Why is value flowing to ICOs? It's diversification of Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://jonathannen.com/speculation-diversification.html <comment><USER2> Given that a bearish Bitcoin market sinks all cryptocurrency ships there's not a whole lot in the way of diversification benefit right now.

ICOs appear to be more like Kickstarter with tokens. Some are in it for speculation and possible wealth, others _really_ like the underlying product/game/app.*

For example, French indie game 'Beyond the void' is integrated with an Ethereum blockchain. People fund the dev and receive tokens to use in the game. "Investors" win when the game is live. That their token can be changed for other currencies is secondary.

People will get burned. Just see the scammy ICO ads on your Facebook feed. As with Kickstarter (with its 21% tech project success rate), diligence is required.

But that any one of us can relatively easily exchange objects of value across hundreds of different projects is just about revolutionary.

* Currencies like Monero and Litecoin are more truly speculative in that their value rests solely in perceived future utility and adoption.

<comment><USER3> It's a mixed bag of legit projects, outright scams, and that grey-area of tech-bro charlatans. It's the last one that concerns me:

CEO - Serial Blockchain Entrepreneur. In this for the long haul!

CTO - "Crypto expert" == Business guy who understands blockchain superficially

CFO - This guy is real, of course.

Working code! = Fork

Whitepaper = Buzzword language that just says their going to tokenize something. 'LegitCoin will tokenize the derivatives market for solar!'

Create positive pump articles and videos for us for free tokens!

My non-technical brother in law asks me every other day to look into one of these turds for him, and I have to deflate his bubble.

<comment><USER2> Spot on. Shitcoins, as they call them.

At this very early stage of adoption, most people who are smart enough to figure out how to trade crypto should be smart enough to do some research before buying 1000 vaporware coins.

As the doors open to the wider population, though, it's inevitable that hucksters will try to separate regular folk from their hard earned cash.

The notion is reprehensible (and goes against the spirit of cryptocurrencies) so some regulation around accountability would not be unwelcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ... or maybe ICO's are clever ways of extorting even more money from naive cryptocurrency day traders?

<comment><USER5> It's probably also a dream come true for anyone who wants to launder some money.

<comment><USER6> How do you figure? I think the general wisdom among people who have a deep understanding of block-chains is that it is about the worst way you could possibly try to launder money. Every transaction you make is forever immortalized in a publicly accessible record book. Not to mention that there is strong KYC at the entry exit points between cash and crypto currencies.

<comment><USER5> And yet hackers steal these coins and seem to do alright, Tumblers seem to anonymize currency too.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any stats on the percentage of traditional financial crimes that go unsolved vs the percentage of crypto-currency crimes that go unsolved? You would have a hard time finding a major crypto-currency heist, dark market, or rogue exchange that hasn't been tracked down and shut down.

<comment><USER7> Yes but cryptocurrency thieves (i.e. exchange hackers, etc) are currently batting around 100% uncaught, afaik.

<comment><USER6> [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim- nilsson-...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-of- wizsec-how-the-bitcoins-were-stolen-from-mt-gox/)

Pretty sure they got the guy behind a lot of the thefts when they arrested that BTC-e guy earlier this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "One of the fundamentals of markets is that value needs to go to work."

Indeed. And since there is little real (read: economically useful) work that Bitcoin can actually do, speculators pile them into other types of coin that are, at best, an additional level of indirection between Bitcoin and real value.

Hm, creating complicated financial derivatives to hide the underlying non- viability of the core product. Now why does that sound familiar.

<comment><USER9> Next thing you know, someone will be making $500,000 ICO loans to retail workers, and selling on the loans to be bundled into AAA-rated securitizations. I wonder if Moody's rates ICO's?

<comment><USER10> ... and developers will be paid in 'coins', issued by the company.

"Join my startup, your salary is 100 Million Kangaroo coins per year. We call them 'ru-bucks' because we're cool like that."

<comment><USER11> Many devs people get part of their compensation in stock grants. For stocks that pay no dividend.

<comment><USER12> In most cases the difference between stock in a start-up and Ru-bucks is negligible.

<comment><USER10> I will admit that in many cases, especially if the company does not do well, stocks = ru-bucks.

But if a company does well, stocks >>> ru-bucks.

Or at least they should ...

Sadly, I actually believe my little satire will become reality very soon, as I believe coins will be handed out as comp ... I'll bet a Kik, very soon.

<comment><USER13> And if people accept that as payment, what does it mean? Too many tech grads? Too few tech jobs?

<comment><USER14> The obvious answer is of cause: we need more visas for developers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author might be missing the woods for the trees. ICO's are at heart a rethink on the angel-vc-ipo funding cycle. ICO's offer very clear advantages in terms of increasing distribution, decreasing friction, aligning investors to product success and builds upon emerging ideas around equity/control structuring.

That they offer a diversification of bitcoin is merely an oversight in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER10> The most important advantages to ICO issuers are: lack of transparency, reporting requirements, no dilution, no oversight, the ability to 'print coins' as they please. In other words, absolute power over the speculators that buy them.

I'm not sure if I want to be on the other end of that deal ...

<comment><USER16> This is mostly inaccurate, the code behind the token creation and distribution is public. And while it's technically possible, in practice most token contracts do not give the creators the ability to mint to tokens on a whim.

<comment><USER10> Yes, 'technologically', sure.

However, as we see with stocks, there's nothing stopping an entity from doing whatever they please in the end.

Like issuing a second set of coins, at par or equal value to the 'current coins'. Possibly requiring that the first tranche be redeemed for the second.

Or whatever shenanigans they want.

With the Kik ICO, they've kept a huge flood of coins to do with as they please. And they will in fact do _whatever_ they please with them.

For these 'company managed' coins, I think they serve as a de-facto 'central bank'. They'll find a way to change the rules if they choose to.

