Looking for Technical Partner - <AUTHOR>

	Hi I am looking for a technical cofounder/partner. I am a college student at a business school in the Boston area. I live in Northern New Jersey over breaks.
What I will be bringing to the table is a credible knowledge of accounting, finance, economics, marketing and other business subjects. My major is going to be Managerial Economics so that is my specialty. Most importantly I bring with me an entrepreneurial spirit, which I have found is a very important, but rare commodity.
I am interested nearly any intellectual topic, and actively seek out to know as much as I can about said topic. Although my education has been as a business person, I would rather think of myself simply as a non-technical cofounder. I say this because I have always been quite good with computers both on the front-end and coding. I have only coded very basic programs, but I understand the mindset, and respect the art. And I am certainly not a hands-off kind of guy.
I would prefer someone who is in college or college-aged and understands the time constrains we have to deal with, as well as willing to take more risk. I would like for us to both share in responsibilities, and to specialize as well. I would like for us to be as knowledgeable about our aspects of business as each other's. You would be in charge of the technical side of the business, and I would be more focused on everything else, however that doesn't mean that I will not learn some programming and fully understand how the technology works. I want us to supplement each other in skill, and learn from each other in what we lack. It doesn't matter what language you know as long as you know enough to bring a full working web app to fruition.
I would love to talk to anyone interested and feel free to send me an email – email@example.com.
Let's build something amazing together. <comment><USER2> Do you have already an idea to offer to your cofounder to build it together? Do you need a partner from US or ..? Make these questions clear to make people able to answer.

Actually you don't need a technical cofounder. Building things with a cofounder is fun, motivational, interesting and he/she could be also a inspirational non-technical cofounder which you can work with. You can always hire a developer or learn to code yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do have an idea I would like to work on. Something that fits very well with YC or possibly another incubator. The reason I would need an incubator is because it is a social networking type of app, (though I hate to draw the image of a Facebook or Twitter clone) and would be difficult to monetize without a gaining fair bit of traction first, not for the lack of a possible business model. I think the best way that I can describe it is that it is something that I myself wish had existed and would love to use.

I didn't specify a location because it isn't extremely important, but I would prefer to have a partner in the NY/NJ area where I live or the Boston area where I go to college. I prefer working with people face-to-face, but have no problems working remotely from time to time either. The main reason I want a US partner is because I would like to be able to go to an incubator together, or any other things we may feel are great opportunities.

The reason I want a partner is precisely for the reasons you mentioned. I want someone who will help me learn, motivate each other, and ultimately wants to try and accomplish something awesome!

<comment><USER2> Sounds great. You have passion about startups. But please think twice about your idea of social networking. After color.com failure VC don't accept startups about social networks so much. I recommend you to read this article. <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/bill-nguyen-startups>

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting read. I understand completely and that is why I was hesitant to call it a social networking app. I feel that is ultimately what it would be categorized as, but it would be much more than that. In addition to that I have a couple of thoughts on how to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem. Hopefully a working demo, and a large enough user base can offset the bias against social networking apps(I use that term loosely).

<comment><USER2> the best way to find a technical cofounder from HN is to browse people by localization and skills on this site: <http://hackernewsers.com/users.html> good luck! (I live in Germany, otherwise would like to help)

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay thank you for your help.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu Updates for the Meltdown / Spectre Vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2018/01/ubuntu-updates-for-meltdown-spectre.html <comment><USER2> Are they independent from torvalds' kernel? I thought the kernel was patched very quickly (KPTI)?

<comment><USER3> > Are they independent from torvalds' kernel? I thought the kernel was patched > very quickly (KPTI)?

They have to package the kernel for Ubuntu and compile it with whatever modules are standard for them. Plus perhaps applying some distro-specific patches (I don't know if Ubuntu does this), and testing.

<comment><USER4> There's an Ubuntu Kernel Team, and they have a very handy archive:

[http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel- ppa/mainline/daily/2018-01-...](http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel- ppa/mainline/daily/2018-01-04/)

They have a 14MB base patch, and then a few small ones.

CHANGES mention KPTI, so it should be good to go.</comment></comment></comment>


The Misunderstood Face of Giftedness - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marianne-kuzujanakis/gifted-children_b_2948258.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The definition of normal (at least for kids) is becoming dangerously narrow, and we're at risk of correcting behaviors with medications that will do more harm than good. In my view, we're sacrificing a measure of behavioral diversity primarily to make classrooms run more smoothly. This article talks about how gifted children have a particularly high risk factor for misdiagnosis and unnecessary medication.</comment>


Silicon Valley: A Reality Check (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/11/silicon-valley-a-reality-check/ <comment><USER3> "When Capitol Hill screws up, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis get killed.

When Wall Street screws up, the country is plunged into recession and poor families lose their homes.

When Silicon Valley screws up, people who want a pointless Wi-Fi enabled juicer get a pointless Wi-Fi enabled juicer. Which by all accounts makes pretty good juice."

When Silicon Valley _succeeds_ consumers get mass surveillance of the minutiae of their lives.

Contrary to the author's statement, there is a point to the Wi-Fi enabled juicer.

For one, it can continuously gather data and can transfer it over a network to an organization that can use it strategically/monetize it.

<comment><USER4> The most common outcome of this terrifying mass surveillance is people are shown ads more relevant to them. Most people are rationally fine with this.

The government doesn't need ad cookies to track you.

<comment><USER5> s/people are shown ads more relevant to them/people are better manipulated by ads

Plus the information and therefore power asymmetry between people and corporations increases. Imagine a business-to-business 'analytics' service to identify or predict insider threats such as whistleblowers or labor organizers. Background checks already get help from the private sector - <USER2> is just the logical next step. I'm sure they'll think of _many_ more uses, if they haven't already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article makes a good argument against simplifying Silicon Valley down to its faults:

> stop talking about how Silicon Valley only makes ridiculous overpriced > juicers

But who are those people who simplify Silicon Valley, and mock the useless innovation?

I feel like the author falls victim to the same blind-men-and-elephant problem: he somehow reads all the 'thinkpieces' (whatever that means) that focus on strange things SV does. I personally do not see this phenomenon, probably because I get my news from aggregators with different bias. The (successfully defeated) strawman is just that, a strawman.

<comment><USER7> > But who are those people who simplify Silicon Valley, and mock the useless > innovation?

In my obviously very much less than completely thorough experience, they're often people with clear goals who want them advanced. They're frustrated with useless innovation, seeing it mainly as resources that could have been used to advance a more worthy goal. They lament the waste of resources and the failures of vision to bring those resource to bear on the proper goals and problems. All the solvable problems that so many smart, driven people and so much money could hardly fail to solve. The lives that could be enabled, the societies that could be changed.

I've known a number of such people. I've seen a series of such pieces over time, no few of which pass through HN.

<comment><USER8> Who I am to judge what innovations are useful or useless to society? In a sense, one could very well argue that the market cap or valuation of a company is at least a decent proxy for "usefulness".

With that said, however, my personal opinion is different. Although I think innovation of any kind is great for society, what I'm frustrated by is the _relative mindshare_ of where we focus our attention on.

I like to use the term "farsighted" \- many people in SV are able to see very far distances into the future, but ignore some of the immediate problems that are right under our noses. That's what I'm frustrated by.

<comment><USER7> One thing I've always found useful is _asking_ the people I think of as having mis-allocated their attention. Very often they have good reasons for their decisions. It's surprisingly rare that they're actually ignoring the immediate problems right under their noses. It is very common that they don't share my assessment of what the resources they command could do if applied elsewhere, and understanding why is educational for me.

The other tool I find useful is to remember that my _perception_ of where our collective mindshare is going is necessarily going to be less than fully informed. It can easily be quite far off the mark, leaving me thinking that a major problem is going completely unaddressed when there are in fact vast resources being directed at it without any visibility to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Silicon Valley bashing that came into vogue around the juicero days was a healthy overcorrection I think. For like 10+ years at least the "media" was probably overly kind about the industry and its startups. Basically just taking PR press releases and doing marketing for tiny startups explaining how they were going to change the world.

