The Bipolar Lisp Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.lambdassociates.org/Blog/bipolar.htm <comment><USER2> I used to attend meetings of a Lisp / FP users' group. Man, what a lineup of the brilliant unaccomplished. There were maybe one or two guys who were using Common Lisp at their jobs (one was at Amazon) and getting amazing stuff done with it. You could spot these guys immediately by their energy and social comfort. But the rest were always working on something cool and never finishing it. They were so far gone nodding in their opium parlor of thought there seemed little hope. I couldn't interest them in any practical project. They were only interested in the next high.

I used to think 'publish or perish' was a bad thing for academia. Now I don't. Everyone needs external social pressure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Story of my life. Started CS in the age of 13 flunked out after 2 years. Been in & out of universities (mainly CS & philosophy) ever since, attracted to the ideal, disgusted by reality. All my life I abandoned most projects that took more than a a few weeks, but did some very cool things in these short time spans. But I think I found the cure, at least for me, a project that is superbly compelling... Suddenly my highs were longer and the lows not so low, and I have been finally been able to apply myself to a single project for a long time, over a year now. I think you need to find a project that will captivate you like the Everest captivated Sir Edmund Hilary, a monumental challenge in a field that interests you. Mine is developing a new machine learning algorithm.

<comment><USER4> " _you need to find a project that will captivate you like the Everest captivated Sir Edmund Hilary, a monumental challenge in a field that interests you_ "

Quoted for truth. Plus with a big enough problem, there will always be neighboring issues you can look at when you get bored of the sub-sub-problem that you are focusing on at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't disagree with his portrayal of the brilliant failure, or even with the statement that such a person would be attracted to Lisp. But brilliant successes and brilliant failures both seem to be attracted to it, which implies that the brilliance is responsible for the attraction, not brilliant failure specifically.

He's even further off when he says that the reason Lisp isn't more popular is because of the mysterious quality that attracts such people. It's unpopular for more mundane reasons: the syntax looks odd, and there's no good, standard implementation with lots of libraries.

<comment><USER6> "...there's no good, standard implementation with lots of libraries."

I think his point was that there's no good, standard implementation with lots of libraries _because_ many of the people drawn to Lisp have big ideas but are bad at finishing things.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that the main dialects of Lisp (CL and Scheme) date from the era when languages were specs. Now they're implementations. It just happens that no one has released a good new Lisp dialect in that sense of language. But no one (as far as I know) has released a good new Fortran in that sense either.

Language designers who have what it takes are quite rare: Matz, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall. It just happens none of them chose to create a Lisp dialect. But the problem is not the brilliant failures who are drawn to Lisp, but that e.g. Matz wasn't (quite).

<comment><USER7> Are you saying that if someone releases a good new Lisp dialect, then it will become popular?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Comment I posted in reddit when this article turned up a year back.

"And here we are rushing to put in a mee too comment. I have known this about me for sometime. I had this thing about people. What ever you admit, you admit it because you are proud of it. Like for eg. I am always busy - yeah, you are proud of being busy. Or to bring the point out, one of my friends admitted to me that he suddenly realised that he was arrogant ( a BBM himself ), subconsciously he is proud of being arrogant.

My simple question: Does it have to be like this ? I mean, being Brilliant and a failure. C'mon guys, failure sucks. Big time. If you don't feel that, you don't have a problem. But if you do, consider this. Lets turn this inside itself in the true spirit of Lisp. Being BBMs we can come up with brilliant solutions to 'cope up with brilliance' while avoiding failure. Can't we ? Stop being proud. That's the point where it Starts. Post any coping mechanisms you have discovered over the years as reply to this thread. Thanx."

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a SciAm article about praising kids for intelligence vs. praising for hard work:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84655>

Net result: kids praised for their intelligence tend to look for things that are easy or to appear smart. Challenges and mistakes often de-motiviate these kids. "Smart"-oriented kids tend to have an attitude where intelligence is a fixed, natural attribute and being able to accomplish something easily is a sign of natural intelligence. "Growth"-oriented kids tend to have an attitude that intelligence can grow and that challenges and mistakes are opportunities to learn. These kids tend to relish challenges, often getting even more excited over difficult problems.

I think that sums up LISP and C with regards to the brilliantly unaccomplished.

Being able to trivially do something in LISP that is difficult in C is good ... yet for someone who relishes a challenge, what does that mean to find a really hard problem in LISP that is nearly impossible in C?

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone have a link to the thread from the last time this article was posted on news.yc? I tried a few google searches, but it seems that the link depth is too far back and it isn't indexed.

<comment><USER8> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012>

(Hack, the only way to search YC at YC I know of: try to google for the old link and submit it to YC again, and it will detect the duplicate and lead you to the thread )

<comment><USER10> <http://www.kirubakaran.com/phr0zen/>

(Front page snapshots from Sep 29, 2007. (wouldn't have helped you in this case))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes that hits pretty close to home I must say... Here comes the depressive cycle again, LOL!

</comment><comment><USER12> I feel as if this article was written about me.

<comment><USER13> Me too (and everyone else, it seems), but I wonder how much of this is Forer Effect. If you go through his description point by point, you'll see that each thing is something that people like to think of themselves, or tend to notice in themselves, but not in other people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I never thought that being bipolar meant living through, frenetic herculean work cycles with copious amounts of output followed by long periods of inactivity. That describes me to a T, though.

I never thought I was bipolar.

</comment><comment><USER6> This reads like my life story. I actually went a little further - I came close to failing my undergrad degree because I was bored and partying too much, then I put in a ton of effort at the last minute - enough that one of my lecturers offered me the opportunity to do a PhD under him... then I started thinking about the futility of it all again, and slacked-off the first couple of years of the PhD!

Fortunately, the extreme ups-and-downs seem to be lessening as I get older.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article feels like it was written about me as well!

</comment><comment><USER16> _It amplifies your power and enables you to embark on projects beyond the scope of lesser languages like C._

Like Unix?

Oops. Bullshit detected.

<comment><USER12> You're missing the point. It amplifies the power of a single individual to do something ON THEIR OWN beyond what they could accomplish with something like C. Last time I checked UNIX wasn't written by ONE person.

<comment><USER16> _wasn't written by ONE person._

LOL. Two.

ADDENDUM: Oh, and his "point" is pointless. One person, two people, N people are meaningless distinctions. Besides, most Lisp projects that have any real success are group efforts as well, I'm sure. The REAL point is always the same: What are those projects? Where are they? How _successful_ are they, really? I'll point it out as often as this article gets re-posted: When you compare C/C++ with Lisp based upon the _only thing that matters_ , results, then Lisp is a near-complete failure. The applications that really matter, that people really use, that have real performance, that solve real problems, are written in C/C++/Blub, or some scripting language.

<comment><USER7> I actually make almost daily use of a social news site that's written in a Lisp dialect. The guy who wrote it had a prior success with Lisp. If you're interested email me and I'll send you the link.

<comment><USER16> Okay, Yet-another-digg-clone versus <http://www.research.att.com/~bs/applications.html>

...and that list is woefully abbreviated.

<comment><USER17> Suppose we are traveling through a forest and come to a ravine. The drop is thousands of feet; so far away that we can't see who might have fallen to their death while attempting to cross. There are two bridges. One is a jumbled together mass of rotting boards and vines, the other is made of solid stone. We know that 500 people have crossed the rotting wooden bridge successfully, and know of only four who have crossed the stone bridge.

Which bridge do you think we should take?

<comment><USER18> Not exactly sure what you mean but my answer is:

Neither before also knowing how many people _attempted_ to cross each bridge, so I know the success ratio for each.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A startup is filling SF's empty luxury rentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Startup-is-quietly-packing-SF-s-empty-luxury-11039436.php <comment><USER2> Maybe I am reading into this but I feel like the author makes this sound nefarious and really uncommon.

When I was moving to the South Bay and had only two weeks to figure out my plan, can't tell you how many somewhat affordable room rentals in non-luxury apartments had crazier setups.

Some of my favorites: 1\. Spacious open room with bed (it was someone's garage with a sheet down and a mattress on top of the concrete)

2\. Pretty common: nice place but you were not allowed to use the kitchen

3\. Converted Living Room (no joke, the photo was a twin bed in a living room with Office Depot boxes to create a divider)

So yeah, I get why someone would share a room in exchange for having some amenities.

<comment><USER3> Number 2 always stuck out to me on rental listings... Why would I want to live somewhere where I couldn't use a vital function of a home/shelter?

<comment><USER4> It makes me angry that I have to pay for a kitchen by law (if I rent or buy a whole 'dwelling'), despite never cooking.

Different strokes.

<comment><USER5> I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not :/

<comment><USER6> Would you be happy if you had to pay for a toolshed by law?

Yes, you have to keep your grass short, but why do you need to pay for a toolshed to store your lawn mower when you might just want to hire someone instead and not waste time?

You don't need a kitchen any more than you need a toolshed, and it sucks to be forced to pay for something you don't use, especially when every inch costs you.

<comment><USER7> Some people have unique situations and do not need the use of a kitchen at all. My diet consists entirely of bottled Soylent and protein bars. I never need to cook or utilize any other functions provided by a kitchen.

<comment><USER5> I reckon the number of folks who claim never to have any need of a kitchen is probably a statistical rounding error, well maybe only slightly more if SF.