<comment><USER17> Your connection between developers keeping a large portion of the coins, and being able to "change the rules" doesn't make any sense. Developers keeping coins is actually very positive, and if I were to buy into an ICO, I would greatly prefer this. Otherwise the developers have no incentive to keep working hard and meeting milestones, since they already have more cash than they would be able to increase the value of their holdings by.

<comment><USER10> The coins are worthless.

And the companies can make them more worthless at any time by changing the rules. Which they will, if they can get away with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The dream of getting rich quick is what is driving most of ICOs, if not all. There's no rhyme or reason to it. People just want to 100x their money quickly as possible and see ICOs as their chance. It's basically gambling, but lately much better returns than the casinos.

<comment><USER19> Tell me how is this objectively different than VCs ? Other than it's now available to everyone instead reserved to the elite ?

In both cases, you are well aware most of your investments will fail and you're expecting one 10x or 100x that will make it up for other losses . aka gambling ...

<comment><USER20> With VCs, there is reason to believe that the expected value of your total investments is positive. With ICOs, the claim is that many people mean to cash out by selling before the bubble bursts.

<comment><USER19> >>> there is reason to believe that the expected value of your total investments is positive

Hmm, I wonder if the zero interest rate "trickle down" free money that is keeping stocks artificially inflated has anything to do with this assumption ?

>>> With ICOs, the claim is that many people mean to cash out by selling before the bubble bursts.

Yeah totally not the same as founders rushing to growth with bullshit things like "growth hacking", then rushing to exit to cashout before everyone realizing their business is not actually solving a real problem. ( like all the messenger apps/chat bot frenzy of last year)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The M1 money supply in any currency is always a tiny fraction of the money supply in comparison to the M2, M3, and MB, which are illiquid and used for speculation.

It isn't mysterious that this is also the result in cryptocurrency as well.

An oft parroted rebuttal is that bitcoin is being used for speculation and very little is being used for purchases of goods and services, even though that fits the same behavior of national currencies it is used to discredit bitcoin's use as a currency.

It looks like it is growing the way one would expect.

<comment><USER22> > _An oft parroted rebuttal is that bitcoin is being used for speculation and > very little is being used for purchases of goods and services, even though > that fits the same behavior of national currencies_

Are you asserting that a sizeable fraction of U.S. dollar M3 or even M2 is sitting idle speculating on the future value of the U.S. dollar?

Rates are built into modern currencies in a way they were not for gold. That's Bitcoin's fundamental problem. It's a 19th-century currency relearning old economics.

<comment><USER21> > Are you asserting that a sizeable fraction of U.S. dollar M3 or even M2 is > sitting idle speculating on the future value of the U.S. dollar?

No. But that also happens whether it is inadvertently just sitting there, or in bonds as part of a massive carry trade

Secondly did you read the article? It is about sizeable portions of bitcoin being used to invest in ICOs, which I was agreeing with and pointing out how otherwise illiquid portions of national currencies are used this way as well

<comment><USER22> > _that also happens whether it is inadvertently just sitting there, or in > bonds_

Bonds fund useful activity. Most ICOs have yet to finance a single developer's salary.

<comment><USER23> District0x is paying salaries like that and many others.

The point the parent was making is that the money IS SITTING there. And bonds are not M0.... you are proving his point.

Anyone holding USD in a deposit account or loaned it out is speculating that the value of USD will remain almost the same (willing to lose 2% to inflation).

Of course someone holding a currency expects value to hold or go up. Unfortunately value of USD and other fiat goes down at exponential rate and by end of century will be practically worthless.

Imagine paper bills in year 2100. No?

Then you can imagine USA will digitize it's currency on some Blockchain of their own(this is a no brainer).

Now imagine THE Fed changing interest rates (aka Coin Emission Rate) as they please.

Pretty soon people will diversify their currency holdings away from a single country/government that can change emission (interest) rate at will and has onerous reporting and surveillance requirements.

Logical conclusion is a supra/trans-national global currency something Bitcoin or Monero.

"Granpa, was it true that when you were young you used to get paid in tree cotton papers?"

<comment><USER24> I think you are conflating "blockchain" with "electronic payment". I can use my Visa card without needing a blockchain. And banks will settle the payment electronically without ever moving paper money.

"No Timmy, I was not paid with paper money even in the 1990s."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> That's roughly 100 percent price correlated. tether, iota, emercoin and few others aren't as correlated. Not a good diversification when they all go up and down together. (If you're diversifying to reduce risk.)

<comment><USER26> Depends what type of risk you're trying to reduce. Trying to reduce the risk of prices dropping? Not very useful. Trying to reduce the risk of them turning out to be scams? If you diversify enough you might end up with one which isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's more than that; it's to provide additional capacity to the cryptocurrency 'inter-net'.

A single blockchain cannot physically scale beyond a certain number of transactions (based on Amdahl's law), but the amount of value that passes through a single network can in fact keep going up indefinitely (e.g. when the price of the coin goes up, the value of transactions go up, even though the actual number of transactions stay the same) - But the flat transaction fees become prohibitively high and only suitable for large transactions; that's why you need new networks with lower-priced coins and fees to handle the load of smaller transactions.

</comment><comment><USER28> Diversification is supposed to be done in different asset classes. Also a good rule is to only diversify when the asset is cheap.

<comment><USER29> Even better: diversification should be done across weakly-correlated (ideally negatively correlated) assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> also, IMO, quite a few think of it as lottery money. Maybe they mined it early or bought in very cheap, now they have a lot of money. So what do you do when you get a bunch of money almost all of the sudden?

