How to Know Everything About Everything: Laura Riding's Letters to an 8-Year-Old - <AUTHOR> https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/02/20/laura-riding-four-unposted-letters-to-catherine/ <comment><USER2> I dunno, I'll play the crank here and say that writings like this really make me question the kinds of life that could be lived with this ideology. People tend to already focus on themselves as the locus of creation, do we really need more of this? I know there are people who claim to live better lives because of views like this, but I've seen how many of them live, which is often in the moment, selfish and a waste of others time.

If the highest intellectual, moral and emotional goal you can achieve is to know yourself, hour can anything be too selfish?

Yet, I hear far more often about what these people think of their lives, and far less about the actual benefit to others.

Maybe my moral compass is tuned differently, but the whole focus on "self" seems to be the most shallow when it comes to a happy life, but it sure is convenient ;P

<comment><USER3> I never interpreted her saying focus only on yourself and maximize your own happy. But rather know yourself. To me there is a big differences in understanding who you are vs only doing what you want at any expense.

This is too simple, but knowing I want a piece of cake does not mean I should or will eat one.

She is railing against the types of people that are so goal driven to a point where it becomes an obsession. She seems to think that over doing(which is what that is) stems from a poor understanding of who you are, and/or surpassing your own needs. For instance opening a local store. It's successful, makes enough money, but instead of being happy(your needs are met) you open a chain, take over the state, then the country and so on. Or the empty nester that now has no children to focus on has nothing to do, no skills to do anything, and no idea what they actually like to do. Since their entire world was built around someone else.

Also, never let the worst of a group define that group. If they are the worst they probably aren't following the actual ideology.(clearly this thinking fails with Nazi's or other extremists)

<comment><USER2> Okay, I can accept that. I do have a knee-jerk reaction to posts along this line, but I can see the difference between pleasing yourself and knowing who you are.

I guess my only criticism remaining is that I think one doesn't and shouldn't preclude the other, so when I see posts like this in isolation, in the current culture, it runs so aligned to the "please yourself" pop culture that it's hard not to see it as part of that. But I agree, knowing who you are is incredibly important. I personally believe that you can't truly know yourself unless you also invest in others so you know them well enough to contrast who you are and are not.

<comment><USER4> The way I interpret the writing is that if one understands who she is then the act of pleasing herself is meaningless "doing" that would never cross her mind in the first place.

I really don't think there is anything in the writing that promotes/suggests the "please yourself pop culture" you mentioned; in fact, I don't think there is anything in the writing about pleasing oneself at all.

The closest thing that I can imagine is consider that you are on a hike alone and all of a sudden you feel the urge to play a tune. You take out your ocarina and just naturally play a tune. When you are done you simply continue hiking. You didn't play the tune to please yourself and you didn't play the tune to please an audience—you simply played because it felt like the most natural thing to do that moment, and it's good because of that.

> I personally believe that you can't truly know yourself unless you also > invest in others so you know them well enough to contrast who you are and > are not.

I tend to disagree with this. I personally think that you can't understand yourself through contrast with who others are (not least because you can never understand others better than they understand themselves)—that way you are simply creating an image yourself based on the opinions you have on other people, not because you are just being you because you understand yourself.

<comment><USER2> The reason I read it that way was because of the whole "knowing yourself is the most important goal in life" aspect, which is a _summum bonum_ type statement, and one I disagree with. I think there are lots of good honorable things in life that are more important than knowing who you are.

> I tend to disagree with this. I personally think that you can't understand > yourself through contrast with who others are

I don't mean you should only or even primarily base your self-awareness in relation to the contrast, but that any view of yourself that doesn't at least have an understanding of your needs vs another person's will always be an incomplete one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> While at some times she seems to be rambling or making no sense(she over uses the words doing, everything), her point rings true to me. You need idle time to understand yourself.

I have seen other sources say that kids need downtime. To just use their imagination. Constantly having your eyes glued to TV or your phone does not make a healthy person.

She also mentions that people make the mistake of 'over-doing'. Which I also agree with.

While I feel like she could have made her case clearer and cleaner(although she was writing to a child so maybe this is perfect), I agree with her.

<comment><USER5> Riding was a modernist poet with a bunch of radical theories about language so it's not surprising she was using words in an unconventional way, even with an eight-year-old.

IIRC she was Robert Graves' partner for many years, and later in life was something like a spiritual teacher seeking truth in language, of all places. Martin Seymour-Smith, who single-handedly wrote a great big encyclopedia of 20th century literature, regarded her as the best 20th century poet in English.

<comment><USER6> My knowledge of American poetry is abysmal, but this sounds intriguing. Do you know of any good starting points to read about her work, and her life?

<comment><USER7> I have a 1973 edition of the "Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry", which includes six of her poems. I think the volume serves its purpose well, and includes a nice balance of British and American poets.

From the brief biography included: "After 1939, when she returned to the United States, she renounced poetry and wrote no more poems: she came to see poetry as obstructing the dedicated use of words for truth that it invited."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Written in 1939 by an author who died 26 years ago, yet still not in the public domain, so you need to fork over $11 if you want to actually read the damn letters. Thank you, Sonny Bono and Disney.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if she would have thought of structured games as the "wrong" sort of play, making "work" out of play.</comment>


Tell HN: Tuft and Needle Follow-up (Ten mattress, improvements and growing pains) - <AUTHOR>

Following up on our December post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6900625), we'd like to thank the Hacker News community—especially all those who reached out directly to advise. Based on feedback, we made improvements that have resonated well with customers, including:
We launched our Tuft & Needle Ten mattress. This is a thicker version (10-inches) of our original mattress while keeping the same comfort and feel. Improved the visuals and photography to show that Tuft & Needle is a quality product crafted with care rather than just another low price mattress. Added FAQs and clarified that we only sell the mattress.
Our company and sales have grown quite a bit since our last post. Over the last three months we've exceeded our 2013 revenue ($1MM). Last week, CNNMoney/Fortune followed up on a previous article and filmed our manufacturing process: http://bit.ly/tncnnmoney
Here are a few of the challenges we've been experiencing with our recent growth:
Scaling Supply Chain: We discovered a very critical bottleneck in our manufacturing process. The fix involves a new machine. We learned that we need to proactively forecast and make sure that order volume can be sustained even with a jump in the sales baseline. Also, customers appreciate open communication via emails and social media about any delays before they realize it themselves.
Hiring: We are having to hire quickly, especially in customer support. The volume of tickets seems to compound with delays which puts extra stress on the team as a whole. What has been working well for us has been to ask our friends, "Who are the most talented people you know who we should hire?"
We'd love to hear your critiques on our changes so far. We realize we still have a lot more work to do. Also, it'd be great to get your ideas on how we can improve the brand.
We're so grateful for your help so far. Thank you again.
JT & Daehee https://www.tuftandneedle.com <comment><USER2> Something that bugged me when I ordered, there's really no order status window. I don't know which stage my mattress was on or when it would arrive. I actually didn't know until the day before it arrived that it shipped. Something as simple the Domino's pizza tracker (order processing, processed, manufacturing, shipping, etc) that shows the status of my order would've been nice. Like you said, proactive status updates, even if it's about delays, put customer minds at ease. The status tracker could also drive traffic to other informative parts of the site. For instance, you're mattresses are American made. If you source materials from a specific place, outlining where a customer's mattress is coming from could be cool. If you source from multiple American companies and manufacture in multiple locations, a customer could track where their mattress is coming from. I think it would add more weight to the claim of American Made. I'm very happy with my Ten and have slept soundly since I got it. I'm a fan.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fantastic idea. I like the transparency around each stage and what's happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cited post from December: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6900625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6900625)

</comment><comment><USER4> We may not be your main target, but international (Canada here) shipping would be great. There are alternatives, such as using a third party to forward the package, but with the weight the shipping costs get out of control.

I'm just waiting until a solution pops up, I do not want to buy elsewhere and I also do not want two mattresses.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just ordered a 10" king for the house I'll be moving into next week. I'm so excited! Keep fighting the good fight.</comment>


Bootcamp, an open-source enterprise social network - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vitorfs/bootcamp

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I'm the founder of a startup that builds/maintains a competing project.

That said: Awesome, always enjoy seeing more projects in this space. I'd enjoy looking at what interop support this project has, and maybe look at doing an interop "bake off" with some other open source social networking projects one day.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> actually the link trybootcamp.vitorfs.com is just to try out the application, so people can see it running

it is meant to be used on the company network, setting ALLOWED_SIGNUP_DOMAIN = ['@example.com']

the idea is to make our developer team to interact more

</comment><comment><USER3> Go, go, go! And then make it 100% distributed via torrent like app (okay, last step may appear bit involved but I'm sure someone can bend torrent/bitcoin/namecoin/whatever enough to make it happen!)

<comment><USER4> It already exists: meet Vole (made in Go) [http://vole.cc/](http://vole.cc/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mmm, any reason you're not using Django's class-based views (or [http://django-vanilla-views.org/](http://django-vanilla-views.org/)) for DRYer code?

<comment><USER6> There's a debate over whether or not class-based views are a good idea to use. Discussion here: [http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/djangos-cbvs-were-a- mistak...](http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/djangos-cbvs-were-a-mistake/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd add images of what it looks like. So far, I don't know what it looks like since I don't see anything on the README, and the landing page is just a plain sign up form.

