"Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds" - <AUTHOR> http://peternixey.com/post/56867259886/instead-of-cures-for-cancer-we-got-angry-birds <comment><USER2> I don't think the people who work on these "useless" apps are to blame, rather it's the system in which they are brought up in and in case of start-ups, are taught entrepreneurship in. Paul Graham himself says he advises every start-up to "work on something for which they are the initial market"[0], so every YC cycle you get numerous companies which solve the problems of young San Francisco residents ([1] for comic relief), who help you save 30 minutes of your week you can then reinvest into working more on problems which aren't really problems while the world crumbles around you, but you don't really care about that because your Uber driver doesn't drive through those neighbourhoods.

Meanwhile, your doctor in the hospital is stuck using some 1980's software, which drains the very life-force out of him by the amount of pain it inflicts with every use, but you'll never need a doctor anyway, not with this healthy- eating/exercising app, plus it's too hard to work on that with the regulations and all, and the carpeting in your apartment is moldy.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6106528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6106528)

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guf0kNV7D1w](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guf0kNV7D1w)

ps. On an honest note, I've been working both on apps of the "useless" type, and spend most of my time on working on "useful" medical apps, and fuck if it's not easy to see why no one thinks these areas "sexy", so bogged down in regulation and old entrenched players. But I still think, at least in the case of these super incubators, who have the connections, who have the access to the financing, the focus should be on something more than what it is right now.

<comment><USER3> "Meanwhile, your doctor in the hospital is stuck using some 1980's software, which drains the very life-force out of him by the amount of pain it inflicts with every use..."

Most of the problems with medical software is the doctors and medical administrators themselves. They get so used to be worshiped as Gods That Save Lives, they assume that they Know Everything About Everything. I've seen more software and business talent quit the medical software field than any other....

<comment><USER4> I've developed for multiple medical companies and applications. This describes exactly 0 of the doctors, radiologists, surgeons, or researchers I worked with.

I quit the medical field because it's incredibly hard work and very difficult to succeed because of the additional hurdles (regulation, entrenched interests) unless you are a large corporation. And large corporations suck.

<comment><USER5> A friend of mine was a QA engineer for a famous children's hospital. He could do absolutely nothing, because every doctor had their favourite vendor with their favourite sales rep that gave them goodies, and they all hated the idea of interoperating and making things more efficient. And once a doctor says "If you change this system, _children will die_!", that's it, conversation is over. It doesn't matter that everyone knows the doctor is covering themselves, the point is that the only people that can override the doctor are the higher- ups, of which there are few, and all of those are playing their own political game.

My friend tells the story of being in one meeting with the various doctors, and one of the elder ones made a snide comment about another doctor 'not being here long enough to understand how things are done in this place' \- to which the reply was 'I've been here for 17 years'.

Myself personally, I worked as a neurology tech for four years, and the doctors I worked with were a broad mix. Some of them were the sweetest people you could hope to meet. Others were such money-grubbers they directly said to the pharmaceutical reps "don't give us 'gifts', just give us the money directly". In that broad mix were doctors so awesome that they write their own mouse drivers, to doctors that behaved just as xradionut mentioned.

Doctors are humans too, there are a lot of them, and they run the same kinds of personalities as other humans.

<comment><USER4> I don't doubt it. I just hated seeing "Doctors" tarred with that overly broad brush when the ones I worked with were universally pleasant colleagues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've found that those who try to impose their ideals on someone else, are usually (but not always) trying to cover up and deflect their own self-doubt and insecurities.

Do what you love, and to heck with whatever anyone else thinks. I used to work on predicting baseball. And before that, even worse, performance management software!

Now I am lucky enough to work on "socially responsible" software, and enjoy it. But I don't delude myself into thinking I am curing cancer, and I don't think I ever could. But damn anyone else who thinks I should spend my time doing something to meet their own standards.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the author is close, but doesn't quite capture the entire reasoning behind "cure cancer" versus "disrupt dry-cleaning" or "new car manufacturer". The disparity between these things is not just a matter of probability of success, but also of the timeline over which success is realized.

When I was just over a year-and-a-half into my Ph.D. training, I had something of an epiphany. At the time, I was designing an experiment that would be part of a larger research course. As part of the work, I scaffolded out the entire research course to its eventual conclusion. Having finished this, I took a figurative step back...and realized that I would be long dead before the entire project could be finished.

I was 24 at the time.

Graduate school, and scientific research in general, has a way of slapping you upside the head with your own finite lifespan. The resulting problem, of course, is how do you convey to a non-scientist that the work you are doing is important, despite the fact that you will not live to see its conclusion?

I've often thought this is the great unsolved problem with capitalism. How do you convince shareholders to invest their money if you can only promise returns on a 100+ year schedule? I think the insurance industry might have some insights here, but I still haven't quite cracked this nut...

<comment><USER4> This is actually the best reason for government funding of basic and applied research. Society has to take the long view since individuals and corporations can not.

This is why it is scary that politics has degenerated to the point where even 4 year plans are becoming difficult.

<comment><USER8> While capitalism is quite successful, it has shortcomings. These should be addressed by the society as a whole, and the State is THE organization that is participated in by the whole society. Major categories of capitalism faults:

\- It does not guard against negative externalities: pollution, long term degrading employee health and safety, value extraction with no value creation (think stealing and other crimes). Here, laws and police/justice are needed to guarantee an even playing field.

\- It does not guard against value capture by monopoly, be it natural or artificial monopoly. Here, state companies and anti-monopoly regulation are needed.

\- It does not invest in positive externalities (think fundamental investigation in generic areas like math). Here, government funding of investigation is a good target.

\- It does not guarantee its own persistence, when attacked by a different ideology (think national security). This is what justifies having the military.

Having the State intervene in the market to reduce these shortcomings should never be viewed as anti-capitalist, much to the contrary: it is essential to preserve capitalism.

For a very vivid example: large banks are capturing an exceedingly large added value from the market, and are creating negative externalities through risky behaviour. We have done nothing to contain this problem. Worse, we are generally failing to take the long view in planning government intervention in the areas government must operate, and are having the government act in areas where it shouldn't.

<comment><USER4> All of these are the result of unregulated and unrestrained capitalism. I'm confused that the majority has somehow been convinced that it is a good thing that corporations are socipathic entities that will parasitically consume its host (society) if allowed.

<comment><USER9> The idea that "the market will regulate itself" is right up there with "the state will wither away".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If Bill Gates had gone to "cure cancer" or "feed Africa" instead of selling operating systems and word processors, is it guaranteed that he would have succeeded? I'm pretty certain that in that alternate reality someone else would have stepped up to create the equivalent of Windows and maybe become a billionaire, but do we have the assurance that they would also make the same altruistic use of their money?

I always get a bit annoyed by people who claim to understand that life isn't some balanced chemical equation with swappable variables, but then display a contradictory logic. If you mention the "butterfly effect" they engage in a dissertation. Later you catch them off-guard and they're lamenting on brilliant minds being wasted on meaningless problems, or on people not eating organic food anymore, or music being too commercial nowadays, etc.

The thing that really gets me is not the lack of merit of such complaints, it's the refusal by people who emit them to extrapolate on the implications of their hypotheses. They somehow always assume that the alternate reality in their proposition is some sort of utopia.

Life is a huge mess, but as chaotic as it is, every little variation has an effect and a price. Just don't assume that you'll like what they are.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's one hiccup in this line of thought: You can't always predict how the flashy toy tech will turn out to be a benefit later on.

Case in point, Kinect. It should have been just a play accessory, but it's being used to help people with disabilities, like the wi-Go : [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-17jRfX9Sw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-17jRfX9Sw)

And also aiding surgeons during operations as well as helping disabled children interact with their environment with more subtle gestures. [http://kotaku.com/5950834/in-japan-the-kinect-may-soon-be- mo...](http://kotaku.com/5950834/in-japan-the-kinect-may-soon-be-more-common- in-hospitals-than-in-homes)

Just like cosmetics and other "vanity medicine" used in the West can have life-saving applications elsewhere, for now, we get Angry Birds. It may turn out to something else later on.

The point is, cumulative knowledge can lead to great things later on. It's the NASA trickle-down theory.