</comment><comment><USER31> Ethereum tokens are apps,basically, they are not even a currency... And some ICOs nowadays raise money to tokenify real world finance, look up genesis vision

</comment><comment><USER32> But they are not. Altcoin value relative to Bitcoin peaked in june 2017

<comment><USER33> That characterization doesn't really tell the whole story though. By my reading of this chart[1] altcoins went from ~15% of the total market cap to ~62% before falling to ~52%. That's still a lot more of the value in altcoins than at the beginning of the year.

1: [https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#dominance- percentage](https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#dominance-percentage)</comment></comment>


The Last Dance Dance Revolution Machines in Manhattan - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/arts/dance-dance-revolution.html <comment><USER2> This format is terrible, and keeps crashing on my iPhone. I really wish this was just an article.

<comment><USER3> I didn't love the format, but I don't think you can explain DDR and have people understand without a video.

<comment><USER4> So just embed a video within the article, or stick it at the top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I bought the home game with spiffy pad controllers.

Great family investment! We played the crap out of the thing. And I got some nice physical benefits.

Sad to see these go. If I were one of those arcade operators, I would keep the machine lit.

</comment><comment><USER6> Topic aside, what is going on with the mobile UI of this article? This is an abomination!

<comment><USER4> It's not just the mobile UI. It's awful on desktop as well.</comment></comment>


Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/devbootcamp/posts/1453888288004252 <comment><USER3> I find bootcamps to be an interesting industry.

The general perception is that they're learning institutions, but that couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, bootcamps are technical recruitment agencies.

Companies are realizing that smart, motivated people with no CS degree can still oftentimes excel in the majority of positions (primarily app development.) The problem is finding those people. Bootcamps have stepped in to bridge that gap - they essentially screen for people who learn quickly, teach them the bare essentials, and send them on their way.

This means bootcamps have a symbiotic relationship with the quality of students they're able to attract. The best bootcamps turn out the highest quality students, who then get the best jobs, which makes the bootcamp look better.

Dev Bootcamp was always in that awkward position where it was trying to be one of the "premiere" bootcamps, but never actually made it to tier 1 status. It's always lived in the shadow of Hack Reactor, Fullstack Academy, and to a lesser extent, App Academy. Having personally worked with Dev Bootcamp graduates, I've felt that on average, they were much weaker than the graduates from the other bootcamps I mentioned.

Since Hack Reactor in particular has been expanding its reach to additional locations, Dev Bootcamp was probably getting boxed out of the premium bootcamp space. The founders were unwilling to be relegated to tier 2 (or the demand was dropping too fast) so they had to pull out.

It's a shame, but I can't say I'm entirely surprised.

<comment><USER4> That's really no different than any university. A lot of the value of Harvard or Stanford is that they only pick the top n% of the country. The signaling factor is as important as the education, often times.

Bootcamps are this weird space where, because they're so short and so expensive, even the most legitimate are considered mediocre by most employers because you can only teach so much in three months.

So you can make it a year long, but then do you charge $40-80k up-front? No one has that kind of money.

<comment><USER5> Another part of the value of a university is that they factor in SAT scores heavily into admissions. SAT scores correlate strongly with IQ.

Hiring based on IQ tests is illegal, but hiring mostly from certain universities is not.

<comment><USER6> It's not illegal, it's just considered defacto discrimination and you have to prove it's actually beneficial.

There's no reason that you couldn't be sued the same way if you're only hiring from a certain university and that leads to excluding people from a protected class.

<comment><USER5> You can use "disparate impact" doctrine to argue that just about anything is illegal. It's pretty hard to full proof yourself against that.

But there's a big difference between something that existing legal precedent has ruled as strongly likely to be illegal for hiring (IQ testing), and a currently widespread hiring practice that may at some future date suffer the same fate (hiring from particular schools). The legal risk of the former is extremely high, while you would have to be extraordinarily unlucky to suffer damages from the latter. Even if the courts do so rule in the future, you'd have to win (lose?) the lottery and be the one or two companies that get taken to court in that test case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, three years ago, I was attending DBC and getting my first exposure to web app development. Today, I write code for a living and am enjoying the work I do much more than what I had been doing before.

Did DBC give me an education equivalent to a computer science degree? No.

Did they teach me everything I need to know about data structures and algorithms? No.

Did they help me get my first programming job? Sort of, but not really.

But I did learn an enormous amount of practical knowledge in a very short time (basically: "How to build and deploy a database-backed CRUD app with a reasonable UI while working as part of a small fast paced team" and "How to research stuff you don't know the answer to and figure out how to do it on your own").

They taught me what I needed to know to teach myself the rest of what I needed to know to get where I wanted to be. And for that, it was worth it for me.

But I do have mixed feelings about the bootcamps in general.

They can be really helpful for people in certain circumstances (in my case: career changer who needed to jumpstart the learning process and get some practical guidance), but they sell themselves as something else ("Learn to be a computer programmer in 6 months!").

Sorry to hear they are shutting down. I suppose it was Kaplan's decision and the space has become so crowded that there must be pricing pressure on the programs and a limit to how many graduates the job market can absorb. Will have to go look into this some more and see what I can find out.

<comment><USER4> Wait, they didn't teach you data structures and algorithms?

They seriously stop at "hey deploy a CRUD app?"

That's rough. There's no way students are getting jobs with that in this environment. Maybe when they first started that was enough, but now the market is flooded with not-quite-competent junior devs.

<comment><USER8> They can and they do. Which is somewhat problematics. A lot of companies are trying to scale, and with the demand for software developers being so high (plus the push for diversity), bootcamp "grads" are a pretty popular target.

But companies rarely make the difference between a CS major (especially those with multiple internships or coops often spawning longer than the bootcamp on their own) and bootcamp graduates.

So they both start as SWE or Junior/Associate SWE. Often there's a drastic difference in ramp up and output, and people around them won't always know why (unless people stalk them on linkedin or ask).