<comment><USER10> _For like 10+ years at least the "media" was probably overly kind..._

This is one of the things which we need to get better at calling out in the media in 2019.

 _Basically just taking PR press releases_

Too much media in 2019 is just parroting other media and official pronouncements and press releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The company didn't sell a product that people wanted and its investors lost money; sometimes that's how things are supposed to work.

<comment><USER12> The mere fact that it got so much investor money says a lot in my opinion

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A blender with bells and whistles is a towering benevolent achievement compared ice cream and make-up. And no one much frets about those. The only thing Hollywood makes are movies and TV. And although not really comparable, even renaissance Italy spent vast resources just making paintings and sculptures.

And when an unethical product is made, and there certainly are some, occasionally employees pressure their company to stop. That is unusual historically.

Of course there are serious problems like exclusivity due to cargo cult hiring, exploding cost of both doing business and living. And of course the related tidal wave of homeless. But even there, occasional effort is made to address them. Historically the typical pattern is for industries to blame victims for the harm inflicted on them.

While those problems are pretty good reasons not to have it in your back yard, as an industry located far away, it's obviously well above average.

</comment><comment><USER14> I feel like the juicer got traction simply because of how much MONEY they got to do it. $120 million - and the end product was okay but kind of obviously not amazing and too expensive.

That calls into question the abilities of the VCs doling out the money, which gets popular because it works as a confirming data point to peoples pre- existing cynical worldviews.

<comment><USER15> We've built and patented machines that cook, package and retail arbitrary food direct from fresh ingredients based on personalized smartphone orders for less than one. SV VCs, where's my money at?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is actually a decent article.

> " If a deeply good person crusading for a better world enters Silicon > Valley, she'll find herself surrounded by deeply good people crusading for a > better world. She'll see mobile apps that track tropical diseases, clean > energy startups that fight global warming by directly sucking carbon dioxide > out of the air, companies bringing microbanking to poor Nepalese villagers, > and boutique pharmaceutical labs searching for cures for orphan diseases.

If a futurist enters Silicon Valley, she'll find herself surrounded by futurists. She'll see neural nets and deep learning, reusable rockets and flying cars, high-throughput genome sequencing and CRISPR, metamaterials and nanotechnology.

If a social-media-obsessed narcissist whose view of the world begins and ends with his own Instagram page enters Silicon Valley, he'll find himself surrounded by social-media-obsessed narcissists whose view of the world begins and ends with their Instagram pages. He'll see a bunch of streaming video services and Uber-for-hair-products apps and elite pay-to-play dating scams and people trying to disrupt the gymwear market.

And if one of those people who talks about "the cloud" all the time enters Silicon Valley, he'll find himself surrounded by people who talk about "the cloud" all the time. I have no idea who these people are or what they're doing, but they all seem really happy with each other and I'm glad they're enjoying themselves.

They'll all have their blind-men-and-elephant view of what kinds of things Silicon Valley "does". And they'll all be sort of right.

(thinkpiece writers: "Can you believe that Silicon Valley only makes products for shallow elites obsessed with the latest fads? It's the strangest thing!") "

</comment><comment><USER17> Slate Star Codex is such a rare site, outputting high quality content at a very high rate. I'm always happy to come across an article from it on HN.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Deadspin...a stupid libertarian dystopia

> Y Combinator...Thirteen of them had an altruistic or international > development focus

SSC mentions criticism, and then counters with the couple of hundred grand of "altruistic" money YC hands out every year. As puff statements like this are as easy to predict as anything, it seems analogous to several hundred grand to a PR department. As his very statement is a usage of it as PR.

Of all the most awful big organizations and groups in the world, I can't think of any that don't engage in such "altruism" PR.

Then he goes on to say that fault found in Silicon Valley is psychological projection, a "deeply good person crusading for a better world enters Silicon Valley, she'll find herself surrounded by deeply good people crusading for a better world" (Jesus, who swallows this?) and a narcissist will see narcissists.

He admits an "invasion of rent-seeking parasites and empty suits".

How about another tale - a naive young 21 year old MIT grad who wants to be a "deeply good person crusading for a better world". They are shown PR projects, maybe a "peer-to-peer lending service in India" (odd to hear the Christian and Islamic sin of usury being praised as altruism), or cool tech like 3d printers. Then they get put in a FAANG division, or dedicated startup, spying on people for better and targeting. Or generating flamebait headlines to get more clicks. Pulling the strings behind all this are the rent-seeking parasites and empty suits - "activist" investors and hedge funds, LPs, VCs, seeds and angels, executives and management etc.

A lot of talk about what is happening and not who controls it. And who controls work _ain 't_ the 21 year old MIT grad paying $2000 a month for a small apartment in Oakland. Who does all the work and creates all the wealth. Who gets the bulk of the fruits of his labors, and to a very large extent what he does is determined by said expropriating suits. That the grad has some choice, although not much, is the reason for the 3 card monte shill game of cool tech and altruism. The kid will be setting up the ad spying networks Kubernetes containers, not doing altruism and playing with cool tech.

Of the people working in Silicon Valley, the main victims of expropriation are the people working in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER19> > Who gets the bulk of the fruits of his labors, and to a very large extent > what he does is determined by said expropriating suits

At any other ti in history, with any other technology (Tesla vs Edison) that would be true. But in tech, the billions made the companies. Page, Brin, Bezos, Gates all got the "bulk of the fruits".

There is this weird idea that work creates value in a vacuum. That's not true. Work in a context - of a company that has funding/profitability/stores of cash creates value. Work done in a vacuum does not.

We need to balance those elements carefully, because not enough workers slows growth, but so does not enough capital/misallocation of capital (see housing).

The ideal world is one in which we all move in the same direction together not out of compulsion but out of an understanding that we all benefit from moving in said same direction.</comment></comment>


How ZIP codes nearly masked the lead problem in Flint (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/how-zip-codes-nearly-masked-the-lead-problem-in-flint-65626 <comment><USER2> I work for a social services agency, and my guesstimate is that 70% of the managers think that zip codes are the answer to all their spatial analysis problems -- they are very easy to collect, and they _feel_ right. These managers don't really have any training in geography, so it isn't exactly surprising, but I think there is a pretty strong committment to zip codes as _the_ unit of analysis because it is the one thing they know and think they understand.

For the folks who in this thread say "just use a point map of occurrences and you would have seen the problem" you are right in this case, but it isn't really enough in most cases.

For one, the boundary of the city limit needs to be shown to see the correlation; perhaps one should map the point occurrences a la Snow, and then overlay all the boundaries you have (mosquito district, city boundary, water district boundary, county, etc...).

Additionally, a point map doesn't tell you rates of occurence, for that you need a denominator, or you can't calculate things like number of occurences divided by total population. One poster mentioned Census Tracts, and I would agree those should be the default boundary, subject to more investigation -- tracts correpsond well to "natural" boundaries, they are mostly consistent over census decades, they are mostly consistent with population (~5k), they nest perfectly with other census boundaries, and they are the smallest geography for which you can get mostly the full suite of population characteristics like education from the ACS.

For some reason tracts feel just wrong to people. I have managers who reject zip codes, but then fixate on weird systems like pixels or equal area hexagons or whatever for which you can't get denominator data and which don't correspond to anything real. I don't understand, though I don't think in public policy / social work education anybody bothers to teach you shit about GIS or Census data unless you know to ask specifically.

</comment><comment><USER3> At a more general level, your mailing address indicates how to deliver your mail; it does not indicate what city, if any, the delivery address is in. Neither does your zip code (as illustrated in the article), your phone number area code, or phone number prefix. All of these things indicate the location of the mail or phone facility that services the delivery address -- or that once did, before facility consolidation or expansion.