<comment><USER12> Angry Birds may help Thwart Alzeihmer's: Study: [http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/01/23/brain-games- ma...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/01/23/brain-games-may-help- thwart-alzheimers-study/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nobody who had the skills to seriously take a stab at curing cancer is instead coding up Angry Birds. All those kids from Stanford going to work at consumer technology shops are smart kids, but even at a place like Stanford the talent to really make fundamental breakthroughs in human knowledge is exceedingly rare. And it's not like there is any undersupply of smart people going into biology.

As a practical matter, it's more like "we got Angry Birds instead of some middling papers about some cellular pathways that are kind of interesting but ultimately not useful." Or more realistically, a bunch of smart kids got siphoned away from Wall Street and management consulting, and maybe big corporations like IBM or Oracle.

<comment><USER14> This is important. The people cashing in their skills to make small things like Angry Birds (perhaps with the intention of making a lot of money without a lot of effort) aren't the people who can sit down and figure out how to cure diseases.

Research is hard and not everyone can do it. Progress on diseases will be slower than progress on new forms of entertainment (or productivity, as many startups are geared towards).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a systemic problem. We can be fairly certain of it because the system used to work differently. Past decades saw major national projects that were successfully undertaken e.g. the Tennessee Valley Authority in the '30s, the WW2 effort, the interstate system in the '50s, Apollo in the '60s.

This all came to a halt in the '70s (just as the baby boomers were starting to be in charge - coincidence?). In the '80s, "greed is good" was practically a campaign slogan. The ideal of public service (make the world a better place, even at great personal cost) is still as strong as ever with many young men and women. But its proper outlets are sorely missing. You can e.g. join the Peace Corps and work to improve another country with hardly any resources allocated to you. Or, if you want to follow greed instead, you can join Wall Street and have discretion over millions of other people's money.

It's certainly not become impossible to improve the world in significant ways, but you just have to become very wealthy first; see Elon Musk, Bill Gates. So every young entrepreneur has to squeeze out some money at a low investment cost first. The route to great public service has thus become: 1. spend the most energetic and productive years of your life to build Angry Birds 2. make lots of money in subsequent financial and legal operations 3. balance family and retirement with building and running a foundation to cure cancer.

<comment><USER16> I like where you're coming from, but I'm not sure our foundation system is as altruistic or effective as we're led to believe. Peter Buffett wrote a great op-ed the other day on this topic: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable- ind...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-industrial- complex.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER17> I'd managed to miss that the first time around; I wish I could thank you for prompting me to read it.

Buffett offers some vague criticisms, intended I assume to mean _something_ to his rivals in the trust-fund-gradual-diminution game. They mean little to someone outside that community. They seem especially unfair in response to a mention of Bill Gates. Gates is ending diseases. How is that kicking the can? How is that turning the world into "one vast market"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At some point an individual has to come to terms with the fact that 99% (or some equally large percentage) of human economic activity has nothing much to do with improving the human condition, but is rather beer and circuses writ large.

You can cure a disease for the cost of a large video game development these days, and an election year of political donations in the US could be used to cure aging. Medical research in general is a sliver of the economic activity spent kicking leather balls around grassy fields.

This is the world. The only way to make it better is to do what you can to add to the sliver rather than to the circuses.

<comment><USER13> The total cost of the 2012 election was $6.3 billion, about half of which was the Presidential election, so over a period of 4 years you're looking at roughly 2.4 billion per year. That would do jack shit for curing aging or even an important disease. The NIH spends $30 billion per year on those things.

We do the beer and circuses because they're cheaper than large-scale human advancements. The Manhattan project was $30 billion. Apollo was about $135 billion. The interstate highway system was $400-500 billion. (Inflation adjusted).

<comment><USER18> The cost of implementing SENS, a detailed research plan to demonstrate rejuvenation in old mice, is between $1 to $2 billion over 20 years.

Of the NIH budget, much less than 1% goes towards ways to intervene in aging I'm sorry to say. The NIA yearly budget is ~$1 billion, and of that very little has anything to do with actually altering the course of aging.

<comment><USER19> SENS is really fishy. Computer people I know love the idea. Biological research people I know think the guy is talking out his ass and hand waving most of it.

I do think aging based research is the future, I just worry that SENS is a boondoggle that could put us off aging research permanently.

Organ printing is getting sizable investment right now. That will do a good job at a lot of problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned on Twitter how my earlier pitches for what I'm working on focused a lot more on the reasons I'm doing it... attacking loneliness in cities and densely populated areas, and inspiring people to pursue their interests.

As the pitches to users and investors evolved, I realised I'd moved a long way from this and now mention just the numbers, just the personal benefits to the user.

No-one seems to care so much for any wider benefit... just the selfish* ones.

I haven't lost my faith, but I hope to build what I believe in as fait accompli rather than something needing individuals to think beyond themselves.

* Dictionary meaning, no offence intended or meant

<comment><USER20> It's not about selfishness, it's just that most easy problems got solved, and we're left with _really really_ hard ones.

Cancer is so mind-boggingly complex that one person cannot even begin to look at ways to solve it on his own.

Think about web developers, for example. We can either develop some SaaS website in 6 months that will bring us something like $500/month, or we can attack the cancer problem for 30 years and pretty much guaranteed to get nowhere.

<comment><USER21> Or, just throwing this out there as an option, you could solve any problem for a physician's practice -- like, say, patients not complying with their treatment regimen by failing to make scheduled check ups. You might even be able to do that with a SaaS app.

Granted, it won't _cure_ cancer, but you'll save more lives at the margin than doing Zynga ads. (And, n.b., healthcare clients often have more than $500 available to spend.)

<comment><USER22> How?

Making software for government is like a two year bidding process. The barriers to entry are incredibly high when it should just be a case of, "Okay, you want X Y and Z as your most critical features, let's keep the initial product small, we can add features as we go along. It'll be done in two months and then we'll iterate."

Instead it's more like, "We're going to have bids for two years for the project and then we're going to want everything done in one pass."

The NHS tried to update their computer systems a while back, it cost them £12 billion and two contractors dropped out of the contract because they were being too difficult to work with. It's still not, I believe, fully deployed.

The BBC tried updating their media management system.... DMI, I believe it was called. And spent £98.5 million on it only to not get the product at the end of the day....

All for things that a reasonable software company could probably have done by iterating over features on a basic product fairly easily.

Then you have things like the Police computer system - which is laughable in its antiquity and difficulty to use. I think there was an article on here quite recently about the awful 911 system.

You know? Things need to change concerning regulation before I think we're going to be able to adequately address those sorts of problems. Otherwise you're going to get these monster projects that effectively have to be done all in one go, which seems like a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER21> _How?_

The not-so-subtle subtext was that "I, erm, actually sell software which does pretty much exactly this." The how, in relevant fashion: create software which does appointment reminding phone calls for, without loss of generality, HVAC contractors. Read up on HIPAA requirements and talk to people who've done it before. Do some very boring paperwork and not-all-that-impressive technical work for ticking off the boxes. Start landing hospital clients, through a combination of slackadaiscal meat-and-potatoes SEO and being a lot more hungry for their business at the low end than the competition is.

I don't typically compete in or win two year bid cycles. I go after smaller projects in the $X,000 to $X0,000 a year range. The sales process often involves convincing a single nurse or office manager that I'm not some slick sales guy from the big city who is going to sell her $10,000 of software where she needs $2,000 and then never be there for her if it breaks.

Your mileage (kilometerage?) may vary in the United Kingdom.

<comment><USER23> Mileage. We still use miles over here. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Jack Handey:

 _Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, mankind should be thinking about getting more use out of the weapons we already have._

Let's explore this topic for three minutes, with Jack as our guide.

An effective way to prevent cancer is to stop causing it, and cigarette smoking causes cancer. Convincing smokers to quit is an unambiguous way to save lives. I used to wonder if the three years I spent as a cancer researcher would have been better spent wandering the streets like an end-times prophet, trying to convince people to put down their cigarettes.

(Don't get me started on the tanning booths.)

Unfortunately, cigarette smoking is a very strong habit and habits are hard to break. But part of the process can involve replacing one addictive habit with another. Angry Birds (plus, perhaps, a sequence of nicotine patches of decreasing strength) is a much healthier addiction than smoking.