<comment><AUTHOR> yup! i will do that! for now, the link you found on the github repository is just for test purpose, so feel free to create an random account with a fake email account just to try it out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kind of a tangent... but I'm actually having a lot of fun using it as a pseudonymous social network/feed.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would add OAuth authentication to it, but by far it fits my needs.

</comment><comment><USER10> What does it mean: " _Enterprise_ social network"?

<comment><USER11> Probably something like Yammer, but for your own intranet.

<comment><AUTHOR> yup!

<comment><USER12> So, none of the features that mindcrime mentioned upthread?

<comment><USER2> To be fair, our definition isn't necessarily _the_ definition either. And there are degrees of "enterpriseyness*. We, at Fogbeam, try to distinguish products by really emphasizing the integration aspect. But a tool without all those features could absolutely still be a useful tool, depending on the situation.

We're angling towards really large organizations with our offering - the kinds of companies that are using BPM / Workflow engines, a SOA architecture, LDAP/AD, etc. But many firms, especially smaller ones, might not want or need those integrations.

<comment><USER12> #1 and #3 came to mind for me immediately, even before I read your comment. Although SSO integration is displacing LDAP/AD.

And smaller firms generally view 'Enterprise' solutions as bloated consulting- ware, so if that's their market, they need to work on their messaging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> do you pipe all the data to /dev/null? I don't see any databases mentioned in the technology stack

<comment><AUTHOR> oh! i have to update the readme ;)

actually as i used django framework (which is database agnostic), on my development env i use sqlite3 and on production im using postgresql

so you can pretty much use any database that django supports.

in fact, for a large scale usage postgresql would not be enough... but for using inside a company intranet, with a few users i think it is alright for now

<comment> vertex-four > for a large scale usage postgresql would not be enough

What sort of large scale are you talking about? Why would Postgres not be enough? What would be, and which features make it better for use with your project?

<comment><AUTHOR> hm im not so sure. but if we plan to use a single to instance of bootcamp, and companies can use it as a service, signing up their companies and using a single infra, that would be thousands of networks on the same database maybe a nosql db would be better? i am not really an database expert to make this sort of analysis hehe.. never really worked with huge amount of data, like twitter and facebook for example

i mean, im not so sure if a relational database would be the best option

<comment><USER14> I would imagine something like Cassandra scaling better (both on the reads & writes), but I'd suspect you'd have to change your data model quite a bit to see those benefits. If you're interested in this line of inquiry, shoot me an email 'jlh' @ 'opencore.io'.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Jakob Nielsen Is Wrong About Mobile Websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/04/why-jakob-nielsen-is-wrong-about-mobile-websites/ <comment><USER2> Yes, everyone please stop listening to Nielsen.

Also, check out the staff section on the Nielsen Norman Group site: <http://www.nngroup.com/about/people/>

\- 4 old white dudes \- 12 young, attractive women</comment>


Most GDPR emails unnecessary and some illegal, say experts - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/21/gdpr-emails-mostly-unnecessary-and-in-some-cases-illegal-say-experts?CMP=twt_gu&utm_source=Benedict%27s+newsletter&utm_campaign=3373a21c28-Benedict%27s+Newsletter_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4999ca107f-3373a21c28-70479421 <comment><USER2> > just got a GDPR email from a company with every single recipient > accidentally CCd in. Great start lads

[https://twitter.com/b3nfox/status/999565387309158400](https://twitter.com/b3nfox/status/999565387309158400)</comment>


Construction Costs: Metro Stations - <AUTHOR> https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction-costs-metro-stations/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how much it would cost to compensate the business owners along the construction project. The reason cut and cover is usually avoided is because of business NIMBYism as they're concerned the construction will harm their business. Since it's so expensive to do these other methods of construction maybe the construction should just pay the businesses to relocate out of the savings from using cut and cover.

<comment><USER3> I think that businesses should really appreciate the foot traffic that Metro station would bring. It's three years of losses and then 30 years of profits.

If we're talking about renters, they can move out if they don't like the hassle, and landlords will surely compensate losses with sweet deal they'll get once subway is open.

<comment><USER4> Commercial leases are generally ten years long. The landlord ends up capturing most of the increase in value, while the current lessees end up eating most of the costs.

<comment><USER3> I would imagine that current lessees' influence will be pretty limited and definitely offset by their landlords. Public reaction on top of that.

I don't understand why their word will be decisive here.

<comment><USER5> I don't really think so. Small business owners are often much more influential at the city level than lobbyists paid by out of town landowners. Even if the landowners have significant influence, they're outnumbered by the lessees and the lessees have a lot more to lose.

<comment><USER3> I can see how this might become a problem. Small business owners will be hostile to any city configuration change, because they'll have to adapt to it and that will require some effort from them.

Naturally their influence has to be limited in order to see any kind of motion forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish there was much better details on costs on such large public projects (and institutions). Between the extreme costs of public works like these, healthcare, college education, there is a cost disease that needs to be figured out and addressed.

> More granularity is needed.

I feel like one big step forward on that would be requiring the disclosure of detailed budgets and expenses for all such semi-regulated institutions/projects receiving large portions of their budgets from public funding.

<comment><USER7> At a previous job my first project was building a webscraper and some processing tools to pull down every application for preliminary permit ever filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a pumped storage plant.

The basis for this was two-fold, first, to get some kind of backing of what the potential supply might look like based on developer assumptions up to that point in time, second (and more germane to this discussion) to pull out every cost characteristics we could find in order to build a more robust set of cost models and cost prediction tools than had existed up to that point. Hydro costs are extremely site specific, so this is typically an onerous process.

I suppose the kicker here is that I was at a national lab and nominally employed by the Department of Energy, and they has such a sub-optimal grasp of hydropower that we were in the process of writing the first big national report on the resource in a long time[1]. Now hydro's also part of NREL's annual technology baselines[2], which was similarly fun to work on.

[1] [https://energy.gov/eere/water/articles/hydropower-vision- new...](https://energy.gov/eere/water/articles/hydropower-vision-new-chapter- america-s-1st-renewable-electricity-source)

[2] [https://atb.nrel.gov/](https://atb.nrel.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is one basic flaw in this.. The 2nd avenue subway is too deep underground for cut-and-cover to be an option for building stations.

<comment><USER4> Building them that far underground was a design choice. Partly as a result of deciding for the expensive and unnecessary full mezzanines and partly to avoid having to coordinate with con-ed and other users of the sub-street space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> wow great blog, glad people take the time to write stuff like this</comment>


Maternal Blood Test Can Tell Parents Fetus's Sex After 7 Weeks - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-09/maternal-blood-test-can-tell-parents-fetus-s-sex-after-7-weeks.html <comment><USER2>
        "It's a theoretical issue now, but people are already doing it using ultrasound," Bianchi said.

This comment seems off base. Gender selective abortion is rampant in northern India (especially Punjab) and China. Even the Economist has written on this (<http://www.economist.com/node/15606229>)

<comment><USER3> It's less rampent than that article suggests. It's natural for ~5% more boys to be born the girls. Still, China and India are both significantly above that ratio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My only concern with this is the reaction of various groups where culture places a heavy emphasis on the development of male children. Gender discrimination before birth (which can lead to abortion) is just something I'm not down with.</comment>


Is it a bubble or something else? - <AUTHOR> http://www.re-cycledair.com/is-it-a-bubble-or-something-else

<comment><USER2> I getting quite tired about this subject, the short answer is NO.</comment>


WTF Forbes 400: How is Zuckerburg richer than Brin & Page? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/ Zuckerberg is #14th, Brin #15th Page #16th... and this is based on what? <comment><USER2> _How is Zuckerburg richer than Brin & Page?_

By holding onto an unusually large percentage of his company, for starters.

[http://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Zuckerberg-retain-26-of- eq...](http://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Zuckerberg-retain-26-of-equity-after- so-many-rounds-of-financing)</comment>


States delaying primaries past 9 June may face delegate penalty, warns DNC memo - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/17/dnc-memo-primary-delays-could-result-delegate-reduction <comment><USER2> DNC should admit the primaries are a charade and cancel them and pick the candidate they're going to pick anyway. The process is so clearly nondemocratic. They keep finding new ways to suppress voters, fiddle with results, etc.</comment>


Apple releases security update that removes MacDefender - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/05/31/apple-releases-security-update-that-removes-macdefender/ <comment><USER2> It seems a bit like whack-a-mole, given how quickly new versions of malware and trojans are rolled out.

<comment><USER3> "and if you're on OS X 10.6.7 it will update the definitions on a daily basis to catch new variants". Right there, in the linked article.

See <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4657> for details.

Here are the definitions: [http://configuration.apple.com/configurations/macosx/xprotec...](http://configuration.apple.com/configurations/macosx/xprotect/1/clientConfiguration.plist)

<comment><USER2> Right, so just hope Apple gets a copy of the malware before you do.

<comment><USER4> Given the current scope of the problem, this is an appropriate solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am on OSX and a few months ago I installed Sophos which is free for Mac (Personal use). I installed it specifically because (a) it was quiet. Set it and forget it. (b) it didn't take up many resource - Activity Monitor is showing 15MB RAM and 0.0 CPU usage) and third it was free.

I know Sophos from Windows - it is good software. ($45 bucks for Windows)

Grab it for Mac: [http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos- antiv...](http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus- for-mac-home-edition.aspx)

Sorry - I realize this looks like spam. I don't have a HN account and this is my first post. I assure you, in light of the malware conversation, I felt this was a good post to share as most Mac user (like me) don't have and don't need anti-virus software, but Sophos was a good option for me.