But good luck trying to flog your flat or house to the next potential owner when you decided to rip out the worktops, hob etc to re-purpose the kitchen for some other non-food activity.

I thought I'd heard it all regarding peculiar habitation behaviours until this sub-thread.

<comment><USER4> If it's going to be so hard to flog anyways then why does government feel the need to mandate kitchens? Sounds like the free market should take care of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > market glut of dense, expensive housing. Since the beginning of 2015, nearly > 22,000 units have been built or approved in San Francisco (excluding the > massive Candlestick Point development). Of these, 19,500—89 percent—are > "above moderate," meaning they can likely only be afforded by individuals > making more than $90,000 a year. "We are in the midst of the biggest > apartment-building boom since World War II," says Patrick Carlisle, chief > market analyst at the Paragon Real Estate Group.

The author insinuating that enough housing has already been built, or that building doesn't bring rents down, is pretty rage-inducing.

How many new _people_ have started seeking housing in San Francisco since 2015? I'm going to guess it's more like 200,000.

<comment><USER9> 200k in the Bay, maybe. SF city population is 800k-odd, no way there's 25% churn in two years…

The message I got was that the new housing is aimed at top of market when mid & low end is where it's really needed.

<comment><USER10> That said, if someone moves from an older (and therefore cheaper) apartment into one of the new and expensive apartments it frees up some mid&low end housing.

<comment><USER11> Most rent-control laws allow re-pricing to market prices when someone moves out, so someone moving out doesn't typically open up that same price point. You end up with situations where your next-door neighbor is paying half as much for the same apartment. Property owners and real estate developers aren't going to price units lower out of the goodness of their hearts, or due to "supply and demand"...they're happy to let $3k/month 1bedrooms sit empty until some sucker comes along to pay their ransom. By colluding to create a situation where one can't get a studio below $2600/month in SF proper, they can ensure slow but steady growth.

It'd be a great experiment if someone had the cash to do it: open an apartment tower with units priced much closer to their actual cost in SF. It'd probably be around 30% of what they currently go for.

<comment><USER12> No they are not happy. This is why there are deals on apartments in many buildings with vacancies. A great example of this is the big "L7" complex that just started renting the first finished units at 8th and Harrison. Those studios are advertised as $3000/mo but with two free months now given to those who lease for a year which means they are actually $2500/mo units. This kind of gaming is going on all over the market and there will probably be some property owners slash bag holders selling off assets and being restructured in order to get through this. Much of the recent construction was based on the idea that the market could support any amount of luxury units that were built. The current slump is testing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So they are building too much luxury housing which normally would cause prices to go down but fortunately a startup is making it easier to pack people in like college students or illegal migrants? Wonderbar.

If I rented a "luxury" apartment by myself and found I was living next door to 5-10 people crammed into one place I'd be pretty angry.

<comment><USER14> Why the heck would that make you angry? What's it to ya?

<comment><USER15> So they overuse the shared resources - the other poster mentioned elevators, but also gym, parking, etc etc.

But also the more people, the higher the odds that there's one of them that just has to do whatever obnoxious thing - like smoke, make noise at all hours, etc etc. Nobody agrees on whose responsibility taking out the trash it is so it piles up and smells.

Vetting can reduce but not eliminate that.

Nobody wants to be next to the "Frat apartment" that is always partying at 2AM on a weeknight.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for explaining, I didn't even think of shared resources since I've never lived in such a place (and find the idea odd -- wouldn't it be safer, providing more choice, NOT to get all your services from one provider?)

Shouldn't a luxury place have good walls in place to avoid noise though? Seems like a luxury place that doesn't do this is kind of a scam.

<comment><USER15> Things like elevators and hallways are really pretty basic, and not subject to choice. But then, many people choose to live in detached houses so they don't have to rely on cooperating with neighbors for anything (I guess there are always shared civic resources, like water/sewer/streets, but you get the idea).

I honestly don't know when it comes to walls. I've asked at a bunch of places and the answer seems to be a variant of "they're normal, I guess?"

Your neighbors having a small house party with ~10 people over, a few drinks, some music is one thing. It's when it becomes very big and/or intoxicated event that it becomes a huge pain.

People barfing in the stairwells, physically running into the walls, ringing the neighbor's doorbell at 2am because they can't figure out where they're going (or need to lean on it to keep from collapsing). My last apartment was next to a perpetual AirBnB where these kind of things were sometimes a problem (probably < 5 % of the tenants, but 1 out of 20 nights of noise at all hours still sucks)

My current apartment does not have these issues. I still have the sirens and motorcycles of a very busy street to deal with, but earplugs deal with that well enough to leave the windows open at night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. It looks like they are not subletting/subleasing, but working with property management companies to sign up tenants. They are basically offering a service to match tenants and collect payment without any risk of dealing with roomate issues. The tenants sign a lease directly with the property management company.

The are probably "quiet" about it because they don't want property managers to do it themselves.

I looked at one apartment complext LSeven. The floorplan 2bd/2ba goes for $4,683, but HomeShare is probably collecting $6,300 per month on that unit.

I had roomates in college. I would never, ever do that ever again.

I had one roomate who would masterbate at night on the couch in the living room, and seemed to think it was acceptable behavior. Had another one who would come in after 2 am strip down and fall asleep on the couch in his whitey-tighty underwear while watching ESPN. I've had to kick out roomates that stopped paying rent. I had a roomate break our lease so he could move in with his ex-girlfriend so he could try to save their relationship -- and that didn't work out so well for him.

<comment><USER17> Seems to me like you didn't vet your roommates carefully. I have had one roommate in my whole life (maybe lived together for 6 months). I was a bit of a pain in his ass as I was obsessing a lot over cleanliness of the place but we managed quite well. We had guests come over, parties, bring GF/Date and allocate time for the other guy to have sex (it was a studio). So I think it can be managed, you just need to vet carefully and be strict.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18>
       Skyscrapers bloom in America
       Cadillacs zoom in America
       Industry boom in America
       12 to a room in America

`America`, West Side Story, 1961

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6wo2wpT2k&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6wo2wpT2k&feature=youtu.be&t=2m20s)

</comment><comment><USER19> The only thing luxurious about some of these apartments is that they cost a lot and sometimes have air conditioning and heating.

<comment><USER9> > _sometimes have air conditioning and heating_

For SF, having both _is_ a luxury!

<comment><USER19> Yes but in the rest of the US it isn't

<comment><USER9> That's grand pal

<comment><USER19> What? Don't like being told your city is screwed up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lot of these new buildings are in less desirable neighborhoods. SOMA is desirable from a convenience to freeways and work standpoint, but it does not have the charm of the more established neighborhoods. I wonder if some of the glut is simply that the new housing is in areas where high end renters don't want to live.

<comment><USER21> Everything (restaurants) closes at 4 PM too in SOMA because people go to SOMA to work but don't live there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the startup industry in SF is, in its own odd sort of way, sending a clear message to young people: "Get married." You can share an apartment, and you don't need separate bedrooms.

<comment><USER23> And the tax incentives!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was looking into homeshare a while ago, and it is a reasonable deal.

They take spacious 2 bedroom apartments and put 3-5 people in them, by converting the living room.

(currently I am living in a 2 bedroom with 3 people in it, via Craigslist . )

It is a moderately better situation than living in a college dorm.

So the article is way overblown with its talk of "giving up privacy".

<comment><USER25> > It is a moderately better situation than living in a college dorm.

That is not a good situation by any standard.

Maybe that's okay when you're a broke 20 yo student with no income.

<comment><USER24> Basically everyone I know in the bay area lives with a roommate, and these are well paid software engineers.

Renting out the living room of your apartment is usually a pretty good deal, and is perfectly normal.

Sure, if you start to talk about hacker house levels of bad, that sucks. But this is NOT that.

<comment><USER26> Is it legal though? Both according to your lease and according to occupancy laws? (Referring to over-occupancy by renting out living rooms and/or multiple people per room.)

<comment><USER24> Yes it is legal. The apartment complex that I am living in allows 5 people to a 2 person bedroom, and I've seen a couple groups do that.

Renting out the living room or even putting 2 people to a room is almost always legal.

Over occupancy laws only come into play in completely ridiculous situations like 3 people to a room and up.

<comment><USER27> "Unapproved subtenant (approval can be either stated or implied) is the only person still remaining in the unit (subtenant holding over)"

Here is a list of just causes for eviction in San Francisco. [https://www.sftu.org/justcauses/](https://www.sftu.org/justcauses/)

<comment><USER24> They are not unapproved though.

The way these things work is that the apartment complex puts you on the lease! That is by definition approved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That so-called "luxury" apartments end up getting rented to students and entry-level workers (even if they have to share) should be celebrated, not mocked or viewed with suspicion. Hopefully, it will be a sign that developers will start to target the broader market in earnest in the near future. But the article spins it as some nefarious plot, and anti-displacement groups (of the supply and demand denier type) share it cynically without even realizing that it is positive news[1]

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/Vanishingsf/posts/647239248801218](https://www.facebook.com/Vanishingsf/posts/647239248801218)

</comment><comment><USER29> I've noticed the huge wave of new luxury apartments being completed. I wonder why they don't lower the rental prices instead of partnering with HomeShare.