Another effective way to prevent cancer is to take the safe and effective products of our expensive cancer research and actually _deploy_ the damn things. We have an effective vaccine against HPV, which causes cervical cancer in women and throat cancer in men, but the vaccination rate lags terribly in, um, certain countries:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/health/hpv-vaccine-not- rea...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/health/hpv-vaccine-not-reaching- enough-girls-cdc- says.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1375189808-WzHqK4r/pDWQ0sJEUkqDwA)

Curing HPV-based cancers is no longer a technical problem. It is a marketing problem. (And, if you haven't been vaccinated against HPV, go ask a doctor why not!)

Finally, we should be honest: Cancer is a _very_ difficult problem, perhaps an intractable one, and for the foreseeable future we'll treat it as we've done for decades: With painful, disfiguring, debilitating, demoralizing surgical, chemical, and radiation procedures. I'm not looking forward to that, if and when the day arrives. But, if I go into treatment, I'm going armed with the _best_ damned mobile entertainment I can find. Games, music, streaming movies, Twitter threads, YouTube kittens, you name it. And I will daily bless the people who took the time to make my existence just a little less miserable.

<comment><USER25> So... Angry Birds cures cancer?

<comment><USER24> Nothing cures cancer in the sense that people mean when they speak of "curing cancer" as some sort of saintly alternative to "living your life."

Many thousands of people are treated for cancer every day. Some of them survive significantly longer, or are significantly happier, as a result. None of the many, many people who work tirelessly to treat the sick are ever credited with "curing cancer," though that is what they do, every day, one person and one day at a time.

I worked as a cancer researcher for three years. It was kind of embarrassing. People tend to fawn over you. You get a lot of credit you don't deserve. I never cured any cancer that I know of. I gave cancer to a lot of mice. Few of them ever recovered.

Downstairs in the shop were some machinists. They didn't have Ph.D.s. They made custom radiation shields for patients undergoing radiotherapy. When a beam of cell-destroying radiation blasts the tumor inside, say, your head, you want to be sure it blasts as little of the rest of your head as possible. Your future depends, in part, on the quality work of the machinist who carefully builds your radiation shield, just for you, according to the plans drawn up by your friendly medical physicist.

These people cured cancer. For all I know they've been laid off by now, replaced by a terrifying molten-lead-extruding 3D printer or something. But they should be proud. People are alive today because of their work. People survived long enough to see graduations and weddings because of their work. People suffered less because of their work.

If we ever really do "cure cancer" in the grand-visionary sense of having a magical vaccine against all cancer, people will rapidly become bored of it. Every fifty years or so there will be a resurgence of cancer because folks will have forgotten what it was like, but the rest of the time nobody will care. There will be a small but crucial guild of people who guard the knowledge and procedures for keeping cancer at bay for all humanity, and nobody will know their names except at industry conferences.

But that's okay. This is how life really works. It's really big and you live your part of it. Only in the movies does a bright light shine down out of the sky when you do good things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We can have both.

There is a dizzying array of diseases, cancers and traumas that were death sentences in 1960 that are completely curable today. If I were born in the late 40's instead of the late 70's, I would be an invalid living in a room somewhere due to a back injury. Instead, because of modern surgical techniques, I missed six weeks of work ten years ago and are 100% fine today.

So I'm not going to sneer at entrepreneurs who invent video games or make movies or start a laundromat or who sell t-shirts in a resort town. They find places where demands are unmet and fill them. If for you, the opportunity is curing cancer, good for you. If it's hocking t-shirts on a boardwalk, good for you.

</comment><comment><USER27> I just wish that societally we would put more of a financial emphasis on things that deliver the most social utility. That would solve the gradient problem, and still deliver efficiency since people would have different competitive advantage.

I think games are something of a poor example, since they clearly do bring happiness to people at least, but the financial industry seems to spend inordinate amounts of energy and human capital shaving milliseconds and tenths of a percent off trading strategies.

Imagine if we had some of those people being paid $300k salary + $300k bonus instead working on vaccines, or new antibiotics? Clearly the skills aren't transferrable, but there's a brain drain to finance that is unfortunate, and I think startups suffer some of the same social-good-to-reward-ratio problems

<comment><USER28> Those milliseconds being shaved off forex trading are the reason that commercial and retail spreads are much tighter than they were a decade ago.

When currencies were priced every second market makers had to set a spread that would protect them from market variance within that one-second period, as that time period shrunk the amount of risk dropped as did the spreads.

Think about the thousands of currency transactions that had to happen for your smartphone to exist. It makes a huge difference to international trade when you can pay a lower premium to exchange currencies.

Just because you don't understand the value something provides, it doesn't mean that it doesn't provide it.

<comment><USER29> I've never understood the claim that "market makers" are providing a valuable service in the stock market by providing liquidity and reducing spreads. If this is a necessary service, why aren't there market makers in every market?

My local grocery wants to sell bananas for $1.50 a pound, but I only want to pay $1.00. Why isn't there a market maker buying and selling these bananas thousands of times per second to reduce the spread between me and my grocer so we can meet in the middle?

oh right, it's because the market takes care of that for us. If others are happy paying $1.50 the grocer will stay at that price and I'll have to accept it or go without my bananas. If most buyers agree with me the grocer will have to lower their price if they want to sell the bananas. No market maker is needed.

<comment><USER30> Your grocer is a market maker!

To the point that the word market is often used for small stores.

If you had to buy bananas off a truck when it happened to be in town, you'd get a lot less bananas and you'd pay more for them.

<comment><USER29> I don't think that's true. It's certainly more convenient for me to go the grocer and know that, usually, they'll have bananas for sale. However, during the summer in my town there is a farmers market every week, where I actually _can_ go and buy produce off the back of a truck. The prices are often cheaper and the products are often better. (Sometimes the prices are higher, but that's because the products are better: organic, varieties that don't ship well, etc.)

I can take this one step further, and actually go to many of the farms around here to buy produce right off the plants, by picking it myself. Even less convenient, but it makes for a nice weekend outing, and the prices are even cheaper.

Note that in both cases the prices _drop_ for me and stay _the same_ for the farmer by cutting out middle-men: the shippers, the grocer. By your terms, those are the market makers, and while they make produce commerce more convenient they're certainly not reducing costs for anyone. They're taking profits out of the parties on the two ends of the transaction.

I'll grant you that, in my example, the middle-men provide an essential service by giving me access to produce that is not produced locally, and by making that access more convenient. Neither of those apply to the financial markets though: as purely information-driven markets, they're accessible 24/7 from anyplace in the world. So again, what value are the market makers actually providing to the buyers and sellers of financial products?

<comment><USER30> Fair enough, the words about cheaper are arguable. I wouldn't want to try to buy bananas in a world where there was no one willing to take them off the truck and hold them for a few days though.

As far as financial markets, reliable prices are worth something (even though a reliable price is 'just information'). I agree that in heavily traded instruments, providing liquidity becomes a fairly abstract value, but if you are a large institution, having someone that will readily purchase enormous amounts of shares is a valuable service. For a lightly traded instrument, being able to sell it is also a valuable service.

I don't see enormous value in having lots of people spending lots of money chasing pennies, but I have trouble getting worked up about it. I suppose what it comes down to is that I am skeptical that rules designating who gets the tiny bit of slop available in financial transactions will be any more fair than the present system (where various HFTs are competing for the slop, often by essentially offering some of it to the parties in the transaction...).

<comment><USER29> If you're a large institution, and you want to sell an enormous amount of shares in some stock, the price of that stock _should_ plummet if there aren't buyers available at the price you want to sell. Having a market maker buy those shares is hiding the fact that a huge position in the stock was just dumped and no one wanted to buy. Sucks for the company, but if you're not attractive to buyers or to the seller, then your market valuation was already wrong.

This would also curb the behavior of the large institution. They shouldn't be able to dump all of their holdings of a stock like that at a high price if there aren't _real_ buyers at that price. The institution should be forced to chase the price down to pick up enough buyers for the whole position. If they still can't move it all, then they're holding a worthless stock. Sucks for them, but investing is a gamble and sometimes you lose your investment. You should've invested in a more valuable company.