<comment><USER6> The thing to bear in mind is that a lot of 'Mac Antivirus' software has overwhelmingly consisted of signatures to stop you passing on Windows malware, rather than necessarily much that will protect your system.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying this was necessarily negligent. I'm saying that time will tell how good any of these packages really are - assuming of course that Mac starts to get real malware rather than what I'll call trickware. That prediction has come and gone with little to show for it in the past, but it may not last.</comment></comment>


Google is down for OpenDNS users - <AUTHOR> http://search.twitter.com/search?q=opendns+google

<comment><AUTHOR> I also couldn't get to HN until switching off of OpenDNS.

<comment><USER2> I couldn't get through to HN a few minutes ago, but I don't use OpenDNS.</comment></comment>


The drive to UI simplicity deters kids from learning about how computers work - <AUTHOR> http://quandyfactory.com/blog/100/ <comment><USER3> (After reading this over, this is a little more misanthropic than I'd intended... I'll post it regardless though.)

The drive to turn general-purpose computation devices into information appliances is something that I find interesting and a bit disturbing. I'm not sure that it's just a fault of streamlined UIs, though. People actively _want_ to neuter their machines to present only what they want and are familiar with, and not a great deal else.

I'm not a Luddite, I don't believe in bashing up the machinery of the internet because it shall enslave us all. It is bewildering, though, that when given ever-better tools for learning and problem-solving, we've managed to infect everything with the same bullshit advertising and consumerism memes that plagued our parents.

Given the opportunity and mechanism for solving problems that were utterly infeasible mere decades ago, for connecting people of different walks of life across untold miles, and for storing several times over the combined sum of mankind's knowledge, a good chunk of startups appear to be either banking on advertising or data mining (for better advertising) as their core business.

Worse, our customers (read: product) flock in droves to our sites and give up their information, buy our products knowing full well our anti-competitive practices (secure boot, trusted computing, and all the rest) because they're too lazy to maintain their own systems, and cheerfully pull down any of their member that question the economic assumptions that condemn "piracy"--and we laud and encourage them!

From time to time we see folks making light of the FSF and Stallman and GNU and that whole mess. I'm basically convinced at this point that the only real mistake those neckbeards have made is making the assumption that the users are _worth_ protecting and ensuring the freedom of.

Why are people concerned about educating the next generation of willful idiots?

<comment><USER4> Very well put together, I just want to say I fully agree with your point. To give a face to what you describe I would say that Apple is one of the most blatant example of what you are describing.

Furthermore the same dumbing down is happening with websites: we lose control over the information or customization because we want a slick design. Just take a look at modern website with just one function that are posted almost daily on here. They just feel so empty compared to the old and clunky websites of just a few years ago.

I don't want to make it sound like a rant but I really wonder where we went wrong in society and decided, again, to take the simplest path and just ignore details and be dumb about a technology that governs us all.

<comment><USER5> _iOS_ may be one of the most blatant examples of what he's describing, but Apple are not. For all the eye candy of OS X, it's still the only mainstream operating system where a bash shell is just a click away.

<comment><USER6> Depending on the definition of 'mainstream' there is only one OS where the bash prompt is _not_ one click away...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never seen a plumber upset that not everyone they meet knows how to do basic plumbing. Chefs don't get mad that people they meet can't cook a fancy souffle. Why is it that so many programmers expect the world to understand computers?

Yes, people use computers daily. They also use telephones, cars, and projectors. They make use of cd players, mp3 players, and water fountains. Do you think that, back in the '30s, everyone who used the then-new FM radio had any idea how the hell it worked? Most people who watch movies don't know jack about how to produce, or act, or edit, or manipulate film.

Kids aren't learning about computers because most kids don't care about computers. That's just fine. Focus on those who care.

<comment><USER8> > _I've never seen a plumber upset that not everyone they meet knows how to do > basic plumbing. Chefs don't get mad that people they meet can't cook a fancy > souffle. Why is it that so many programmers expect the world to understand > computers?_

Because computers are tools, and we'd like people to be independent and to be able to use their tools efficiently.

How much does a plumber charge to change a $0.25 washer?

Some people have a bunch of data, and they need to do stuff to it, but they have no idea how to start or what to do. Not just 'how to create a pivot table' but 'what icon do I click on?'.

I agree that it's not a good idea to think that everyone can pipe sed and awk together, or can create amazing VBA tools, but it'd be nice if people could open a program and use it well.

<comment><USER9> You know, how to enable people to use their tools efficiently? Make it useable. Make a great UI so the users don't have to think "how do I do X in this program?", don't have to learn to program so they can fix your lame program, but can just use it.

<comment><USER10> This. And if they want to learn the what's and why's and get to the guts of it, they'll find a way outside of that UI as I'm sure that's how we all got to where we are in web, because we care and we're curious and neither of those traits are disappearing in kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh, there is nothing like the smell of Luddites in the morning!(people against change mixed with fear and mixed with "those were the times...").

So I assume this person really knows how the clothes she wears are made. Of course if she wears socks or a sweater she will know knitting, or at least how to manage a sewing machine(everybody should know just the basics).

Of course she will also know how her car works and repair it when needed, if she had ever flied she will know how to pilot a plane.

Look at mee!!, I AM A GEEK! I know how to do all of the above so everybody should!!

Now you also need qualities that are not geek nature. It seems like we have to be everything, from playing good the piano and being a good lover to being the funniest at the parties and work in your job like a machine, while we are the best parents to our children and the best givers to the community.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a little surprised to see the label of luddism applied to an argument that we should be encouraging more people to learn to program computers.

I can understand what you're saying here, but I'm not making an argument for the "good old days" of command line interfaces and arcane commands. What I'm arguing for is what you expressed in this comment:

"Of course if she wears socks or a sweater she will know knitting, or at least how to manage a sewing machine (everybody should know just the basics)."

I don't know how to knit but my wife does, and I can sew well enough to make a Hallowe'en costume, fix a button or hem a pair of pants.

All the time I see people manually, painstakingly processing data as a necessary part of their jobs - repetitive, time-consuming stuff that could easily be automated with a fairly simple script. If we made basic computer programming, like basic literacy and math, a part of core education curricula, we would empower many more people to write amateur code that's _good enough_ for the task at hand, just as most amateur writing is good enough to communicate meaning without being slick and professional.

I'm not saying everyone should work as a software developer, any more than I'm saying everyone should work as a writer. However, the general ability to read and write is absolutely invaluable no matter the career, to the extent that people who are functionally illiterate are barely employable and can scarcely function in our society.

Similarly, I believe a general ability to write computer programs - to express a set of steps that execute some data processing task - can become invaluable as well and unlock a huge boost in general productivity.

<comment><USER12> >All the time I see people manually, painstakingly processing data as a necessary part of their jobs - repetitive, time-consuming stuff that could easily be automated with a fairly simple script. If we made basic computer programming, like basic literacy and math, a part of core education curricula, we would empower many more people to write amateur code that's good enough for the task at hand, just as most amateur writing is good enough to communicate meaning without being slick and professional.

I think that more important is the ability to at least be capable of identifying repetitive work and asking someone more skilled in programming to implement it. It's amazing what kind of basic things people miss when you're asking them about what could be automated. Sometimes, you need to sit next to them and watch them work just to identify the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It has to be said that we _only_ have what the article calls social literacy - i.e. a largely correct assumption that everybody can read and write - <USER2> there are laws in place that make it so. Everybody has to learn reading and writing in school.

I don't think social computer-literacy can be achieved without making it a mandatory part of everybody's school curriculum.

So the question we have to debate is whether computer-literacy should be such a mandatory part of the curriculum. I am not completely certain on this, but my instincts tell me that the answer is Yes.

<comment><USER6> Maths _is_ a mandatory part of the curriculum in the UK and I'm sure in the US and in many countries. Famously, we are not very good at it as a country. Teenagers are asking for 'real world' maths more, they don't like the abstract nature of mathematics as found in standard syllabi.

How about incorporating mathematical modelling as part of school maths? Using Excel/Calc or a programming environment such as Scratch?

<http://scratch.mit.edu/>

Any mileage? The history of school maths by the way is pretty political: no stats before about 1950 in the UK, and then only for the top 10%. Arithmetic for the workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem is not UI simplicity, but rather the consumer monoculture of consumption destinations like facebook or even reddit. As the article points out, many young users rarely go beyond popular sites and fail to learn basic computing skills. This is a problem of users viewing the web as a new form of couch potato TV, but I would not blame simpler UI for this phenomenon.

<comment><USER9>
      > This is a problem of users viewing the web as a new
      > form of couch potato TV

And this is a problem because?

<comment><USER15> Because it's a bad way of living your life.

And the non-judgmental, you're all special snowflakes, do whatever, is also.

<comment><USER16> > And the non-judgmental, you're all special snowflakes, do whatever, is also.

Oh? How are you so sure?

<comment><USER15> ~3,000 years of recorded history point to it.

<comment><USER16> Is that so?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And this is a good thing in general. Computers are tools, after all. When I drive a car, I don't need to know how internal combustion engines, transmissions, steering etc work, like it was in the early days. The same is true for computers today. Why should the user be forced to learn all the peculiarities of the system if all he needs is a way to talk to his friends on the other side of the globe? If it works, it works, and if it doesn't you call an expert.