<comment><USER9> I guess, because they get more money this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I thought building tons of apartments and kicking people out of stable living situations was supposed to decrease rents.

Apparently the investors/builders have a price floor they cant go under else the situation becomes financially unviable.

Also - it would appear that several of these new builds are having a tough time filling units at luxury prices.

Who knew?! I thought if we just kept building the market fairy would magically lower prices everywhere.

<comment><USER31> Also, I'd love to hear more about how building a high rise on what used to be a parking lot involves "kicking people out of stable living situations"

<comment><USER28> Indeed, _none_ of the new buildings that Homeshare advertises displaced any residences. It's a common misconception that construction in San Francisco displaces housing. It was true during Redevelopment, but it is not the case with the past couple decades of construction.

• 1222 Harrison St was a bus depot[1]

• 340 Fremont St used to be a few "institutional" buildings including the "Seafarer's Union" building[2][3]

• 1010 16th St aka Daggett Project was a paint factory[4]

• 1333 Powell St, Emeryville aka Parkside Project was a couple office buildings and large parking lots[5]

[1] [http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2012/12/the_massive_plans...](http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2012/12/the_massive_plans_for_the_shortsited_soma_site_at_8th_a.html)

[2] [http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2012/09/340_fremont_scoop...](http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2012/09/340_fremont_scoop_permits_pulled_for_400_foot_tower.html)

[3] [http://sf- planning.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Docume...](http://sf- planning.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/24-2000.1081E_Rincon_Hill_Plan_EIR_Part_1.pdf)

[4] [http://oewd.org/daggett-project](http://oewd.org/daggett-project)

[5] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZkY04cvzUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZkY04cvzUE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How do they get around violating rental leases ? Are they essentially subletting ?

<comment><USER33> It looks like they quietly make agreements with the corporate housing developers beforehand. They don't want the deal to be publicized since it's not good for their image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This was one of the plans I had for housing next year as a college student. My friend had invited me to share the living room with another person in a 2-bedroom apartment that goes for $4400 a month; splitting the costs, we would've paid around $750 a person. The deal with the manager turned south, however, because he wanted to increase the rent. Now I'm aiming for a 1-bedroom apartment or studio to share with my brother that typically goes for $2000+. This is Berkeley we're talking about, so I can't imagine how crazy it is in San Francisco.

<comment><USER35> Hate to break it to you, but Berkeley is going to be more expensive to rent than SF.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely not. I pay $2500 for a 650sqft 1-bedroom in West Berkeley with a parking space. The fixtures are a little cheap, but it's 2001 construction in good shape with solid noise isolation, no pests, etc. The location is urban infill, so industrial, but safe, and similar apartment buildings are popping up around it. It's an obnoxiously long walk (or longer bus ride) to BART, but if you're willing to drive/Uber to a station, the location is fine.

Last I checked, similar units in SF were running at least $3800.

Yes, I could have a crappier apartment, or a shared apartment, or no parking, or several of the above, for a little less in SF. Berkeley is still my best option.

If 2-3 of my peers decide to live in the same amount of space I claim for myself, then the price will rise until the only way I can afford to live here is by sharing with 2-3 people. So while I am excited about the new housing construction in my neighborhood, I am not very excited about HomeShare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> stay hungry. stay foolish.

</comment><comment><USER37> > quietly

when pretending your article isn't clickbait or can't work a scare quote in your headline

<comment><USER38> Thanks! We've removed that from the HN headline.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Visualize Graph Theory - <AUTHOR> https://treksit.netlify.app/ <comment><USER2> Appears to be a repackaging of Tronix by Danijel Durakovic.[1] Includes his code but this is not mentioned in the credits.[2]

[1] [http://pulzed.com/](http://pulzed.com/) [2] [https://treksit.netlify.app/credits.html](https://treksit.netlify.app/credits.html)

<comment><USER3> Yup, totally plagiarized.

<comment><USER4> Changed a few colors, and added a background that makes the page lag. Didn't change the text or even the order of the levels. The small size of the bounding box is because he didn't expand it from the original.

<comment><USER5> Meanwhile, the post is still at the top of HN and he keeps receiving clicks. Can the mods change the link to the original one?

<comment><USER3> I did flag it. Maybe more people flagging it would help?

Plagiarism really does get my dander up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I invented this game in 2005, it's called Planarity.

[http://planarity.net/](http://planarity.net/)

It has a wikipedia page!

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

Since Flash is dead I rewrote in JavaScript:

[http://johntantalo.com/raphael.planarity/](http://johntantalo.com/raphael.planarity/)

Here's a short doc about how the puzzle generation algorithm works:

[http://johntantalo.com/wiki/Planarity/](http://johntantalo.com/wiki/Planarity/)

<comment><USER7> Wow, you got cloned by Tatham _fast_

        Author: Simon Tatham <email@example.com>
        Date:   Sat Jul 16 19:51:53 2005 +0000

        New puzzle: `Untangle', cloned (with the addition of random grid
        generation) from a simple but rather fun Flash game I saw this
        morning.

How much did you make via PayPal donations back then, if you don't mind my asking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fun challenge, but the draggable area for the graphs is small, and it's not obvious where the boundaries are. I kept going past that boundary then realizing I can't set a vertex down.

</comment><comment><USER9> That's also one of the puzzles in Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection ([https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/))

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I was going to say, I've played a lot of this because I ran Kubuntu on my laptop for several years and Simon Tatham's games are sort of our win-98-minesweeper.

<comment><USER10> Simon Tatham's puzzles are also available as mobile apps -- ad-free, and highly recommended -- and can also be played via the Web. The Signpost puzzle is my personal favourite. :)

[https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool. Increase the drag boundary box immediately.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's neat, but I'm not sure I learned about graph theory. I liked playing with it but the background was a bit too much for my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarity_testing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarity_testing)

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice game, but the moving background somehow makes me quite nauseous.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am not sure I learned anything about graph theory from playing this.

</comment><comment><USER16> Liked it, except the limited boundary and the irritating animated background. Staring at the screen for a minute makes me dizzy

<comment><USER17> Nobody tell them about hyperspeed (click and hold on the background) ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like this, but I swear there was a Flash version of something very similar that went viral about 15 years ago.

<comment><USER19> "planarity"

The game is cool, but I think the title is overly general. It contaons a graph visualizer, which doesn't show much in the way of theory; and it's a railroad, not a playground.

<comment><USER20> No- he outright plagiarized this. Even the code: [http://pulzed.com/](http://pulzed.com/)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I saw that in another comment and flagged the posting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I feel like most of these graphs seem to be the same graph just with a different initial conditions?

<comment><USER22> Here's a Numberphile video that talks about embedding graphs. I think this happens because the subset of graphs that are able to be embedded in a plane is actually fairly limited.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBkTIp6ajAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBkTIp6ajAg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For anyone wanting to play it a bit bigger (albeit a bit blurry) and without the background you can load the iframe directly [https://treksit.netlify.app/tron/](https://treksit.netlify.app/tron/)

</comment><comment><USER24> It's cool (well, not cool if these accusations of plagiarism are true, but superficially cool at least), but for some reason, the combination of frustration, tiny working area, and horrendous background really raised my anxiety levels.

</comment><comment><USER25> Feels a bit like untangling rope, which makes sense

</comment><comment><USER26> I like, but: Boundary, background, no "you've finished" (it just stops advancing). Also, I have not had a productive day.

</comment><comment><USER27> _Spoiler Alert_

The gotcha thing about this puzzle is sort of greedy approach; try to disentangle the local sub-graphs - concentrate on any nodes of your choice and their connections - and the global graph starts to fall in its place. It's trivial approaching it like this.

<comment><USER28> I think I just naturally gravitated to that method after a few levels.

I wonder what an algorithmic approach to this would look like, would it act similarly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Similar game, but PGC: [https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/unta...](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/untangle.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> It reminds me my Javascript / WebGL game I made back in 2011 :) [http://crazybugs.ivank.net/](http://crazybugs.ivank.net/)

The design was ispired by Wold of Goo :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Very good job, the bonus area made up for the fact that there are only 20 levels :) Opening up the dev console sent the robots for a little jump lol

</comment><comment><USER32> I enjoy puzzle games like this, but can anyone help me understand what the relationship is to Graph Theory (of which I have little knowledge).

</comment><comment><USER33> the moving backgrounds are gonna give people issues.

i also had trouble reading the text on the backgrounds; consider changing the font colour to something that has significantly a different value (as in, Hue- Saturation-Value) from the background.

also as somebody has pointed out, the drag box felt tiny.

<comment><USER34> Click and hold on the background. Now you've got issues!

Also click on bonus area and then perturb the things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> That's fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER36> Good but I got the hang of it very quickly and it became boring.

</comment><comment><USER37> Had good fun

</comment><comment><USER38> went through the first ten in under 2 minutes. got bored. by the second one, it's easy to see how to find the solution pretty much immediately.</comment>


Juul Labs CEO to Step Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-25/juul-labs-ceo-to-step-down-amid-growing-vaping-backlash <comment><USER2> And he is being replaced by a former Marlboro employee. I am sure the public will feel so much safer knowing that the advertising will be handled by a Big Tobacco veteran moving forward.

<comment><USER3> All the 'big names' companies like 'Juul' and 'Blu' are heavily invested in by 'Big Tobacco'. These are the companies you see in gas stations and convenience stores across the America.

