and the sheer number of people interested in it makes it far more competitive. As deedubaya said in their earlier response. You need to show without-a-doubt why they should choose _you_ over anyone else. The competition is more fierce.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my case I freelanced/contracted for 2 years before applying for a full remote gig. Those contract gigs gave me a diverse set of skills to show off on my resume. It did help immensely that prior to those 2 years freelancing I worked for 3 years as a intermediate dev for a company that in the last 6 months of my time there went into remote friendly. I took that opportunity to travel to Europe for 2 months which got me in the front page of one of our national newspapers. That factoid that I include in my resume catches a lot of attention and engenders a lot of trust. I've been working remotely for 6 months now a this new gig and it's been great. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Not sure if it works everywere but working on site for company and then discussing, after a few months, if that would work remotely, seems to work for friends of mine. I never had an on site job in my life (I am 42) and I try to be good at things that are hard to find. As PHP webdev, most companies I know would hire you if you reliably get shit done. Reliably churn out results 6.5 hours per day for 5 days/week. Not many people can do that; actually I meet very little who can. A colleague of mine makes business dashboards in PHP: he creates and maintains enormous heaps of the most boring stuff. But he does it, day after day, year after year and that is worth a lot. Adhd coders that want to code in some new thing are more common, as are stuck coders who have the productivity of a snail and need a lot of handholding. Just sit and do it is worth a lot but you need to get your name out and that happens when you work onsite first or are able to market yourself online for that role.

</comment><comment> kinetik-pro Awww this feels like a fresh shave, so many answers. Thanks a lot!

A month ago I didn't even have any web presence because I didn't need it. Since then I've polished my CV, made web portfolio, and every few hours I check each site that posts Remote/Freelance jobs. . .

</comment><comment><USER16> Relocate to a tech hub (Dublin in my case) and find a job where working remotely is possible, but be on the site for a few months to prove yourself that you are effective when remote. Start full time on site and gradually move to be remote.

</comment><comment><USER17> Yep as been mentioned, it's obviously a lot more difficult to get remote gigs. I probably applied to around 20 places over the course of 6 months. Some I heard back from, some I declined, and most I never heard a peep. I've got almost a decade of experience too, but it's just that competitive.

\- You need to stand out, have a decent Github profile and/or solid code samples that you can share

\- Demonstrate the ability to work autonomously

\- Be patient, it takes time.

It's also worth mentioning that if you do get rejected ask them what you can work on. Helps to know what you can do to bet better and get a remote gig later!

Source: working remote for the past year

</comment><comment><USER18> Work for a company that has several offices that are geographically spread out. This is a good indicator that the company has already developed the necessary prereqs (good code collaboration tools, everything is a videoconference by default, annual all-company occasions, travel policies that make cross-team sessions easy) to accommodate remote work. Once you know they have the pieces in place, remote work is a really easy sell. Sell it to your manager/director, not HR.

I would not want to work remotely for a company that hasn't gotten used to distributed workers yet.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have worked remotely for just about 1 year right now. This answer may not please you, but I became remote by starting on-site for the company I now work remotely for.

After about 2 years of working in the office I told my manager that I would be moving to another state and that I was interviewing for remote positions. I also said I would stop interviewing if they gave me the ability to work remotely, which they did (and I was very, very happy to stay). It is going to be difficult to find your first remote job, but this is how I did it.

</comment><comment><USER20> I know this probably isn't the route you can go down, but I'll share my story since it's one more data point.

The company I'm working for is fairly distributed across the globe, and a lot of the computer engineers are part time remote (three days at home, two days at office, say). But typically no one is fully remote at this company. I came to work on site at a city where they had an office and a few employees but it was a satellite office and I worked there for a year or so. Then the boss that was managing that office left the company and they decided to let the remaining workers from that city go full remote (it was just two of us and they didn't want to continue paying for an office for just two of us). Since I was going to be full time remote anyways I kept working for them but I can live whereever I want so I just relocated back to my hometown.

I did have to push at one or two points to ensure I ended up full time remote, but mostly it was luck, in other words. This company knows I'm a good worker and responsible from my year working on site so that may be why I can get away with the full time remote whereas for new people joining a company I can see how it would be a hard sell.

</comment><comment><USER21> I started working remotely with a background similar to what you describe. Your best bet is to find or negotiate a local position that will allow you to be remote part-time, and then demonstrate that you are able to work effectively remotely. Then, over time, try to increase the amount of time spent working remotely. After a while, you'll hopefully be working remotely ~80% of the time. For me, that was good enough for a long time. If not, you can find a new (remote) job, and you'll be able to demonstrate a track record of working remotely, which is understandably very important to your prospective employer.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've often thought about starting a job board / remote contract hiring firm specifically for this area. Pair people who are looking for their first step into a remote job with companies that are willing to test people out a bit for perhaps some discount or some other reason. The firm could help screen applicants for remote suitability, train them up a bit on what it really is like to work remotely, and then pair with companies. The firms would understand that while the worker may not have worked remotely before, they have been screened and are willing to give it a good shot. Thinking maybe a 6 month contract to start and then the option to turn permanent.

</comment><comment><USER23> To be honest, this is actually a very interesting post and question. As even myself (fullstack dev for over 15 years) has tried to do this and failed. I therefore tend to move between fortune500 companies and make as much money as possible while contracting so that I can (in a while) create my own 'remote company'. I just decided that given how much of a challenge it is to get decent remote work, perhaps the best option is to create my own. Anyone interested in joining me in this venture?

</comment><comment><USER24> What efforts have you actually made? How many jobs have you applied to? Have you polished your online portfolio and CV the best you could? Does googling you get high-quality results across various social media/news outlets?

The above are just a few questions to start off with. You'll find better answers once you give a better idea of what you've got going and what you're already doing.

</comment><comment><USER25> Work in the office and demonstrate that you are competent and can work autonomously. Then ask if you canwork remote. This worked for me.

<comment><USER26> same story here as well.

<comment><USER27> Saw your comment on "How to Interview Engineers" but can't reply to it anymore.

I'm preparing a talk for the KC Developers Conference "The Two Question Code Quiz" on how to run an effective technical interview. Please reach out to me, [https://github.com/scottconnerly](https://github.com/scottconnerly), I'd love to bounce my ideas off you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It was mostly persistence and luck in finding a position that matched my existing skills and interests. You'll often have a code screen as an early step (because remote jobs get hundreds of applicants in days), so getting good at those sort of problems can be helpful as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> Look for keywords like "lean" and "agile" to find tech companies with remote work options. And keep in mind that if a posting makes no mention of being remote, chances are that it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER30> Do most remote job interview loops include whiteboard-esque coding challenges, or more focused on soft skills and project/contract based assignments to assess your skills?

</comment><comment><USER31> Good question, I have a bit less experience but am looking for the same thing soon. I have no idea how to find one. Not even sure where to look.

<comment><USER32> [http://weworkremotely.com](http://weworkremotely.com)

[http://jobspresso.co](http://jobspresso.co)

Indeed has some too.

<comment><USER33> One more: [http://remoteok.io](http://remoteok.io)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What have you been trying so far?

</comment><comment><USER35> A good way to get a remote job is start local (for at least a year), then move.

</comment><comment><USER36> Shout me out at my username at yarsa dot io. I'll see what I can offer.</comment>


Dating your way into debt - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/gender-spenders-0118.html

<comment><USER2> The article: <http://www.csom.umn.edu/assets/166362.pdf>

This excerpt:

 _"sex-specific data are not available for these kinds of aggregate measures, making it impossible to determine whether the relationship between sex ratio and desire for immediate access to rewards is driven by men, women, or perhaps both genders"_

tells me their conclusion is a load of b.s.

<comment><USER3> Actually MIT points out "in follow-up lab experiments, the researchers found that men are more willing to spend money quickly in social settings with marked gender imbalances." So they're looking at multiple studies. But I agree that the conclusions seem unwarranted, e.g.

 _Seeing more men around them in these environments activates a competitive mindset, which leads to a short-term, spend-now approach._

Um really? Maybe men prefer to spend money in the presence of other men. Or they're afraid of being taken advantage of by women if they flaunt their money. Or any number of other, completely unwarranted conclusions you want to jump to.

<comment><USER2> Or - Occam's razor - "men are more prone to take (monetary) risks", which is not exactly news.