A related phenomenon is that different agencies have different boundaries, despite often sharing the same geographic name. Cities, water districts, sanitary districts, school districts, community college districts, counties, congressional districts, etc each have their own boundaries, and they are usually not aligned.

<comment><USER4> I encountered this the other day: friend of mine has a zip code associated with a major city, and puts the name of that city in their mailing address. But the land is not incorporated in any city. City government was trying to enforce city laws against them and use the mailing address as justification. Stupid.

<comment><USER5> Paradise, Nevada -- an unincorporated town [1] under Nevada law in Clark County, which host all of the famous casinos of the Strip between Sahara and Mandalay Bay, as well as over 200000 people -- is definitely a real place, yet all domestic mailing addresses that are in Paradise, in ZIP codes like 89109, 89119, 89169 need to say 'LAS VEGAS'.

In Virginia, Henrico County, which surrounds the City of Richmond on three sides, petioned the US Postal Service in 2008 to allow 'HENRICO' as an acceptable label for affected ZIP codes that were used on its territory. Establishing a shared identity was a factor, but so was the fact that in some cases collected taxes were misappropriated to the wrong jurisdiction on account of a label lookup from the mailing address [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unincorporated_towns_in_Nevada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unincorporated_towns_in_Nevada) [2] [http://www.henricocitizen.com/index.php/news/article/address...](http://www.henricocitizen.com/index.php/news/article/address_change_provided_revenue_identity_3128)

<comment><USER6> Isn't the primary idea of an unincorporated town that it doesn't 'exist' for purposes such as mail?

<comment><USER4> All the unincorporated places I'm familiar with in the mainland US are under the jurisdiction of federal, state and county governments, but not a city or town government. I'm sure there are examples of more sovereign towns... US Postal Service is federal and required to service the whole country. Lots of cities and towns manage utilities like power, sanitation, etc. and would probably exclude unincorporated properties from access. People just buy them from county governments, private companies, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> John Snow [1], who traced the cholera outbreak to an unsanitary water pump plotted the occurrences directly on a map. The other map in the article shows a similar flaw to that of using zipcodes.

Lesson, if you want to correlate something spatially, use spatial coordinates.

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

<comment><USER8> It's not really so simple, binning is a really useful technique to display data, especially large amounts of messy data. Just putting all the points on the map only works if you have a low enough number incidents in a compact enough area that the individual points make sense. But if you are not careful your points might actually be a population density map and be masking higher relative occurrences of something in certain areas.

The key thing is that if your bins (zip codes) don't align well with the underlining data (municipalities) you can mask patterns. In this case they basically (to borrow a phrase from gerymandering) cracked the high led district across a bunch of zip codes.

This is not actually an issue with zip codes nationwide, in MA there is only one zip code there crosses municipal boundaries so if you were doing the analysis in Massachusetts you wouldn't have had this issue.

<comment><USER9> You can easily bin spatial coordinates, too.

<comment><USER10> Sure, but it still requires some more skill than say, creating an Excel PivotTable and drilling down on the ZIP column.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of people put far too much faith in algorithms, and assume that because it's all math, it's both correct and unbiased.

There are so many, many ways to lie with numbers, and once money and power depend on the outcome of the algorithms, you can never trust that people won't design them to produce the outcomes they want. I suspect the problem here was less 'didn't understand geography' and more 'didn't give a shit about the truth'

</comment><comment><USER12> Has nobody in the conversation around the Flint crisis paid attention to Detroit Water's part in the issue? They terminated their contract when Flint decided it had long term plans to move and that termination forced the issue of finding an alternative water supply until the long term solution was ready.

If not for that, there never would have been a problem, Flint would have eventually had its long term new supply without ever needing an intermediate option.

When I sat down a finally looked over the details of this story it's the one glaring omission that I noticed from all of the news coverage.

<comment><USER13> As I understand it, the direct cause of the crisis wasn't that they changed water. It was they changed water and were totally incompetent in doing it. The basic PH levels in the new water are easily compensated for. Flint just didn't.

It's like if an uber driver canceled your pick up and the next one you got was drunk driving. Sure that first driver was a but-for cause, but not a direct cause. They have no moral culpability for the reckless actions of the next person.

edit: edited to correct the ph level as suggest by max.

<comment><USER14> The river water has too low of a ph, the correction is to increase it.

<comment><USER15> Yep. And it wouldn't have cost much. Emphasis mine:

> Marc Edwards, a professor at Virginia Tech who has been testing Flint water, > says treatment could have corrected much of the problem early on — _for as > little as $100 a day_ — but officials in the city of 100,000 people didn't > take action.

> "There is no question that if the city had followed the minimum requirements > under federal law that none of this would have happened," said Edwards, who > obtained the Muchmore email through a Michigan Freedom of Information Act > request.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/internal-email- mic...](http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/internal-email-michigan- blowing-flint-over-lead-water-n491481)

<comment><USER16> Interesting. Although I tend to attribute things like this to ignorance and not malice. < Helps me pretend people aren't so bad.

The people who make decisions often don't know what they're deciding about (how can the same person make a good decision about child education, policing standards and public hygiene?) and I think our modern philosophy that a "bad decision made early is better than no decision" amplifies this.

There are some decisions in life that have to made carefully so we don't ask for forgiveness.

<comment><USER14> The importance of pipe scale and water chemistry is something that the person making the decision absolutely should have known. It's a huge systemic issue if the decision has been taken away from someone with that basic technical knowledge and handed to some administrator.

It really is pretty basic knowledge for someone making decisions about a water system.

<comment><USER17> ...which is why the trend of conservative-run states usurping power from cities is so disturbing to me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great summation of the issue! ZIP code related issues are a constant problem. Often the administrators of data sets don't know how to geocode a full address, and there are few easy ways to have participants record 'good' geographies. Can you imagine asking people whether they know what Census Block they live in? So we end up with a lot of data sets where ZIP codes become bad short-hand for geography.

Last year I worked on a study where the geographic data had been fuzzed prior to passing it along to the study team, a process that unfortunately resulted in the patient addresses being simplified to just the ZIP code provided by the patient.

There were two major issues beyond the general unsuitability of ZIP codes as geography: first, ZIP codes don't seem to be verified during the course of patient care. They are recorded (incorrectly at a minimum rate of ~0.2%) as a part of a patient address during the creation of the initial record. Even if the address is used for mailings, a bad ZIP does not result in mis-delivered mail in the vast majority of cases due to the availability of city, state, and street address data in the full address. The issue is just never discovered until you are put into the position of relying on only the ZIP code for geography, at which point the mitigating data (the full address) is unavailable.

Second, even when ZIP codes do match to Census ZCTAs (the closest thing to 'ZIP code geographies' available and commonly utilized) there are some ZIP codes that do not have exactly matching ZCTAs. For example, 03911 and 04565 are real ZIP codes without (exact) matching ZCTAs.

It would be preferable if address data, before being obfuscated for data anonymity reasons, was properly geocoded. After geocoding, the resulting geography could then be fuzzed for anonymity. Of course, this would just lead to arguments about what constitutes proper diligence in geocoding :)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is an interesting read, but just seems like an obvious problem with no obvious solution other than "use the right boundaries for your problem space".

He needed geographic search boundaries that matched where the suspect water was being delivered. It so happens in Flint's case that it matches city boundaries. I suspect that's not the case everywhere...that is water delivery in some places might extend beyond city boundaries. Or perhaps some cities are split, and have more than one water source.

So the overall lesson here doesn't have much to do with zip codes, it has to do with searching the right boundaries. City boundaries wouldn't have been appropriate to search for mosquito borne issues. So that's not a good default either.

<comment><USER14> The solution in the article was a simple scatterplot of the data points.

There's no need to use any boundaries when just examining the data. The basically unbelievable thing that happened is that they only looked at one summary of the data.

<comment><USER19> I agree with your last point. A scatter plot, though, could just reflect population density. There is still value in bounds so you can see relative figures. I don't see a silver bullet really. The difference here seemed to be having someone with the right skills.