The theme I'm getting at is that I think that market makers definitely alter the dynamics of the market, as they claim to, but contrary to their claims they do it in a way that benefits themselves and other financial institutions to the detriment of non-financial-industry investors and the companies and other real-value instruments (bond originators, mortgage borrowers, etc) being traded.

<comment><USER30> What is not real about the automated system? As far as I know, they pay real dollars. Is it the fact that the bet on the shares is short term?

There are some issues with HFT that I don't like, where different players are getting different access to information. Beyond that, I have trouble with the argument that parties that aren't me should have to engage in transactions that I like the shape of (or the other way around, should be prevented from engaging in transactions that I don't like. I'm using transaction here in the sense that both parties are acting freely...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just to throw another point into the discussion - to some extent, brain power _is_ fungible. I say this speaking as someone who has a clear and ongoing choice between academia and industry. However, currently, academia is a world of hurt for most post-docs (several articles on the topic have passed HN, they're out there if you're interested). So, maybe the reason people aren't curing cancer is because curing cancer doesn't pay even half as well as selling ads, _and_ it comes with a whole lot of other issues (short term contracts, high pressure, long hours, etc). I really believe that if there was a higher financial incentive / more funding support for science, we could keep more of the brightest, and things would progress faster. But in a recession, we get austerity measures, and half the kids move into strategy consulting / finance. Anyway, that's another conversation. </rant>

</comment><comment><USER32> There's a lot of this sort of discussion in the strong artifical intelligence/transhumanism crowd. The reasoning goes:

* The threat (and possible upside) of strong AI is too great to ignore.

* We should be spending as much effort on understanding and developing friendly strong AI as we can, to outcompete any efforts that will produce a malevolent strong AI (whether intentionally or not).

* Ergo, everyone should maximise their gross income by becoming a high-flying lawyer, derivatives trader, or similar, live off a minimal income and give the rest to a strong AI research group.

Which is fine, except that the economy is, by nature, a huge web of networked interactions. The ways in which those interactions are linked is probably very hard to discern.

Which is to say that I think the kind of redistribution of wealth to good causes that people are calling for is worthwhile, but only to an extent. It's the problem that utilitarianism has - it requires perfect knowledge of the outcomes of the various choices you could make.

As others have said, the thing you develop might prove useful in treating some disease. Or the skills you pick up while developing it might lead to down a more 'socially responsible' path. Or the thing you make might produce utility for someone else and lead _them_ to contribute to an important cause (e.g. the entrepreneur who sets up a coffee shop in town isn't curing cancer, but the people who now have a place to gather and collaborate might).

</comment><comment><USER33> Some ask, "Why can't these minds be contributing more to society?" I find that they often are, by being good parents, citizens, volunteers, donors. A similar vein of thought might be applied to the talent in the financial industry.

<comment><USER34> True, but just as often they're wretched parents and citizens who never volunteer or donate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I sometimes feel like the ice-cream factory guy in this funny bit by Mitchell and Webb - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-zRPDvTJTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-zRPDvTJTo)

At the same time, I'm happy Mitchell and Webb stayed in comedy rather than attempt to cure cancer.

If you feel a calling to a particular space or venture, follow it - even if its Angry Birds. On the other hand, if you think your calling is in medicine, think well before attempting a go at this "golden age of entrepreneurship", as chances are you'll regret not doing what you love.

</comment><comment><USER36> Don't forget as well, the barrier to entry for solving cancer is non-trivial compared to the barrier to entry for creating Angry Birds. It's significantly easier to develop an app than solving cancer in terms of the equipment, research and background you need. I haven't seen many 'Learn cellular analysis in a week' books floating around.

<comment><USER37> But big problems are usually solved as a series of small problems, yes? It's unlikely that one day some researcher will combine a few chemicals in a new way and shout "Eureka! I have found the drug that cures all cancer!" A problem as complex as cancer (and diverse too: meningiomas are very different from, say, basal cell skin cancer) is something that will probably be solved by a 1,000 small breakthroughs, rather than 1 huge breakthrough. And there are a lot of apps that could help in that direction.

Here are some ideas that would be great, if someone could figure out a clever way to implement them:

1.) an app that allows the discovery of important papers that have received no attention, perhaps because they were published in journals that have low prestige

2.) an app that can detect possible bias on the part of the researchers (perhaps a tool that combines data about grants received from Big Pharma to papers that seem to prove the effectiveness of Big Pharma's drugs). At the very least this might protect some researchers from wasting time doing follow- up research based on a paper that is false.

3.) apps that offer different color encodings to DNA information to reflect different theories of the how DNA works, and how DNA damage contributes to cancer. In the same way that in Emacs you can get different color schemes for looking at your Java code, it would be useful to be able to easily format and color DNA sequences, based on the various theories regarding how non-coding segments effect the overall functioning of DNA -- this would be especially useful now, when there is as yet no dominant theory about exactly what roles certain non-coding segments play in the life of our cells.

These are 3 apps that would be helpful to researchers and which face no regulatory hurdles.

I do not offer these examples to say "We should all be working to cure cancer", though the thought is not completely unreasonable given that close to 25% of all Americans die of cancer. But rather, I offer these 3 examples simply to challenge glib assertions that programmers can't work on a problem like cancer because it is too hard -- rather, there are a million small tasks that programmers could undertake that would help the overall effort.

<comment><USER38> I agree that there are boundless opportunities for skilled developers in bioinformatics --- _IF_ they are willing to work for free or a substantial pay cut.

The problem is that there is a big mismatch in expectations between developers and researchers: researchers are not accustomed to paying for software. Most developers in bioinformatics are other researchers, who are self-taught programmers paid by their grant funding or university, not by software sales. The quality of software is usually quite low, but it is at least free.

But I still think there is a large pool of developers out there who may work for BigCo during the day, but want to tinker on something meaningful in the evenings or weekends. Biologists and bioinformaticians need to get better at advertising needs and harnessing the kind of community involvement that has made Linux/Apache/etc so successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This presumes there is no social benefit from the Internet. But there are loads of margalized groups who have been able to find a group and community thanks to quick and easy communication of the Internet. Just look at a lot of lesbian, gay, bi and trans people who wouldn't be able to find people like themselves in many places. I'd even think the more common acceptance of atheism is a result of this too.

<comment><USER40> I'm failing to find the original article, but from the quote, I don't think the author is arguing against the Internet, but small stuff like iPhone apps and other "small impact" startups.

Besides, is the Internet really an accomplishment by Silicon Valley and its startups? ARPA and BBN certainly don't fit the model.

<comment><USER39> _is the Internet really an accomplishment by Silicon Valley and its startups?_

Well, look at Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and reddit. These are "Silicon Valley startups". They are tools that empower minorities to do things. Here's a video ( [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBeNfSoMqjY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBeNfSoMqjY) ) of someone who started @EverydaySexism on Twitter, talking about how that project has empowered her and lots of other women with compating low level sexism. A "trivial" website like twitter is fighting sexism (while also have lots of cat pics and memes).

The big game changer with the internet isn't so much the technology, but the fact that so many mundane average people are on it. For that we can thank Silicon Valley's push for "growth" and "user count", the end result is people (incl. marginalized groups) having access to the tool. It's not the technical superiority of the tools, but the widespread availability of the tools, that is the game changer.

<comment><USER41> > Well, look at Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and reddit. These are > "Silicon Valley startups".

None of those _are_ Silicon Valley startups, and Facebook and Twitter never were _Silicon Valley_ startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I call it the Fart App Generation. Triviality rules the day. People make money selling whoopee cushions too. And if you find meaning in that, then more power to you. It's not for me though.

<comment><USER43> I fail to see the problem with that. If people prefer "bright minds" to work on cancer cures rather than on new casual games, why don't we make a $5 app to sponsor cancer research and see how well it sells?

My conclusion is, that most people simply aren't bothered with cancer research until they get it (apparently in these areas, about 50% of the population do at some point in their lives).