<comment><USER3> I might believe that men are more likely to take risks than women in general, but there's no reason to say that they spend more when there are more men around _just because_ they are competing harder for women. How about an environment where there are no women? Would they spend the most, or the least in that situation?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Harper Lee to publish Mockingbird 'sequel' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31118355 <comment><USER2> I was incredibly excited to see this news upon seeing the headline in the New York Times, and surprised, because Harper Lee has been a recluse for almost her entire life since writing _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , and has repeatedly insisted that she had no desire to publish another book ("I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again."[0])

After doing a bit of digging, however, I'm a bit concerned. Now, Lee is almost 90, and has suffered a stroke that seems to have had lasting effects. She filed a lawsuit in 2007 against the son-in-law of her former agent, claiming that he took advantage of her mental state during her recovery and duped her into assigning him the copyright to _To Kill a Mockingbird_ [1]. For much of her adult life, her sister handled press relations and shielded Lee from these pressures. Her sister passed away three months ago, and suddenly this new book comes to light[2].

I really hope these suspicions are wrong, and that there's nothing shady at play here. I'm excited to read the book, but I can't help but be skeptical of the timing.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#After_To_Kill_a_Moc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#After_To_Kill_a_Mockingbird)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#Lawsuit_to_regain_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Lee#Lawsuit_to_regain_copyright)

[2] (I dislike linking to Gawker Media sites on principle, but Jezebel actually wrote a good post digging into the details of this - "Be Suspicious of the New Harper Lee Novel".)

<comment><USER3> I'm certainly thinking of running the ebook through a statistical analysis to see if the patterns in the writing match. If they were both written in the same time period by the same author, they should be pretty similar.

I do hope there's nothing untoward going on here and that this book lives up to the legacy of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , but the possibility is at least worth examining.

<comment><USER4> Huh? I don't think anyone is really doubting the authenticity of the book. At least not yet. They're doubting that Harper Lee has actually authorized its release with full knowledge of what that means.

<comment><USER3> Oh, it's not the most likely hypothesis; not having access to the book yet I can't even say if it'd even be a relevant question. My most likely depressing scenario is that it's a less interesting novel that wasn't published at the time because it simply wasn't as interesting, and Harper Lee isn't in a position to evaluate it because she hasn't read it in fifty years.

I'm hoping for a happy ending here, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Embarrassingly, I first misread this as Harper Lee working on a sequel to the Hunger Games finale Mockingjay, and I was so confused....

I was forced to read To Kill a Mockingbird for school. I started reading it with a bad attitude. After I finished it, I immediately turned back to the first page and reread it, not with a school mindset but with a "this is amazing literature that I need in my life" mindset.

If she was writing this "sequel" at the same time she was writing the original, they're likely to contain the same themes and the same timeless way of looking at life, society, and what it means to be human. I don't know if any novel could survive the pressure of being a long-delayed sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird, but I'm definitely willing to let it try!

<comment><USER6> Apparently she was writing this novel first and incorporated flashbacks, which were so descriptive that someone (might've been her editor) strongly suggested she separate them into their own novel.

I think it'll be great.

<comment><USER7> Yes, this "sequel" was apparently the original book she wrote before her book editor told her to focus on when Scout was a child (the flashbacks). And they just found the manuscript hidden in a box a few months ago apparently.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, am I the only one who's skeptical of the whole "hidden in a box" part? More like "hidden until we thought we could convince her to publish".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A writer working on a biography of Harper Lee came to my high school 6 or 7 years ago to give a presentation about her. He told us that she had written another book but didn't want to publish it due to the pressure she felt from the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, so she planned on having it published after she died. This is probably the book he was talking about.

I can't remember exactly who the writer was, but he spoke about his experience interviewing Kurt Vonnegut for his biography, so it was probably Charles Shields.

<comment><USER7> Apparently, they only just found this manuscript hidden in a box "in the fall of 2014", so it was probably not the new book that person was talking about. In fact, this was the original book before "To Kill a Mockingbird" was written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems everybody here loves "To Kill a Mockingbird". To me, it's a well written but ultimately shallow novel. Finch is your typical woman's fantasy man: great at fatherhood, great at his work, morally upright, totally scrupulous, and yes, best shot in the county. The black people in the novel rarely get a voice, except one of platitudes, and the race relations stuff is totally black and white (excuse the pun), with no particular insight. It counts as literature only because of its propitious timing around the Civil Rights movement. It's a fine school reading list book but that is all it is.

<comment><USER10> > a fine school reading list book

I'm pretty sure a book can't get on those lists any more without a theme of oppression or alienation. I'm not joking. Almost everything they make kids read any more is somehow about injustice or bigotry.

Apropos Southern Gothic lit, I'm chuckling at the thought of a typical 9th grade english teacher trying to tackle a much better book like Flannery Oconnor's "The Violent Bear it Away." Doesn't quite fit the essay templates they raise the kids on.

<comment><USER11> Then you have High School AP English, where "As I Lay Dying" is a standard text.

I think "Catch-22" is as well.

Say what you will about those books, they're not necessarily essay-ready in the same way "To Kill A Mockingbird" is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the basis of regression to the mean ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean)), or what we might call the "J.K. Rowling effect," it would be far too much to hope that the sequel will match the original. Nonetheless, this has got to set some sort of record for the gap between a novel and its sequel.

Interestingly, there is a list of gaps between film sequels ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_longest_gaps_betwee...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_longest_gaps_between_film_sequels)), and the longest gap is over 63 years, but there is no such list for books!

<comment><USER13> The article shares though that she originally wrote the book around the same time as _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , or more precisely, she wrote this book first, and was advised by her editor to expound upon some segments of it to write _To Kill a Mockingbird_ instead.

So a huge gap between publications, but I would expect the writing to be similar.

<comment><USER14> For the impact to be similar, it will take a lot more than similar writing. I will read this -- I would read Harper Lee's grocery lists with interest -- but I expect that it will be a minor literary footnote, not another beloved landmark book.

<comment><USER15> But is that because of the expectation due to the preceding piece of work or can it be judged on its own merit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For anyone who hasn't seen it. "Hey Boo" is a pretty good documentary about Mockingbird and features Harper Lee. [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/harper- lee-...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/harper-lee-hey- boo/about-the-documentary/1972/)

</comment><comment><USER17> 60 years on and it remains relevant and insightful into the events of today. We should all reread it.

I look forward to the new book.

</comment><comment><USER18> Despite widespread changes in social attitudes on some topics, To Kill a Mockingbird is still as relevant to today's world as it was when it was originally published.

<comment><USER19> That's because it is a timeless tale about the goodness of people, of faith and charity and humanity. Those are everlasting values.

My girlfriend reads the book at least once a year. She says it keeps her grounded and optimistic. I started doing the exercise last year and I have to say, she is right.

<comment><USER14> True. But also because it's a sensitive and nuanced examination of the fucked- uppedness of US culture with regards to race. I certainly hope that isn't everlasting, but the book remains depressingly relevant.

<comment><USER18> That's an unfortunately narrow misreading. There are much more universal themes than that in the book.

<comment><USER20> There's nothing unfortunate about acknowledging the racial themes in To Kill A Mockingbird, and doing so doesn't diminish any of the other messages. It would be a shit book if it were only about one thing. One of the things it's about is race, unpleasant as it may be.

<comment><USER18> That's correct, but the GP comment is unfortunate in that it is either a deliberate misinterpretation of my comment, or one made from a very superficial understanding of the text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd be interested to hear more about the creative dynamic between this new book and To Kill a Mocking Bird. It says she put this new one aside 60 years ago to write TKaMB, but it features the characters later in their lives. I wonder if she was sketching out backstory to flesh out the characters and that was more compelling, so she pivoted and wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird instead?

<comment><USER22> It sounds to me like her editor thought the flashbacks to Scout's childhood were the best part of the unfinished book - so as you said, she pivoted to the good stuff.

<comment><USER23> While I expected it to annoy me, for some reason in this particular situation I love the fact that we're using very _current_ terminology in the context of a 'classic' from the 60s. Perhaps because it 'anchors' the term and makes it seem more like a useful word to describe a phenomenon that has always existed, rather than annoying, very-specific jargon.

<comment><USER6> Maybe at the time they would be referred to as 'memories'.

<comment><USER15> He meant pivot. It has become a bit of a buzzword and perhaps people think that it has only just come into practice, however it was always around it just hadn't been reduced to a single word.