<comment><USER14> Sure, it wouldn't be the end of the analysis or necessarily the thing you'd use to communicate the data. But here's a paragraph from the article about the distribution of the data:

 _As I ran the addresses through a precise parcel-level geocoding process and visually inspected individual blood lead levels, I was immediately struck by the disparity in the spatial pattern. It was obvious Flint children had become far more likely than out-county children to experience elevated blood lead when compared to two years prior._

"It was obvious"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Frustratingly the default guidance from HHS on preventing de-identification of PHI uses the first 3 digits of ZIP codes (ZCTAs actually) in their examples [1]. We've had fun conversations on publishing analyses that rolled up to other more useful spatial binning because of this.

[1] [https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for- professionals/privacy/special-...](https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for- professionals/privacy/special-topics/de-identification/#zip)

</comment><comment><USER21> The way the greater Flint area's zip codes and address system works out had some other interesting impacts, as well, from a business perspective. After the crisis became more public, we started seeing businesses who were in Flint (greater Flint area, Flint mailing address), but not the City of Flint (the affected area), putting up signs and trying to make very obvious that they didn't have Flint water.

The City of Flint's water system is isolated from the rest of the county, which falls under the Genesee County Drain Commission's jurisdiction and is connected to the Detroit water system. It is still difficult to get some people to understand that they are different things (have had to explain to family many times that while we live in "Flint", we are not on Flint water). It would be interesting to see a study done on the effect this had on businesses both within the city and in the greater Flint area.

</comment><comment><USER22> "ZIP codes were arbitrarily delineated and covered a range of neighborhood types; in most small and midsized cities, one ZIP code can cover urban, suburban and rural neighborhoods with highly variable socioeconomic characteristics."

My own ZIP code is a perfect example of this. We're in the ZIP code of Town A, but Town B is actually the closest incorporated town to us. The Town A ZIP code extends between the state line and a river, up the eastern edge of our county. That covers our large development, which has people from very poor to very wealthy, four smallish unincorporated communities that are mostly poor- to-median, an incorporated town of about 1,000 bordering Town A, and the actual Town A which is a National Historical Park and consequently is mostly shops and museums catering to tourists and actually has very few residents (about 300 out of about 13000 that live in the ZIP code).

</comment><comment><USER23> tl;dr Zip There isn't a good mapping between zip-code and water source so water source being the common denominator for high lead levels wasn't recognized, little additional effort was put into combing through the data and you know the rest of the story.

<comment><USER24> The point isn't really about water boundaries, it's a larger about boundaries in general. Zip code isn't a good mapping to anything except how your mail is delivered. The water system was just a very good example of how using zip to do these mappings can fail catastrophically. This is a piece about GIS, not the particular data involved in telling it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > guesstimate

Stop making up words for which there already are words. "estimate" works just fine in that context.

<comment><USER26> Please don't be rude in comments here, or take threads on nitpicky tangents.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240636) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Dev Art Co(de) Factory - A visual programming interface for 3D - <AUTHOR> http://devartcodefactory.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find the github repo here : [https://github.com/postspectacular/devart- codefactory](https://github.com/postspectacular/devart-codefactory)

And more info on the project from the /about page:

"Co(de)factory is an installation and online design tool that allows anybody to create art and become an artist. It empowers people by giving them tools to create complex 3D forms, and offers the chance to have their digital piece fabricated in 3D and showcased in the Digital Revolutions exhibition at the Barbican."

"For this piece, Karsten Schmidt has created a visual programming interface with simple design tools, which people can use to transform a single shape in countless ways to construct more complex objects. The interface is accessible to anybody online with a modern web browser, and all pieces can be uploaded to appear in the curated online gallery of this website. Any existing object can then be edited further, thus forming a chain of related pieces and their co- authorships."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: You must have WebGL enabled</comment>


History of computer programming language statements - <AUTHOR> http://hhh.gavilan.edu/dvantassel/history/history.html

<comment><USER2> Not especially insightful, imho. It focuses on syntactic details, and mostly skips functional programming completely.

Better read the article _The Next 700 Programming Languages_ about ISWIM, say. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISWIM>

And Lisp has a lot of interesting history: <http://www.paulgraham.com/lisphistory.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Not just is it not especially insightful, I'm finding the prose a little hard to get through. Granted, this is presentation and not content, but my complaint are the sort of thing a decent editor ought to clean up: there's all sorts of syntax oddities and typos. It almost doesn't feel like native English</comment>


InfiniBand for the Home in Less Than $150 (10Gb Networking on the Cheap)  - <AUTHOR> http://hpc-opinion.blogspot.com/2011/12/infiniband-for-home-in-less-than-150.html

<comment><USER2> And the real content is here: <http://davidhunt.ie/wp/?p=232>

Not sure what the above blog post adds to this, if anything.

<comment><USER3> Voting the grandparent up for the sake of the link you cite (which they do, too, but as has been said, is essentially blogspam).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> kinda neat, but the only use-case he can point out is home theater? you can already stream bluray video over 100mbit ethernet, and you can get cable and switches for that for free or trivial amounts of money. that said, the mere idea is rather tempting (though I think gigabit is good enough for my home network)

</comment><comment><USER5> Thunderbolt/Light Peak is also 10G though...

</comment><comment><USER6> Blogspam</comment>


PrivacyGuide: Towards an Implementation of EU GDPR on Privacy Policy Evaluation - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/04/16/privacyguide-towards-an-implementation-of-the-eu-gdpr-on-internet-privacy-policy-evaluation/ <comment><USER2> Honest question: I see a lot of companies complying with the GDPR.

Why aren't there companies simply pulling out of the EU instead? For internet- based companies, they can still continue to serve EU customers while keeping all servers in the US. Unlike China, most EU countries aren't going to engage in internet censorship if companies just back out of the EU.

Credit cards also generally inter-operate between US and EU, so it's even possible to accept payments from the EU without setting foot there or otherwise physically entering EU jurisdiction.

<comment><USER3> > For internet-based companies, they can still continue to serve EU customers > while keeping all servers in the US.

That's not the case though. If they are serving EU residents, they have to abide.

<comment><USER4> I think the question being asked is why dont they just break EU law if they dont have a physical presence there (i.e. their assets can't be siezed, and they can't be arrested).

<comment><USER5> Because their country of residence only has a limited interest in protecting them at the cost of the country's relationship with the EU. Especially if the EU ruling is credible.

Also, the EU might block them from the market completely.

<comment><USER2> How would the EU block them?

In a hypothetical scenario where, say, Google pulls out, would EU dare block google.com? Given Google's revenue model is largely based on ad impressions, as long as they don't set up a firewall, Google gets all the business they need.

<comment><USER5> Those ad impressions only happen when the ads are loaded from Google's server. If routing to all Google servers gets blocked, those ads won't load anymore either.

Then webpage owners won't make money anymore off of having Google ads, so they'd replace them with different ads and you'd have the most flourishing ad industry in the EU within a few months.

But even just blocking access to google.com/.fr/.de/etc. would hurt Google quite a bit. Companies pay a lot of money to bend the truth and have themselves appear as the top result. As far as I'm aware, that still is the main source of income for Google.

Would they dare it? If pulling out means that Google disregards, therefore breaks EU law, I do think so. That would be entirely in the hands of the jurisdiction, which is relatively strong here. Which is to say, they generally don't need to give too much of a fuck about the effects of their doing. They just look at the laws, look at the facts and then make rulings out of those.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Non-Programming Skills Every Programmer Should Have - <AUTHOR>

1. hygiene 2. an affinity for numbers 3. rofl 4. starcraft 5. omg fml <comment><USER2> 0\. If not proper, at least consistent spelling.</comment>


Telehash protocol - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/telehash/telehash.org/blob/master/protocol.md

<comment><USER2> I'm leading an effort for a pretty large refactor and cleanup of all of the existing telehash work (look at the commit history), honing in our mission and simplifying it's usability.