But these big companies can't compete with all the Vape Shops that are insanely popular and are everywhere.

This is why there is just a big hubbub over regulation and the deaths over black market Marijuana cartridges. These massive corporations can afford to deal with things like FDA certification of flavors and such things.

Were as the small companies, that make up the bulk of the vape market, cannot. So they will get pushed out of the market and 'big tobacco' will be the only ones that are allowed to sell in the USA. They really don't care if they have bad names and are used as targets by the regulators when they are going to be the only ones allowed to sell to the public.

Governments are going along with this because tobacco is a massive tax base. They can't regulate small business and internet sales in the same manner they can regulate and tax a small number of massive corporations.

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

According to 'Lung Cancer Fact Sheet' there was a estimated 154,000 Americans that would of died to lung cancer in 2018. Tobacco smoking contributes to all types of cancer.

This is why Vaping, which should cut these lung cancer rates by over 95%, is one of the most important public health break-throughs in recent memory.

If allowed to continue to exist in the way it is now it should do more to cut down on cancer deaths then billions of dollars in medical research spent in the past 20 years.

People have found that vaping is massively more effective at helping them to quit smoking compared to patches, gum, or any other medical-grade nicotine delivery method. It's extremely cheap, it's effective, and it's safe and has none of the side effects associated with any other type of drug being sold by doctors to help people quit.

And yet you have politicians now scrambling all over each other to flush this miracle down the toilet to protect their tax revenue and help out 'Big Tobacco'.

And when you look close at the facts behind 'vaping deaths' it's pretty obvious that these are related to drug prohibition more then anything else. These are deaths that are massively contributed to by regulation. If people bought those cartridges from gas stations or vape shops they would still be alive, but they couldn't because they were illegal in their states.

<comment><USER4> "This is why Vaping, which should cut these lung cancer rates by over 95%, is one of the most important public health break-throughs in recent memory."

Not so sure about this. If the recent lung illnesses are tied to vaping, then that really can't be true.

Also, the 154,000 dying of lung cancer would undoubtedly be those who started smoking tobacco decades ago. The overall trend of smoking tobacco is downward. That alone would decrease the future number of lung cancer deaths. Hard to pin that on vaping, which seems to be (even just a few short years after widespread adoption) is leading to sudden cases of lung illnesses/deaths.

<comment><USER5> There needs to be some more information out there as to what specifically is causing this illness. Everyone is quick to lump all vapes together when there are a ton of rumors that the ones making people sick/dead are blackmarket/bootleg THC cartridges from China. For all of these illnesses and deaths to come on so quickly, it seems more like a tainted product than the typical PG/VG/flavoring mixture causing this. We already know smoking kills. It kills way more people every day than have ever died from vaping. If we aren't going to ban cigarettes too, then we need to regulate them both equally. I don't think vape ads on TV are appropriate and Juul employees visiting schools is definitely not good, regardless of whether or not the kids are 18+. They can be used as smoking cessation but they can also just be used as an alternative as compared to patches and gum which are really only good for cessation.

<comment><USER6> "Rumors" from e.g. the Minnesota department of public health

<comment><USER5> I hadn't seen anything official, only people saying it in comments so I didn't want to imply it was a fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a very mixed reaction to all the e-cigarette shenanigans.

There's part of me that feels like it's a health corollary to the Jevons Paradox, if you make nicotine delivery potentially less damaging, it would stand to follow you lower the risk barrier and might end up with more nicotine users than you started with.

I'm def not in high school anymore, and maybe for that reason, the messaging I've personally seen from Juul does is entirely different. Literally the only stuff I've seen from Juul in the wild has been,

* "If you weren't already smoking, don't use Juul" * "we support any effort to raise the minimum age of purchasing nicotine products to 21 (T21 laws)"

I certainly wouldn't be taken aback if this were just one face of a many-faced beast, and with the other hand they were trying to cultivate a new generation of customers.

But it's with a sort of bemused annoyance that the common refrain I've heard from activists and public policy folks ends up converging at "Juul should have never existed." The cynic in me thinks it wonderful if all our problems had the decency to never exist. It just seems aggravating of all issues, the wheels of the machine politic turn so freely for flavored e-cigarettes.

<comment><USER8> I've noticed a major cognitive bias most people have regarding vaping. Basically along the lines of "smoking's very bad for health, therefore vaping (or nicotine consumption) is probably pretty bad too".

Here's the facts. Smoking is bad because smoldering organic compounds are very damaging. It doesn't matter what is being burned, all smoke is bad in roughly equal proportion to the volume of smoke being inhaled. It's why sitting by a wood-burning fireplace does as much damage as a pack of cigarettes.

(As an aside, we generally don't see the same health problems with cannabis smokers as we do with tobacco smokers. That's primarily because cannabis smokers consume significantly less volume than tobacco smokers. A pack-a-day smoker is smoldering 140 grams of dried organic material. A very heavy cannabis user might go through 7 grams of high-THC weed per week.)

So the fact is we don't really know much about the long-term health consequences of vaping. It simply hasn't been widespread for long enough for us to gather any large-scale epidemiological data. It's possible it may be very harmful. It's also possible that it may be basically harmless.

But the fact that smoking is unhealthy tells us _nothing_ about vaping. There are no smoldering organic compounds involved in vaping. Therefore if it is unhealthy it would be because of a totally separate mechanism. In general there are very very few human activities that are as unhealthy as smoking. Heavy smoking literally quadruples all cause mortality.

There are many many activities that push humans' physiological baseline. High- altitude living, exotic or restricted diets, mega-doses of vitamins, scuba diving, high salt consumption, high-dose hallucinogens, keeping a nocturnal schedule, heavy caffeine consumption, drinking too much or too little water, being a radiation worker, artificial sweeteners, heavy manual labor, tons and tons of synthesized dyes and chemicals. Most of them are basically harmless, and none of them have anywhere near the health impact of smoking.

It would quite unexpected if vaping just coincidentally happened to be one of the few human activities that had a smoking-magnitude effect. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all.

As for nicotine consumption, the balance of the evidence is that it's very slightly unhealthy at worse, and potentially beneficial for neurological health.[1]

[1][https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine](https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Smokers switching to ecigs is a good thing. Significantly proved health outcomes.

But kids adopting flavored ecigs and beginning smoking is horrible.

So we need to limit ecigs to the first use case and minimize the second otherwise ecigs/vaping could be an overall net negative.

So I do strongly favor no advertising at all and no flavors or colors except mentol or something else which appeals to existing smokers.

<comment><USER10> Fruity flavors were a life-saver for me, because it allowed me to distance myself from tobacco flavor so much, that it made me nauseous when I would try to smoke a real cigarette again. It just so happens that the "something else which appeals to existing smokers", e.g., fruity flavors, may also be appealing to non-smokers. However, I don't see that as a strong enough argument to ban them.

<comment><USER11> My concern with 'fruity flavors' is the molecular diversity. Many of these compounds are considered safe for human consumption (edible) but under- researched when vaporized an inhaled, which has the potential for formation of novel unexpected compounds, especially in heterogenous solutions.

I think the risk from these compounds is likely an order of magnitude less than the risks of cigarette smoking, and these risks will decrease as we get more data on longer-term use for these compounds.

I read one study that found benzene formation in vapor from higher-watt devices, but not in lower ones. I think using minimum necessary power is a good harm mitigation measure until more data comes in, that would likely help with flavors as well.

Seems like stringent labeling requirements for vape juice would be a cheap win for regulators and consumers. Give us an MSDS with the exact constituents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also, (forgive me if I get the jargon wrong here...) isn't the vaping health crisis the article mentions due to sketchy THC vaping solutions that have Vitamin E oil in them? Not Juul's nicotine stuff?

I.e. because THC isn't water-soluble, it has to be suspended/dissolved in some oil-based thing. Lipids + lungs = BAD.

<comment><USER13> There's two vaping crises.

One is THC vaping solutions that are killing people.

The second is that we're currently living through a meteoric rise in nicotine addiction among teenagers. For a very long time, teenage nicotine use was going down, due to declines in smoking rates. Smoking rates still continue to decline, but nicotine vaping rates have gone up and to the right. 1 in 4 high school students are now vaping nicotine. That number is growing by ~20% year over year.

This is a public health crisis.

<comment><USER14> Is caffeine addiction a serious public health crisis?

Nictoine on its own is no more harmful than caffeine.

[https://news.sky.com/story/nicotine-no-worse-than-cup-of- cof...](https://news.sky.com/story/nicotine-no-worse-than-cup-of-coffee- report-10349589)

<comment><USER13> Quitting caffeine is as easy as a few days, maybe a week of feeling like shit. Take an aspirin or two, and move on with your life.

Quitting nicotine is a fucking struggle.

It doesn't kill you, but it has negative impacts on your life, when you aren't using. Addicts become really shitty to be around, when they haven't had their hit for a few hours.

What exactly is the public benefit to getting children addicted to a substance that is incredibly difficult to kick?

<comment><USER15> I'm also not forced to consume caffeine merely by standing next to you.

<comment><USER16> What is the actual quantity of nicotine in second hand vapor?

Most likely not very high.

<comment><USER15> Got any studies to back that up?