<comment><USER6> Oh I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> To kill a mocking bird was the first novel i read in my life. I was only 11 (in 6th grade) at the time and took around 3-4 months (summer break) to complete it, to be honest this was the book that made me realize that reading english literature can be an extremely amazing and insightful experience. Granted i didn't understand many things that were in it at the time but it kept me hooked.

Also i remember thinking that jean was a boy till i was 20-30 pages in realizing that she was in fact a girl.

<comment><USER25> Jem turned out to be a boy. When I started the book, all my classmates were sure she was truly outrageous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow. Am currently reading "The Mockingbird Next Door" by Marja Mills. Brifely, Marja gained unprecedented access to the private life of Nelle Harper Lee. It is extremely interesting, and I am quite surprised at this turn of events. Good news!

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm sure the first book was very good but I never read it and feel negatively about it. Why? Simple. Because it was on the high school required reading list. I looked around at the teachers, looked around at the town, looked around at the larger society in which I lived, and decided very early I was having no part of indoctrination.

It's too bad. Because it probably is a good book. The bible might be as well. But I'll never know because suspicion of indoctrination ruined it for me. Maybe this is a personal failing. But putting books on the high school required reading list is a good way to make thinking people suspicious of motive in my view.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought I was seeing an onion headline at first.

<comment><USER29> ...why?

<comment><USER30> I get it. To take the joke even farther, you might imagine a headline from The Onion along the lines of "God working on sequel to The Bible". Not funny when I state it all dryly of course, but hopefully you can see the joke now?

<comment><USER31> Wait a minute, I thought the Quran was that sequel. Wasn't it?

<comment><USER32> Perhaps; authorship is disputed, and some claim the Book of Mormon is the sequel from the original author.

(Of course, its worth noting that that the problem goes back further than that and that "the Bible" is itself a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and a -- of disputed provenance, like the others -- sequel to that work.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Perhaps David Gerrold will complete the War Against the Cthorr after all! We've only been waiting on that for twenty years...

<comment><USER34> You mean this?

[https://plus.google.com/wm/4/+DanielKeysMoran/posts/dQx3oqkH...](https://plus.google.com/wm/4/+DanielKeysMoran/posts/dQx3oqkHjqz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great. But what does this have to do with Hacker News?

<comment><USER16> This _is_ HN.

<comment><USER35> You make no sense at all. My complaint is about the numerous postings of "general news" here on HN. If I wanted general news, I would not come here to find it and, instead, would go to my favorite actual news sites. HN is not a general news collection point.

Hence my question, why is this here?

EDIT: Now that I think about it, I'm wondering if you are just agreeing with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> To Kill a Mockingbird perpetuates the idea that women make false rape accusations. We shouldn't celebrate such a hurtful topic.

<comment><USER37> Rape is a problem. However false rape accusations are also a real problem and not just an imaginary one.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/09/false...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/09/false_rape_accusations_why_must_be_pretend_they_never_happen.html)

It varies by country but in the US, it's estimated that 8% of rape cases are false accusations.

<comment><USER38> The article you link to does not support your claim of 8%. It mentions data "averaging 8 percent to 10 percent" but then goes on to point out that:

> Not all reports classified as unfounded are necessarily false. In some > cases, women who were victims of rape were disbelieved, pressured into > recanting, and charged with false reporting only to be vindicated later > on—the kind of awful story that adds to people's skittishness about > discussing false accusations. Some police departments have been criticized > for having an anomalously high percentage of supposedly unfounded rape > charges: Baltimore's "unfounded" rate used to be the highest in the nation, > at about 30 percent, due partly to questionable and sometimes downright > abusive police procedures, such as badgering a woman about why she waited > two hours to report a street assault. By 2013, an effort to provide better > training and encourage full investigation of all complaints reduced that > rate to less than 2 percent.

The problem is that you cannot rely on a police officer's opinion that a rape accusation is false. It could too easily be based on a sexist perception of the woman reporting the crime. The rape of sex workers, women who use drugs and alcohol, and women who have many sexual partners has never been taken as seriously by law enforcement.

On the other hand, we have actual scientific data from the CDC showing that 20% of women have been raped: [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=...](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=ss6308a1_e)

What we need is an equivalent study that asks men if they have ever been falsely charged with rape. My guess is that the number is quite small.

<comment><USER37> I was citing the FBI for the 8% estimate.

> On the other hand, we have actual scientific data from the CDC showing that > 20% of women have been raped: > [http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=...](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=..). > What we need is an equivalent study that asks men if they have ever been > falsely charged with rape. My guess is that the number is quite small.

What are you arguing? Since false rape accusations can't be measured well, they shouldn't be considered a problem and they should be ignored?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this will be a massive seller, though (depressingly) probably nothing in comparison to a new Harry Potter.

I also think it'll be great.

<comment><USER15> Why hate harry Potter? it probably encouraged many more people to pick up a book, some of whom may never have read a book otherwise, and then they may have gone on to read classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird.

<comment><USER40> I agree. Harry Potter is a great "gateway drug".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> ask HN: seems to be down, sorry, off topic, I want to publish eBook/only, and have all revenues go to charity. not a lot of info on web, regarding this subject. One author who put a Link on the end of his eBook is all.</comment>


Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (1966) - <AUTHOR> http://www.watertownology.com/cold/ <comment><USER2> This article was obviously required reading in our long form journalism course in college. It's devastating that this is the kind of work that people deride now for its length and verbose cadence.

A piece like this is incredibly difficult to write. It doesn't just require embedding yourself in the life of a typically-unwilling subject but also to take what seems to be a random set of small anecdotes and finding the larger theme they speak to.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that more recently, long-form journalism has become commoditized. I get the feeling that in the past, you wouldn't see long-form journalism unless the writer could actually do it well. I love this piece of writing, but with modern long-form on the web, too often I've had this feeling that the "long form" is just turgid padding, and there isn't really the understanding of theme, or how the whole is really supposed to exceed the sum of its parts.

<comment><USER2> I notice modern long-form means, "Here's what happened to me when I met this person, in 1,200 words."

Pieces like Frank Sinatra Has a Cold swathe you in the life of the subject, and the writer takes a back seat. You literally will not find the words "I" or "me" used in reference to the writer once in this article. Modern day long form are vanity pieces; little more than well-written diaries or blog posts. So I definitely know where you're coming from, but I think it's simply a lack of discipline of the writers to take themselves out of the story. It's part of the reason I can't stand the Serial series.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps some stories are actually about the author as well. Serial, since you brought it up, always seemed to me to _also_ be about Sarah Koenig's relationship to Adnan, how she feels about him and whether he's telling the truth, and her journey along the way. I really don't think "it's simply a lack of discipline of the writers to take themselves out of the story" is a fair representation of what the story is about. You might think it it would have been better presented a different way, but I don't think it's the way it is because they were sloppy, but because that's the type of story they wanted to tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I heard an excellent memoir on _This American Life_ [NPR] last night about Sinatra. They referenced this article.

What particularly stuck out about him was his every-man-ness. He shook hands of presidents, mobsters (supposedly), and "normal" people. He touched every strata and maintained a class that let him stand apart from it all.

For those interested: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/574/s...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/574/sinatras-100th-birthday).

<comment><USER6> Interesting, I also listened to a NPR podcast about Sinatra last night, but it was on Planet Money: [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/12/09/459116467/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/12/09/459116467/episode-668-frank- sinatras-mug)

<comment><USER7> Probably because his birthday is this weekend :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> After you've read this, read the annotated version: Elon Green's interview with Gay Talese about the piece, interspersed into the text. [http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/annotation-tuesday- gay-t...](http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/annotation-tuesday-gay-talese- and-frank-sinatra-has-a-cold/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Every time I read about Sinatra, I immediately recall the Doonesbury's strips back from 1985.

From the archives, starting on [http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/1985/6/10](http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/1985/6/10)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Frank Sinatra would have been 100 years today.

</comment><comment><USER10> Worth listening to after reading the piece: Gay Talese being interviewed by Alec Baldwin.

[http://www.wnyc.org/story/gay-talese/](http://www.wnyc.org/story/gay-talese/)</comment>


Facebook adds video search to combat original content sharing decline - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/07/facebook-video-search/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully this will make it easier for people to find their videos that have been reuploaded and take them down.

Really annoying to constantly see videos in my feed that are just blurry, partially cropped copies (what is this, VHS?) of videos from a great youtube channel with no attribution and no context.