That puts a ton of burden on teammates that may not be properly prepared to coach these people (they go through the same hiring process, same onboarding process, etc). Don't get me wrong, its a failing on the companies who hire people they are not prepared to handle, but they're often pressured to.

It's a really awkward situation.

<comment><USER9> > So they both start as SWE or Junior/Associate SWE

> That puts a ton of burden on teammates that may not be properly prepared to > coach these people

You hit the nail on the head. Bootcamp grads will typically require more coaching than 4-year CS grads. Companies that don't realize this are setting themselves and their new hire(s) up for a painful experience.

In my opinion, fresh bootcamp grads are ready to be apprentice developers. Unfortunately, that's not really a role / distinction that any 21st century companies even recognize, probably because that also means recognizing the additional costs involved : apprentices require mentoring, and mentoring costs money. It's simply greedy thinking on the part of a hiring company to believe they can get a 4-year CS grad on the cheap & easy by going the bootcamp route. It's bad management not to account for the latter's steeper learning curve & onboarding requirements.

Ultimately there's no such thing as a free lunch. Even talented people can't magically leapfrog the learning curve by cramming out webapps for 3 months. There _will_ be gaps in their skillset - gaps that are best bridged with hands-on guidance from a senior developer. This applies to all junior devs, obviously, but doubly so for bootcamp grads.

<comment><USER8> > gaps that are best bridged with hands-on guidance from a senior developer

Yup. Also, there are situations where that gap becomes problematic to fill. As a lot of bootcamp people get hired, you start getting in situations where everyone in the team is a bootcamp grad. Then they don't have someone with an actual CS background to compensate.

I only have an IT degree myself (which, while longer to get, for all practical purpose is just a longer bootcamp). That was fine: I learnt a lot on my own, and 15-20 years ago, everyone else on my team had a CS background. I got coached, i learnt, I went from there.

Fastforward today and people without CS backgrounds might not have someone who does anywhere near. You don't know what you don't know, and have no way to be guided in the right direction. That's bad news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It always frustrates me when commenters are overwhelmingly undereducated about a topic but continue to make broad, sweeping generalizations. There's a ton of negativity, outright assuming, and misinformation being thrown around here. It happens in every bootcamp-related thread (and topics in other subjects of course).

No, not every bootcamp was legit. No, making assumptions about all bootcamps based on a handful of bad apples is not an honest critique. No, your anecdote about a bad bootcamp grad does not hold more weight than someone else's anecdote about a bootcamp completely changing their life.

The fact is DBC, which spawned an entirely new industry, was an overwhelmingly positive force. DBC has always made inclusivity and community a priority. For the vast majority of students, DBC has been a much higher ROI investment than a 4 year college degree and changes the way people think about modern education systems. There are thousands of capable engineers (including myself) out there today thanks to DBC, which often operated with high stress and, apparently, minimal funds.

It's a shame each bootcamp topic has its share of otherwise reasonable people making unfounded claims. In a community that values programming, startups, inclusivity, and helping others, you'd think the negativity and baseless accusations would be a lot more infrequent. It's been 5 years since DBC began and yet commenter ignorance still requires graduates to come in and defend their bootcamps.

If you have no idea what you're talking about, it's fine, ask and I'd be happy to answer. But this community really ought to be celebrating what DBC has accomplished.

Source: I'm an early 2013 DBC grad who has worked in SF tech since graduating. I've also helped hundreds of bootcamp grads with their job search post- graduation (meaning I have my fair share of honest criticisms for DBC). The vast majority of people I've talked with are now employed at companies most people on HN would love to work for.

<comment><USER11> Bootcamps are threats to ego. If it turns out that random person can do the same with three months of study, then one is not such a huge exceptional genius as one would like to believe.

A lot of the negativity is insecurity.

<comment><USER12> What a lot of people fail to understand is working in React and Angular is no easier to get into with a CS degree than without one. Both technologies among the thousands of others change weekly and for that reason Bootcamps are damn near as effective training tool than anything else. Ego's do get hurt though.

<comment><USER11> I have nothing against bootcamps, but I don't think it is difficult for someone with CS degree to learn react. There is a lot of practical in CS too and that experience makes learning react much easier - especially compared to people with little experience and not much programming background.

Likewise, second bootcamp would be easier and learning new technology for someone from bootcamp is easier then for someone with neither bootcamp nor CS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For anyone seeking alternatives, $0 up-front cost software engineering bootcamps that I'm aware of:

Learner's Guild [https://www.fastcoexist.com/3068200/when-this- entrepreneurs-...](https://www.fastcoexist.com/3068200/when-this- entrepreneurs-thriving-business-lost-its-purpose-he-walked-away)

42 (completely free) [https://www.42.us.org/](https://www.42.us.org/)

Holberton School [https://www.holbertonschool.com/](https://www.holbertonschool.com/)

Lambda Academy [https://lambdaschool.com/computer- science](https://lambdaschool.com/computer-science)

<comment><USER4> Hey, I'm the co-founder of Lambda Academy of Computer Science ([https://LambdaSchool.com/computer- science](https://LambdaSchool.com/computer-science). Also happy to answer any questions.

We're not a bootcamp, but we are 100% free until you get a job, and have live instructors from UC Berkeley, NASA, etc. We have a very rigorous curriculum that is closest to an uber-practical CS degree, but there's not really a close proxy to it anywhere.

We cover all the CS & programming fundamentals employers want you to understand, and get much closer to the metal, covering things like architecture/scaling, functional programming (hence the name), use compiled languages, etc.

We're also online, so you don't have to move anywhere, but we're live and on a strict schedule, so it's not something you can do asynchronously.

<comment><USER14> > We're also online, so you don't have to move anywhere, but we're live and on > a strict schedule, so it's not something you can do asynchronously.

Has that been a benefit in terms of graduates getting easier access to remote positions? (The fact that they've demonstrated the ability to work remotely through your course)?