True, you should know a bit about cars if you want to do crazy endurance races and you should know a bit about computers if you want to use their full potential, but the vast majority of the users won't ever need that.

<comment><USER18> The "just works" however should be only the outer shell, and if you want to do more, or if you want to learn, this shell should be easy to remove. As you can open your car and look inside, mess with it.

Instead many modern systems are designed to be blocked in the most basic shell, and to deny all the rest. Like the Apple iPad for instance.

<comment><AUTHOR> It needs to be pointed out that there were legal struggles last century over the _right to repair_ automobiles. Car companies didn't want third parties to be allowed to fix their cars. At the time, governments generally decided in favour of consumer rights to their own purchases and the benefits of competition.

As a disturbing sidenote, the "right to repair" issue has re-emerged with the computerization of cars: <http://www.r2rc.eu/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't actually see the problem. The analogy between learning computer programming and learning to read and write is flawed. The written word is a tool which, to be used, requires both parties to know how to read and write. There is no way to use written media unless you know how to read. Computer programs are not like that. You don't need to know programming to use programs, and there is really no problem if most people don't know how to program. The real analogy would be programming, and knowing how to operate a printing press. You need this knowledge to produce the end product (programs and printed books), but not to use it. And that's fine, really.

</comment><comment><USER20> We're heading towards the Idiocracy future:

[http://acousticmonster.com/wp-content/gallery/wtf- files/wind...](http://acousticmonster.com/wp-content/gallery/wtf- files/windowsidiocracy.png)

</comment><comment><USER21> Necessity is the mother of invention. No necessity means no invention. Right now, we're building an entire generation that will be unable to produce computer innovation because they've become complacent: they believe that facebook is the end of the computer world. That would be fine if facebook actually _were_ the end of the computer world, but it _isn't_. In thirty years we'll need those people to manage sprawling databases, automate more and more complex systems, and generally bend computers to their will, and they'll be unprepared and inadequate.

<comment><USER22> I don't see the relation here. If there was no facebook or other apps, people would not use the computer, they would watch TV, go to pub, or stuff like that. These people that use facebook, mostly, just don't care about computers, they want to interact with their friends and have fun. What would you suggest? Making facebook harder to use? Making people learn to program to publish a message on twitter?

Users are just users, they don't want to know how it works. It was always like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Comparing computer illiteracy with analphabetism seems a little exagerated. I remember seeing this same divide between geeks and people who couldn't care less ten years ago.

And about the quote: "The kids I have, and that is roughly two dozen of the brightest young digital artists a semester, often have no idea what Microsoft Word is. They can't tell a Mac from a PC. And forget Excel," he says. He struggles to get his students to use basic computing etiquette." Maybe they should raise the bar for entrants to this course... really.

update: how can those students be the brightest digital artists if they can't even tell if they are working on a Mac or PC?

</comment><comment><USER11> As someone said "genius" or experts are always special. Just because everybody uses a computer, it does not mean that everybody will be the next Euler.

But it does not mean either than there are not going to be more Eulers. Quite the contrary, the barriers to know for those that want it are smaller than ever. And there is people that care. They are a minority, but they are there.

The worst thing you could do is to try to force it to all, as what was a pleasure becomes a sin as Feynman realized.

<comment><USER23> As a demonstration of the difference in barriers: When I was 10 I wanted to learn assembly. I didn't have any books about it. None of my friends did. This was 1985, so I didn't have internet access (nor would I have a modem for another 7 years). My local library had some low level books on electronics with vague descriptions of how CPU's worked. None of the local book stores had anything.

We "knew" we had to get machine instructions into memory somehow, but we didn't know how they were encoded, and we didn't know anything about how even BASIC was encoded in memory on our C64's. But we tried to figure it out, and got pretty much nowhere. At some point we resorted to trying to POKE the names of BASIC keywords into memory. Not only was it not assembler, it's not even how C64 BASIC does it. Our efforts petered out.

After ages I got hold of a pirated copy of an assembler written in BASIC that I could start figuring out. It got me a bit further, but not much. It was first one or two years later I finally got hold of decent quality assembler and tutorials and started learning assembler properly.

I do think it's sad that programming is not made more "visible", though. E.g. take automation. Most OS X apps supports being automated with AppleScript, but how many users even know it exists? Increasingly Linux applications supports automation via DBus, but it's the same situation.

I've not seen widespread usage of cross-application automation since ARexx on AmigaOS, which turned a large number of casual users into programmers (even if it was "only" for simple stuff to automate their own workflows) despite how horribly lacking ARexx is in user-friendliness, simply because it helped them get their stuff done better and they could start small (one line scripts to tell an application to do something when they pressed some icon, for example) and build on that.

Just making automation tools more discoverable would be a major step towards getting people more interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I was younger between the ages of 9-15 I loved hardware hacking. I would take apart Xboxes, Play Stations and even my computers. I would install mod chips, homebrew software and even tacky lighting. Being apart of the hardcore gaming community (CS, Team Fortress, WoW) almost instilled the notion of modding your 'rig'. People would overclock and and liquid cool their PCs which is hardcore stuff. I feel like there are two things that have led to a decrease in the hardware hacking environment (which I feel is parallel to the author's point).

1.Manufacturers began to 'get it'. Computers began to look cool, no more beige boxes and lame looking side panels. With the birth of Aleinware, the Dell XPS and Falcon Northwest came a huge blow to the modding community. Instead of spending days modding your PC to make it look cool and perform well, you could buy one out of the box (sometimes even overclocked)! This started to eat away at the modding culture. Even console makers stepped their game up in terms of connectivity. They began to provide more codecs for video playback which was one of the main reasons to mod a console- to allow video playback.

2\. Another thing happened which pulled me and others away from the modding/hacking community- I bought a Mac. Ever since I moved into the Apple ecosystem I haven't opened up a piece of hardware. I bought my first Macbook when I was 16 and loved it. It worked, it did everything I needed it to. I moved more into the less horsepower social game landscape where I didn't need the heavy duty processing power. Once I was in the Apple ecosystem I didn't need a home NAS server running with my torrents, I began buying my music, movies and TV shows. This content then streamed on my devices (Apple TV and mobile) perfectly. It required no hacking to work, it all came together effortlessly. I feel like this is happening to a lot of hackers. I deep down feel Apple has made people complacent with current technology and has really created a lack of need to hack your hardware and software.

This begs a question, has the paradigm shifted from enthusiasts pushing the envelope with hardware and software to the technology companies?

</comment><comment><USER25> Not everyone needs to know how computers work. There will always be some who do, and most who don't. That's the way it has been and the way it probably always will be.

</comment><comment><USER26> The objective of simplifying the UI is to reduce as much as possible what a user has to learn. The thinking is that the less a user has to learn, the more a user gets to do and as a result the greater satisfaction gained by the user. Satisfied users are good for sales, so UIs have been getting simpler to generate more money.

It's no surprise that UI simplicity deters kids from learning about how computers work, since UI simplicity is supposed to deter learning, or eliminate the need to learn as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this same argument was made when computers first had mouses and GUIs introduced...

It's a silly, pointless argument. Absolutely without merit.

</comment><comment><USER27> So you build tools that attempt to make it easier to make mobile apps (PhoneGap, Trigger, Titanium etc) and the geeks cry "use native code!".

I'm looking forward to the day where we can build any website/app/program/idea by simply having a conversation with our computers (or the cloud). 12 year- old: "I want a mobile app that finds my friends on Facebook nearby", comp: "Sure, how's this?", 12yo: "Cool, I want to be able to post a message to all nearby friends", comp: "Here you go. Do you want it to send an SMS or a push notification or?"...etc...

As much as 98% of HN will hate this concept, the faster coding can become more modularized and easy enough for the mainstream to build whatever idea comes to mind, the better off society will be and the faster humanity will progress.

<comment><USER28> If we ever build computers smart enough for that, they'll probably also be smart enough to tell us to go f __* ourselves. Even more probable if by that time we are still preoccupied with social networking trivialities.</comment></comment>


How does one build a team for a solid/good idea? - <AUTHOR>

It's probably the million dollar question. I have a very good idea that I cannot execute on myself. I have limited programming abilities and would need a developer. My background is in CS but I have worked in corporate (sales) because money. That over time has degraded my coding abilities. So how does one find/build a team? Any particular tools/websites? How do you identify good talent? Etc. I am currently working with to get some funding for a small team but you obviously cannot just sell an idea. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> If there's a startup weekend in your area check that out.</comment>


Google Cloud Console Incident - <AUTHOR> https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/developers-console/19001 <comment><USER2> Hey everyone - Seth from Google here. We're aware of this issue and our teams are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. We apologize for any interruption.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Seth!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm interested in the root cause.

Console operations and architecture for HA is one of my current responsibilities. It's important to me that customers can depend on a functional, responsive, and stable console.

I think the console experience heavily influences the trust and overall customer experience of any service.

<comment><USER5> 100% agree. I wanted to record some screencasts of the interface today and it is a little inconvenient. However, Google has an extremely robust post mortem process and I am sure they will correct things so this specific event does not happen again [1, 2]. They will typically post some type of public boiled down version of the post mortem too. Hopefully that happens in this case!