When this whole controversy came up last summer and fall, it was said there would be easy ways for viewers to flag videos (since the original creators have no way of finding arbitrary uploads of their videos), but I can find no way of doing that. Maybe this will help on the other side, at least.

<comment><USER3> That's impractical. No one can check for video theft 24/7, and by the time a video would be taken down by Facebook staff anyways, the damage would be done.

If Facebook offered an API for Video Search, that would be different, but Facebook's depreciation of APIs that can pull data from arbitrary profiles makes that hard. (you _could_ scrape the Pages of likely suspects though.)

<comment><USER4> YouTube's ContentID seems to work? Or am I misunderstanding the issue?

<comment><USER3> On YouTube, ContentID can only be used by the big publishers, not the little guy whose videos are getting stolen.

Facebook is 10x worse as you might expect.

<comment><USER5> Anyone can register content with the ContentID database and choose to remove or put ads on any matching videos. Big players have access to delete any video they want from YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > While people are sharing plenty of news, they're posting less photos and > status updates about their own lives.

Facebook seems to have become this battleground for status. People post to Facebook when they :

a) are travelling to some exotic or foreign locations

b) got admissions to prestigious schools or got amazing jobs

c) had a pretty picture of themselves taken

d) are outraged by some social injustice

etc

When I meet past friends who are going through a slump in their life I am reminded how little I know what is happening to them. They would have stopped posting to Facebook a long time ago. The site offers less human connection these days.

<comment><USER7> > a) are travelling to some exotic or foreign locations

> b) got admissions to prestigious schools or got amazing jobs

> c) had a pretty picture of themselves taken

What do you mean by `photos and status updates about their own lives` if these points don't match that description ?

<comment><USER8> Those points are certainly a _subset_ of "photos and status updates", but they're a very unrepresentative one, and one I personally prefer to avoid consuming.

Ideally, what I want to get from people on Facebook is the kind of 'candid' talk I would get if I were to take them out for drinks—because the people I add to Facebook are exactly the people who I don't live close enough to to take out for drinks.

Originally, this was what Facebook was actually used for—asynchronous catching-up. In this it was contrasted against e.g. Twitter, which was much more about broadcasting your "personal brand."

These days, I feel like the place to get what you used to get from Facebook is Tumblr (at least for teenagers.) The same sort of "I'm going to sit here and whine into a pipe; you can listen if you like; we can have a back-and-forth running thread if we are all mutual friends" vibe of Facebook ca 2009.

<comment><USER9> From my view, here's how I'd break all the social networks out there down, though I'm sure I'm missing some:

Linkedin: online resume

twitter: for people to broadcast clever witticisms, suck up to their professional contacts, complain to brands. Very front line of "personal brand." Seems like people have two twitters pretty often- one for random chat about whatever and one "professional" one to push their career agendas.

facebook: bragbook for social striving/status updates of vacations, jobs, new cars, cute kids, flattering photos. Also to cheer on and suck up to friends and family/like their content. Getting more and more annoying lately with political posts. Being able to block people from your newsfeed has helped with this immensely.

instagram: more personal photos than facebook, less likely to be "friends" with your boss etc, also less likely to be attached to your real name, so easier to showcase your real personality/quirks. More artsy than facebook.

snapchat: original video content, people are more "real" than on facebook because there is less perceived risk of people they know irl or professionally finding them and seeing all their doofy posts. Here I am riding my bike, here I am at the beach making a silly face, etc. People feel more free and less worried about it hurting their careers. More fun than facebook with the facial editing tools and stickers which seem really neat.

periscope: dunno, never used it but heard it's the hip new thing

about.me : I still don't understand this one. Guess it's supposed to be the landing page for all your other social medias?

medium.com: starting to pick up lately, not just a place to write Open Letters to Whoever anymore! Extension of personal brand for writers.

Path: dead

Google plus: annoying, stupid

Reddit: enjoy the anonymity, so refreshing after being forced to use the "real you" constantly on facebook etc. Surprisingly intelligent discussion and relevant content in the subs. Was actually recruited for a fantastic job off of my reddit comment history of all things!

hackernews: kinda new, still learning the ropes around here but I've been loving the intelligent discussions and learning a lot.

quora: Place to show off your smarts and push your personal brand. I am actually really annoyed about this because I used to answer and ask a lot of great questions on quora about embarrassing stuff (LOTR, Star trek, whatever) and then all my coworkers and professional contacts started following on me and now I feel very constrained on there.

any other thoughts?

<comment><USER10> Reddit is a massively double edged sword. I hang out in some of the video game subs like /r/3DS and /r/PS4. The communities there are nice and well moderated.

Then there's /r/TheRedPill, /r/KotakuInAction, and several other bastions of racism, homophobia, and misogyny. My personal use of the site makes for a strange sort of dilemma. Unfortunately, the gaming subreddits are really the best place to keep track of all the disparate news sources for my favored platforms. :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How has facebook not implemented their own version of Youtube's content ID yet?

YouTube did that how many years ago & it seems like Facebook would have at least the engineering capability to do that now.

I think you'd see a huge movement for them to do something like that if big movie companies were having their stuff ripped & uploaded, but since it mostly effects small players - it seems no one at FB really cares all that much :(

<comment><USER12> The cynical answer is that bookface is turning a blind eye to content theft because they need the eyeballs on videos, regardless of their provenance. It (theoretically) helps metrics and allows them to woo advertising money.

There is no proof of this, I'm sure a ContentID like system is prioritized or even is implemented. Ultimately if you're a legitimate content producer, having a system like this in place would only encourage you to use the platform and it would have a net benefit to usage overall.

<comment><USER13> I think it has more to do with forcing content creators to come, than with beefing netrics up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I don't use Facebook enough but I find it really inconvenient to watch any videos I'm not directly linked to.

If they show up among my friends' postings they're always pre-muted, so I miss the first couple seconds as they autoplay and have to run it back after unmuting.

Even if I wanted to watch videos, they're interspersed among all this social crap - I'm not in the mood when I'm really only looking to get an idea of what others are doing. Wish it were easy to filter content if you don't want to see everything.

Anyway, I hate Facebook as much as the next guy - but this seems like an obvious feature one would add, regardless of content sharing 'decline'.</comment>


Ask HN: Insulated water? - <AUTHOR>

Out of curiosity, are there any HNers that know much about Aerogel and the chemistry or physics of it to answer the following question:
Aeorgel is an amazing insulator from heat due to its incredible surface area of its glass-foam-like structure that it can withstand immense heat with very little mass.
If one could make little balls of hydrophobic aerogel - then mix those balls with water - could you get a greater cooling/insulative effect from the water -- for use in something like a reactor?
Obviously there are problems with this. 1) Aerogel is normally destroyed by water, 2) you may have to regularly replenish the aerogel balls in the water which, also, due to the deterioration of the aerogel balls in the water, itself, destroy the insulative effect/taint the water. 3) Aerogel may not react very well to being irradiated...
So, barring some technical details - is it conceivable that insulated water could be made? <comment><USER2> Insulation would make the fuel in a reactor hotter and, if we are referring to the design used in fukushima, could cause it to melt down. It would also fail to transfer heat efficiently through the exchanger, which makes it harder to generate electricity.</comment>


Skype goes VP8, embraces open video codec - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/video/skype-vp8-video-conferencing/ <comment><USER2> I'm pretty confident that when the acquisition closes, Mr.John Luther (the author of the blog post) is going to get a nice mail from MSFT LCA (legal and corporate) on the implications of using VP8 :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it really matter that they're using an open video codec when their protocol itself is not? It's at least of little utility to anyone else that they use an open video codec.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't matter from a user's perspective, but it does show that VP8 is good enough for Skype to use it.

<comment><USER5> Skype has been using the VPx codecs for as long as they have done video calling. if VP7 was good enough for them, there's no reason why the new and improved VP8 wouldn't be. they aren't moving to any new technology here, nor are they embracing VP8 because it's open. they are merely upgrading to the latest version of the same codec they have always used.

<comment><USER4> Ssssh, you're screwing up Google's PR. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that, at least according to the article, Skype has adopted and released VP8 for video chat before Google itself (for Google Talk and Google+ Hangouts.)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is surprising based on Microsofts support of h.264. [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/02/html5-and- web-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-video- questions-for-the-industry-from-the-community.aspx)

Could this be a strategy to challenge Apple's (apparently) open standard FaceTime which uses h.264?

Other reasons?