Do you work directly with potential employers, helping students get a foot in the door, or is that up to students themselves? If you _do_ help out, do you "sell" the remote idea?

Finally, are you open to non-US students?

<comment><USER4> > Has that been a benefit in terms of graduates getting easier access to > remote positions?

I don't know that it's really come up much; generally we don't recommend a remote position for your first job, as you'll need a lot of hands-on training. It makes more sense as you become more senior.

> Do you work directly with potential employers, helping students get a foot > in the door, or is that up to students themselves? If you do help out, do > you "sell" the remote idea?

Yes, we work directly with potential employers, but again "remote" isn't the emphasis.

> Finally, are you open to non-US students?

We are, but unfortunately the "free-up-front" option is only available based on our income share agreement, which is only available to those authorized to work in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Attending Dev Bootcamp in March 2013 is the best decision I've ever made, it totally altered the trajectory of my career and I'm happier and more fulfilled as a result. I'm not sure I would have been able to make the switch from consulting to software engineering without DBC.

That being said, I'm extremely lucky to have enrolled during the narrow window I did. The entire bootcamp industry is suffering, not just DBC. They've now totally saturated the market with juniors and refused to adapt to that reality by extending and improving their product: they should be offering longer courses, covering more material, interspersing their offerings with internships, and providing intermediate-level bootcamps for engineers looking to graduate to the next level. Today's bootcamp graduates have to compensate for this themselves by continuing to teach themselves new content as they fight for jobs after graduation. This is difficult - don't get me wrong, it's still doable and still very much worth the effort - but it's hard, and this explains the current embarrassingly low rate of bootcamp graduates winning jobs as developers. If this describes you: keep your chin up, find a friend to practice interviewing with, and know that you're going to need to work through this material eventually: [https://teachyourselfcs.com](https://teachyourselfcs.com). And feel free to reach out to me.

I don't think anyone close to the bootcamp industry would see this as a surprise, and I think we'll see many more bootcamp closures/M&As in the near future. Hopefully the industry will evolve and adapt, not die - <USER2> deserves the opportunity, not just the lucky few who had it easy before the market got saturated.

<comment><USER16> I'm already web developer, but I want to move into Software Engineering. I wish there was a bootcamp out there that would train people who _already_ work with JS and coding, but are not as strong in CS. Bootcamp L2, for example.

<comment><USER17> Check out the guys at outco!

[https://outco.io/](https://outco.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I worked at Dev Bootcamp for four years. A big part of why the company is going out of business is that it put students ahead of profits.

I wrote a post about this here: [https://medium.com/@abinoda/dev-bootcamp-is- dead-but-it-didn...](https://medium.com/@abinoda/dev-bootcamp-is-dead-but-it- didnt-fail-3a4e456899be)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for writing this Abi

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> DBC 2013 alumnus here.

I'm super disappointed to hear this news. Although I could see it coming, because how often does this kind of thing NOT happen when a small company gets purchased by a larger corporation?

DBC was quite an institution. As I've stated before, it's not about what they can teach you – it was simply an invaluable resource to allow those with ambition to figure out aspects of app development on their own and with other people. If you're expecting a series of lectures, exams, and knowledge to be bestowed upon you at DBC, you're looking at it wrong and you will fail. To have a place to go where you can spend months hacking on things with other people while going through a learning process, right in the center of the action in technology, was so unique and valuable. I met so many cool people and had far greater experiences than my time in college. It changed my life tremendously. I have Shereef and everyone whom I shared my experience with to thank! I really could be living in a van down by the river right now if I didn't discover DBC.

The greatest thing I got out of DBC was not coding ability, which I mostly picked up on my own, but a mindset/philosophy about learning and problem- solving. I know that many of these things come naturally to people software engineering, especially those far more brilliant than I, but not everyone figures these things out. They summed it up as the "growth" mindset vs. the "fixed mindset", which seems fairly accurate to me.

I really hope someone can continue(or at least hold a candle to) DBC's legacy. A lot of bootcamps seem like junk, but I'm sure that's not all of them.

<comment><USER21> which aren't junk in your opinion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Kudos to the school who started it all, and the vision behind it. Thinking about the future, and the million of people who could benefit from learning coding, is DBC going to open source their curriculum?

I think they should consider it, and I think that they could reach out to Free Code Camp to see if they can do something together. Hope to see this happening! What do you think?

From the European side - [https://codeworks.me/](https://codeworks.me/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Burst of bootcamp bubble? Dev Bootcamp seems to have been the first ever coding bootcamp. Think Hack Reactor (another popular bootcamp) was founded by Dev Bootcamp grads. Or maybe the herd would just distribute to other bootcamps? Even if the failure of Dev Bootcamp doesn't directly hurt the business of other bootcamps, it has a psychological effect on the bootcamp industry: suddenly the bootcamp experience doesn't seem so attractive anymore. If the school failed to survive, does it affect the survival of its graduates? Is this going to have a psychological effect on how industry views bootcamp grads, and consequently affect the job prospects of bootcamp grads?

<comment><USER24> The bubble is credentialed post-secondary schools and the 1.3 _trillion_ dollar student debt crisis.

Just like the credentialed schools, there's a wide variety in quality and outcomes, but I think it's pretty clear they're doing better on ROI (and at least people aren't going into decades of debt for them en masse).

> _" If the school failed to survive, does it affect the survival of its > graduates? Is this going to have a psychological effect on how industry > views bootcamp grads, and consequently affect the job prospects of bootcamp > grads?"_

If someone learns nothing after finishing their courses and has nothing positive on their resume for several years, they'd probably be in a tough spot. That's not really very different from the case for other types of schooling, though. If someone is learning and growing though, why would it? Only an extremely strange employer would ignore a candidate's performance in their last job and reject them based on schooling they did before it.