[1] [https://landing.google.com/sre/sre- book/chapters/postmortem-...](https://landing.google.com/sre/sre- book/chapters/postmortem-culture/)

[2] [https://landing.google.com/sre/sre- book/chapters/postmortem/](https://landing.google.com/sre/sre- book/chapters/postmortem/)

<comment><USER2> Sorry for the interruption. I'm not sure how much information we'll be able to share publicly, but there will definitely be an internal PM once the incident is resolved.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm sure there is a healthy omg happening right now :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the second time in 2 weeks this happens.

Last time it happened (Tue, Feb 26, around 12:41 PM), my Kubernetes cluster became unresponsive (and my website). I was never able to figure out if that was purely a coincidence or not, but I do not believe it was.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also seems BitQuery having issues too.

Wondering if this end up being related with Summer Time change? Happened many times in the past in companies where I worked.

<comment><USER5> You might be able to use the older interface still (has been working for me) [1]. I think they are testing a new beta interface that is right inside the console. I still like the older interface myself.

[1] [https://bigquery.cloud.google.com](https://bigquery.cloud.google.com)</comment></comment>


Facebook Is Kinda OK but Largely Overrated : Matt's Homepage - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=277

<comment><USER2> It seems to be the big question of the internet at the moment doesn't it... is facebook worth that much, or really anything?

Firstly I think anytime there is a whole bunch of people communicating you should never ask yourself what the point is. Communication is a fundamental, it _is_ the reason.

Second there's the big draw cards of social networks - an easy lightweight way to connect and reconnect. Its a great big people directory - and connections are very low social risk - much easier than emailing that person you haven't seen in years. And how are you going to get their email address anyway, any public directory would be spam central.

Of course myspace or any site has that much going for it. So that leaves the final facebook draw card - facebook apps. I totally understand the skepticism, but apps offer lots of different shared activities. Lots of little quizzes and games, very much like the kind of structured getting-to-know-you party game type activities. Its actually very difficult for these kinds of applications to exist without incorporating the friend networks that facebook offers.

Its a platform that allows a kind of lightweight, asynchronous and with easy opt-outs and opt-ins, shared online experience. I think it actually threatens to become the internet for a lot of people.

<comment><USER3> Facebook has apps, sorta like Myspace has music.

The rub is that people keep comparing facebook to Google, without seeming to have any idea how it'll get that far beyond a vague notion of connecting people. The only person I know who doesn't use Google search is my grandma, who doesn't use a computer. In contrast, not even half the people I know my age use facebook, and essentially no one older than me uses it or seems at all likely to ever bother.

_Its a platform that allows a kind of lightweight, asynchronous and with easy opt-outs and opt-ins, shared online experience. I think it actually threatens to become the internet for a lot of people._

It's not there yet, though. The login requirement is a barrier. The interface is still pretty complicated and it's not much faster(if it's faster at all) than its competitors. There's still nothing so compelling that people can't break a Facebook habit if they want to.

Facebook has a lot of potential, and of course millions of users count for something, but it's not a Google and really doesn't seem to be headed that way.

<comment><USER2> Facebook sucks in a lot of ways. I'm not a fan, in fact I'd actually quite enjoy seeing Zuckerberg crushed. There is just very little else online that facilitates shared experience.

Myspace has zero interest or ability to push itself further. Google hasn't really thrown its full weight behind orkut, not least because they have a much better money maker they need to protect. So the next generation facebook killer will probably have to be a startup - which means they have to be significantly better to attract users and reach a critical mass.

<comment><USER3> Orkut is quite possibly the worst name for a social network that I've heard. I have no idea why it was chosen, or what significance it has, but it's definitely not an advantage. Nobody I know would hear Orkut for the first time and think either "Social Network" or "Google." (In contrast to, say, "gmail," which immediately evokes email and google).

<comment><USER4> "Orkut" is the first name of the guy who wrote it.

<comment><USER5> Not only that, it's what everyone calls him because no one can say his last name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you talk to college and high school students, they will have a completely different opinion about Facebook than Matt's. For many of them, it is their primary form of communication - above email and oftentimes even cellphones. To some extent, there's a large generational gap on Facebook with respect to its hardcore users. To high schoolers, us professionals "just don't get it."

<comment><USER7> Facebook came out at my school during October of my freshman year. It's a whole lot more compelling when everyone you know is truly on it, except for a couple luddite hold-outs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Also contributing to the hype is the Facebook platform... whose existence Joe Average is now and ever shall be blissfully ignorant."

Matt may have some good points but I strongly disagree on this one. Joe 6pack is not ignorant of the FB Platform. Joe 6pack just sees it as: "Mary has offered you a 'long island'", "Jack want's to play poker with you", "You are 67% compatible with Ann in movies", and so on...

I could be wrong but what keeps people coming back on Myspace is just messages either on their wall or in their inbox. In FB this is on steroids, allowing users to do that interaction in a potentially infinite amount of ways. As techies we may think that 98% of these apps suck, but hundreds of new ones come out every week. Even if only a few catch Jill Average's attention for just a few days, it's good enough to keep her and her friends coming back regularly; since there's something new and novel everyday.

FB's platform is perfect of our modern "everything is disposable", attention deficit society.

<comment><USER9> The middle part of that sentence which you ...ed out was kinda important. I meant that platforms in general have not and will not reach the popular consciousness. People in the tech world today think they're far more important than they are.

Facebook apps have definitely made themselves known to Facebook users, but far from indispensable.

<comment><USER8> Well to me the most important part of:

"Also contributing to the hype is the Facebook platform. Platform is the Bubble 2.0 buzz word, which everyone talks about but of whose existence Joe Average is now and ever shall be blissfully ignorant."

was that you thought Joe 6pack doesn't know anything about it. All tech enthusiasts talking about it is a well known fact (everyone on yc knows about it). Was there something that I missed in that fragment?

"I meant that platforms in general have not and will not reach the popular consciousness."

I could be wrong, but I feel that my non-technical friends and family that I have FB food fights or Mafia games with would disagree. They may not know what it's called, but they do see it and enjoy it.

<comment><USER9> That sentence "Platform is the Bubble 2.0... was speaking about platforms in general. Average Joe doesn't know or care about platforms. Average Facebook user (who is far from Average Joe) may know about some of the apps on Facebook, but has yet to find anything compelling and never really will.

<comment><USER8> I could be wrong but to me without the platform the apps don't exist, and I still feel that the majority of ppl under 30 care about facebook apps: mostly college, high school students, or semi-fresh out of college ppl.

speaking of platforms, doesn't joe 6pack use windows at the very least?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But what if having a facebook profile becomes like having an email address? I'm sure early emails and early web searches were frivolous b/c people had been getting along fine w/o them. Early cell phone calls were, "OMG!! I'm walking down the street talking on the phone!!! This is so cool." etc.

At the same time I agree w/ maroon. Social networks are not my thing. Think about how you meet and maintain relationships with people in the real world. You're usually talking to someone you know and they introduce you to someone else. The conversation naturally veers toward common ground where a relationship can be built. I haven't seen a company reproduce this.

I never met anyone new on a social network. I never had the nuggets to ask anyone out and the ones who asked me out were either no-go's or bonafide prostitutes (yes I was on myspace for a few months.)

One of my co-founders said it best. "Facebook is for maintaining aqaintences."

<comment><USER11> "You're usually talking to someone you know and they introduce you to someone else. The conversation naturally veers toward common ground where a relationship can be built. I haven't seen a company reproduce this."

It happens a lot on LiveJournal. I'm still in touch with some of the folks I met 5 years ago on there. I've met them in real life. Some of them have introduced me to all their friends, who I'm also still in touch with (in some cases, moreso than the original friend). A couple of my now-RL friends met on LiveJournal; they're now married. The wedding pictures tagged guests with their LiveJournal usernames instead of their real names.

FaceBook and MySpace spread largely through existing social networks, which is why their growth was so fast. LiveJournal, blogs, webcomics, and the myriad niche forums have been forming _new_ social networks, which is much slower and doesn't get as much press attention. It's there, though, if you're looking in the right places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I personally think that in someways facebook is over hyped, especially regarding the apps which are largely superflous however I use internal facebook messaging more than I use email now.

So perhaps until almost everyone you know has a regularly used facebook account, it will be hard for people to fully appreciate the value of it.

Interesting anecdotal evidence: A lot of people leave Myspace and Bebo to join Facebook. I've never heard the opposite of this happening.

<comment><USER13> "until almost everyone you know has a regularly used facebook account"

In other words, never.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure about that. Picture some widely-used public school management package written to be used over the Facebook API. Suddenly, every new student [high school students, remember, not college] _has_ to get Facebook, as part of the enrollment process. Then, since all the friends they make at school already "use" the service, they start really using it.

<comment><USER15> I'm in a class in college where we have to have a facebook in order to participate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the second time I've read something recently that Facebook will never be MySpace because MySpace has more users. I disagree. One of the articles I read made it's point by showing a graph that showed Facebook is clearly catching up. It's a few months old, but Andreesen had a really good post on why the platform will always win: <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/analyzing_the_f.html>

<comment><USER9> Andreesen is wrong on so many fronts. The biggest is

"The web, after all, vanquished proprietary online services like America Online, Prodigy, and Compuserve -- the so-called "walled gardens" -- in large part because the web is a platform and the walled gardens were not."

Umm, no. Broadband vanquished them. They allowed unfettered internet access long before they began their downward spirals. I had AOL in high school, when they were approaching their zenith, and never used any of the walled features, just internet and IM.