We're trying to make it easy for any developer to add/use end-to-end networking that has strong encryption and connectivity built in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought a bit about something pretty similar.

One problem I saw was that the hashnames are still too long and random to be practical for many use cases like building instant messaging on top of it. What you kind of need on top of it is some kind of possibility to find other people/hosts. One possibility is kind of a social network way: You show your "friends" who your "friends" are. Hashnames that are friends to many of your friends are most likely friends and could be suggested to you. Another possibility is local node detection. Other devices you own are most likely on the same network.

Another problem is that sometimes instances aren't online but still should be able to receive messages. You either need to persuade some nodes somehow to store messages or you need central servers.

<comment><USER4> From what I understand, hashnames aren't supposed to be like domain names. They're supposed to be like IP addresses. Normal people don't need to type or remember IP addresses very often.

So what it needs is a DNS replacement. Something like namecoin might work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare to something like BitMessage? I think this does not provide anonymity in terms of IP cloaking and I don't see any kind of spam protection.

<comment><USER6> It's completely different to BitMessage. As far as I can tell this is not a personal messaging protocol, but an IP replacement.

<comment><USER7> Correct -- Telehash provides a basic communications layer, and is not an application, nor does it directly provide anonymity. The intention is to solve one specific problem, and solve it well. All sorts of applications could be built on top of Telehash to provide things like messaging or anonymity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022831) had 60 points just three weeks ago, I think we have to call this a dupe.

<comment><USER9> But discussion there is closed, and discussion here is active. Doesn't that suggest that this should not be killed, and instead should simply be allowed to run its natural course?

<comment><USER8> I didn't say we would kill the item. We don't close ongoing discussions on duplicate posts.

<comment><USER9> You can see from this chart[0] that the item disappeared down the rankings at pretty much exactly the same time you said that. So if you didn't kill the item, did you apply a penalty? Doing anything that takes the item off the front page - especially when it's already off the "newest" page - is pretty much equivalent to killing it.

[0] [http://hnrankings.info/8124822,8125111/](http://hnrankings.info/8124822,8125111/)

<comment><USER8> Of course. We demote duplicates off the front page. That is the whole point about duplicates.

We don't, however, stop an ongoing discussion from continuing. That is a significant difference.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ruby on Rails is out: major coding bootcamp ditches it, due to waning interest - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/07/26/ruby-rails-major-coding-bootcamp-ditches-due-waning-interest/#.tnw_eFHcmiDL <comment><USER2> "Watson specifically brought up the trend towards single-page web applications, which Node.js excels at, and Rails has yet to fully adopt."

I'm considerably less bearish on Rails than this article. My go-to stack, especially for prototyping and rapid product development, is a Rails API and a React Frontend or React Native mobile client. There's a gem for every common problem that I'm going to run into, and this setup "just works" for 90% of what I need to do, which is some flavor of CRUD mobile and web apps.

I feel like I've given Node an honest chance, and it definitely excels for real-time and high-performance apps, but for a basic web app, development feels slow and cumbersome.

Is there something that I'm missing about Node? This article mentions it being great for SPAs. What makes Node better for an SPA than a Rails or Django API- only app? And if there is something that makes it better, are there frameworks to make Node development for basic CRUD apps more productive? I tried Sails for a bit, but found it kind of lacking.

<comment><USER3> The main benefits I can see for node are performance, ability to use the same language on front and back end, and possibly easier server side rendering for SPA applications.

I don't think node comes out ahead in basic CRUD productivity as the rails ecosystem has many robust gems, established patterns, and documentation due to its maturity. They've recently added yarn and webpack integration as well so the core team seems well aware of the interest in SPA support.

It's a little tough to gauge though, since rails is a close to all inclusive framework while node's frameworks (ex: express) tend to favor smaller pieces you combine together yourself. There are pros and cons either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Replacing it is a Java course, which will emphasize the Spring application > development framework. This can be used in a variety of contexts — from > back-end services, to mobile and web applications._

The cycle has completed. If there was anything that Ruby and RoR seemed like a salve to, it was Java (and perhaps C#/ASP) web frameworks.

<comment><USER5> Ick, I'd rather write a CGI backend in C than even touch Spring after having to use it for a consulting job.

<comment><USER6> Spring, or Spring Boot? The latter I can live with...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think JAVA is a good choice for a bootcamp, not because of any merits of its own, but because there are a lot more opportunities for beginner/intermediate level JAVA developers than there are for beginner/intermediate level Rails developers. Also, starting out with something as opinionated as Rails might harm you in the long term. JAVA, once you're over it, leaves you with less things to unlearn.

<comment><USER5> At least from what I've seen, RoR jobs outnumber Java jobs 3:1, unless you're looking at enterprise jobs, and, well, who wants to do that?

<comment><USER8> Anyone that values the perks, vacation days, not having to answer emails/phone calls outside working hours, being able to work remotely without issues, getting software just by issuing a change request given project budgets.</comment></comment></comment>


LINKD – Game Changing Dating App for London? - <AUTHOR> http://linkd.co <comment><USER2> Why London? Does it only work in London?</comment>


The Case of WordPress "App" Themes vs. The GPL - <AUTHOR>

Ever hear of WordPress app themes? They're somewhat new. These are no ordinary themes. Take for instance a dental office. You walk in and the dental assistant makes an appointment on the scheduling app. Only it's not an app per sé, but a WordPress theme that acts like a full-blown web application. The application may use some features of WordPress, but may not use others. Some of the files will load via an MVC framework kicked off by WordPress calling a theme's index.php file. Some of the files may use WP API calls, while other files may not use a single WP API call at all. Some app themes may simply use WordPress as the sales mechanism because things attached to WordPress have market uptake. (Note, almost all app themes are not available on wordpress.org.) Some app themes may simply use WordPress to borrow the same database, provide easy admin panels that people are used to using, and the rest might be something else entirely. Some may use pages and posts inside the app theme. It depends.
Now that you know what a WordPress app theme is, the question is, "If a given PHP file doesn't make a single WP API call in it, but the parent file that called it may make a WP API call, does that file also mean it must be GPL as well because WP is GPL?"
Here's what the FSF told Matt Mullenweg about it:
http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/
However, did the FSF take into consideration my question above in the case of an app theme? That's a bit different, don't you think?
Here's my conundrum. I've put family life on hold, which hasn't been easy for me at all for me and my marriage. I've been drinking water and eating bread some days, almost. I did all this so that I could have the time to spend 30 days coding a WordPress app theme. Now that it's finished, I want to market it behind a paywall and get paid for my hard work. I want to ensure that when I told my wife, "We'll make some great sales here on this," that I was telling something realistic. But there's woothemes.com and cheapwoothemes.com as an example. Like that, I don't want someone to fork my stuff and sell it as their own accomplishment, perhaps doing nothing but changing branding, eroding all my seriously hard work. <comment><USER2> I'm not convinced WordPress themes are derivative works of WordPress, which is what you need to believe to make the GPL stick when you're not distributing WP itself.

But it really doesn't matter. Release your "app theme" under the GPL and don't worry about it. You're already meeting its requirements -- you have to give the source (the theme) to each person that purchases it. You're not required to give it to anyone else.

You're not required to license your other assets -- images, stylesheets, javascripts -- under the same license. So even though your customers can redistribute the PHP code, it's pretty worthless.

Still, I would put that all under the GPL anyway. It's not going to lose you a single person that would've otherwise bought your theme. WooThemes makes millions a year selling premium WP themes -- they're all GPL licensed.

I used to sell a WordPress plugin and theme set. It was pirated all over the place, on all the file sharing sites and black hat forums. If someone wanted it for free, they could get it. Didn't matter. Still made a quarter million dollars from people that wanted the latest version, from a trustworthy site, with support.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dan, some solid advice there, and with a track record of experience. Thank you so much for the great advice. Now to convince my wife that I need to go 100% GPL or do the mixed license thing with CSS, images, Javascript files as proprietary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this is weird. Lets say, Wordpress is a commercial product. You won't even think a minute, that you didn't have to pay for it, even if you just use one feature. The same goes for the GPL.