<comment><USER44> > My conclusion is, that most people simply aren't bothered with cancer > research until they get it

This is part of the problem, coupled with the "immediate reward versus distant punishment" bias. Another is the obvious tragedy of the commons here. Once the research is successful it also benefits those who chose not to contribute so fund it please while I spend my $5 on a tasty cookie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> FYI: If you do not know how difficult it is to cure a patient from cancer, just see:

1 [http://xkcd.com/931/](http://xkcd.com/931/)

2 [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162)

</comment><comment><USER46> I for one am at a point in my life where I'm starting to switch my focus from web apps and games to bioinformatics. Not that I believe I will be the one to cure cancer or that this field isn't without it's problems too, but it feels great that whatever I accomplish will hopefully lead to improving medicine, no matter how small the contribution. Right now I'm doing my first project on antibiotic resistance and I get to use my knowledge about computer science, mathematical staistics and *NIX shell hacking, while learning a lot of new cool stuff baout biochemistry and molecular biology.

Personally, I want to do more than flashy games and entertainment that are essentially luxury products for the happy few that can afford a smartphone and a computer.

That being said, it's weird for a Sunday Times writer to be pointing fingers at game developers for what they are doing instead of, I don't know, curing cancer themselves.

</comment><comment><USER47> Everything is working as it should.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

The key word here is _old_. Society cannot conjure up a solution for cancer, that takes dedication which only a few people who are interested in the topic can provide.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cuc...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cucj4ipzV8k&t=88)

"(Money) gives you a position in time when you're at that second level to be a good citizen of your community. To work on community projects. To be a good neighbour."

The selfish pursuit of money allows us all to make the world a better place once we have no need for it anymore. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that trying to make money is immoral. It is the most moral thing you can do for society.

<comment><USER48> This assumes that it's possible for everyone, or even everyone _deserving_ , to have enough money that they can afford to spend it charitably.

<comment><USER47> Anyone who claims they can't afford to be charitable should be on the receiving end of it. You can be charitable with time or money. There is an infamous quote:

"A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure."

At a certain point, you don't get special treatment if you came up poor. I know a guy who has been to jail a couple of times, never finished university and still makes six figures.

<comment><USER48> Wait, what's so bad about buses?

Also, "anyone" != "everyone".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think that the return on investment on curing cancer does not impact the sale of Angry Birds much. At least not sufficiently to justify the investment. Sorry for being cynical.

On another note, look at Bill Gates, made a fortune with software, now spending it on charity. Maybe that's a route that is more reasonable.

<comment><USER50> Elon Musk too. Remember he started with PayPal, not SpaceX and Tesla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you destroy and corrupt businesses and the way of doing business, the only way to "do stuff" without having to hold your nose as much is new areas.

People have been curing cancer, admittedly at variable success rates, for decades. Medical industrial complex is much older. You're going to have to hold your nose pretty bad to eliminate cancer. Your triumphs will be via paying off political candidates to purchase laws, and patent warfare. Maybe something the "smart kids" do in the lab will matter, but probably not.

On the other hand mobile apps aren't as corrupt yet, therefore they're effective, therefore you can make money and businesses in them... for awhile, before they get tainted.

</comment><comment><USER52> "The Valley's brightest minds once invented things of immense significance like the first PC"

Weren't the first PCs mostly toys for hobbyists?

</comment><comment><USER53> False dichotomy much?

<comment><USER54> Very much agreed.

In addition...

Brain power is not a fungible resource. You cannot divert excess brain power to any task you choose. It's a highly specific, highly targeted resource which seems to me to be horribly capricious and (ironically?) irrational in its choice of target.

In other words, the answer for any app entrepreneur when asked "Why didn't you work on a cure for cancer?" is simply "Well, I didn't think of that. I thought of an app."

I like the apparent contradiction in the Telegraph article too:

"Hackers/entrepreneurs used to invent revolutionary things like the PC!"

"People are only using personal computing devices for trivialities!"

Either personal computing was a great idea or it's a platform for the trivial and banal, you can't have it both ways.

<comment><USER55> _Either personal computing was a great idea or it 's a platform for the trivial and banal, you can't have it both ways._

Well, you can. Cheap personal computers unleashed an amazing amount of creativity in _all_ areas of human endeavor

 _and_

they also enabled that power and creativity to be used for trivial, disposable things, as well as scams and harmful things.

Human life went online, with both the good and the bad.

<comment><USER54> I should have said:

>Either personal computing was a great idea or it's _solely_ a platform for the trivial and banal, you can't have it both ways.

Even then I concede that this was a straw man for the Telegraph journalist's position. How embarrassing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Then there is this: It is things like Angry Birds that provide the economic engine which funds cancer research.

If there were no Angry Birds, or countless other "does it matter" products, the amount of money that would be available for charities or research of all kinds would be drastically reduced.

These "does it matter" products create wealth that did not previously exist. Yes, create wealth. They don't steal from research. They create economic value that did not exist before.

There is nothing systematically broken here. However, the system absolutely does break when some authoritarian power decides that they shall decide which products shall be produced, and how any existing wealth shall be apportioned. It has NEVER worked in the history of humanity. Call it unjust if you wish, but one's sense of social justice does not change the way economies function. An economy is based on human action. Humans act on fundamental needs. Sometimes they act irrationally. Nevertheless, on a scale, they act in ways that are predictable and consistent. The principles of human action cannot be changed. They can only be observed and exploited. Any economic system that is predicated upon changing human action will fail.

</comment><comment><USER57> Why is this?

\- Making Angry Birds is a whole lot easier than curing cancer, which is not even a single disease.

\- People need to eat, want to enjoy themselves, all that stuff. To do this, you need money. What's the easier way to do so? Making Angry Birds.

\- People want raised status. You'd get a lot more from curing cancer(s), but it would take so much longer, and you're not guaranteed it'll really work. Making Angry Birds is the much better option.

\- You need piles of money to do research to cure cancers. You also need time. Short-termism (caused by the other side of accountability, transparency, and demands for ROI) means you may not get either of these. So where does the money come from, and is what you're getting enough? If it is, do you have time (and enough of the right type of skilled researchers) to do so? Modern medicine and research is not an individual endeavor; it requires teams, sometimes large ones.

Along these lines, if you believe a government's number one job is to protect people from harm (and you're inclined towards positive liberty), why is there virtually no government support for anti-aging research (in the first world, disesases of age of edged out many other killers), or life extension/immortality research? "Natural causes"/"dying is part of the natural cycle"/other excuse based on cultural beliefs/ideology are so ingrained our cultures/ideologies as just being something we have to put up with, that we haven't even gotten off the ground with this stuff.

Maybe the short version here is "we don't collectively care enough about things that kill us in a way tha matters or are even actively opposed to fixing them" to do anything about it. Change the culture, change the world.

</comment><comment><USER58> I got bad grades in high school because I was a kid and didn't yet know what was important in life. That shut me out of any possible avenue where I'd be able to contribute to "curing cancer".

No one will let me work on cancer. That door is closed. But for some reason people will pay me to write "useless" software. I'd imagine many of us are in this boat.

<comment><USER59> Find some opensource bioinformatics projects and contribute.

Add some new features or fix some bugs in IGV or other common projects and you'll be helping thousands of cancer researchers be slightly more productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Does anybody dare to argue that angry birds did provide more value to peoples lives than a cure for cancer?

Why is it so obvious that curing cancer is the right thing to do as opposed to engaging in economic and cultural activity, which has been the norm for mankind as long as we have been around? (and by the way provides the social stability that is the very basis for any kind of progress at all)

What's worse is the implication that there _is_ a cure for cancer and all it would take is a few talented entrepreneurs to tackle the problem in an directed effort (which, to my knowledge, is happening anyway but with limited success while chemo therapy is still around, which was a by-product of war efforts)

<comment><USER48> Which is better: getting your cancer successfully treated and then playing Angry Birds, or playing Angry Birds and then dying of cancer?

 _That_ is why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Cancer is being cured gradually. People don't notice this gradual progress and are thus prone to making silly statements like the one in the headline.

What it means to be diagnosed with various cancers today is not the same as what it meant 30 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER61> People don't appreciate that science is not an embarrassingly parallel process. Some steps have to come before others, and each of those take time.

There is a ton of money being thrown at "cancer", which is a large set of incredibly complex problems. I even believe that there is never going to be "a cure for cancer", while we will be able to manage and even "cure" most types of cancer during the next two decades (IMHO).

But it's a tough problem which doesn't lend itself to YC-style founder teams or extreme implementations of lean entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER62> I have a feeling it's a good thing that game developers don't work on curing cancer. I know this isn't what the article is about, but the headline makes it sound so.