<comment><USER6> Federal loans (90% of all loans) come with income based repayment plans that charge 10% of your disposable income and are cancelled after 20 years if you don't pay it off.

The income based repayment plans are also retroactively available to all Federal borrowers.

It's not actually as big of a problem as it sounds.

<comment><USER25> The loan forgiveness entices people who wouldn't otherwise buy the education product and further inflates the sticker price of education.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but it essentially shifts the debt burden from the individual to the government.

$1.3 trillion in extra government debt isn't a large enough to really cause problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here's the thread that started it all: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133)

<comment><USER27> Thank you for this. I remember reading this 5+ years ago. It was the catalyst for me dropping out of college, and eventually made my way up to SF to go to DBC. A hell of a journey, and it all started with a post on some forum.

Edit: I also didn't realize you're the DBC founder? I owe you so much and i owe my entire career (thus far) to DBC and the entire industry you started with some crazy idea of teaching people to code in a couple months. Thank you for everything you have done.

<comment><USER26> You are very welcome. Thank you for the kind words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> nathan-wailes I don't know if I _should_ feel sad about this, but I do feel sad about this. As others have mentioned, DBC was the first company in this industry, and their excellent execution seems to have been what led to so many other entrepreneurs becoming convinced that this concept could work; they really did a great service for people in this country who didn't graduate college with a hard-science / engineering degree. I considered going to a bootcamp back in February of 2013 (one year after DBC launched), met Shereef and his cofounder Jesse Farmer at their SF location, and left very impressed with what they had created and with them personally.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the kind words.

<comment><USER28> Some more kind words:

I'm currently working through week six of Phase 0, and I'm so, so sad that DBC isn't going to last. I did tons of research about different bootcamps, but ultimately I chose DBC because I wanted to be a part of a program that has such a commitment to being a corrective force in the embarrassingly un-diverse tech world.

It really is incredible that the thing you created has empowered so many students to both maximize their ability to learn and gain more agency in such an inequitable society.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. I'm glad I decided to dive into this while DBC was still around. (And now I should probably get back to work with attributes and modules...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So I graduated from DBC 3 years ago and I agree with most of the sentiments already stated in this thread. However, I think the red flag for me was seeing some of my cohort graduate and then immediately after become instructors at DBC. I don't care what you say, you cannot teach programming after being exposed to programming for 12 weeks. For one thing, a "good" teacher isn't just someone who has been coding for a while (which obviously you lack if you have just graduated from the program); you actually have to understand pedagogy and take an actual interest in being a mentor or guide. If DBC had hired instructors with industry experience, I often found that they lacked the proper skills to make them effective educators.

<comment><USER30> I hear that, I remember being asked if I was planning on sticking around to teach at DBC and feeling inadequate at the thought of it. Mentoring perhaps made sense...

BTW I finished in 2013 as well (Pocket Gophers SF!).

<comment><USER29> Nice! I was in the Red Admirals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> DBC was acquired by Kaplan back in 2014 [1]. Was this Kaplan's decision or DBC's?

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/kaplan-to-buy-software- developm...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/kaplan-to-buy-software-development- school-dev-bootcamp-1403660869)

<comment><USER23> I would guess it was Kaplan's decision. If the cause is unprofitability, then there are no moves left for DBC. DBC sold to Kaplan for the money, and Kaplan sees no money to be made in DBC, thus shuts it down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Top tier boot camps are essentially 12 week long interviews that the interviewee pays for.

It's a great business model for those top tier boot camps, but there's a limited number of students who can make it through, pay for it, and take time off to do it. It's just not that scaleable.

<comment><USER32> True. Schedule for most bootcamps are too rigid, especially for a married person. And living costs during and after bootcamp (until that perfect job magically appears) can far outway the actual tuition costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Hi Andrew, we had actually been working too find a sustainable business model since the very beginning. Ultimately we couldn't find one that didn't sacrifice on our commitment to provide the highest quality program possible while keeping our program open to the most diverse students possible."

What does that mean? It seems like this should've been a profitable business - 3000 graduates @ $10k/piece = $30mm revenue.

<comment><USER34> I believe that three thousand was over the last five years. So 6mm. I don't know much about it, but you could eat that up pretty easily it seems. Figure 300 students at a time, ten students an instructor, 100k per instructor, gives 3 million. Then there's rent and support staff.

<comment><USER19> The support/general overhead wasn't cheap either. When I was there we had a free therapist, mandatory morning yoga, teambuiliding exercises, and stuff like weekly free food, etc.

<comment><USER35> > mandatory morning yoga

This would enrage me.

<comment><USER36> Bootcamps are not for everyone.

<comment><USER37> > Bootcamps aren't for everyone.

DBC grad here (Chicago 2013). Mandatory morning yoga is not an inherent part of a generic coding bootcamp experience. DBC chose to make yoga classes part of its unique culture, but I doubt all other bootcamps follow suit.

Personally, I wasn't "enraged" by the yoga and I even appreciated the emphasis on mental health, but I don't think yoga was the only way to achieve this and I would have appreciated the chance to opt out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> That's too bad.

I've worked with many DBC grads and some nice people came through there. I interviewed many DBC grads and they were definitely all over the place in terms of ability and understanding, but some had everything it took to grow into solid software engineers.

I've worked with some of the instructors as well and they're great folks.

</comment><comment><USER39> DevBootcamps work over the last 5 years have been super impactful and paved the way for many bootcamps. Like many in the industry, and as a founder of DevMountain bootcamps, we all knew DBC as the golden standard. DBC changed tech education and positively affected many! Much respect and best wishes to everyone involved.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is this announcement official? I don't see anything on their website [https://devbootcamp.com/](https://devbootcamp.com/). Also, the timing is off -- it seems announcing this at this time is going to put a damper on the entire next semester.