And if I understand those "app theme" correctly, they use the backend of Wordpress. For storing data, for administration of the data, users, rights.

So I think the FSF is right. But the GPL doesn't say, you can't sell your themes, it just says you can't deny other to do, what you did. That is all.

</comment><comment><USER4> In your case, to comply with the GPL you must give the sources to those who paid you for your theme. You also cannot stop your costumers from giving those sources away for free if they want.

You are not _forced to spread_ the sources around, to publish them on github or similar things. That would be nice but is not needed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not a problem really.

People need security fixes. If they download from elsewhere, they won't get priority notification.

You can also obfuscate your code.

In the long run, you can also remove dependencies on WP, by writing your own code to access the database et c.</comment>


DSCOVR Launch - <AUTHOR> http://new.livestream.com/spacex/events/3783845?origin=stream_live&mixpanel_id=a3817fd678e79-0f41afd19-43681f0a-2ee000-a3817fd679f25&acc_id=4097841&medium=email

<comment><USER2> do you know if the barge cam is public?</comment>


The Sextortion Scams: The Numbers Show We Have A Failure of Education - bsdly-pitrh https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-sextortion-scams-numbers-show-that.html <comment><AUTHOR> Even when assuming the worst, if an attacker filmed you while browsing adult websites at most they would have a movie of you making some funny faces, unless you have a habit of watching that kind of stuff with your laptop lid half closed.

Even if they managed to make a compromising movie, there is a small chance it would be seen by your friend, family or work colleagues unless they have a habit of clicking links in their spam folder.

</comment><comment><USER2> I believe education is important, and in the United States, it is wildly underfunded at the K-12 level.

However, blaming people for being under-educated is probably as misguided, and immoral, as yelling at a short person for not being able to reach the top shelf in the grocery store. It's as wrong as going to a mental hospital and yelling at the retards that they just need to try harder, go out and get a job, and start supporting themselves.

Humans have variable intellect, and our society really wants to deny that. Sure, it's good to treat people like they are capable of making smart decisions, but the evidence is overwhelming that many of them can't. There are people who really can't tell what is real from what's been made fake. And that's not just a problem with the lower IQ people: Look at fakes in the art world as an example for how highly trained and educated people are still fooled.

So, what are the best policy decisions in a world where a significant portion of the population can't tell a half-decent photoshop from reality, or a sextortion scam from actual sextortion with real evidence?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an article about phishing attacks over email that is using sex and vagueness as clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is a version of this that is identical except it shows your password in plain text.

<comment><USER5> And I've gotten it, too and don't care. It was the right password at the time, but without my 2FA dongle, good luck getting in.

I've succumbed that all of my info is out "there" somewhere and there's nothing I can do about it.

Everyone just needs not to put anything out there.

Rule of thumb: the cloud is just someone else's computer that you have no control over. Stop putting your data on it.

<comment><USER6> Do you honestly think society is going to become more responsible with their private data? Because I don't.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Military Operations Are Biggest Motivation for Terrorists, FBI Study Finds - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/us-military-operations-are-biggest-motivation-for-homegrown-terrorists-fbi-study-finds/ <comment><USER2> That type of study is not enough to change the war machine. There's too much profit at stake for war hawks to even blink.</comment>


U.S. Senators Advocate H-1B Freeze for 60 Days or Longer - <AUTHOR> https://insights.dice.com/2020/05/11/u-s-senators-advocate-h-1b-freeze-60-days/ <comment><USER2> This is a backdoor immigration cut, nothing more. COVID is irrelevant.

Remember that it's not just new entrants that need H1B processing: it's immigrants currently in the country that need to transfer their visa type (e.g., former students moving from OPT to H1B). What, are they supposed to leave or risk being denied a visa forevermore?

Not to mention, they've already paused green card processing and shut down most offices that process F1 (student) visas. The US just doesn't want high- skilled immigrants anymore.

<comment><USER3> Some, but not all, H1B immigrants are highly skilled. Some are fodder for body shops, some are used to avoid having to pay market rate. This behavior has been documented in great detail.

I do not believe it unreasonable to take measures to encourage hiring of citizens over importing workers when official unemployment is near 15%, and unofficially, closer to 20%. Your typical tech company is likely to be sophisticated enough to onboard skilled workers outside the US and support them working remotely, in which case, they are not impacted by this policy.

<comment><USER4> Then change the rules to make it more difficult for the body shops maybe?

Doesn't seem too hard

<comment><USER3> > Doesn't seem too hard

Apparently it is, as it has not been done.

<comment><USER4> Politically hard most likely, instead of technically hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Genuine question for anti-H1B people on this thread.

 __Do you think there should be a pathway to immigration for someone not from the US ? __(Not just Indians /Chinese)

_______________________________________________________

Because honestly, there really isn't any at all. If all work visas are supposed to not have a pathway to citizenship. Then how is someone supposed to make it in ?

The diversity PR ? Which is almost explicitly an Anti-big country immigration visa, which even then, only has a 0.5% success rate ? (It is kind of hilarious that the visa thinks EU countries add more diversity to the US than those from other nations)

Or the investor PR ? ie. bribe your way into a GC.

Or be religious minister ? Because for some reason priests are a more productive part of society than people with PhDs.

Or should they be refugees. Which is also GC that has fallen out of favor among US politicians.

You say the H1B is a backdoor. But look at the other categories. People in the arts and general administration abuse the Eb1 GC. On the other hand it is almost impossible to get the EB1 GB without a willing employer (usually needs to be in research) and a top tier PhD.

Also, it is not just Indians. How do you think Europeans have historically immigrated to the US. Come over on an employment visa and then get a GC. Just because the ethnicity of the applicants has changed, doesn't mean that the system wasn't always in place. It is referred to as dual-intent for a reason.

I understand if the US wants to suddenly stop being a country that wants immigrants. But, they continue to sell the American dream, their inclusivity and proudly claim the the creations of 1st and 2nd gen immigrants as their own. That, makes them seem really hypocritical.

<comment><USER6>
      honestly, there really isn't any pathway to immigration at all

Honestly... the USA makes a _million_ new immigrant citizens a year, year over year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Of course, doing so will do very little to nothing for American workers. Companies who want the top talent will go where the top talent lives, and this may just speed up the process (one example could be a simple adjustment to hire more folks in Vancouver, for example). Somehow, some people in the US forget that yesterday's immigrant is today's citizen.

<comment><USER8> I'm not straight out saying you're wrong, but I don't see the evidence that this is obviously true. There's an equally compelling line of logic that by removing H1-B visas you create less supply for those jobs in the US, driving up wages for local workers and encouraging more local people to train up to take those jobs - because of the higher rewards. Will companies just immediately decide to hire in another country? Well, some of them might, but if wages go up 5% is that really going to force companies overseas? Running an international organisation is hugely expensive. So maybe wages go up and basically no jobs are lost to overseas. What if removing these options to basically steal talent from overseas meant companies needed to sponsor more university programmes to get the qualified staff they need?

I find it quite compelling that the first order effect of H1-B visas is to give large corporations an easy way of driving down wages by hiring cheaper overseas workers who are willing to take lower wages than the locals in order to earn their citizenship, and that benefits company profit margins at the expense of native workers.

I'm willing to believe that the net effect is actually different and you get some magical efficiency effect that makes everyone richer, but I think that actually needs to be demonstrated rather than assumed.

<comment><USER2> I recently worked as a consultant doing back office talent sourcing work. It is a stated, explicit ambition in the industry to offshore & automate as much work as humanly possible.