Seems to be high enough to feel the effect. Never experienced this by just standing next to someone sipping coffee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To be succeeded by a former tobacco executive. The takeover of Juul by big tobacco is now complete, and they have someone with strong experience downplaying, denying and obfuscating to weather the storm.

<comment><USER18> Next up: regulatory capture. Vaping right now is super cheap because of all the options from different companies. So what's a multibillion dollar international conglomerate to do? Well, make the little guys go away with onerous regulations, of course. It's the American Way™.

<comment><USER19> A Juul habit is not super cheap, it's more expensive than an equivalent cigarette habit, by far.

<comment><USER18> JUUL's competition is super cheap. Which is why JUUL/Phillip Morris will lobby to have most of them regulated out of existence. You can get a bottle of the same strength juice that's in a JUUL pod for the same price as a pack of pods. But the bottle has 30mL and the pack has 2mL.

<comment><USER11> I'm someone who vapes, and I wouldn't mind more regulation on juices. Nicotine is a very potent chemical, and concentrated solutions are effectively potent poison. A swig from one of these bottles could easily kill you.

At minimum, I believe there should be labeling and quality controls standards, and child-safety caps. A concentration limit may be sensible as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They reached out to me on LinkedIn. Don't know why they need software engineers, but I don't think I'm aligned with their mission -- whatever it may be.

<comment><USER21> Who cares if you're "aligned with a mission"? It's a paycheck.

<comment><USER22> In addition to the paycheck, some people like to be rewarded with the knowledge (or at least hope) that their work is somehow making the world a slightly better place, or at least not making things worse for somebody.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I get how this is happening and is independent from other things going on in the world... But what is the deal with all these CEO's stepping down?

<comment><USER24> Confirmation bias? Better access to information?

<comment><USER23> Could be, looking at my usual business news site, they got 4 stories about CEO's resigning. Very atypical, but could just be part of a abnormally on a normal distribution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just managed to quit Juul's after a ~5 year binge. It costed me ~60 dollars a week or so and unlike cigarettes where you typically go outside and make a little event out of it, these little guys can be huffed anywhere, so that usually causes you to build a constant huffing habit. Your entire day is constantly revolving around this little device, it terrified me to realize that I needed some external device/chemicals just to feel normal every day.

</comment><comment><USER26> There is an emerging argument that vaping is less health damaging than smoking and it likely is, however, Nicotine addiction is key to the business model and that will not change.

<comment><USER27> That's not an emerging argument, that's been the argument from the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Outline: [https://outline.com/XZ7M3t](https://outline.com/XZ7M3t)</comment>


US court orders American companies to give up info stored on Europe servers - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11125962/US-threat-to-British-online-privacy.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This takes surveillance to a new level where data about Europeans - stored in Europe - is subject to US jurisdiction due to being held by American companies...

"Why should the American security services be able to access to our MPs emails, when even the British security services cannot?" he asked."

"There remains a concern that if data is held on a US company's equipment – wherever in the world it might be – it is accessible to the American legal process," said Prof Walden."</comment>


Video Game Approved as Prescription Medicine - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gaming/video-game-approved-as-prescription-medicine <comment><USER2> adventures of tintin game download for android Free latest version :

[https://androidblue.com/the-adventures-of-tintin- apk/](https://androidblue.com/the-adventures-of-tintin-apk/)</comment>


Apples Accessibility Consistency - <AUTHOR> https://geeksmodo.com/apples-accessibility-consistency/ <comment><AUTHOR> This article explores Apple's consistent attention to accessibility, and how other tech companies with commitments to accessibility, like Microsoft and Google, compare to Apple in their accessibility efforts. It also shows where these companies can improve their consistency, and that no company is perfect at being an Assistive Technology provider yet.</comment>


Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm Kevin, co-founder of Pathrise (https://www.pathrise.com). Pathrise is an online replacement for career services that helps students get better jobs and make more money. If and only if they get hired during our program, students pay us back a tuition fee of 7% of their income for 1 year.
For more context, you can read about us here: https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/09/pathrise-wants-to-be-the-....
The problem: universities aren't directly incentivized to get students good jobs since they make all their money in upfront tuition. As a result, college career services centers aren't results-driven and can't properly support their students. Most students are essentially left to figure things out on their own, and they think to themselves, career services are useless. The easiest way to verify this is to ask your average student how many times they've visited their career services center in the last year.
In reality, career services (that actually work) are probably one of the highest value things a student can receive. You can take any step of the job search (e.g. online applications), train students on one technique (e.g. lead gen and cold emailing), and produce significant and measurable returns (e.g. we've measured that this technique in particular can 4X response rate from under 5% to over 20%). Pathrise does this with every step of the job-hunting process, from training students from a 2/6 to a 5/6 in technical interviewing scores based on real company rubrics to helping students get a 10%+ higher salary through negotiation.
In this sense, we're kind of like YC for students instead of startups. Founders give 7% equity to YC because they know YC will increase their company's prospects by more than 7%. Students give us 7% of their first year's income, and our program is designed to increase their job prospects by more than 7%. They know we'll do everything in our power to provide them that value because we have aligned incentives - we only make money if they do.
What this ends up looking like is an online accelerator for students that takes place in 12 monthly batches a year, followed by an average of 3-4 months of support until a student is placed. Instead of focusing on a technical education (like our friends at Lambda School), Pathrise is entirely about optimizing your job search. This involves services like resume review, prospecting, referrals, interview preparation, and negotiation advice. Again, unlike career services today, we track every data point so we can hold ourselves accountable to actually produce significant and measurable value for our students.
Thanks for reading! I'd be happy to answer any of your questions and would greatly appreciate your feedback. <comment><USER2> > because we have aligned incentives [with our students] - we only make money > if they do.

If you sign up all students and do nothing further, you still get your 7%. That is not aligned.

To align incentives you would have to align the students payments with how much you improved their outcomes - much harder to do of course.

I think your model has the same risks as real estate commissions where the selling agent is highly motivated to sell quickly and they have little motivation to get a higher price.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that you have some good points here that we've actually debated internally quite a bit. First, I would say the program is designed so that we commit a specific amount of time and resources per student, so we're motivated to work on their behalf to recover that investment that we make for free.

As for the risk of trying to sell quickly rather than looking for quality, I think the most effective way we can tackle it is by also measuring the student's satisfaction with their final offer.

One of the most important things to protect a student here as well is they don't have to accept any offer they're not happy with. They can reject an offer to look for more and we don't have any say to stop them.

Whenever we do run into a situation like this where our advice may be affected by a conflict of interest, we also do our best to inform the student first. Something like, "Pathrise will make money if you accept this offer, so please take what I say with a grain of salt, but..." and then we'll just have an honest conversation about what they're looking for and if the offer is a fit.

<comment><USER3> Committing a specific amount of time gives you an incentive to better screen your applicants. It still doesn't give you an incentive to find them the highest offer. Let's say that someone could get 110k with a significant effort by your company and 100k without you.

You guys doing very little gets you 7k.

You guys putting forth significant effort gets you 7.7k.

That's not much difference and it makes a lot more sense for you to put that extra effort into finding another customer to get another 7k.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmmm, this is a really interesting line of logic.

With this logic, I think you can look at the income share agreement more as us taking on the risk rather than aligned incentives.

The problem with some potentially good career coaching services out there is that charging students thousands of dollars upfront without actually having placed them yet just feels unfair.

On the other hand, with income sharing, students know we have a similar risk of getting nothing out of the experience as they do, which motivates us to make their experience as impactful as possible.

Even if we continue at an extremely high rate of placements, let's say 95%+, for the other 5% of students where the worst case happens, the income share agreement model is much better than upfront payment because the cost of these invested advising hours and resources is on us rather than on the student.

Outside of that, I think from a purely revenue perspective you're basically right that the incentive to invest a lot of time for a little salary is not incentivized.

Part of the reason why we are still incentivized to put effort into our students (especially if we can track measurable results) is that those results will ultimately lead to much better user acquisition anyways, especially since we expect natural referrals for Pathrise to be one of our main sources of growth moving forward.

I do have to admit though, that though this is a very real incentive core to our business, it isn't an incentive that's actually integrated into the revenue model itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would advise them to not cold-email students about 'Engineering fellowships' which upon further inspection are just resumed workshops and interview prep. If you want students to take your company and service seriously, don't send out disingenuous emails about 'impressive backgrounds'. It makes your company look like one of those pay-to-join academic honor societies whose emails everybody[1] ignores.

[1] Obvious not everybody or there wouldn't be a business.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point that the word fellowship is potentially misleading.

Although...I do want to clarify we actually offer advice on project development, the interview prep goes to a reasonable technical depth, and you are connected with other engineers at top companies. So in many ways, it is still a fellowship.

We struggle a little with how to describe ourselves because we're not quite just career coaching but calling ourselves an accelerator is too nebulous.

We try our best not to be intrusive - if you don't mind, could you actually email me on the things you disliked the most about our cold email? We definitely want to make the changes we can to be more well-mannered here. I'm at email@example.com.

If anybody else has any questions as well, feel free to use the contact information above.

<comment><USER4> I replied to the original email you sent me with some thoughts. I want to note here that I like the idea of Pathrise but was just a bit put off by the initial email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool idea, my university has a stellar co-op program for Engineering and Computer Science students, and other universities in Canada do as well (Waterloo, UBC, etc.) and I am curious as to what differs you from universities that have these co-op programs because co-op is mandatory at UVic and Waterloo and has helped fund my way alongside many other engineering students ways through their degree.