<comment><USER8> This is a myth that MS doesn't support WebM. They do. They just don't ship it in the box. But if you have it on your system, they'll use it. MS doesn't ship a lot of its own technologies in the box -- it doesn't mean they don't support it.

<comment><USER9> How depressing that an operating system being able to run third party software is now held up as notable enough to count as "support" of that software.

<comment><USER10> More along the lines of "Internet Explorer's <video> support will use WebM if you install a 3rd party codec because it hooks into Windows' video codec system" vs "Internet Explorer only supports h264 for <video> because it's all linked in directly to the browser." Unless you were referring to IE as the 'operating system.'

<comment><USER9> In exactly the same way that running Chrome hooks into Window's "program execution system", or installing a new video card hooks into windows "driver extension system".

Microsoft provided an API, and the WebM plugin implements it. That's how this sort of thing is _supposed_ to work. That it doesn't any more (at least, not in the world dominated by a particularly popular mobile device vendor who shall remain nameless lest I be flamed into oblivion) is what I found depressing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a TV Sitcom Triggered the Downfall of Western Civilization - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thatdavidhopkins/how-a-tv-sitcom-triggered-the-downfall-of-western-civilization-336e8ccf7dd0#.e6rsh72wb <comment><USER2> While "The Big Bang Theory" has its problems, at least it attempts to show people who are unrelentingly interested in science and technology, who love their work, and who go out of their way to learn stuff and make things.

The linked article nails it with regards the rampant anti-intellectualism of Friends, and while it didn't trigger the "Downfall of Western Civilization", it certainly is indicative of the state of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article is very US-centric for all its talk about "western civilization".</comment>


Ask HN: Hosting provider that respects privacy? - <AUTHOR> As with many companies changing their privacy policies to be GDPR compliant, Bluehost, Hostgator, and iPage updated their privacy policy. Unfortunately, they are switching to the privacy policy of their parent company, Endurance. Bluehost's old privacy policy (https://www.bluehost.com/terms/privacy-policy) is "Bluehost will not provide or sell to any third party your personal information and will keep all Subscriber information confidential... Bluehost does not share personally identifiable information about individual users with advertisers." The new privacy policy (https://www.endurance.com/privacy/privacy) is "When we share personal information with certain third-party partners, including marketing and advertising partners, that information includes your name, email address and other information enabling partners to.." Other information could be anything they want it to be, which is obviously unacceptable for a company hosting my personal e-mail. I may as well use Gmail with the new privacy policy instead of paying them to host it.<p>Are there any good hosting providers left that actually respect privacy? The new Endurance policy applies to Bluehost, Hostgator, and iPage, so those are out. InMotion's privacy policy is no better stating that they will share your personal information with other companies and for advertising purposes. GoDaddy has had a history of very questionable ethics (SOPA, bidding against customers for domains). 1&1 and Dreamhost ("we will not provide to or sell to any third party your personal information and will keep all such data confidential") may be options; other good options and opinions?. Namecheap has an acceptable privacy policy and they are cheap, but from reviews you get what you pay for performance wise and they have had problems with being blocked for hosting spam services. E-mail hosting for private domains that isn't blocked by spam filters is a requirement for me. Feel free to discuss both shared hosting and VPS. <comment><USER2> I think most of those companies are US, because of US politics(NSA, CIA, SOPA, etc) you wont find a US hosting company thats interested in protecting you or your clients privacy, as realistically they cant.

Here are a few good European hosting providers I have used, I dunno what their privacy policies say.

ovh.com Cheap and hosted in France and Canada great to cover both Europe and America

hetzner.de Cheap and hosted in germany, great support.

prq.se These guys specialise in proving privacy focused hosting, Wikileaks used them. You can pay with bitcoin and they store none of your details. Super expensive tho.

<comment><USER3> In the same vein as prq.se, Cyberbunker might be interesting: [http://www.cyberbunker.com/web/index.php](http://www.cyberbunker.com/web/index.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What exactly are you looking for? Every hosting company will share your data with someone, for example to verify your phone number, they will most likely not call you and talk to you, but use automated services such as Twilio/Messagebird. By doing that they shared your phone number with a 3rd party and need to put that in their privacy policy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't want them to go through my data for advertising purposes or to sell my personal data to advertisers (often called "partners" in privacy policies). I also don't want them to sell my personal information to foreign governments (like Facebook selling personal information on US tech users to Chinese tech companies).

I am fine with a privacy policy that has a section for using my data to provide the service (Service Providers section) and to share my data with companies that they use to provide services (as long as those companies must adhere to the same restrictions). As per your example of Twilio, that is fine as long as their contract with Twilio ("trusted business partners are subject to confidentiality agreements") states that Twilio won't sell my phone number to advertisers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Azure: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/TrustCenter/Privacy/gdpr/def...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/TrustCenter/Privacy/gdpr/default.aspx)

The Security and Compliance Center in Microsoft 365/Office 365/Azure is just fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nearly Free Speech - [https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net](https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net) ?

Didn't look into their privacy policy myself, but they see honest and no- bullshit so I would be really surprised if they used your data for anything besides legal compliance.</comment>


MythBusters: Just the Facts - <AUTHOR> http://fora.tv/2009/08/06/MythBusters_Just_the_Facts#fullprogram <comment><USER2> I didn't really like the interviewer too much, but she did get it right at the end when she brought up how the MythBusters do live lives of passion for what they do.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, she was kind of weird. (She totally misunderstood Jamie when he was talking about being "bought off".)

She should have just let Adam and Jamie talk, they are a lot more interesting :)</comment></comment>


What Makes Start-ups Burn Through Cash? - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/staff-blog/2010/02/what_makes_star.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+inc%2Fheadlines+%28Inc.com+Headlines%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

<comment><USER2> Summary: scale sales and marketing team with no repeatable sales model.

Personal experience: learned same lesson using other people's money. CEO hired 15 marketing and 10 sales people without a working product. Burn millions of dollar. Fired everyone after 3 years. 1 marketing and 1 sales left.

</comment><comment><USER3> Link Fail. This is just the headline, and then more headlines, none of which link to anything resembling an article.

<comment><USER4> Stick with it - its a couple of clicks down:

[http://steveblank.com/2010/02/11/it-must-be-a-marketing- prob...](http://steveblank.com/2010/02/11/it-must-be-a-marketing-problem/)

its a good article</comment></comment>


Show HN: Board – A Collaborative Whiteboarding Tool - <AUTHOR> https://letsboard.co/ <comment><USER2> Very cool! Another application that is great for collaborative prototyping is precursor [1]

[https://precursorapp.com](https://precursorapp.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is fantastic.

I don't understand why this did't go bigger on HN.

(Maybe because missing shapes?)

Might consider posting to Product.

Let me know if you do and I'll add my voice (jv at vip dot ie).

</comment><comment><USER4> I love this and been looking for something like this! Thanks for creating it.</comment>


The Haskell Platform 2011.2 is out: GHC 7 for all  - <AUTHOR> http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/

<comment><USER2> Very nice! I've never written anything in Haskell beyond configuring Xmonad, so I don't know if this is how it works in the Haskell-world, but presenting it this way (the "Robust"-section in particular) really gives me the feeling that this is a great platform to explore. Libraries are extremely important, and choosing between similar ones leads to anxiety.

I think many languages should take after this. If not distribute libraries with the platform (batteries included), at-least bless some libraries. It'd be so much easier to get started with some languages (cough, Erlang) if authoritative characters in the loop would share their opinions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shameless plug here, but if you're interested in installing the platform but don't want it clogging up your dev environment I've created a snap project skeleton that will do it for you with Vagrant and Chef.

[http://johnbender.us/2011/03/05/snap-setup-from-scratch- the-...](http://johnbender.us/2011/03/05/snap-setup-from-scratch-the-vagrant- way/)

Snap is the only extra install and you can quite easily alter the haskell platform version in the Vagrantfile. I'll be updating this tonight when I get home if you don't mind waiting.

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice for this site to give more detailed advice on studying Haskell. Learning a language should be a side effect of studying its canon of programs. Is there a book that relates to Haskell as TAoCP does to machine code, SICP to Scheme, K&R to C, and the dragon book to Lex and Yacc?

<comment><USER5> Real World Haskell: < <http://book.realworldhaskell.org/> >

Written by three of the most prolific and capable Haskell library developers. It covers everything from introductory functional concepts to high-performance C-style stateful programming.

You can buy a dead tree, or read it online for free.