</comment><comment><USER41> I was a graduate of one of the 2015 cohorts. It was a good school that really prepared me for a solid career. However, I remember running the numbers on the camp when I was there and was having trouble coming up with how they could still be profitable given their location, staff, and cohort sizes.

</comment><comment><USER42> Good. The idea and intention behind bootcamps is a good one but the current implementation is suspiciously like university of phoenix.

<comment><USER43> My youngest brother went through Dev Bootcamp in 2012. He had graduated from a top 30 university but wasn't able to find a great job and had been doing some part time, low skill work.

DBC literally changed his life. Post graduation he immediately got a job at a dev shop as a programmer, and now 5 years later is a great developer gainfully employed in Silicon Valley.

Not sure why you would shit on the grave of a program that has done a lot of good for its graduates.

<comment><USER42> Trouble with anecdotes is that it is not data. I'm happy for your brother but that still doesn't change the fact that most bootcamps are overpromising and underdelivering on their promises of gainful employment. It's simply not possible to learn to program in bootcamp time frames.

I'm certain if we saw actual numbers it would not be a pretty picture.

For the truly motivated it is much better to go to recurse.com or join a learning Meetup. Get a day job to pay the bills and learn at your own pace. Programming is not going anywhere even with all the fancy AI startups. In fact if I was just starting out I'd just learn Python and R.

<comment><USER44> I fully support this comment, and have been doubling-down for a while on the notion that people who come out of hacker schools and "do well" just had a knack for it in the first place.

We have been looking for a very entry-level dev to be in a pretty entry level role that would be perfect for someone to get their feet wet in the industry.

Every single person we've interviewed from a "hacker school" has been from Hack Reactor. I'd say something like 40% of them would actually be able to be some sort of "developer" given that they keep up the practice. About 20% (at best) are what I would consider an actual "entry level dev intern"

Entry level in this context is basically just the ability to code some basic html, css, javascript, with a computer given to you, and a task to work on over the course of a day. Many of the previous Hack Reactor students we had interview (at least 60%) (some even being "assistants"), in my opinion, have no business in software development. They were technical enough to understand "web dev" in conversation, but just couldn't manifest that into anything useful without huge amounts of guidance for menial tasks.

<comment><USER45> Are you paying below market? The good ones probably are shooting for better paying companies. I know some Hack Reactor alumni have made their way to Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Who needs bootcamps? All you need is a decent machine and an internet connection to learn. That's how we learnt "web" back in the day. Cynical me hopes all commercial (and often spammy) bootcamps and conferences and meetups die a quick death. Also death to the hipster culture in tech. /rant over

<comment><USER20> Why stop at bootcamps? There are so many resources on the internet, most of which are free, that can replace all of the knowledge universities have to offer and then some. Someone could learn astrophysics through Google searches.

But that's not a reasonable position across the board. Of course universities offer more than mere information, and I would say that bootcamps(at least DBC) focus mostly on those other things and far less on the information. By that I mean learning to code at home online isn't going to give you the same experience as spending days or weeks hacking on your first mobile app with a bunch of other people, non stop, while chowing on beer and pizza. Yes, there's tremendous value in that, especially if you need to learn to work on a team and self-organize. In theory, you can emulate that environment on your own, but there's a reason people pay for that kind of experience. A person of novice experience can't or won't come up with a substitute for that. It's an introduction to a world, of sorts. At least it was for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If Dev Bootcamp was unprofitable, are other bootcamps also unprofitable, or was Dev Bootcamp an exception?

<comment><USER47> Recently, I had the opportunity to do some number crunching on actual outcomes data for one of the tier 1 bootcamps. (all its years of operation to date) I discovered that some major changes needed to be made in their business model in order for them to be truly profitable. Their big innovative business idea seemed to be: we are gonna be the best at bootcamping. I don't get how that even passes as an innovative business idea at the first funding round. Their delivery on that awesomeness idea didn't show itself in their outcomes. They still love their model though. This may be because they don't have to be profitable. I was puzzled.

<comment><USER33> Oh dear.

<comment><USER47> Yes. Well said. I truly wish there was a way for the minds who convene here to get at a disturbing issue with respect to bootcamps: No one with access to actual data can be honest about what is going on here. they can't really share this data in any detail that would be valuable to a potential student, and really to the industry as a whole. These "transparency" reports that have cropped up recently are not so transparent-- (although they are better than nothing) they too deceive (why not show an actual budget with actual living expenses after graduation- including debt to the coding school- a detailed personal budget, if you will?- and actually show what it costs to live and study for several months in addition to this- show them how much they will actually have to lay out for a NYC security deposit (three months' rent if local, 6 months often if foreign these days- sure, not everywhere, but anywhere they will feel is a decent, legal place to live) this is just one aspect of how they are not "full-disclosure" with newbies. Also- the pre-work thing: take responsibility for teaching these people, please! They are paying you! Stop acting like their paying you lots of money is a privilege of theirs. Stop acting like they just got into Yale Law School when they got into your bootcamp. Get real with them. That gives you credibility right there. The honesty problem: Students can't be honest about what happens to them, because if they are, they (in their own minds) will devalue the bootcamp pedigree they paid good money for. (I have been talking to bootcamp graduates since this whole thing started and doing research. No, for some of the reasons I state, I can't produce this evidence, at least not right now) Then there is the whole having to pretend to be a member of the upper classes in NYC in order to get a job. This is a real thing in NYC, so tell them about it, and teach them how to act like rich people when you send them out. Teach them to act entitled- even arrogant. People who found and work for these bootcamps can't be honest (even if they believe they want to be) for obvious reasons. I mean, this is why we value double-blind testing in medical research. I just don't see another way than the companies themselves taking the responsibility to educate employees. I don't think they have to become Stanford. I do think Google has already started with this effort in bringing Howard University onto their Mountain View campus... I'm paying attention. The burden on the employee just becomes greater and greater until people are funding whole mini-careers in order to clear the first barrier to entry. It is ridiculous. We should not stand for it. But labor is dead. The bootcamp thing was a fantastic model five years ago, and Dev Bootcamp was truly a pioneer. That should be recognized for sure, and applauded. But what is being ignored is that this barrier to entry is now the highest it has ever been as a direct result of these bootcamps. I can believe that and also think Dev Bootcamp and others have done wonderful work for people. It is just that the big heavy castle door is closing fast and a few are scrambling to run under before the spikes hit their backs. Most will be left drowning in the castle moat. The answer is clear here: the model needs to change dramatically and it needs to always be changing dramatically. Agile anyone? (sorry- had to, I really had to) So maybe take stock and make real change that responds to the market in a sustainable way. Sustainable would be wonderful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hard to compete against things like Lambda Academy where there's no up front cost and you only pay if you get a job: [https://lambdaschool.com/computer- science](https://lambdaschool.com/computer-science)