Also 7% of first year salary seems steep, considering co-op costs are around 8k at my university (don't know about others off the top of my head). Which are covered pretty easily with mandatory 16 months of work experience.

<comment><USER6> > Also 7% of first year salary seems steep

The real long term benefit is if using the service results in a better entry level position. A person starting a career developing on Win32 will have a significantly different career than someone starting a career in React Native. If Pathrise leads to an increase in job offers (quantity of offers) and an increase in the type of job offers (diversity of projects types) than they can be worth the 7% even if the initial pay is equal because it will give the recent grad more options in choosing their path.

There is a lack of job hunting skills among recent CS and CE students, and there is a potential customer base. If I were looking to invest in Pathrise I would specifically be interested in how they plan on targeting students that have tried and failed in the job market and filtering which students failed because of a lack of job hunting skills and which failed because of a lack of technical skills. Graduates they have tried and failed in the job market are the ones that should see the most benefit from this service.

<comment><USER7> Recuiters will take around this 7% amount, so it doesn't seem absurd through that lens.

<comment><USER8> Recruiters do it on top of your salary, not as part of your salary, and the pain is felt by the company, not the employee.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, but as a result, they don't care as much if an individual candidate gets placed - they're more so looking to fill a specific position.

Recruiters solve the problem of hiring whereas we solve the problem of job seeking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love the idea and I definitely see the problem and need. If you are able to answer, I have a few questions:

1) You say that you will track every data point to hold yourselves accountable. What metrics do you intend on tracking to prove the value of your service to potential customers?

2) Do you screen the customers prior to accepting them into your program? If so, what kind of characteristics are you looking for in an applicant?

3) What experience/skills/connections, etc does the company bring to the table for the customers?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Some of the metrics we are currently already tracking:

Response and follow up rates from cold emails

Response and follow up rates from referrals to hiring partners

Technical interview score over time (measured by internal rubrics we design to be very close to what is actually used at companies)

Success rate per interview over time (hard to see trends for an individual, but kind of starting to see trends for a batch)

The classic feedback form, 1 to 5 in how much did you learn after every session

Average gain from negotiation compared to the base offer and to industry standards

Pretty basic stuff for now, but still able to prove value. For example, like I mentioned we're seeing a response rate from under 5% to over 20% after applying cold emailing techniques. This is theoretically already a 4x difference in the number of opportunities you receive. Another example is average raise as a result of negotiation through the program can be thought of as literally money we get you.

2) Yes. We mainly look for a fundamental conceptual understanding of your field (since we don't do technical training besides interview prep) and a high level of motivation.

Surprisingly, we haven't found the need to look for anything else. This lets us ignore something that might increase implicit bias like trying to evaluate culture fit. We can focus on finding each individual candidate the company that's the right culture fit for them instead of the other way around.

3) We have about 10 hiring partners right now as well as an advisor and alumni network we use to make referrals on behalf of students to top companies like Facebook, Google, etc.

In terms of experience: my co-founder and I are unique in that while we have past founding experience and have worked at top companies like Facebook, Salesforce, and Yelp, but we are also young enough that we are not decades separated from the problem of figuring out your early career.

There aren't many people working on career services that understand both sides of the table when it comes to what it feels like to be a university student looking for a job and what it feels like to be a hiring manager evaluating a university student. This would describe us though.

We like to think we understand what a student is going through and how to help them better than anyone else because of this.

<comment><USER9> Awesome, thanks!

You said you are measuring gain from negotiation as one of your metrics. Will you be teaching the customers about negotiation techniques or actually negotiating on their behalf?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both! We oftentimes tell students what to say and how to say it behind the scenes, but they will always do the actual communication themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I once visited a career office at a community college that I wanted to hire out of. What I saw was crushing - a small office run by a _student volunteer_ with nothing but a few binders of reading materials.

I'm excited for private companies like this to help students who want to put in the work.

<comment><USER11> During high school, I strongly remember what seemed like the entirety of career advice provided just before we selected the key subjects that would dictate which university/college courses we could apply for. There was a bland jobs guide book. We laughed at "crane chaser" and "cheese maker". Then we all stumbled forwards with no idea what we were doing.

Austen Allred had a tweet recently about how dangerous it is to get career advice purely from your parents. My parents are fantastically supportive, but I've ended up in a tech/software industry that they would've been oblivious to during their lives/careers. I could've definitely received far better and stronger advice during pivotal years. I made a misguided university choice, quit after six months, then stuffed around for a few years before starting the business that I still run 20 years later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> May be a silly question but I didn't see it in your FAQ -

Is this only open to currently enrolled students?

Would be very interested in applying as a self-teaching job seeker.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's open to recent grads as well!

Edit: Sorry I totally misunderstood the question. Yes, it is available to self-teaching job seekers!

We say students for simplicity because the program is designed for your early career and university/new grad recruiting.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the response. Glad to hear it's open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You should tier this by industry or career goal more closely. For example, many students want to do high-profile consulting or banking gigs after undergrad. These have relatively similar starting salaries so you don't need to worry about adverse incentives as mentioned below. Basically get the student to say "I will give you 7% of my salary if I get a job at McKinsey Bain or BCG". That will be a lot of value for many students (7% is probably low pricing frankly). You'll probably need to do more work on screening and the addressable market is probably much smaller. But the value prop for that market I think is way big vs. just "I want any job thanks". Those interviews and prep are trainable and there is a pretty robust set of providers there already. Could also add investment banks, larger tech cos, etc. just get specific on goals.

</comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of Holberton school ([https://holbertonschool.com](https://holbertonschool.com)) which has the same "free until hired" business model. I'm very interested to see how both of these pan out.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very cool!

Some questions:

1\. How do you know the student's income?

2\. How do you know if they're hired or not?

3\. What if a student is hired and then is laid off?

4\. What if a student is hired and promoted within the first year? Do they give you 7% of the income per their original job or 7% of total income received?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. In the contract, students agree to something called a Tax Information Authorization ([https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8821-tax- informati...](https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8821-tax-information- authorization)) to allow us to view their tax information to verify payments if necessary. This is fairly standard practice for income share agreements.

2\. Same answer as question 1. Also, just to add to this, most students are pretty honest since we're likely to be friends at the end of the program anyways.

3\. They normally pay through a share of their monthly income. If they are laid off, and therefore don't make any income that month, they don't pay us anything. However, the payment is then deferred until they can pay again, for a maximum of 2 years, after which everything left is absolved. The goal is to never have anyone have to pay money they don't have.

4\. 7% of the total income received. They still pay through a share of their monthly income.

<comment><USER15> 1\. In the contract, students agree to something called a Tax Information Authorization ([https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8821-tax- informati...](https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-8821-tax- informati...)) to allow us to view their tax information to verify payments if necessary. This is fairly standard practice for income share agreements.

2\. Same answer as question 1. Also, just to add to this, most students are pretty honest since we're likely to be friends at the end of the program anyways.

3\. They normally pay through a share of their monthly income. If they are laid off, and therefore don't make any income that month, they don't pay us anything. However, the payment is then deferred until they can pay again, for a maximum of 2 years, after which everything left is absolved. The goal is to never have anyone have to pay money they don't have.

4\. 7% of the total income received. They still pay through a share of their monthly income.

\---

Thanks for the prompt reply! I didn't know such an agreement per (1) existed. In the unlikely event a student refused to pay you, how would you collect? Sue them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Though an income share agreement is not a loan. It will still affect a student's credit adversely if they default on it.

We're actually transferring the management of the income share agreements to a third party company that's built a software platform for this that directly uses ACH.

So with that combination, hopefully we never have to sue anybody ever about anything! Seems like a terrible experience.

<comment><USER15> > We're actually transferring the management of the income share agreements to > a third party company that's built a software platform for this that > directly uses ACH.

Care to share the third party?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here ya go: [https://leif.org/](https://leif.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really like this concept for college tuition or for funding people who haven't already gotten a degree. However if just focusing on soon-to-be/recent graduates, I don't get why a student would be motivated enough to use your service with a non-trivial fee over going to a university provided one that they have already essentially paid for.

Even going to a state college, the schools are still quite driven to have very high job placement statistics, and the career services offered were quite helpful if you took the effort to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> By aligned incentives, we mean aligned incentives that are integrated into the business model.

Any business has a good reason to treat their customers well because that results in future business, but you wouldn't necessarily call something like a restaurant an aligned incentives business.

We've seen from our perspective that the lack of aligned incentives in the business model itself leads to ineffective solutions. A good portion of our students come to us after already having gone to their career services centers and realizing they want more help.

To be clear, I still think career services centers and the counselors that help run them are doing good work. However, one counselor using intuition and anecdotal evidence to advise hundreds of students just doesn't work very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You say you're able to achieve 12k over the industry average, and take 7% of the first year salary. It's hard to assess how much of that 12k is due to selection, and how much is due to your work. In other word, what value you actually deliver.

Let's say the industry average is 120k (in California). If you deliver 12k extra, and take 7% of the total, you're actually taking more than 9k out of this extra 12k.