You're thinking, reasonably, that companies aren't going to go through the trouble of immediately opening a whole office in Bangalore for a few QA testers. You're right. They're either going to (1) offshore to an MSP (2) automate or (3) just not do QA, and (without realizing) just let bad code get written.

Now that IT is working remotely anyway, why the heck NOT call Cap Gemini? Presto - we have QA. Who cares if they're in Penang?

<comment><USER8> The obvious answer is that the companies that have their QA in Penang fairly quickly learn that the 7,500 engineers in Penang that you got for the price of 20 engineers in the US not only don't do the QA correctly, they're actively making the quality worse by DDOSing the engineers in the US with jira tickets. Then you find out that the senior management outsourced core activities to Penang, and before you know it you're on 14nm++++++ and angry US engineers are being forced to fly to Penang and figure it out, and the CEO is being blackmailed into a resignation using an office affair as a pretext.

May have gotten a bit too specific with my hypothetical there.

<comment><USER4> But it doesn't need to be Penang

It can be Canada. It can be Mexico or South America.

It can be Eastern Europe.

Yes, it will be more expensive (but maybe not overall), and there will be fewer "yes-men" and less bottom-kissing but more actual work done and maybe better communications since time zones overlap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Choosing a nonpartisan description of "U.S. Senators" obscures the fact that all of the senators are from the same party (Republican).

An example of where the journalistic commitment to being politically neutral harms the ability to properly inform the reader.

<comment><USER10> Plus, it has not context for how many. Saved anyone a read, it's 4.

<comment><USER11> It's 2 highly influential senators (Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley), one up- and-comer (Hawley) and then Ted Cruz. I'd especially pay attention to Senator Cotton, there's a lot of chatter about him having presidential ambitions, and it wouldn't surprise me to see him become the figurehead of the post-Trump GOP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly, employers prefer to layoff citizens before h1-b's because of the illiquidity in the h1-b system.

<comment><USER13> ...and also because they're cheaper. H1-B's are like indentured servants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this is quite good in a strange way. Nobody was happy about H1-B. Tech companies were complaining that quotas were too low. Skilled workers complained that this is a ploy to keep costs down, especially in academia. I've once heard an American PhD say 'I am not afraid of competing with very smart Chinese or Indian scientists. But they are making me compete with 10 mediocre Chinese or Indian PhDs and nobody can win this competition.' So, why not blow the entire H1-B system up and maybe in 3-5 years, once the crisis is over, something better emerges.

<comment><USER15> I am one of those Indian PhDs. Many of my friends are. I suppose it's easy for you and your friend (let's not get into an argument about who's stupider) to sip some coffee and say let's blow it up and wait for a few years when you have no personal effect.

Meanwhile I'm back in India, and completely lost in my mind on where and how I should proceed with my career.

I'm of the view that a country can choose whatever the hell they want about who to let in. Just stick to some rules with some consistency though. I came to America believing that there was a path that works a certain way, and that I could Hope for a better life in America if I follow it and work hard. Clearly your country hasn't kept your side of a gentleman's agreement there.

I suppose your friend is right, we Indian abd Chinese PhDs are idiots to think America is a fairer country than wherever we come from.

<comment><USER14> You are assuming that I am a US citizen, but I am not. I was once an immigrant too, lived in California for 6 years and ironically wasn't able to get an immigrant visa, because while on J1 visa I was sponsored by US State Department. I had to apply for an immigrant visa in Canada and was just one point short. So I returned to my home country. I was bummed too, my life was totally turned upside down. That was 20 years ago. So I feel you. BUT I am happy my life turned out the way it did. I am 40+ years old. I own my own home. I have zero debt. I have family and two kids. My medical expenses are next to zero (whatever they take out in my taxes). American political leaders, including presidents turned out to be more batshit crazy than the mediocre idiots that are running my home country (and less corrupt, too). So NOT getting a green card was the best thing that happened to me. It turns out that American dream is more dream that American for many people, and living in Eastern Europe is quite good. Sorry for sharing my personal story, but so that you know where I am personally coming from.

<comment><USER15> I'm definitely glad it worked out for you, I hope you do agree you wasted a lot of time as well though.

I spent a decade doing things in the US and am stuck knowing more about how the system works in the US than how it does in India. All my twenties have been wasted a bit because of this. And India is not the greatest of places to deal with either, though at this point it's up in the air which ones worse! Perhaps that's the state of the entire world as well.

For what it's worth though, in spite of the inequality, healthcare, partisan politics and things, I will much rather still work in the US - it's a more exciting place to be than anywhere else I have ever been

<comment><USER14> I do, but I am always careful to distinguish my personal situation with the bigger picture. And you kind of have to train yourself to do this. Also, I don't feel that I wasted a single day while living in US. Or, actually wasted a single day I lived in Turkmenistan (lived there for three years as well). Those were totally different experiences, but immensely valuable to me. Either way, I hope your life, personal and professional, turns out to be good whereever you end up living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought H-1B was for when one was unable to source enough skilled people locally? If so, it should kinda be self-adjusting if more high skilled people are unemployed, right?

<comment><USER17> That's its stated purpose, which is why you see it mostly used for software and science positions.

However, it's been "abused" by large consulting/contracting companies who hire an army of immigrant labor at the low end of market wages. The H1B recipient can't do much about it - they're tied to the employer (and their spouse can't work unless they also get an H1B). Yes, they can move jobs, but it takes legal resources to get the visa moved/re-issued (not sure about the technical details).

<comment><USER13> Can confirm. Our requirement to fit the "cannot find American" requirement was to post a tiny ad in a small unknown paper with a ton of requirements that they H1-B we were about to hire didn't himself even really meet.

It was HIGHLY abused to just get cheap low-level IT staff. ...like the kinds who confuse Java with Javascript.

<comment><USER18> I've worked with a ton of H1B talent in my 20 years or so in the industry and I can count on one hand the number of times that they were an exceptional talent (compared to the rest of industry) that couldn't otherwise be sourced locally.

That's true for anybody in any IT position, though, generally. Truly exceptional people are few and far between. Also in those cases those H1B folks were highly paid. No, the vast majority of times I've worked with H1B talent was because they were willing to work hard and for less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is any American firm even hiring internationally at this point? I imagine the only H1-B processing going on right now is for transfers.

<comment><USER20> International transfers don't need to use H1Bs, there is another visa to use that doesn't have a strict quota.

<comment><USER21> If you're talking about an L1 (specifically L-1B), it's the same process for getting a green card as an H-1B. The downside with the L-1B is that you can't switch employers.

<comment><USER20> Edited, thanks! I got confused because there is the @ L1 but then one of my friends got stuck on a J1 instead when moving for Microsoft China to Redmond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's the status for TN visas right now? The US/Canadian border is semi- closed now except for things like trucking. If you were just issued one, could you get across?

</comment><comment><USER23> While I have sympathy for the foreign workers who are hurt by this, honestly this is hardly a surprise. When you try to optimise for money over everything else (quality of government, public healthcare, education for your kids, safety) weird things happen. Try looking for countries that have a sane government with a clear immigration policy. These countries are out there. Yes, you will make less money. But at least this shit isn't likely to happen to you.

</comment><comment><USER24> This doesn't make any sense. What does a "60 day cut" even mean? As I understand it, H1Bs get processed now and then get issued in like October. It is more than 60 days from now until October

Wouldn't the only result of this be a backlog of paperwork to process?

</comment><comment><USER25> Most PhDs start with H-1Bs. So with longer freezes (not that anyone is hiring right now) you risk losing an entire cohort of the best scientists in many fields.

<comment><USER26> Most PhDs I know that are doing research in labs are on a F1 or J-1.

<comment><USER25> F1s expire pretty quickly, you should now this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Meanwhile, doctors working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis aren't able to go where they are needed because of the H-1B rules:

[https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/837855173/immigrant- doctors-f...](https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/837855173/immigrant-doctors-face- barriers-trying-to-volunteer-to-help-fight-covid-19-pande)

</comment><comment><USER28> The H1B system along with the L1 and L2 and mostly labor arbitrage. Given the current employment situation, it should be since there are currently enough local workers given the state of the economy. The initial draft of the immigration pause included these, but some of the presidents advisors were concerned that it would upset Google, Apple etc. so it was removed from the final one.