<comment><USER63> Well then you share the same feelings with the author of this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Hmm...

I think an interesting way to frame this problem is to take the theory that entrepreneurs should solve problems close to them as fact.

If we do this then we have two related problems. Why aren't people close to big problems becoming entrepreneurs? Why aren't entrepreneurs closer to big problems?

A solution to the problem of "useless" apps might come from finding ways to bring big problems to entrepreneurs, or making it easier for those closer to big problems to become entrepreneurs.

Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER65> I hypothesize these types of arguments would fail if you quantified them, ie. compared the actual amount spent investing (VC money, people, manhours) in (1) Angry Birds type startups versus (2) training medical researchers, medical research in academia and industry.

Ie. I hypothesize (2) >> (1)

</comment><comment><USER66> Cancer will be "cured" when mRNA sequencing gets below $100. At that price point it will be cheap to identify the exact mutations. Then comes the harder part of hacking the millions of mutations to create millions of cancer specific drugs.

</comment><comment><USER67> So let's just ditch everything non-functional. No really. Does music helps cure cancer? I don't think so. Banned. Movies? No. Paintings? Not a bit. Gymnasts, you are uselessly hanging all the time, better learn some biology.

</comment><comment><USER45> > Being an entrepreneur is a nail-biting, ration-sapping, wind-bitten, multi- > year unsupported journey into the unknown.

Not that different being an entrepreneur from being a cancer researcher.

</comment><comment><USER68> I wonder how many people are planning on going the Musk/Gates route: first make it big in something plain, then use your fortune to tackle the big problems.

</comment><comment><USER69> Had to break out my Android tablet to read. Linked site is the first one I've come across that was totally unreadable on Windows Phone 8.

<comment> james-skemp Huh. My first gen Nexus 7 suffered from half the content being cut off. Having read the comments here, though, I won't be reading the article on another device.

<comment><USER69> Similar problem on WP8. About 80% of the content was cut off and not visible. On my Acer Iconia tablet running Jelly Bean it looked mostly OK maybe because it has a 10.1" screen? iPad looked fine. I guess we know what device OP has.

<comment><USER70> An old Macbook - someone stole all my other ones :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'm curious how many of HN readers have never played Angry Birds. Could it be more than half? Or less than 1%?

<comment><USER72> I hope, that at least 70% (to be nice..) haven't - or that same percentage have only taken a quick look at it once, and never again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> "Instead of"? One does not preclude the other.

We slowly advance in all areas, whether that be beating cancer or boredom.

</comment><comment><USER74> Cancer has been around for tens of thousands of years, yet human kind did just fine.

</comment><comment><USER75> I don't want to endorse some of these behaviors, but:

* Thanks to video gaming, we got super-high-powered but cheap graphics.

* Thanks to people's seemingly insatiable appetite for pornography, we got the VCR and eventually, home internet.

* Thanks to people's desire for conquest, we got natural selection and world exploration.

Nature is boundless. From every great evil, eventually, comes great good. This isn't an endorsement of evil, but of nature's resourcefulness. Humans using technology are no exception.

</comment><comment><USER76> First off, there isn't a zero-sum game between Angry Birds and curing cancer. It takes different resources and skills and there isn't an easy or immediate conversion between the two.

I don't like Zynga (not to lump Angry Birds in with Zyngarbage) and what they do, but it's not like one could, if given majority ownership of the company, walk into their office and say, "Okay, we're going to sequence oncogenes now". You can't really fault them for not curing cancer, because they aren't set up to do it.

All that said, I think there is truth in the argument that VC lends itself to frivolity. VCs are no longer investors, so much as detachable _managers_. The problem is that a non-expert can't evaluate cancer research. On the other hand, any moron can evaluate and run a "social" web app.

If you treat executive positions as political favors to be handed out to one's cronies, and you're running biotech companies, you'll destroy them, because one actually needs to know things to run biotech. On the other hand, with the hot "social" companies, no one will notice the change.

Just as reality TV survived the end of its hype cycle, because it was so much cheaper (no writers or professional actors) than scripted television, so it is with social media. Talent is the scarce resource, and the nice thing about the social world is that one doesn't need much of it. They're marketing experiments; they can back-fill with solid technology later on in the process.

The dark secret to this is that there are a lot of middle-aged MBA types who never learned to understand technology, and haven't actually worked in over a decade, but want _something_ to manage. As investors in cancer research, they'd be passive philanthropists; as paratrooper managers they'd have no clue. On the other hand, social media they can take over and run because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what those companies are doing.

</comment><comment><USER77> So, what can the average person do? Since this seems to be a deficiency of the market, it seems you have to vote with your wallet. How about using a percentage of your income to donate to worthy organizations? Maybe instead of giving a tithe to the poor, you give a tithe to causes that try to improve the whole human condition? Start communities (not hierarchical, political organizations: simply communities) that discuss this type of philanthropy. Maybe you could get a critical mass of people to donate to things that require a modest amount of funding.

It's not like anyone hasn't already thought of this, but what other choice does the inidividual have if they doesn't want to dedicate their whole time to fight very systemic and perhaps even an inherent human shortsightedness?

</comment><comment><USER78> Nice linkbait headline

</comment><comment><USER79> Instead of intellectually stimulating discussions we got Reddit, Facebook and HN.</comment>


Linux Sysadmin/DevOps Interview Questions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chassing/linux-sysadmin-interview-questions <comment><USER2> Generally good questions.

However I would not ask a candidate or more specifically I would not show him the code for fork bomb. I would ask him what fork bomb is or demonstrate it on some demo VM and ask him how would he prevent himself..

There's too many technologies already. I would not ask specific questions about the staff we use but instead a very generic ones.

Like really it's almost impossible to be a specialist these days and you can pretend your company is full of rockstars and works on the next big thing but in fact you are just bunch of posers.

Nobody really knows everything to the detail. I really hated when my colleague asked new people really deep stuff about Puppet and then we have switched to Ansible and half of the team was clueless and had to learn along the way. That's what good engineers do. They adapt. They learn the concepts and focus on delivering a good service. They do not memorize man pages.

When it comes to scripting / programming do not print scripts on paper and make the candidate to describe you what is it for or find a bug / mistake just by reviewing the paper. It's insulting. Especially if you do not follow any conventions or your code is not idiomatic.

Also I would never ask a question "What does the following command / parameter do". These are not good questions. Ofc they are asked often during interviews but are just plain stupid.

How would you display last / first 10 lines of a file ? How would you remove an X string from a line / row of text ?

and so on...

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly I think this is a good list of questions to test out a search engine.

As far as interviewing a DevOps guy, maybe? I consider myself a decent DevOps person out of necessity, but questions like "How to add a new system user without login permissions?" would kind of annoy me, because that's the exact kind of thing I can't remember because I automated it years ago at my current job. I probably add a new user twice a week... from a Fabric script. I couldn't tell you if it's useradd or adduser because my workflow would be to google the exact wording of the question if I actually needed to do it manually for once.

<comment><USER4> I don't remember the flag, but this could be my answer:

Most linux distributions, come with /bin/false as a valid and registered shell, for login to the system (but it's a program that returns false and does not open a shell).

I know that useradd and adduser allow a flag for change this at creation time (probably --shell /bin/false).

It could be more safe to be explicit since the creation time, than using chsh (changeshell) to avoid race conditions in security, having a user created with a shell until chsh is run.

You see, I didn't remember the flag, but I did try. That's the kind of answer that maybe some interviews are waiting for.

<comment><USER5> /sbin/nologin actually does some cool logging stuff that /bin/false doesn't, which is why the distros generally use it.

<comment><USER4> Cool stuff as in display a message that the account cannot login, which leads to brute-force service, process or other stuff system user names.

Failed logins will be logged either way.

I think still could go with the output of `type -P false`. Unless the project requests that feature of messaging to the (forbidden) user, its forbidden logins.

It could work even on embedded devices having only 'false' available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh my.

Nothing about knowing if the sysadmin knows how to find information (man, docs, info, apropos, perldoc) offline and online (advanced bash scripting guide), which shell to use to be the most portable, and where to go to be up to date regarding vulnerabilities.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's a good pool of questions to choose from. How long do you think would not take an applicant to fill all of the questions?