<comment><AUTHOR> You would need to consider more than just the first year. In reality, the difference it makes in terms of your career as a whole is significantly higher than that initial 12k because it compounds.

Starting off with an additional 12k in your salary means you'll get an additional 12k next year and every year thereafter, if not more.

Also, though we really need to do more work to figure out how to measure this effectively, the quality of the position goes beyond the salary itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am curious as to how narrow your scope of industries/requirements will be in the future.

I have a friend with a BA in Photography and a MA in Collaborative Design. She is very talented and intelligent, but has trouble explaining exactly what it is that she excels at. (I've known her for years and I still only get the gist of it. Think creative work mixed with formalized systems thinking.)

Is this a possible customer down the line?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! Although we're not there yet, we believe the program is generalizable to every young professional who wants to work in the US, since the core insights themselves are not industry-specific.

Ideally the further we expand the more we're capable of supporting interdisciplinary job seekers like your friend. There's potentially something here where the more industries we cover, the more we know about everything in between those industries, and the more effective guidance we can provide to candidates who are stuck in between.

<comment><USER17> Thanks! I'll pass that along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can you clarify the percentages for internships? Equivalent annual salary as in, if a student is making $20/hr at a 3-month internship, then their equivalent annual salary would be $20/hr * 40 hr/ week * 52 weeks = $41600, and your payment would be $2912? Or is it just 7% of what they earned over the summer ($9600, and payment would be $672?)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the $2912 one. Unfortunately, we can't offer the same services without basing it off of equivalent annual salary.

For the students that look for internships with us, the service is a reduction in short-term capital gain for career trajectory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Point of clarity: are all of your services rendered remotely? No need to move to a big city (until a job requires it, at least)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, everything is online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What you guys are doing is really awesome! Definitely in the same spirit of Holberton School, a two-year coding program I'm currently attending that's an alternative to a traditional CS degree. Tuition is also deferred

</comment><comment><USER21> Whats the difference between Launch HN and Show HN?

<comment><USER22> Launch HN is for YC companies, although AFAIK it's just convention that keeps other people from using that phrasing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice. Get students to keep paying tuition even after they leave the Uni.

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal is to make them more money than they would pay in the first place (and it compounds in later years), but I understand how you feel.</comment></comment>


Slicing Pie Start Up Equity | Founder's Shares | Dividing Up Stock - <AUTHOR> http://www.slicingpie.com/ <comment><USER2> I read the book, excellent idea on how to split equity in startups, what happens when one founder loses interest etc.

I think Mike nailed how to divvy up equity, there are still challenges between founders, but this clears a lot of things for them in advance.</comment>


What does "software engineer III" mean? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Software-Engineering/What-does-software-engineer-III-mean <comment><USER2> When I see "Software Engineer III" I think "we are big corp and you will be a tiny cog in the machine, stay away".</comment>


Watching Pirate Streams Isn't Illegal, EU Commission Argues - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/watching-pirate-streams-isnt-illegal-eu-commission-argues-161001/ <comment><USER2> Interesting case, with a lot of grey areas. I'd say there definitely are some differences between p2p (i.e. torrenting) downloading and streaming, where in p2p you are also actively distributing the illegal content, in contrast to streaming where you are only a consumer.

There's also the fact that the user has no real way of knowing if the content they're are watching is legal or not (most display ads before, like youtube), heck netflix could stream pirated content and no regular user would really know (not saying they do ofc).

Furthermore, in the case of streaming a clear target is the site that provides the stream, which is a lot easier to target than whatever user ends up watching it.

<comment><USER3> On the not knowing front, many people used Netflix for 'piracy' either intentionally or unintentionally by watching shows in regions where Netflix didn't have the rights to stream them. I imagine a lot of people simply thought that it was cool that they could get US Netflix in Europe or vice versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting the apparent legal (and social) distinction between streaming and downloading, where technically the distinction is mostly in whether the data continues to be stored after it's been watched -- the decision about whether the data transfer is a 'stream' or a 'download' is pretty much entirely down to the client.

<comment><USER5> And we'll note that browsers usually write the stream to the disk and it stays there for an unbounded amount of time, so streaming is equivalent to downloading [most of the time].

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is similar to the argument made in German law, which explicitly excludes (rough description) "transient copies that only exist as a detail of the technical transfer method" from protection.

AFAIK mostly intended to stop people nitpicking technical details (e.g. claiming that you infringed on copyright on an image that you are allowed to view, but did not have explicit permission to create a copy of it in your browser cache, or javascript in a website, ...), it also is used to defend streaming.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought copyright was about distribution of content not acquiring content.</comment>


'All Men Are Guilty,' Says Mega-Mogul Barry Diller - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/style/barry-diller-iac.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is an excellent interview, touching on much more than the subject in the headline. I kept the originsl title however.</comment>


Robot Builder Constructs House in Two Days - <AUTHOR> http://news.sky.com/story/watch-robot-builder-construct-house-in-two-days-10514890? <comment><USER2> The superstructure of a house usually doesn't take long. It's all the fiddly bits with site work, foundations, finishes and furnishings that takes most of the construction schedule.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shouldn't there be cement in between the bricks? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> >At the end of the boom is a hand which grabs and arranges the bricks, securing them with construction glue instead of cement.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Add FedEx-like tracking to email with CommAssure - <AUTHOR>

This came about from the inevitable solve-the-world's-problems conversation(s) that happen over beers.
I'd heard time and again how email could "never cut it" for "real" business communications because it was so unreliable, especially in the face of increasingly fervent anti-spam measures. The whole "I never got that message" trick has happened to us all; we've all had emails disappear and require re-sending. (People also lie and abuse that excuse when it's convenient for them! :-)
I decided to see if I could code up a solution that would be everyman-accessible and seamless to use, and integrate into existing workflows.
Commassure is my new SMTP-based service that automatically adds tracking, delivery confirmation and integrity verification to all your outgoing email. After a brief configuration step you use your SMTP-compatible client just like you always did. iPhone, iPad, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc. are all compatible.
I'm interested to see if this gains any traction at all. If there's demand, I'll continue to expand the service with new features to address whatever good suggestions come my way. Any constructive criticism is welcome.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails 3; PostgreSQL; Linux.
http://www.commassure.com/ <comment><USER2> "CommAssure keeps a complete record of the email." -- the problem is that the email may contain confidential information. Using FedEx, you are reasonably sure that FedEx envelopes and packages aren't opened by the courier service.

And the comment "We hold the same ethical standards as other email services such as Yahoo Mail, GMail, etc." doesn't really cut it for extremely confidential messages. You can tell, for example, if FedEx opened an envelope, read the contents, and put it back.

<comment><AUTHOR> A good point, and I understand. I tried to anticipate this concern: there is a user preference that purges message body info after the message has been sent. The relevant confirmation data remains, but the body is wiped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The problem is that working off of the current email protocols you have no way to guarantee that the message got any further than the MX for the end recipient. You can't even guarantee that MX didn't immediately route the message to /dev/null after accepting it from your server. So you could have a user that utilizes a spam filtering service like Postini, where an MX will accept the message, but then NOT deliver it to the end user. Your records would show that message as being verifiably delivered when it actually wasn't.

Sure, you can put tacking bugs in the email, but there is no way to guarantee the client will load/access those bugs as expected. I know of several organizations (banks, etc) that would likely immediately bla Khios your server IPs if they became aware of someone trying to utilize this to send emails into their organization.

So, this becomes a scenario where you can guarantee a message was delivered when everything cooperates, but can never conclusively prove a message was NOT delivered.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's all true, and I concur. Delivery confirmation is certainly the weakest link in the whole equation and may never get solved with the current SMTP protocol.

The other pieces, however, retain their merit (I hope) -- a neutral and accessible 3rd-party that can prove you sent something, when you sent it, and to know that it at least got accepted by the recipient's MX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> clickable: <http://www.commassure.com/>

I like the idea and you've found a great domain name for it.</comment>


The thing I hate about HTML (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/07/thing-i-hate-about-html.html <comment><USER2> Saying we should write HTML using the following syntax?:

(div class="red"

      (p

        (Hello, World!)

      )

)

I'm not sure what problem this solves. It eliminates the tiny bit of work that is typing the extra characters in a closing tag, and in doing so you lose all of the other information as to what exactly you're trying to close. The end of most HTML douments would be ))))))) (plus a mess of indenting).

I can see this causing many more problems than it would solve; I'm okay with typing three extra characters to avoid lack of confusion.

The current syntax may not be ideal, but I don't think removing the object type from a closing tab is a good way to make it better.

<comment><USER3> Hah, but aren't most HTML documents a mess of

 at some point :)

<comment><USER4> Not when you know what you're doing and don't use auto code generators.

<comment><USER3> What is "knowing what you're doing?" I'm honestly curious, because I handwrote most of the HTML on my website and I don't know how to have it cleaner than something like this:

(If you actually look at the website, it will be pretty obvious that I'm no skilled web dev)

<comment><USER5> Indenting all of the tags would help, but that's probably about it.

<comment><USER6> In theory, maybe.

In practice, where the code is coming from 3 or 4 different levels of templating? Bets are off.

<comment><USER5> I use Twig for templating a lot, and I have to admit that while I indent per template, i don't even bother keeping track between parent and child.