When you phrase platform the way he does, it sounds superior. When, in reality, you have people piling layer on top of layer until what remains is something so complex and unreliable that few people can understand or tolerate it, you end up with something nobody wants.

And honestly, anything is a platform once somebody turns it into one. Myspace most definitely is. People make good livings just making layouts for it. Photobucket got rich off of it. Lots of indie bands sold concert tickets and CDs thanks to it. Dane Cook owes it his entire career.

So in the platform race, Facebook is losing. They're a more restrictive platform built onto a smaller one.

<comment><USER4> I agree with Marc. What made the web win was that random people could make web sites. So there started to be way more stuff on the web than on AOL. By late 1995, the main reason people were signing up for AOL was to get access to the web.

<comment><USER9> Right. Which didn't ruin AOL (the company) it made it better. What ruined AOL was the shift away from them to broadband.

<comment><USER4> He's talking about an earlier and much more ambitious AOL than you are. AOL once hoped to _be_ what later turned out to be the web. But because they weren't open enough, the web grew faster, and they became merely an on-ramp for it.

(Then after a few years of being a quite prosperous on-ramp, they lost even that, which is the vanquishing you're thinking of.)

<comment><USER9> Aha. Guess I'm too young to have known that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> He doesn't get it! Does. not. get. it.

It's an online rolodex! A REPLACEMENT for a real rolodex! Isn't that fucking outrageously brilliant?

It's clear how a rolodex web application with messaging and a full-featured API is worth nearly as much as GFS + PageRank + MapReduce + BigTable + 450,000 commodity servers + thousands of motivated engineers.

<comment><USER9> That would be Plaxo.

<comment><USER9> Not to mention, nobody has bought an actual Rolodex in 10 years. You can't build a business by replacing a product that has already been replaced.

<comment><USER8> maybe it's trying to replace your web mail for personal use...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> the google comparison is so idiotic I don't know why you even brought it up, they are different things and will have different values. That being said you talk as if things were static, "fb apps are far from indispensable" uhh that doesn't mean other better apps won't come... your issue there isn't really with the platform is with current app developers I guess, or is there something particularly wrong that will prevent interesting software from being written for this platform?

"Platform is the Bubble 2.0 buzz word"

first there is no bubble2.0 at least not even close to the extent of the last bubble, bad investments/ventures will fail as they always have and will, there are no crazy IPOs with ridiculous valuations. there won't be massive lay-offs.

"It's also yet another way in which MySpace is superior. They have always allowed you to stick JavaScript in your profile page, so it has always had a platform."

uhhm the platform is more than sticking widgets on your profile, if you're writing an opinion piece on this maybe read up? I mean just that you don't come out sounding like a complete idiot.

</comment><comment><USER19> The last comment about people's status message is funny. Gave me an idea to write a script, which hides people's status messages, avatars, music they currently listen to, and all similar forms of self-expressing-annoyance, on gmail chat, meebo and all similar.

</comment><comment><USER20> Many of the most useful technologies started out as trivialities.

<comment><USER21> Really? Name a few...

<comment><USER8> Ebay: a place to sell PEZ dispensers that used to crash every second

Internet: a place that used to only be mainly useful for looking at free pr0n

Post it notes: its adhessive was a "failed" project. Its value was only found after an employee started using it on paper to use as temporary bookmarks for gospel music

"From: email@example.com (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: small poll for my new operating system Message-ID: <firstname.lastname@example.com> Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones...."

<comment><USER9> eBay was not started to sell Pez dispensers. That's a marketing myth they perpetuated which has since been recanted. A brief Wikipedia search shows that it was story crafted by a brilliant P.R. agent a couple years after they'd launched.

<comment><USER8> ok, then i guess you could replace PEZ dispenser with "broken laser pointer" or any other misc item, and the rest is still valid. it was still a dinky site in the beginning that crashed often

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> matt: I admire your ability to look at things differently and express those beliefs among a crowd that in all likelihood might burn you at the stake for them. People fall into herd mentality much too often.

<comment><USER9> You know, despite the fact that the tech community flocks where the sheepdogs tell them to as much as any other, maybe more, they seem more open to dissenting opinions. Especially when they're well expressed and come from someone who agrees with them 90% of the time anyway.

<comment><USER8> yeah I do like posting here a lot better than other places

even when I don't agree with people here, at least they have valid logical arguments as well; i don't miss debate class anymore

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> AOL was the internet to a lot of people. Why we regressing? We used to make fun of AOL people.

<comment><USER8> until something like open id becomes more mainstream, I guess it's probably because we have to login to so many different sites...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Facebook is wrong by definition:

virtual contacts are virtual, real contacts are real (no joke! Try the difference!)

</comment><comment><USER25> That is a retarded blog post with lots of errors. Good job on getting on ycombinator - but that's a dumb dumb post.

<comment><USER8> I disagree with Matt too on this one, but it's a bit rough calling someone an idiot without at least telling him why...</comment></comment>


First Images of a Heart Injected with Liquid Metal - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/first-images-of-a-heart-injected-with-liquid-metal-8b41e1d318c6

<comment><USER2> I've worked a lot with liquid gallium (in semiconductors, not medicine) and it is pretty nasty stuff. It might not be very reactive, but it is extremely corrosive to other metals and can crystallize very quickly if given a seed.

A quick search for a gallium MSDS confirms that it isn't exactly regarded as medically safe right now: [https://www.rotometals.com/v/vspfiles/downloadables/MSDS_GAL...](https://www.rotometals.com/v/vspfiles/downloadables/MSDS_GALLIUM.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It appears to mimic iron(III) in biology which would be all kinds of concern about what it's doing to red blood cells.

People used to play around with Mercury and even ingest it since it's not supposed to be reactive. Turns out it's stupidly toxic but nobody figured that out until recently.

<comment><USER4> > People used to play around with Mercury and even ingest it since it's not > supposed to be reactive. Turns out it's stupidly toxic but nobody figured > that out until recently.

Well that's only partially true. The toxicity of mercury was speculated as early as the late 1600s [0]. Then in the 1920s Alfred Stock was doing "modern" research on its effects [1]. So sure, people played around with it, but it's toxicity was figured out a long time ago.

Hopefully we've also advanced as a society since then in that we wouldn't handle something so carelessly - however it would be a little naive to actually believe that, I'm sure 100 years from now our descendants will look back and judge us just as we do.

> Qian and co are optimistic. They point out that gallium is chemically inert > and believed to be non-toxic in humans. And they say a small amount of the > metal can be injected into the target vessels and sucked out afterwards > without leaving a residue.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bioengineering researcher here, who works mostly on analysis of vascular imaging.

Imaging in general is a field in medicine of increasingly growing importance - and as the article suggests its increasingly limited by resolution of the images. I personally see patient-specific diagnostics from image processing to be one of the most promising medical advances to expect in the coming decades. Image resolution is a major thing holding this back, it probably needs to improve ~2-5X for many applications.

This kind of thing is exciting, but probably at least a decade from clinical use, if at all from this particular technique. Use in research is itself quite interesting in at, at least to my knowledge, microvessels can only be observed by micro-dissection, which disturbs the tissue.

Being able to better observe microvessels clinically could have pretty big implications for heart attacks, strokes, cancers, and kidney functions.

The experiment (from the paper) was done on a in vitro (removed) pig heart (and kidneys, reported in the paper but not Medium article). In vitro studies often give much better images than in vivo because there is less

I am sceptical of the ability to retrieve the injected gallium, although I am not terribly familiar with its properties. I believe it is a quite rare and expensive metal, and the volumes needed for this would be small but not insignificant (maybe 20mL/ organ imaged?). I could see retrieving it being an issue, and particularly in the heart or brain, blood flow would need to be restored within a few minutes.

Iodine contrast agent, which this technique is compared against, is pretty nasty stuff. It gets filtered out by the kidneys, and is toxic to them. If anything, there is a movement to get away from contrast-based CT imaging of vessels and towards MRI or ultrasound, where contrast isn't required.

<comment><USER6> Radiographer here. MRI uses contrast about as much as CT and gadolinium toxicity turns out to be at least as bad (which took a while to work out due to the slow onset of symptoms). While our non contrast techniques are good and are getting better fast, nothing beats a good contrast run. However MR of coronary arteries isn't anywhere near as good as CT or cath lab imaging which is high quality. It is notable how poor the quality of that pig heart image with iodine based contrast is. It is laughable. A quick google of CT or cathlab angiography images will show examples vastly superior that were obtained on beating hearts in live patients - rather more difficult than direct injection into a dead, removed heart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> On a related note, look at what gallium does to aluminium: [http://youtu.be/9DEjE8jiwT8?t=1m7s](http://youtu.be/9DEjE8jiwT8?t=1m7s)

<comment><USER8> To be fair, lots of things will do that, since aluminum is an incredibly reactive element. Once you scratch away/through the oxide layer that normally protects it, you can get all sorts of stuff to react with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somewhat higher resolution image on page 8 of [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.6717v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.6717v1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> Speaking of filling organs with metal, I've read that the lungs have an absolutely amazing amount of surface area. So I got to wondering if we could somehow use a lung (say removed from a pig) as a super capacitor?

Maybe use a non conductive material to thinly coat the inside of the lung and then fill it with metal?