My questionnaire for the same purpose (hiring) has 30 similar questions, yet including some that query soft skills.

E.g.: "you got the following email from a customer, please write down your answer to her inquiry".

Or: "the CFO, the CEO and the CTO are approaching you with the following different requests, how do you react to them and in which order would you process them".

</comment><comment><USER8> There's some decent questions here, but also too many "how to" questions that most people won't bother memorizing since they take 2 seconds to google.

</comment><comment><USER9> The key thing I found in interviews (from the interviewer side) is that getting someone to sit down and write the test is not very useful.

Its far better to get them to talk you through it. It allows you to asses their knowledge (which can be taught) but more importantly it allows you to see _how_ they work and _if_ they can explain their shortcomings.

I want someone to say "I know that x does y, but what happens when z comes along I'm not sure" I can then provide a nugget of more information and see if they are able to grab onto it.

It shows you their ability to communicate, and will bring out more of their latent personality. You're going to spend more time with your co-worker than your significant other, so you need to have some idea that you won't hate them.

Its far more important to have someone who knows when they are out of their depth and handles it gracefully than someone who seems to have more knowledge but hacks about wildly when they fall off the deep end.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a horrible interview question for all but a tiny handful of jobs:

      Is 300.168.0.123 a valid IPv4 address?

...but it is a great late night fun trivia question about "how can adding one character to that address make it into an address accepted by many tools".

<comment><USER11>
                                                                                Stick a zero in front?  0300 octal == 192

Edit: Fixed so it's not such an obvious spoiler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Unpack test.tar.gz without man pages or google"

Ha, guess I'm not the only one :)

<comment><USER5> Remember to 'eXtract Ze Files', twirling your moustache while you say that.

<comment><USER13> You can actually drop the Z these days in a lot of cases; tar will detect the compression algorithm.

<comment><USER5> I occasionally log into older GNU, or non-OSX BSD systems where tar can't detect the compression automatically. [1]

[1] this isn't true, I just enjoy saying 'extract Ze Files' in a silly accent

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Write a get_prim method in python/perl/bash/pseudo.

What does get_prim do?

<comment><USER14> Returns prim

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't the biggest skill of a sysadmin to solve problems that he has not seen before? Learning all those answers to the questions wouldn't help you much in a real life scenario.

Instead of asking "what is/how do you do this?" it is better to give example scenarios and listen to what someone would do, to see how they approach the problem.

<comment><USER16> Being a hobby linux sysadmin myself I'd say you're right. The hard and often interesting part is to figure out why everything suddenly stopped working. sometimes I see the same problem several times and try to figure out how to stop it from happening again, most of the time though I see completely new problems. But it always helps to know your Linux system and how to hunt down error messages and log files. Buy then I'm no professional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How can I use this as a self-placement test? I'm in college still, and I have answers to many of the general, simple Linux, and devops questions. What is expected to be known for varying levels of employment? (Intern/junior/normal/senior)

<comment><USER18> I was a sysadmin, a devops engineer, and a build/release engineer. Now a developer.

These questions are all decent. There's nothing here that would be out of the question to ask in a junior interview.

Usually for junior interviews, they want to see if you understand the fundamentals and not advanced details that a senior might need to know.

One example of this is the question "What is swap and what is it used for?"

For an intern, I'd ask if they knew what it was for. For a junior, I'd add questions about any ways to control swap. For a midlevel/normal, I'd add scenario questions about configuring swap and the performance effects it can have. For a senior, I'd add troubleshooting questions.

To be honest though, I've only ever been asked the base question in interviews. I'm guessing that my answer sounded confident enough that the interviewer determined that it would be more worthwhile to explore areas I was not so strong in to see how I problem solve/deal with foreign scenarios.

Most decent interviews understand that people have different levels of understanding for different topics which might fall under the umbrella of "DevOps". A candidate could be a docker wizard, knowing all of the best practices of versioning, CI, and deployment, but could not know much about VLANs because "they never had to use it".

Keep in mind that most companies use a certain tech stack and are usually looking for people familiar with it. Interviewers always seem to be impressed when I told them I "checked it out over the weekend" and was able to answer questions decently about their stack. Skimming the documentation, setting up a vm to play around with, and finding the most popular blog posts about current best practices for a technology can go a long way towards closing the gap between your current knowledge and the ideal candidate's knowledge.

Hope that helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here are a couple I use:

\- How many hosts are there in a /23 network?

\- Estimate ping time from your workstation to your local gateway? www.google.com? Server on the east coast from the west coast? Server in Europe from the west coast?

\- What law(s) of physics control(s) the round trip times?

<comment><USER11> "How many hosts are there in a /23 network?"

Having interviewed a lot of sysadmins, I see this trip people up, mostly because the slash/bits network notation isn't taught/documented well. The "memorize a table" approach seems to be common.

Most of them, with a bit of prompting, get that an ipv4 is 32 bits, and that a /23 means (32-23==9) 9 bits of host addresses. Most also can figure out what 111111111 is. Some remember to account for the network and broadcast address not being available for hosts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The "simple questions" really reads to me like a proof of the superiority of the gui over terminal. With "how to delete a directory and its content" winning the award.

It could almost read like a wishlist for linux improvments.

<comment><USER21> Change it to "how to delete the contents of a directory, but keep the directory itself" and it becomes less simple.

But even this can lead to an interesting discussion. From a CLI, there's quite a few things to consider. Do you need sudo? If not, you shouldn't use it, IMO. Is the directory name dangerous? If so, would _rm -rf --_ help? Does rm support -- as an argument at all? I wouldn't know. And would it always prevent problems, even with truly weird directory names (with spaces, asterisks, slashes, $HOME, unbalanced quotes)? Of course you shell should tab-complete names and correctly escape them, but should you check your shell (brand and version) first if the name is weird, and know what versions have a known problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know where to find a similar list for Microsoft Sysadmins?

<comment><USER23> "How do you enable DHCP or $feature on Windows Server 2008?"

"Click the "Add Role Wizard" and then click next until you're done."

<comment><USER24> Q: "Ah but how would you enable it in Windows Server 2012/2016 Core editions?" / A: "PowerShell and Google, not necessarily in that order"

(Of course, Bash and Google would be the equivalent in *nix-land, so, maybe not that great an answer...)

Taking it more seriously, well, I'm not a sysadmin, I'm more of a developer (usually on Mac) with a passing interest in Windows servers. But here's my list: at least one question could relate to knowing any advanced Windows terms they might come across in a sysadmin context, like VHDs, different types of installers/drivers, differences between client, server, core, nano editions of Windows. Bonus points if they know of Git, Nuget or Chocolatey? Oh, and they're good in my books if they know about Microsoft Virtual Academy and Channel 9, especially the early Scoble days ;-) I do like the direction Microsoft's been going lately...

<comment><USER25> _Q: "Ah but how would you enable it in Windows Server 2012/2016 Core editions?"_

A: Most likely, add it to the Server Manager in the RSAT machine, then use the add roles wizard and click next till done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ex Amazon syseng here. Please be advised that the questions are really basic, even the "hard" ones and won't get you very far in an interview in various companies.

</comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for the effort.

These type of questions are OK for a filter phone interview or entry-level Linux job imho as in they rely on "what is" questions (which can be memorized or replied without much experience) rather than "how would you" questions (the "demo time" at the end, that's the good part). You want to ask scenario and troubleshooting questions rather than trivia for jobs other than basic ones. (You can certainly ask more advanced non-scenario -still relatable or practical- questions about things like system calls, interrupts, CPU scheduling etc, "system internals" stuff that I don't see at all or barely in these questions. A Linux questionnaire without mentioning strace or perf hurts my heart.)

I can basically nit-pick, find a fault or find a better way of asking in pretty much every question.

The Expert section can be dropped (only one question).

Mysql section can be dropped, maybe replace with basic SQL section.

DevOps section can be dropped, we can see here how definition of DevOps is still fluid, just add Linux/Networking/General questions to their respective sections (also "GIT", really?).

One reference link at the bottom doesn't work.