But then, Twig has its own weird issues sometimes with adding whitespace so I've given up caring how templated html works altogether in that case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought I remember reading this was debated extensively when XML was being ratified. The consensus was that it was better for reading the markup even though it made it harder to write vs SGML's empty end tag.

In any non trivial HTML doc many of the close tags will be far from the start tag, such as  and looking at a bunch of </> tags and having to go match them up with the correct start tags is more difficult. I run into this all the time with parentheses in your typical programming languages.

The IDE I usually use does auto close tags but also does folding both help with verbose close tags or matching parens so it doesn't matter much what the language does anymore. I generally do think html/xml is more readable because it so verbose including end tags.

<comment><USER8> The reason this is a problem is not because documents are long, but because HTML does not have a concept of encapsulation. You can't make a subroutine--or rather, subtree--of HTML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of all the things to complain about HTML and modern web development, this ranks pretty low on my list.

</comment><comment><USER10> The fact that the end tags are named means that people are also tempted to write markup like:

         one  two  three

This is technically invalid, but some browsers will "helpfully" parse it and apply strength to "one", strength and emphasis to "two" and emphasis to "three". This would be avoided if the closing tag weren't named.

<comment><USER4> Invalid markup means you are relying on the browser to read your intent or your mind. They are very good at doing that but no self-respecting web developer would ever do such an insane thing as your example.

EDIT: Interesting about the downvotes. It shows a total lack of understanding the fundamentals of how browsers work but, alas, downvote away.

<comment><USER11> You're being downvoted because of your argument from intimidation ("no self- respecting web developer...") and your wording ("such an insane thing"), not due to a lack of understanding browsers.

<comment><USER4> So don't tell the truth? It's interesting that people on Hacker News are intimidated so easily when confronted with such things.

<comment><USER12> No, tell the truth - just don't be a fucking asshole about it. Everything about the way you're talking makes you sound like an aggressive jerk. Even your username screams "I'm an asshole who thinks he knows it all and always has a snarky reply ready". It's OK. We've all been there. Exercise is a good way to get the negativity out.

<comment><USER4> "I can't think of one" as a username screams "asshole who thinks he knows it all"? Wow. You should hear my thoughts now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Jade does this elegantly.

[http://jade-lang.com](http://jade-lang.com)

<comment><USER14> It's just so refreshing not having to type closing tags(Emmet aside).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hiccup gives you HTML in Lisp [https://github.com/weavejester/hiccup](https://github.com/weavejester/hiccup)

</comment><comment><USER16> how about just use whitespace, like python:

      div class="red"
        p
          Hello, World!

(of course I know would not look nice if had to place tags inside of single line of text, and might get a little too indenty)

<comment><USER17> This is basically jade[0]. Although jade isn't quite as smart, so the expression you wrote would be considered invalid.

[0] jade-lang.com

<comment><USER16> interesting. Very clean looking.

<comment><USER18> You absolutely have to split jade documents and use includes/blocks though, any decent sized page, even if it's static becomes unmanageable very quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format) from 1987 ish worked this way. Or as another commenter mentioned SGML in it's more compact forms from the same time period and so therefore early HTMLs. Having a closing symbol at all is a pain and I have painful memories from trying to manually find a missing closing bracket in a book length Rtf document. HAML uses significant indention to accomplish the nesting which I find much much easier to read nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER20> Browsers are too kind to bad developers (who accidentally omit close tags) but I don't see that changing those to parenthesis or whitespace will make those developers any less rubbish.

The simple fact is: if you're still regularly typing your close tags in 2015, you either need a better editor or you need to learn how to use your current one better.

</comment><comment><USER21> SGML has null end tags, which do exactly what he wants. For example this is valid:

       <p /Hello World/

</comment><comment><USER22> 10 years ago I was a heavy TeX user and really hate HTML. I made it a little fun with my stupid flex program [https://github.com/icy/ktml](https://github.com/icy/ktml) :D

</comment><comment><USER23> This is such an odd rant from a very smart guy. Closing tags make plenty of sense and from our web experience definitively are not a problem. The proposed improvement seems far worse.

</comment><comment><USER24> _> PS Yes, I know there are some tags that don't need end tags (e.g. )_

e.g.
,
,
, .

 _> But that's just messed up._

Nah, it's pretty straightforward once you wrap your head around it: [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#optional-...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#optional- tags)

 _> </>_

This reminds me of @annevk's XML5 concept: [https://annevankesteren.nl/2007/10/xml5](https://annevankesteren.nl/2007/10/xml5)

<comment><USER25> "A p element's end tag may be omitted if the p element is immediately followed by an address, article, aside, blockquote, details, div, dl, fieldset, figcaption, figure, footer, form, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, header, hgroup, hr, main, menu, nav, ol, p, pre, section, table, or ul, element, or if there is no more content in the parent element and the parent element is an HTML element that is not an a, audio, del, ins, map, noscript, or video element."

Quite straightforward indeed.

<comment><USER24> _> "A p element's end tag may be omitted..._

practically always except when it obviously makes no sense. If you mean
Hello
World, you obviously can't omit
, since the inline  would become part of
. But why would you write that anyway?

When you omit
 where you shouldn't, the validator will usually tell you. You do validate your HTML, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> See: [https://github.com/dominictarr/hyperscript](https://github.com/dominictarr/hyperscript)

</comment><comment><USER27> After years of working with C++ GUI (Borland VCL's version) I'm loving HTML5 and how the controls layout so nicely.

<comment><USER8> That is the rather depressing thing about this. The sorry state of HTML5 is an indictment of the much more sorry state of every other cross-platform GUI toolkit. When you start to break down all of the issues of development, training, deployment, and execution, HTML5 is the better tool. It's by no means a great tool, but what else do we have available?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> i was actually thinking about this recently. one appeal of json over xml is xml is so wasteful with all those tags. then i thought, why in the world are we still doing web pages in html and not some other json or other syntax? =|

</comment><comment><USER29> Your opinion is incorrect

</comment><comment><USER30> see also: [http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum- xmlrant.html](http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-xmlrant.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> _Everything_ should be S-expressions, not just HTML.

</comment><comment><USER32> Not a fan of how this blog takes over the swipe from screen edge gesture so I can't go back in Safari easily.

</comment><comment><USER33> (2010)

</comment><comment><USER34> This is such a trivial complaint and breaks readability/usability for no real advantages.

</comment><comment><USER35> Such a bummer there's nothing out there that solves this. Oh wait, slim, haml, PHamlP, shpaml...

</comment><comment><USER36> Two easy solutions:

1\. HAML

2\. IDE

</comment><comment><USER37> l2haml

</comment><comment><USER38> The thing I hate about bikeshedding

</comment><comment><USER4> Complaints such as his, and most of the comments so far below, show a total lack of knowledge of the science and underpinnings behind the whole thing and the only supported proof throughout is silly, invalid examples of markup no one would ever use.

More laughable are the attempts at making HTML look like a programming language, which it is not, and I'd bet that comes as news to many.

<comment><USER39> Is HTML5+CSS3 not fully turing complete though?

<comment><USER4> Quit reading stupid articles written by out-of-work people with nothing better to do.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to earn more money? - <AUTHOR>

I've been programming for a few years now and, as far as I can tell from comments from managers and people I have worked for, I'm quite good at web development.
The thing is, for the first couple years, I only made $45k.  This year, I have been self-employed and should end up at around $65k.  I really feel I am not earning as much as I should be for the work I'm doing (although I realise probably everyone feels this way).  I also took a month off this year.
I came across this post - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1747713 - that a good developer should have no problem earning six figures.
I ofter wonder reading salary rates on HN if people in SF are completely out of touch with the rest of the world or what.
The rate for senior developers in my city is around $90k so I have sought out remote work this year.
Some reasons I may not be earning more: - I need to improve negotiating and knowing my value - I'm working on building web applications and not complex problems - I'm not as good as I think I am - I'm not living in SF or NY
What can I do to earn more? <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1747713></comment>


Hadron – A new era for design and development - <AUTHOR> https://hadron.app/ <comment><USER2> The last line explains the full non truth of this... Big ol' lies on the landing page

""" Built to work with any framework. Or none.

Hadron editors interpret files such as React, or Vue files and modify them when you design. Building new interpreters is easy, and we'll even open source it in the future so anyone can add support to another framework.

* Currently only Vanilla is supported. """</comment>


Cloudflare Workers is 4.6x faster for CPU-bound tasks than Amazon Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/serverless-performance-with-cpu-bound-tasks/?hn <comment><USER2> Unfortunately they don't support shelling out or running static binaries, which makes Cloudflare worthless if you want to run other programming languages like Crystal, Ruby or Python, or do OpenCV stuff, which you can readily do (with some difficulty) in Google Cloud Functions and in Lambda. You are stuck in pure js land with Cloudflare workers, though they are still awesome for this speed increase.

disclaimer: I have 27 Google Cloud Functions doing native stuff atm, about 70% in Crystal, 15% in Ruby, and 15% in Python.

<comment><AUTHOR> How much of that would WebAssembly support get you?

<comment><USER2> Not as much as I would like probably

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cloudflare Workers are fascinating. I love the idea of distributed functions- as-a-service. Simple deployment, quick response times. Has anyone tried pairing these with a geo-replicated database like Azure's CosmosDB to serve up a REST/GraphQL API?</comment>