<comment><USER6> At the time, the book seemed like a fresh breath of air, since it focused on solving real 'daily work'-style problems in Haskell. I used to recommend it to friends, but most of them were not so happy. The first few chapters are nice, but after that the examples really become contrived. Instead of giving simple standalone examples to explain a concept, the book starts using examples that tend to linger. People get bored or stuck and stop around chapter 6 to 8.

I am hopeful that Learn You a Haskell will serve as a good introduction to Haskell, and will recommend it to anyone interested.

RWH is still a fine book; once you understand Haskell, it's still great to go through the examples and exercises. But it is not a good starting point.

<comment> T-R It definitely gets a little tough around the Parser example, but it does lighten up again once you get through the monad transformer section, though.

For someone who's done some functional programming before, Real World Haskell is probably a good starting point; otherwise something like YAHT would probably be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm using Ubuntu Maverick. The debs page (<http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=haskell-platform>) has 2010.1.0.0.1.

How do I get 2011.2 for Maverick?

<comment><AUTHOR> You'll need to wait for your distro maintainer to update the package set. Alternatively, you can build from source, using a generic Linux ghc, like so:

<http://www.vex.net/~trebla/haskell/haskell-platform.xhtml>

<comment><USER7> Cool, thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would be nice for the Haskell Platform to adopt a de facto IDE (e.g., Leksah) that was compatible across the major OS platforms and distribute it along with the other developer tools.

<comment><USER9> When I download a compiler and the core libraries for a language, I don't want to have to download an IDE with it—Haskell Platform downloads are generally slow enough already, without adding something that really shouldn't be considered part of the core functionality of a language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Haskell, it's incredibly powerful, fast and elegant. However, I switched to Erlang because it's a heck of a lot easier to learn and it's quicker to sit down with it and produce something tangible. While I struggled to learn the concepts of Haskell, I immediately "clicked" with Erlang. I still wish to look up Haskell again though, it's very intriguing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Question?

I'm an ubuntu/xmonad user. I also do some occasional haskell coding. I've been using the packaged versions of xmonad and the haskell platform thus far.

Are people building from source? Waiting for Natty? Using a ppa?

<comment><USER5> For most of my Haskell work, I just use the standard GHC package, with libraries installed in clean environments using ``cabal-dev``. Compatibility with Ubuntu-packaged libraries, such as xmonad or mtl, is too important to trade away for a new GHC.

For testing against GHC 7, I built from source and installed to ~/.opt/ghc_7.0.1 -- over the next few days I'll probably grab 7.0.2 and install in the same way. This is only for testing -- I don't built software against it, generally.

Building GHC from source is actually _very_ easy -- just install the development packages, then ./configure && make . There's instructions in the GHC tarball.

<comment><USER11> I'll probably follow this strategy. I'll wait for the entire package structure to be revved in the next ubuntu release hopefully.

I'll run ghc7/cabal-dev from a portion of the home directory not in my path

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually you can install only needed packages from cabal using it as `cabal install`.

Since it requires compiling the packages using either methods anyways.

</comment><comment><USER13> Still no GUI programming support!</comment>


Show HN: Scientific Literature Browser - phantom-scald http://www.choose-your-textbook.com/

<comment> phantom-scald Hi. This is my first mashup: the science outline page from wiki encoded as a JIT tree. Mashing itself is offline (written in Scheme).

There are around 700 branches of science. A bit less, perhaps 600, unique entries.

<comment> phantom-scald The Amazon widget is standard, and being updated according to the currently selected branch.</comment></comment>


To combat falling ratings, TV networks are increasing ads up to 10% - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/bernstein-report-confirms-tv-networks-are-increasing-ad-stuffing-2015-8 <comment><AUTHOR> There must be a law somewhere, where some business exec comes up with terrible schemes to squeeze more and more blood from a stone:

\- let's fire the engineering staff to improve the profit figures

\- let's slowly fill up content channels with so much advertising, consumers can't read/watch/listen to the media they're trying to access

\- let's sell subscription access with a promise of no ads, then slowly introduce ads until the subscription payers are also earning significant money per ad

\- let's reduce the quality of our product so we can improve the profit percentage

\- if cars only last 5 years, consumers will have to buy new ones! (planned obsolescence)

\- let's see how much we can carve out of this shrinking pie

\- etc.

These kind of harebrained schemes seem so obviously stupid from the outside, but they keep showing up over and over again. It's like there's a population of con-artists who've managed to get into positions of influence in lots of companies, and will pitch and sell these ideas and make them happen, then everybody is aghast when the company tanks shortly after...meanwhile the "proven idea guy" goes on to another company and shows "improved profitability by 21% and revenue by $3mil/quarter blah blah" and slithers in to another decision making position where this happens again.

<comment><USER2> It works because of the short term nature of modern corporate goals. A lot of stockholders are institutional investors looking to buy low and sell high, rather than long term stakeholders in the company. Neither they, the board and there for the CEO has any reason to see beyond a 1-2 year horizon unless the company is in really good shape.

<comment><USER3> I think there is quite a lot of related irrationality outside the corporate world. You see it in environments like a committee of volunteers running a club for hobbyists. "Subscription income is down therefore we must raise our subscription fees" seems to be obvious and common sense to many, maybe most people. Pointing out that this is most likely to have the deadly unintended consequence of driving current members away and further reducing income often seems to be fighting against the tide.

<comment><USER4> "Tax revenue is down so we must raise taxes"

Yep, definitely happens a lot outside the corporate world.

<comment><USER5> It also works as "Tax revenue is up, so this is proof that taxes are not too high, so we must raise taxes".

<comment><USER6> You get the reverse too. Tax revenue is down, so we must help the economy grow by reducing taxes. Tax revenue is up, so clearly we are taxing more than we need to and we can reduce taxes.

Taxation doesn't quite fit the pattern we're talking about here, anyway. If a TV channel increases its ads, the obvious failure mode is that viewers go elsewhere instead (and hence advertisers spend less and revenue falls). But inter-country mobility is small enough that even quite large changes in tax rates aren't likely to make a lot of taxpayers go elsewhere. You occasionally hear rich famous people threatening that if some potentially tax-raising party comes into power they'll leave the country, but they don't generally actually do it.

(That may be different for corporate as opposed to individual taxes. Large multinational companies may be willing and able to move their operations around to minimize the taxes they pay.)

<comment><USER7> I believe he was thinking of runway economic effects -- e.g. tax revenue is down so 'Let's increase taxes!', while doing so could lead to further economic slowdown and less taxes; this effect is less obvious and doesn't necessarily happen imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It isn't just that they are stuffing more ads in. I have noticed a huge spike in what I call "program guide fraud" \- networks indicating in the program guide information they provide to cable systems that an episode of a show is new, when it is in fact a rerun. This causes any DVR programmed to record only new episodes of a show to record the rerun, which fraudulently inflates DVR views, which leads to increased ad rates and ratings.

Some shows have taken a slightly less fraudulent, though equally frustrating, approach. 60 Minutes remixes old segments into "new" shows, but the only thing new about them is the order in which the segments appear, along with a total of maybe a minute in added commentary or updates on the segments. Whenever you hear "as we first reported..." at the beginning of a segment, that's a remixed segment. Nightline has also been remixing old segments into most of their "new" shows over the summer.

TV is dying, and the networks are turning to fraud and annoyance to try to save themselves. I can't imagine that it will work.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if it's "fraud," but Netflix's "Recently Added," "Recently Released" etc categories are just plain cynical, at the least.

<comment><USER10> I've been wondering if maybe they just switched something in the backend and a whole bunch of shows got confused metadata. They're not at all what would be interpreted as "Recently Added". Charitably, my only guess is the system just doesn't detect that certain shows used to be in the line-up. Cynically, I imagine someone in their management is taking advantage of a bug and calling it a feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> TV is already mostly unwatchable. As people channel-surf more to avoid ads or boring TV, the TV shows try and adapt by regularly recapping what has happened before the last ad break. So they spend less time on the content and more time on ads and then recapping after the ads.

The results are poor quality shows which are even less desirable to watch.

It's hard to view it as anything other than a death spiral.

<comment><USER12> I live in France where I wonder whether there's a law against abusive ad sequences, because they're much less intrusive:

Movies/programs start at 9pm. The ad breaks are at 9.45pm and 10.30pm. It means most movies (1.30) have only 1 ad break, series such as X-Files and 24 hours are displayed with uninterrupted episodes. Football games match this format.