\----

Examples of issues with questions and how to improve them:

\- What commands do you know that can be used to check DNS records?: instead ask how to troubleshoot DNS issues, like how to check if a name server has an entry. How does local DNS work? (as in what's the order in which files/servers are checked to resolve a name, where is that stored) how does DNS in general works? (as in you ask for a record to a name server and it doesn't have it, now what). How much TTL would you set in a record and why. Why does DNS run on UDP and TCP?

\- "tac", (really? and no "grep" "sort", "uniq" or "sum"?), rather ask how to print a field from a command like 'df' or 'free' or how to add column values from a text file (basically if they can slice horizontally with grep and vertically with awk / cut and then count occurrences or sum numbers.

\- What does & disown after a command do?: rather ask when you would use 'disown', or better, inversely how to de-attach a running command from terminal

\- What is Virtual Memory? : not sure what you want them to answer here, maybe rather ask about a server with most of its total memory used, what does Linux cache (there's buffer and inode/dir caching besides files but only two memory caching areas), how to find that, when does the OS write stuff in RAM to disk (what are dirty pages), how do you change that frequency, when is better to do it more/less frequently or what's the tradeoff etc

\- What is swap and what is it used for?: this is more advanced but you can ask if a server can have no swap, is it possible for a server with plenty of free RAM to page (write to swap)? can you reduce/increment tendency to swap? why would you do that, how much swap partition would you set up (OK these are a bit of tricky questions, more to gauge experience)

\- How to search for the string "my konfi is the best" in files of a directory recursively? : I actually like this one

\- How to connect to a remote server or what is SSH? : you can split in "list all the possible ways you can think of so you can communicate (or send message/file) between two servers on a network" and a question about how SSH works from Linux point of view (not protocol), sshd settings (idea, not memorized params), how to set up passwordless (key-based) SSH, hardening tips, how to troubleshoot if you can't ssh to a server (no firewall, you can telnet/whatever), what does it mean when you get a message "key has changed etc", what's a private and public key...

\- What is the sticky bit? : this depends on OS, I guess explaining different behaviours is good.

\- What does the immutable bit do to a file?: this is not part of linux VFS but of particular filesystem implementations, btw no questions about what's a filesystem, what's a journaled one, difference between ext4 and xfs for ex. Also what about LVM?

\- What is the difference between hardlinks and symlinks?: while a good question I'd rather ask when to use one or the other, also just to confuse, ask how to "link/map" a directory in a partition that is running out of space to a directory in a new partition with plenty of space, so that it works transparently.

\- What is MAJOR and MINOR numbers of special files?: I guess device files, rather or besides ask difference between block and character devices, about pseudo dirs in file system: /dev /proc /sys , how to find hardware or process info (everything is pretty much in /proc or /sys , also dmesg )

\- Describe a scenario when deleting a file, but 'df' not showing the space being freed. : this is good but it can be better built into a scenario: there's an "no space left on device" error, how to find biggest files/dirs. You find it's a huge web server access.log file, now you delete it and disk space doesn't seem to shrink, why (the df vs du), what can you do?, can you close the open file?

\- Instead of "how does ps/top work?" ask something specific or scenario based, like how do you find if there's a disk I/O problem by looking at 'top' (there's at least two possible indicators). Zero questions about I/O, or for the matter, for server utilization metrics, which ones are they, how to measure each, how to find if they reached saturation, what happens in that case for each, how to look for errors in each. If a server is using 80% CPU is that good or bad?

OK I got tired here.

If you have read until this dear reader, would you be interested in my trying to create a Docker container or Amazon image with a Linux box and have these types of scenarios set up?

<comment><USER28> > _Describe a scenario when deleting a file, but 'df' not showing the space > being freed._

I came across this, seems to occur when disk is almost full. Is there any probable reason why this happens?

<comment><USER27> if the deleted file is open 'df' doesn't show cleared space, 'du' does

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any additional questions anyone can think of?

<comment><USER29> One ultimate question: "describe a project of yours, current or past, personal or or job-related, that you are most proud of". You don't need to ask a professional anything else if he's anywhere near worth his salt; he'll volunteer all the information you could judge him by.

Having that said, most of the questions from "general questions" part come either from assuming that the candidate is dumb and possibly doesn't understand how computers work or from some lousy layman psychology.

Many of the questions further down are incorrectly assigned. "What is an A record?" is not a Linux-related question, and git is hardly a "devops tool".

Very poor list, in my opinion. In an interview you need to assess whether the candidate can do the job. Since the only heuristics available to the interviewer is how the candidate did in the past, the interviewer needs to allow candidate to show what he has done, how, and why.

And just for fun:

> A careless sysadmin executes the following command: chmod 444 /bin/chmod \- > what do you do to fix this?

My favourite way of fixing it is by running /bin/chmod. It blows minds of most smart-asses who ask this question.

<comment><USER30> > > A careless sysadmin executes the following command: chmod 444 /bin/chmod - > what do you do to fix this?

> My favourite way of fixing it is by running /bin/chmod. It blows minds of > most smart-asses who ask this question.

\----

Not sure what I'm missing here?

        $ docker run -it ubuntu
        # chmod 444 /bin/chmod
        # /bin/chmod
        bash: /bin/chmod: Permission denied

<comment><USER29> ELF interpreter/loader.

      objdump -s -j .interp /bin/chmod
      /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /bin/chmod</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Critique me please? - <AUTHOR> https://www.hammadfauz.com/about?ref=hn <comment><USER2> Well for starters I would fix the work history section where you say you were an "internee" at Pakistan International Airlines, since "internee" means "a person who is confined as a prisoner, especially for political or military reasons." \- probably not the right impression to give a potential employer... Intern is the word you were looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Thanks for pointing out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What criteria should be used for the critique?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, I have created this as a substitute for a resume. I would like suggestions on what to include to make me more likely to be hired.

<comment><USER3> In the US, the purpose of a resume is to get an interview and the standard is short and to the point. That's where I am coming from.

Think of how much work the website generates for the person treating it as a resume. There's processing the navigation, clicking links, trying to figure out what is relevant.

The site is more of a work sample than a resume and those serve different purposes.

Of course other cultures may have different standards.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple isn't paying artists who perform at its stores - <AUTHOR> https://www.kqed.org/arts/13852882/artists-today-at-apple-unpaid-exposure-money <comment><USER2> "And yet, Apple didn't pay any of the artists who performed or spoke that night—at least not in cash, Nzinga says. Instead, they were given Apple products."

So they were compensated in another way. Ah. This changes things substantially in my eyes, and makes the headline rather misleading.

Then they're trying to conflate diversity efforts with this issue. Doesn't quite work. Ask how many coffee shops pay performers. usually the answer is "not very many," and they have a tip jar sitting out front.

<comment><USER3> If Apple has figured out how to pay featured iPhone photographers, they can probably figure out how to pay other featured artists in cash as well. Though personally I'd probably take that Apple Watch Series 3 or an Apple TV 4th gen. ;-)

I wonder if you have to pay tax on it (e.g. sales tax?)

Still might be OK; then they could change the headline to "Apple charges artists to perform at its stores."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless they forced them to work for free, or promised them money and then reneged, what is the problem? If the artists agreed, it was probably because they felt the exposure was worth giving up their time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately for artists, although opportunities for "exposure" are nearly endless, they don't pay the bills.

Part of the problem here is that, as the article mentions, Apple is using these artists to improve its optics when it comes to diversity. Apple can almost certainly afford to pay these artists a fair wage. So why does it choose to put them in the difficult position of passing up a collaboration with Apple, vs. putting on a show with a questionable return value for the artist?

Not being willing to offer fair compensation for the labor and costs these artists incur to put on these performances, especially given how difficult it is to survive in places like the Bay Area as an up and coming artist, it seems a bit like Apple is getting the better end of the deal here. Especially when, as the article mentions, the audience is more focused on getting an iPad repaired or a new iPhone charger -- they aren't the engaged audiences that strengthen a fanbase.

<comment><USER4> The opportunities for exposure at places like Apple are far from endless. But in any case, if you don't think the exposure is worth your time, then just don't do it. Pretty simple. We are talking about grownups here. Clearly the thought it WAS worth it.

And the argument that Apple can afford to pay is silly. They could also afford to give me a free Mac Pro. That doesn't mean anything. The in store entertainment budget might not be flexible, who knows.</comment></comment></comment>