<comment><USER11> Or do that, then burn away the flesh and use it as a heat exchanger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd be very reluctant to have gallium injected in me, but it's still a valuable technique to map out (and make casts of) hearts and vascular systems in animals or people that donate their body to science.

</comment><comment><USER13> Neat, but unless this is in vivo, this isn't all that thrilling, as we've been doing this sort of thing with wax and plastic for more than a century. [http://cruciblezine.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/circulatory-...](http://cruciblezine.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/circulatory- network-0101.jpg)

<comment><USER14> Some guy does it with aluminium and ants' nests: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJ2jMZ- gaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJ2jMZ-gaI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _And they say a small amount of the metal can be injected into the target vessels and sucked out afterwards without leaving a residue. "_

The most curious part of the story isn't there, how do you suck out the metal afterwards? What percentage are you able to reliably _suck out_?

<comment><USER16> »Without residue« sounds like 100 % to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Needing some education here. They took a pig's heart, dead, injected it with metal, and are impressed that this showed up in an x-ray? Gunther von Hagen with metal?</comment>


Please fork, contrib & push Paython (Payments in Python) forward - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/abunsen/Paython <comment><USER2> Python could certainly use a generic payments library—like what libcloud has done for cloud providers. And I don't want to demoralize you or ridicule the work done already. However, there are a number of problems with the implementation as it stands that make it a bad idea to ask for contributors at this stage:

1\. There are no tests. How can I be expected to contribute to your project when there's no way I can ensure a change doesn't break existing functionality, or even works itself? Testing remote APIs is a bit of a hassle, but it's what mocking was made for. Short of signing up for multiple payment gateways, there's no current way to test any change I make.

2\. No setup.py support. This will likely further limit the number of people who contribute as it increases the barrier to entry. A proper project structure is a relatively easy thing that saves you a ton of time in aggregate.

3\. There is no coherent developer API. Why does XMLGatewayInterface exist if only one gateway uses it? Why isn't there a generic GatewayInterface that abstracts things further, for non-XML APIs? If you're not going to use ABCs or strict interfaces (like zope.interface), you should at least have well-formed documentation: most ivar conventions (Foo.API_BASE, etc.) aren't mentioned anywhere. Why are there exceptions in the lib module that are only used by one gateway (or none)?

4\. There are a multitude of minor design decisions that, if followed by contributors, will likely cause you pain down the road. Using print for debug output, relative imports, random error handling, "entrapping" functions (why would a function take two optional parameters that are immediately checked for non-None status?), etc.

To be clear, I'm very glad you're working on this—it's a difficult (at least incredibly tedious) problem that I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate a Python solution for, myself included. But I don't think this is a very good time to be asking people to fork and contribute. You need a proper foundation built before trying to solicit contributions or you'll end up with a bunch of code you'll need to rewrite later instead of a comparatively small amount you should rewrite now.

As the library author, it's your responsibility to build a cohesive, general- yet-customizable, clear interface upon which people can build and test their own gateway drivers. If you do that, I promise you you'll have contributors in no time. It's exactly what we did with libcloud and we now support almost every cloud provider out there and even have a nearly API-compliant Java fork (just to lend some credibility to my rambling).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a reason I put this out, to get harsh realistic feedback. You're right, I do need tests - someone has come forth & offered to write them since I put this online.

I want to improve what I've got but, IMO, I cannot do so by myself. Hence my call to arms. If you want something like this, please help improve it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oooh nice, a payment system not encumbered with a framework.

What would be _really_ awesome is for this to turn into something like the standard database api spec PEP249 (<http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0249/>) but for payment gateways!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll definitely read that & look into using in future iterations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have already looked into this (and decided to write your own), it would be great to see a blog post or similar on the current state of payments in Python (and what you intend to do differently).

It seems like there's Satchmo, various Satchmo forks, and GetPaid, but I can't tell which are directly or indirectly tied to various frameworks (Django, Plone). Are people just coding directly to payment APIs? Is everyone running on Django or Plone?

<http://www.satchmoproject.com/>

<http://bitbucket.org/bkroeze/django-bursar>

<http://bitbucket.org/diefenbach/django-lfs/>

<http://www.plonegetpaid.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely will do tomorrow!

Thus far, Paython is standalone. Planning to add tests, unifying conventions & wrapping all gateways up into something much easier to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a seriously necessary project.

I recently used this: <http://github.com/simplegeo/python-fpys2>

Perhaps you would be interested in merging it? I have some additional example documentation the author emailed to me as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> You should say that you support Authorize.net AIM. You'll eventually want modules for Authorize.net ARB and Authorize.net CIM as well, for those doing recurring payments. Each has a separate API unfortunately.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Dan, the plan is too eventually be a standalone recurring billing system. ;) So things like ARB become optional not required & things like switching gateways are not impossible (as would be the case with stuffing all of your customers into ARB).

<comment><USER6> Have you thought it through that far? That implies building a PCIDSS certified solution, with tons of additional requirements. I doubt there are (m)any individuals, small businesses or startups that can legally do their own gateway-independent recurring billing. The physical security, documentation, policy and extra hardware requirements in addition to the huge (half a million dollars per violation) liability make it infeasible.

If someone just downloads your code and starts storing the cardholder data on the same server, even encrypted end to end, that's still not _nearly_ PCIDSS compliant, so they're violating their merchant account agreement and hugely liable if it leads to any kind of data theft.

It would be wonderful if there was an easy way to be payment gateway independent for recurring charges without meeting the 3-digit number of PCIDSS requirements, but I don't think that can come from any code project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dan, those are my aspirations. I would not place a PCI compliance stamp on the project because no matter what, people can use it "incorrectly".

I am not against supporting ARB, but it is a big vendor lock in & I think it makes sense to have options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recently spent about a week trying to hack Django Bursar into something useful. I was woefully surprised at the lack of payment libraries available in python. I highly recommend stealing as much as you can from existing systems (including Bursar and Satchmo) it will save you some time.

</comment><comment><USER8> How about WePay support? Documentation is at <https://www.wepay.com/developer> Rough Python example code at <https://www.wepay.com/developer/python>

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't like the name. Hard to pronounce, also stealing thunder from a language name for no solid reason; a programming language is in a different mental category than an application service.

<comment><USER10> I don't wholly disagree with you, but Python developers are more prone than most to name their packages with at least a py prefix, if not something punny like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is awesome.

Do you have support for recurring charges built in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but the goal is to get to something like that.

<comment><USER11> That would be cool. I think some thought would need to go into the API there, as the provider market fragments pretty quickly over how and what they offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those looking for something adventurous in the payments world, we're just starting to look for feedback on the FaceCash API, which is brand new.

<http://www.facecash.com/developers>

It doesn't process plastic, but it does allow you to integrate mobile payments for any kind of retail transaction.

</comment><comment><USER13> Another similar project is django-bursar[1] which is supposed to be integrated into the Satchmo[2] webshop in the (far) future.

[1] <http://bitbucket.org/bkroeze/django-bursar>

[2] <http://www.satchmoproject.com/>

<comment> lost-theory One of the sad things about the Django community is that they create useful things that aren't usable outside of Django.

<comment><USER14> Although there have been projects (like Celery) that have started as Django projects until they achieved relatively maturity, at which point they were broken out into more general libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just so you know, the reasons why a decent payments solution has not emerged are not technical in nature.

For significant change to occur in the payments space, a business model to rival Visa must be developed and led by someone with the political savvy to drive it home.

<comment><USER12> We're working on it! And we'd love to talk to you about integrating your menu data.

<comment><USER15> ... with your payments system?

At any rate, happy to talk: scott (at) marksmenus.com

EDIT: Ah, I'm guessing you're thinking for FaceCash? Sounds good -- shoot me an email!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was hoping someone would eventually do this.

I wrote PyMoneris a while ago simply because there wasn't one and have been hoping someone would start a project like this that I could hand that code over to.

Tedious, but necessary!

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool. Anyone know if something like this exists for .NET? Otherwise it might be good for my first open source contribution :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Do you have a plan to certify the gateway code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you please explain what you mean by "certify"?

<comment><USER18> Typically a payment processor has a certification process to validate code talking to their system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, if it costs money, probably not.

If it doesn't, I don't see why I wouldn't try?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"God, I hate recruiters" - <AUTHOR> http://gregsavage.com.au/2011/03/02/%E2%80%9Cgod-i-hate-recruiters%E2%80%9D/ <comment><USER2> I get 2-3 emails per day in LinkedIn. I read all of them. It gives me confidence that I'm hot and it's easy for me to just move on from my current job. When I see Twitter, Facebook, HP, Google and Apple are reaching out to me, it gives me confidence.

I sometimes use small but rich startups that can afford high salaries as a tool to get a raise. Just by bringing their offer to my manager's table if it's required. This year I'm targeting $180K salary. It would be impossible without recruiters help.

<comment><USER3> Just a heads up, confidence is the correct noun to use.

Confident is the adjective form.

<comment><USER4> Neat obscure language thing: adjectival is the adjectival form of adjective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Crocodile tears, I suspect. Based on multiple past experiences, I'd be a little reluctant to trust a recruiter who described himself on his blog thus:

"Over a career spanning thirty years, Greg Savage has established himself as an icon of the Australian recruitment industry".

It's immodest, it's untestable, and after 30 years, it's probably a bit bloody late to start preaching the good book.

Edit: And yes, if your recruiter has an English accent, better find another one.