At high school, those who went to Spain or UK discovered the poor state of TV in the rest of the world. We're lucky.

<comment><USER13> Must have been strange watching 24 in France, then. In the US, the time in the story was set up to align with ad breaks, so when it was XX:47 (for example) in the story, it was always 21:47 in reality.

<comment> david-given Living in the UK with the ad-free BBC, you could always tell US import TV series because they had 45 minute slots rather than the 30 or 60 minute slots of the local content.

The first (and only) time I saw an episode of Star Trek on US television I was shocked when I realised there was a commercial break immediately after the credits. (I turned it off in the disgust.)

<comment><USER14> This is why I cringe every time I hear people badmouth the BBC. I'd pay double the licence fee for it, it's that good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The beatings will continue until morale improves..."

</comment><comment><USER16> Sort of related, it's always felt odd that Hulu Plus (paid) forces ads on the user.

Seeing as time is extremely valuable, why not provide an option to skip ads?

F2P games figured this out long ago, you annoy users into paying to make the pain go away.

<comment><USER17> Apparently there is a subscription version of Hulu on the way, which will be ad-free.

<comment><USER18> A Hulu++ you say?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This tactic is desperation. Short-term profits for a long-term loss. People will migrate to a more tolerable alternative.

Alternatively, they're just squeezing as much juice as they can from the last fruit. They know the end is nigh for network TV so they might as well burn it all the way down.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think that Steve Jobs nailed it. People are willing to pay a lot for the experience. Right now bittorrent gives the best TV viewing experience at all. You click, you download, you watch. No logins, no DRM, no bullshit.

Until TV can beat the quality of that experience - they are doomed.

<comment><USER21> I'd argue usenet + sonarr/sickbeard (+sabnzbd/nzbget) + plex is even better but I agree overall. I pay for TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc but I rarely watch content on those platforms. Plex is just so many times better and I'm not dependant on my crappy ISP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Would it be safe to deduce that the decision to counter-intuitively add more of what people dislike is due to executive remuneration being tied to share performance i.e. they don't give a shit if the whole things tanks as long as they vest and get out while they're seemingly profitable?

I say this under the assumption, perhaps naively, that the people in charge are aware that the decision, long-term, is not a very good one and they're playing strategically for their own ends (rather than simply being pants-on- head stupid).

<comment><USER23> Is it really a bad idea? Will people actually get off Facebook and watch more TV if the ads were shorter? I suspect ads aren't the reason TV viewing is declining and aren't going to accelerate it much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I was very young, and broadcast television was still in its infancy, a 60 minute network show contained about 50-52 minutes of content.

Today, you can feel _very_ lucky to see as much as 44 minutes of content per show.

Personally, I don't care if they stuff 54 minutes of commercials into each 60 minute show. I'm not going to watch the show as it's broadcast. I'll watch it on netflix, stream it, or download it. In any event, as far as I'm concerned, the commercials never happened :-)

</comment><comment><USER25> That's the same logic as "ratings are down, let's create more channels, cuz people like variety". They ended up diluting their captive audience even more resulting in even worse ratings. Time to turn off the TV, and that includes internet TV. You really won't miss it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, when you're in a death spiral, spiral as hard as you can I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think the relationship between falling ratings and increased ads may be different than the title communicates.

In fact, it has to be for the specific numbers cited, since they are simultaneous rather than the action occurring before the response, but even though the reported numbers are simultaneous, its likely one occurred first and there is some kind of cause-and-effect relationship, but even assuming that the decline trend leads the ad increase rather than the two being lockstep or the order being reversed, it may not be that the ads are strictly to "combat" the falling rating so much as being a response to the perceived market characteristics of the remaining audience -- if networks believe that the remaining audience is less sensitive to the quantity of advertising, increasing advertising makes sense (just as if a product has a smaller but less price-sensitive market because of a new competitor stealing the most price sensitive part of the market, increasing prices and focussing on other differentiating features may be a more successful strategy to maximize profits in the new market reality than price competition -- this is a fairly exact analogy, since ads are essentially a price consumers pay for TV content.

</comment><comment><USER28> As someone who lives in the US in a competitive senate race (and has a nearby state that are politically important, competetive and share tv markets).

If more states had competitive elections in the US, including splitting electoral college votes, they could solve their stations revenue shortfall and get a cut of that sweet sweet PAC money.

Plus I'd like everyone in the country to feel the pain of non-stop election advertising. Maybe then campaign finance reform might show up.

</comment><comment><USER29> No surprise TV ratings are falling. The graphical user interface for my cable has to be over a decade old and zero updates have ever been done to it. DVR is an alright option, but I always pass right into the show, and on some networks it disables! fast-forward.

As ESPN continues down the road of being unwatchable, I honestly think the only thing carrying cable television in America is football. This year the NFL will broadcast one game over the internet. If, or rather when, that becomes the norm, cable subscriptions are going to drop at a faster rate than they are now. I enjoy being able to put something on really fast, but cable television reminds of the music industry as CD's died.

</comment><comment><USER30> This isn't going to help the ratings.

If they were paying any attention at all, they would see what happened to radio when they jacked up the ADS. More ADS per hour did improve revenue, but that improved revenue came at a loss of audience.

There is a curve function, and it's complex. No ADS will deliver a nice audience, assuming the program is compelling enough, but no revenue. A few ADS will do just about the same thing, but deliver revenue.

From there, as the AD rates ramp up, audience will drop off and at some pivot point there the value of the AD, due to insufficient audience impressions, drops off impacting both revenue and audience.

If you ask me, TV is already well into the pivot point.

<comment><USER31> It's more complicated than that, though. Content quality/cost is also a factor. This problem is multidimensional.

<comment><USER30> Indeed it is.

I do believe the AD / content axis is dominant. Quality can do some damage on the problem, but the move to lighter AD loads is clear. We are close to 50/50 and worse at times now. Completely unacceptable to growing numbers of us.

The thing is almost nothing can't wait. So I will, if nothing else. Buy it straight up AD free. Worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Originally there were no ads on cable ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> I've got one four letter word that really helps counter this trend:

       TiVo

But they get very little love. People would rather watch 10 hours a month of commercials than pay $10/month to bypass them.

And there's also laziness. I've seen so many people with cable company DVRs, but they don't FF thru commercials. Huh? Not only are the commercials mind- numbing when viewed for the 50th time, but there's also the matter of 20 minutes lost per hour of viewing.

<comment><USER34> I think a lot of people like ads. I personally hate them, but I have noticed other around me don't seem to care.

<comment><USER35> Back in the 80's when I first got a VCR, I taped some shows. Ironically, today the old commercials are more interesting than the old show.

<comment><USER36> For your viewing pleasure: [http://www.retrojunk.com/commercial- index/new](http://www.retrojunk.com/commercial-index/new)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is like stuffing more ad units on a page. It might help your revenue in the short term, but it turns off viewers, and it turns off advertisers; so next quarter you're in the same spot, but with less room to put in ads.

If I were running a tv network, I would be doing whatever it takes to get ad rates up now, since next year is an election, and there's some rule about charging all political ads the same price, fixed based on earlier rates.

</comment><comment><USER38> I saw an interesting stat recently: the average hour of broadcast TV has traditionally had between 12 and 18 minutes of advertising, whereas on the web the most people seem to put up with is about 6 minutes per hour. That means that even in a best case where ads transition over to web along with all tv viewership (and people don't favor ad free, subscription services), 2/3rds of that advertising medium is gone.

<comment><USER39> That's for now, I wouldn't be surprised if over time it meets or exceeds the TV minutes.

<comment><USER40> I'm sure it will eventually meet TV in # of commericals, just most potential advertisers haven't made the full leap into online video ads yet and content publishers are probably reluctant on increasing video ad quantities until they're certain they have an audience that will accept them.

People once said the same thing about satellite and cable being great because they didn't have as many commercials as traditional broadcast TV. Once cable channels had broadcasting quality on par with traditional TV and audiences committed to watching their shows, commercials increased until they were on par.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What I do hope is that things like Prime and HBO Go succeed. TV is already going down the shitter, and I don't know any millennial peer that actually still watches it (it's so backwards, why would we want to tell us what we can watch and at what time?).

What I do hope is that Netflix doesn't become a complete monopoly, else they'll stagnate.

</comment><comment><USER42> I feel bad for older folks who are less capable/willing to adopt newer technology. Give the grandparents a hand, eh?

</comment><comment><USER43> That's why I don't like watching it! Cut the number of ads and increase the price, watch viewers flock back.