</comment><comment><USER29> This sucks.

America should be using this crisis to prioritize hiring the world's best medical, engineering, and technical talent.

It's like our last competitive advantage, a way to capture value from America being a desireable place, and we're pissing it away.

</comment><comment><USER30> Politicians sending a letter isn't a substantive story for HN. It's even lower on the totem pole than proposed bills, most of which never go anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER31> Good. Hope it's permanent. We need a moratorium on immigration for a few decades at least.

</comment><comment><USER32> There are 85K H1Bs a year of which 20K is for Masters/PHD students.

\- Most foreign student revenue will dry up if you take H1B away.

\- H1B is also used for doctors. Do we not want them?

\- Given the remote transition underway, they will probably transfer over to Latin America/Canada. This is an issue even for existing tech workers. We are now competing for jobs with everyone that fall in American time zones.

<comment><USER33> Don't worry about doctors getting visas. Have a look at the visa delivered by job: [https://h1bdata.info/highestpaidjob.php](https://h1bdata.info/highestpaidjob.php)

The top 15 paid job titles are all health related and well above $200k in average salary. Their organizations will always manage to get visas no matter what new fancy requirements might come up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This means they want to suspend the processing of current queue of H-1B apps, right?

</comment><comment><USER35> This thread seems very astroturfed.

</comment><comment><USER36> You'll know they're serious when they do the same for H2A/H2B.

</comment><comment><USER37> How much H1-Bs account for jobs in US ?

<comment><USER38> Estimated to be 400,000 mostly in IT.

<comment><USER33> Should clarify that this is IT as in low level positions in cheap outsourcing firms. Not to confuse with tech companies.

Edit: You can see visas per company here with average salary [https://h1bdata.info/topcompanies.php](https://h1bdata.info/topcompanies.php) You can make an opinion for yourself but suffice to say that the bulk of the jobs are in cheap outsourcing firms, not in tech companies. (cf. google 15k VS tata consulting 73k)

<comment><USER39> Microsoft , google and Facebook are consistently topmost recipient of h1b visas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> finally no more bonded labour for companies who get away with paying 70% less(in tech) due to immigrant status than their american counter part.

</comment><comment><USER41> Good. H-1B is an exploitative system that forces people into something resembling modern slavery, at the cost of American jobs and business opportunities.

People who are against this IMO, are mostly concerned with not appearing "racist" or xenophobic in any way. Virtue signal.

<comment><USER13> My wife started as an H1-B. It's true that she was unpaid and locked into her company, but ultimately it was her path to US citizenship.

She knew exactly what she was getting into - and now she's making higher six figures than I do.

The H1-B program is a choice they can walk away from at any time, which makes it fundamentally different from slavery.

<comment><USER42> This is often a false choice in reality - many H1B recipients have lived here for decades or more, have kids at school who are American citizens and know nothing about where their parents even came from.

To go back deports their American children to a country where they may not even know the language, as one example.

I wouldn't go as far as to call it slavery either of course, but it undoubtedly has a servitude element - the outcomes of the policy speak to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> My concern is that American selfish politics will just drive a lot of new work to other countries which are actively courting immigrants/skilled workers.

We are already reeling with concerns about China becoming the largest economy. Now we throw out some of the more skilled producers who also have the capital to drive consumption, thus creating jobs. This will only reduce our GDP and allow other countries to go ahead much faster.

What do we expect will happen here? Bartenders will start being on-call in AWS immediately? Unemployment systems, public utilities will run automatically?

Are we seriously imagining the best of people will come to the US to work in medicine or academia with so much vitriol and uncertainty directed towards them? Does anyone even think twice about how inhuman our laws are to people and families who are not criminals?</comment>


Has Anonymous Romania Been Caught? - <AUTHOR> http://www.maindevice.com/2012/05/29/anonymous-romania-arrested/ The Romanian news agency have reported today that 14 people, members of Anonymous Romania have been arrested. The Romanian cyber fighters were spread across the country and it took special operations led by the specialised Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism to apprehend them.<p>The 24 year old Romanian leader of Anonymous group <comment><USER2> The English language used in this article makes me cringe.

<comment><USER3> What exactly isn't according to your standards?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> according to local press, yes. <http://bit.ly/KSxULR></comment>


Who's an Angel, Super Angel, or a Micro-VC? Investor Nomenclature by @ManuKumar - <AUTHOR> http://k9.vc/MicroVCs

<comment><USER2> This is a newbie question, so forgive me for that.

The article says that there are too many angel investors right now, so the available money exceeds the number of quality companies at the seed stage.

Here's the newbie question - where are these angels? Are there places people gather online, or is it all about running in the right circles?

How does a team of talented developers get connected to the funds they need to get started?</comment>


Marissa Mayer: The Visionary - <AUTHOR> http://www.glamour.com/women-of-the-year/2009/marissa-mayer <comment><USER2> You aren't going to get a good article about her aesthetic push in Google without a mention of either her upcoming marriage or her taste in ODLR.

Vogue's article was worse.

They post her in women's mags because she is cute, she's has designs touch, and she works for Google. I would prefer to see Caterina Fake. She has a brilliant understanding of HCI, that most of us will never top in our lifetimes. She's has doctorate from RISD. She's doing the startup thing RIGHT NOW. She's brilliant. She also has great style. You know that because no one would dare go up to her after a presentation and say:"Is that Jane Mayle you are wearing?" She just pulls it off as a professional, and that's that. (seen this in person at the New York Tech Meetup, I actually recognized the jacket she was wearing from somewhere, but she wore it perfectly, and no, I would not have dared go up to her and asked, where did you get said jacket.)

Bad conde nast (though I will vogue and W forever)

</comment><comment><USER3> Did anyone notice she's sitting on a Swiss ball wearing stilettos and a clingy red dress?

<comment><USER4> Of course - but I think some of us wish that for once there could be an article about a woman in tech that didn't make a big point about her gender and include a staged, sexy picture. :/

<comment><USER5> This isn't a tech article. It's a women's fashion article.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it is annoying that you can't have a successful women without focusing on how she looks.

<comment><USER5> I've seen a lot of articles on Mayer before. She's not at all an unknown. It's just that those weren't submitted to Hacker News, and this was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Choice quote:

 _"Get in a bit over your head," she says. "That's how you grow and learn and stretch yourself."_

</comment><comment><USER7> We need more articles about women in technology circles here on HN. Thanks for posting.

<comment><USER8> "We" might, but women in technology don't. When someone writes about a successful man, people can assume that it's because he's successful; if someone writes about a successful woman, comments like yours make it seem like she's just being written about because she's a she.

<comment><USER7> Wow. You are reading way too much into my statement. I was just trying to voice encouragement. Why don't you try to be more supportive?

<comment><USER8> "Supportive" is not necessarily good. I am "supportive" of things I think are a good idea. I am not "supportive" of things I think are a bad idea.

Maybe you meant something like "I'm glad women are succeeding in technology," rather than "I want people to lower their standards for what's worth reporting, when they report on women, so we'll hear more about women even though the technology industry is disproportionately male." But what you were saying is much closer to the last one.

If you want women to achieve more, for whatever reason, that's fine, but that's not the sentiment you expressed.

<comment><USER7> "Supportive" means in the sense of "supporting" reporting any type of publication that aims to increase the awareness of women or any minority in the technology sector. Whether you think the publication has to meet certain "standards" is entirely subjective and based upon your individual worldview.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


» Silicon Valley Wiki Bert Baeck's domain - <AUTHOR> http://www.bertbaeck.com/?p=464 <comment><USER2> Yes, please do call every programmer in the Valley a "rockstar" or "ninja."</comment>