</comment><comment><USER6>
        So this very day I have scheduled company-wide training
        at Firebrand. And I will be running it myself.

        The topic?

        "Differentiating our business through candidate service."

The first lesson in that training should be how to stop talking like that. Candidates are people and they want you to use humane language not business jargon. Differentiating is something you do to functions. How about:

        Standing out by taking better care of candidates

</comment><comment><USER7> It's easy to hate recruiters when the market works in your favor and demand for engineers is higher than availability. Everyone is trying to hire and now they seem redundant and unnecessary evil.

If the market cools down I bet most would feel lucky having a recruiter knocking on their door.

</comment><comment><USER8> My experience with recruiters hasn't been bad at all. (I'm in Atlanta rather than Australia, though) Quite the contrary, now I don't have to browse Craigslist or Monster myself. I don't have to keep asking my friends for job leads. They come to me. I don't understand the hate.

I listed my resume on Monster, bracing myself for the worst. So far, it hasn't happened. I get two or three emails a day, most with decent leads. For the first few days, they kept telling me my resume was "thin", until I grilled one on what he meant, I reformatted it according to a template he sent and now they love it.

If I got an under-compensated offer, I'd just ask for more. If the recruiter's lead isn't interesting, I email back with what I _am_ interested in. It takes half a minute. I could copy-paste a boiler-plate response but so far I haven't found the need to.

I suspect most of the hate towards recruiters is coming from the tendency of engineers towards introversion, so they perceive each interaction as draining, and think negotiation is much tougher than it is. In other words, it's not the recruiters they hate, it's the job hunt, period, they just don't want to admit to themselves that they have a tough time selling themselves.

<comment><USER9> I posted on Monster a few months ago and just got inundated: at least a dozen calls before I had a chance to leave the coffee shop I was in.

I'm sure there's real professionals out there, but every one I've ever met is just scanning the job boards trying to match keywords. I'm tired of hearing from them how wonderful every position is (with one of our top clients!) and when I've been on the other side I quickly grew tired of hearing from them how wonderful every candidate was. It's not that they're lying really, they just generally don't have the ability to evaluate either.

Recruiters are like the throng of people you meet when you arrive in certain third-world countries who follow you around offering to show you the sites or trying to sell you trinkets. I don't hate them or anything; they're just annoying, they get in the way, and I certainly don't think they're adding any value.

<comment><USER8> > I posted on Monster a few months ago and just got inundated: at least a > dozen calls before I had a chance to leave the coffee shop I was in.

If I had this problem I'd do the same thing I already do for Craigslist, get a Google Voice number and put that on the listing. Go over it once a day and reply only to the promising ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is partly because the vast majority of 'tech' jobs in Sydney are as 'resources' in cost centers, not profit centers, ie 'IT department' not R&D.

There are not yet enough big business successes in the area that leverage tech in a big way for a major competitive advantage or sell tech as their product/service.

This affects the image of the profession in the area, how we are treated, and puts downward pressure on compensation.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hate recruiters too. Not because they cost me too much annoyance, but it's just sad to watch them flounder. I get at least one or two a week trying to pitch me a job (interview?) on LinkedIn and I've yet to not regret opening the mail. Half the time it's for a technology job I'm either under qualified for (management positions, data scientist, etc) or technologies I'm clearly not familiar with nor interested in.

The times it is a technology match I'm completely underwhelmed by the offer, considering I have a _current job_ listed. I get it Amazon, you'd love to have me as a moderately paid backend java programmer, but come on.

Recruiters should have to pay _me_ to pitch me, as they should be that confident they have something compelling to pull me away from my current gig. If i'm out looking it's a different story.

<comment><USER12> This is really a first world problem. I agree recruiters are often irritating, but I try to remember back 15 years ago when I could barely get a recruiter to return my call. I often take a moment to respond to recruiters on LinkedIn, sometimes offering them encouragement or advice on what I think they could be doing better. It doesn't take that much time, and I like to think that being friendly with them could help me down the road.

<comment><USER5> Trouble is, I think LinkedIn is a cancer. You know, I've worked with some pretty decent people, but I've often cringed to see their extravagant self descriptions on LinkedIn. No way are they the people they think they are. And if decent people can be tempted into such self deception, what about people who aren't decent in the slightest?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me, or is the whole "I hate recruiters" bit a big 'ol humblebrag? Just ignore them.

<comment><USER14> He means actually working with them, not the spam. They seem puzzlingly worthless. I actually asked a guy at an interview, years ago, "Why do you use recruiters?" and he said it saved time going through resumes. As if that's worth a fat commission: Using some lib-art knucklehead who can distinguish 5 years of .NET from 3 years of .NET.

Also, they sometimes call your office. If you don't have a good relationship with your receptionist, never ever use them.

<comment><USER15> Last time a recruiter cold-called me at the office I asked them if they really thought it was appropriate to 'phone my client in an effort to recruit me … and then hung up on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's all because the noun in "HR" is Resources, not Human. From soup to nuts, the employment industry treats people like equipment.

<comment><USER17> To be fair to recruiters, the reason they do so is that _their_ ultimate bosses, the companies looking for staff, view people in a similar manner. Paying for human resources is a necessary evil, like paying for mineral resources is. At least, that's how it shows up systemically— any individual manager might not have this view. But to the company, especially the kind of company that has turned to recruiters to acquire them, human resources are another kind of resource.

<comment><USER5> But unlike all the other resources, a resource that lives, thinks and judges people as they are done by.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here is how I deal with them. I always reply with:

"I will not consider any position that pays less than $200,000 a year. Non- negotiable."

They leave me alone.

<comment><USER19> I also do that about moving to some cities. I'm kinda hoping I stroke lucky sometime and someone really does want to pay me €500,000 for a job in $CITY. Jackpot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I receive lots of recruiter spam through LinkedIn. I reply to each an every one indicating that I'm not looking and that I don't connect with people I don't know.

One of two things will happen next, I will get either a phone call (from the details in the email signature), or an email asking if I will refer other people.

Either of these will ensure that I never deal with the recruiter.

There is only one recruiter I've ever met that doesn't fit that mould. I won't talk to much about HOW he's different, because it's his secret sauce. But Steve Gilles (@stevelikesyou on twitter) is someone that is highly regarded within the Australian Ruby community.

If you are looking to find someone, or looking to find a job I highly recommend a chat with Steve.

Disclaimer: I have over the last 3 years, become very good friends with Steve.

</comment><comment><USER21> It often seems to me that there are incentive problems with recruiting. HR's most commonly centred, on shaky data, around getting rid of as many candidates as possible, and there's no real advantage in them treating you decently, unless they think they're going to be rewarded for some financial gain down the line. If they don't think that they're going to be rewarded, there's still an incentive to mess you about because they don't really want you going with someone else.

Position of power, poor incentives, actively contradictory interests in the case that they decide you're no good for them. _shrug_

Breadth first search strategy manifests social problems.

</comment><comment><USER22> Funny he says that about the English accent - even from the other side of the (Australian-based) hiring desk, whenever I pick up the phone and hear that accent I just know what the next question will be, and I could copy&paste my answer.

No, we aren't looking for anyone right now, and certainly not with those skills (we've never looked for those skills); yes, that's the same answer I gave you last time you called.

And if they could remove the phrase "a quick heads up" from their lexicon, it'd make my year.</gripe>

</comment><comment><USER23> Dealing with recruiters _is_ maddening.

They are, in my experience, not only incompetent -- but harmful as well.

<comment><USER24> Their interests are barely aligned with yours. After all, you're not paying them. Their real customer (the hiring company/manager) is.

Here's a scenario I've had happen in the past: * Recruiter pings me about job I'd really like * They prep me and I go to interview * I'm clearly not qualified or actually prepared as hiring manager asks about stuff that wasn't on job description * Company chooses other candidate from same recruiter.

Stuff like that makes me really wary of recruiters in general. Best way to get hired is to make great industry contacts at as many levels as possible and network your way into a gig (perm or contract). Most of mine have been through this route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I swear, I must be the only person here who doesn't get contacted by a million recruiters every day. I haven't had a single recruiter email in three years, when Google sent me one.

How do you guys do it? Why are they avoiding me?

<comment><USER26> I have been contacted because a recruiter had seen my profile on Linkedin, because I was in the list of subscribers to a Meetup group (not attendant, merely subscriber), because of classes I took in college (about 3 years after the fact), because of my github profile, because of my ( _very_ minimalistic and completely outdated) homepage, and through one or two other channels I'm probably forgetting right now. And I'm neither in the US, nor particularly known for anything.

So, either you're really stealthy, either I'd like to know your secret.

<comment><USER25> <http://www.korokithakis.net/>

<https://github.com/skorokithakis/>

<http://gr.linkedin.com/in/skorokithakis>

I'm just as puzzled as you are.

Not that I'm looking for work, it's just one of those "why am I being left out?" things.

<comment><USER9> From a glance at your linkedin page (recruiters don't know about github), there's a couple of things that I think are helping you stay recruiter-free. The first is that a cursory glance would imply that you're in Greece, which has less of a recruiter problem (even though I think you're really in Cornwall). And the second is that you're missing the Java/c#/SOAP/Agile set of buzzwords that corporate recruiters are scanning for.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, it might probably be a bit of both. I've never been to Cornwall, that's just where my company is registered. I'm currently in Spain. It's lovely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I hate quotes in URLs, so we are even.</comment>