</comment><comment><USER44> seems a bit like they are punishing the loyal. id think that you could drop commercial percentage in an effort to lure viewers back and make up for the loss of revenue by time with an increase in viewership? or perhaps the commercial boat has already sailed and a new revenue model is needed.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is hilarious. I would never pay for cable anyway because advertisements are just repulsive, even when the volume of them (in both senses) was slightly lower a decade or two ago. But whenever I happen to be in a hotel room and happen to turn the TV on I am just amazed that it is actually possible to click through nearly 100 channels in sequence and see nothing but commercial after commercial on. And if I do find something to watch it seems like every two minutes or so I have to mute the TV because it starts yelling at me to buy pharmaceuticals. Definitely not sad to hear that this medium of communication is in trouble because the internet alternatives are amazingly and obviously much better.

</comment><comment><USER46> I really find it amazing that even to this day there is not a dynamic process for inserting adds into tv programming. Cable box should simply see that this tv watches NOVA, Star Trek, and Saturday morning cartoons. Because of this, I am a nerdy guy who may have kids. Reduce if from 3 minutes of 6 ads to a single minute long add. Something really specific like Disney Vacations, science kits for the kids and their parents, whatever. It isn't even a privacy thing necessarily. Cable box could be the only one that actually "watches" what you watch; streams in all possible adds and decides which adds to display to you based on its private (and un-shared) knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER47> Original source article: [http://adage.com/article/media/commercials- tv/299810/](http://adage.com/article/media/commercials-tv/299810/)

</comment><comment><USER48> So, that would mean, the audience hates the program but if you show them more ads instead, they will not switch channels because the same ad is so much better on your channel than on any other?

That's really fascinating, I had no idea.

</comment><comment><USER49> Myspace tried that. How'd that work out?

<comment><USER34> -$545 million. Not one of Rupert's finest investments, but I suspect he lost more on the WSJ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> If anyone's interested, I know Telestream's Tempo ([http://www.telestream.net/tempo/overview.htm](http://www.telestream.net/tempo/overview.htm)), is super popular as it can actually cut and/or interpolate frames from content, to allow content producers to run more ads, without any perceptible difference from the viewer perspective.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm pretty sure this tactic is going to work brilliantly to get people to watch more television. I'm pretty sure.

</comment><comment><USER52> Which will drive more people away from watching TV which will require an even more aggressive approach.

Maybe TV networks should start an 'ad free Saturday' or something like that to combat the failing ratings?

Show the first episode of something without ads on that Saturday and the follow up on some random day of the week.

</comment><comment><USER53> Oh no we are getting out competed by online vendors, I know lets crap all over our product.

</comment><comment><USER54> Radio did the same thing. Now we all use anything but radio.

</comment><comment><USER55> That's like your if solution to surviving an increasing number of hemorrhages is to pump in more blood.

<comment><USER15> Hmm, I'm not a doctor, but that sounds pretty reasonable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> They are feeding the cancer, that is feeding upon them...

</comment><comment><USER57> Seems counterintuitive..

</comment><comment><USER58> Fighting fire with fire

</comment><comment><USER59> For some reason I can't access the article at the moment but, when I was in radio and TV, years ago, the FCC restricted how many advertising minutes you could run in an hour or per show. I want to say that, in radio, you couldn't go over 13 minutes in any hour but few dared to approach that limit except the kiddie rock-n-roll stations lest they turn away listeners.

iirc, that ruling has been removed.</comment>


Bitcoin Android Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/barmstrong/bitcoin-android <comment><USER2> While I can't speak to the legal or political implications of the product or supporting infrastructure, I'm thrilled with the idea of a mobile application that provides for the exchange of "currency" in an autonomous manner.

The exchange of value outside of the established models (Gov't issued currency / PayPal / Google Checkout / next iteration thereof) has the potential to provide a huge opportunity for those of us involved in the space of online media and web applications.

Mobile implementations to bring the utility of the Bitcoin project into the palm of the hand bridge an intimidating virtual-to-real gap for many potential users.

In my opinion, the development of this mobile application, as well as similar projects, is a first step towards the more widespread adoption of the Bitcoin currency, in whatever (hopefully at least semi-legal, and legitimate) form it may finally take.

I'll observe with great interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the server-client model more, for example BitPay which uses instawallet.org (<http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=24452.0>).

There is also mtgox vouchers-app: <http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=25307.0>

These apps use QR codes, but I think the way to go is NFC communication.

The benefit is instant transactions with server-client model, but on the downside you have to rely on 3rd party. I think it isn't that big downside, since you have always handed your money to 3rd party before bitcoin...

<comment><AUTHOR> The entire production blockchain is 14MB right now. We keep this on the SD card of the phone. Many smartphones today have 8GB SD cards or more, so 14MB is not a big deal.

I agree though, I think a thin-client or server-client model would be better long run. There just isn't a service I'd trust with it currently.

<comment><USER4> Where are you getting the 14MB figure? I see a blk00001.dat file on my PC which is already more than 300MB.

The latest compressed blockchain download available here at the time of writing is 280MB: [http://bitcoin.bluematt.me/bitcoin-nightly/blockchain- nightl...](http://bitcoin.bluematt.me/bitcoin-nightly/blockchain-nightly/)

It is known that even PCs won't be able to handle the full blockchain eventually, let alone smartphones. Supernodes will be needed if bitcoin becomes popular. <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability>

__edit __: I see now that there is indeed a 14MB blockchain file in the source:[https://github.com/barmstrong/bitcoin- android/blob/master/as...](https://github.com/barmstrong/bitcoin- android/blob/master/assets/prodnet.blockchain). I suppose this is not the full blockchain, but just the block headers. This is described as "Simplified Payment Verification" in Satoshi's paper.

<comment><AUTHOR> It could very well be just block headers, to be honest I'm not sure (didn't realize the desktop version was that big). We're using the bitcoinj library and contributing back some patches along the way. Mike Hearn at Google wrote the blockstorage and deserves a ton of credit for it: <http://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/>

<comment><USER5> "BitCoinJ implements the "simplified payment verification" mode of Satoshis paper. It does not store a full copy of the block chain, rather, it stores what it needs in order to verify transactions with the aid of an untrusted peer node."

one click * HN user base = global time saving :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one interested in mobile payment apps that let you buy real things with dollars? Are dollars suddenly that uncool?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, it's pretty theoretical at this point. But as Chris Dixon points out, most big ideas start out looking like toys: [http://cdixon.org/2010/01/03/the-next-big-thing-will- start-o...](http://cdixon.org/2010/01/03/the-next-big-thing-will-start-out- looking-like-a-toy/)

<comment><USER6> Don't be ridiculous. The USD isn't about to be disintermediated. The Euro, maybe...but then by the USD.

<comment><USER7> Bitcoin is unlikely to replace the dollar, but if I were Paypal I'd be worried..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh good, just what I needed. _Less_ battery life on my phone.

<comment><USER9> Word. I imagine it would take my old HTC Magic about 9 years to process the block chain. Also even though I wouldn't keep much BTC in this wallet, I don't like the idea of just storing it 'in the cloud' or whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually prepackage a recent blockchain with the app when you download it. So it only needs to udpate the last bit the first time you run it (< 1 minute over wifi). After that future updates are near instant (a few seconds) over 3G or WiFi.

<comment><USER10> Brilliant software... have been waiting for this.

One obvious question: is there anything to prevent someone from repackaging this, as it's open source, and modifying it to rob folks?

<comment> mike-cardwell No. Just like any other open source software. It's also possible that people who download the apk from the Android Market Place are getting a backdoored version of the software.

This relies on trust.

Does anyone remember Paypal updating their iPhone app last year to do SSL certificate verification because up until that point it was trivially MITM'able?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Wallet file backed up in the cloud (synced to your Google account) in case you lose your phone." Here's hoping that the wallet is encrypted.

<comment><USER12> We make no guarantees about the security of the backup. This is beta software :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can you tell us where exactly the wallet.dat file and the block chain are stored on the android? I sent 0.01BTC to my phone a while ago, and it has yet to show up (so I'd like to grab the wallet.dat for backup), and it's showing a swirling circle at the top, meaning it's still downloading, and I'd like to check if it's actually doing anything (file size increasing?)

</comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone speak to how this app works? Does the phone store a local copy of the block chain?

<comment><USER15> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2732839>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> crashed for me =(</comment>