<comment><USER12> Lambda does not look like a legit company, there is no terms of service, privacy policy or even a legit contact which is typically required for most reputable businesses. I don't trust them without basic legal information available on their website. For all we know, they are run by the Russian mob.

<comment><USER4> There's not really a need for a terms of service on a static page. We should probably get a privacy policy up. And there is a contact... both email addresses and forms. Do you need a physical address? We don't have someone sitting around waiting to answer the phone all day.

We're Lambda Inc. Incorporated in Delaware. Haven't announced our fundraising yet but that will be public soon. Clearly need to work on making the site look more legit.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, maybe legit is too harsh a word, but in many cases I've seen privacy policies and terms of service to be a requirement to do business with the likes of Amazon and Google etc...

<comment><USER4> terms of service is something you have if you're an app. Our students sign legal contracts. Our site is just a landing page.

But ya we'll work on it. Thanks for the feedback. Something something cobblers kids worst shoes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Relevant thread with comments from competitors and people who were there at the beginning: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758364)

</comment><comment><USER49> Can't bode well for Kaplan's other bootcamp, Metis for data science.

<comment><USER36> That space might still have less competition and therefore lower marketing costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think Dev Bootcamps are awesome but would probably be better served as an online service without the live classroom setting. I would rather do acloud.guru and udemy.

</comment><comment><USER51> .

<comment><USER52> I think a scathing review like this deserves a bit of explanation, regardless of topic. It's so easy to say "this thing BAD!" Why should we believe you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Does this mean coding is starting to lose its sexiness?

Is the fad over?

<comment><USER54> Possibly, but there certainly is an over-abundance of bootcamp grads, and it's hard to choose among them.

<comment><USER10> I'm not a fan of this line of thinking. Not every bootcamp graduate is the same. There may be less variance between them from a purely technical standpoint but their backgrounds are far more diverse than what you'd get out college.

In other words, I don't think it's fair to say "there's an over-abundance of graduates from XYZ university. It's hard to choose among them." Regardless, stereotyping job candidates based on where they learned to code is poor practice. A good hiring manager ought to take the time to treat a candidate respectfully, but I know this behavior is rare. If your organization simply doesn't want to take on junior/entry-level programmers, it should be clear in the job post _and_ IMO, you shouldn't be open to receiving college-grad applications, either.

<comment><USER54> I actually don't hire junior/entry-level devs, but I do get flooded with their resumes even though I'm very explicit that I'm looking for experienced devs.

If I were considering entry-level hires, I wouldn't hire bootcamp grads if their only experience were at the bootcamp. If someone has been coding for less than 4 months, I'm going to spend most of my time teaching them how to code. That kind of employment provides more value to the employee than the employer. That might work for some big companies, but I can't do it in a small company.

> _There may be less variance between them from a purely technical standpoint > but their backgrounds are far more diverse than what you 'd get out > college._

I agree with you, but it doesn't make it any easier to hire them. I have no idea if I'd rather have an ex-ballerina or an ex-salesman as my employee. Neither of those careers give you training as a developer.

So if I'm just trying to decide if someone can do the job, seeing 20 people with 12-16 weeks of experience isn't helpful. And, as someone who has been writing code for 20 years and still has a lot to learn, it's insulting to suggest someone can become competent in that short a time. I know for a fact that they can't. It sometimes takes that long for an experienced dev to learn a new stack, and bootcamps are claiming to teach people a huge array of technologies.

> _A good hiring manager ought to take the time to treat a candidate > respectfully, but I know this behavior is rare._

I treat candidates with respect. I think (most) bootcamps should treat their customers with more respect and stop promising to teach them to code. Bootcamps are mostly "teaching to the test" in my experience -- they teach you how to get hired. That's valuable, but it's a totally different thing.

<comment><USER55> How about a math major from a top ivy? Physics grad student? Consultant? Chem-E engineer? Founder of a successful startup? Product managers? We had all those and more at my bootcamp cohort.

Look, you do what you want with your hiring. But don't just make the blanket claim that bootcamp grads aren't competent. People in my cohort were contributing right away. Looking at people few years above me, they're launching successful open source projects, becoming team leaders, giving talks at conferences, etc. If you're insulted by their success, maybe that's on you.

<comment><USER54> > _Physics grad student? Consultant? Chem-E engineer? Founder of a successful > startup? Product managers?_

Those would be the same in that they don't have coding experience. Those people might be great hires, but they're not going to be great coders after a few short months trying to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and possibly a backend language.

I didn't say that they're stupid or anything. I mentioned that even a highly experienced coder wouldn't be competent with a new stack in that amount of time.

> _People in my cohort were contributing right away._

Contributions aren't the same as _good_ contributions. Bad contributions are much worse and more expensive than no contribution at all.

> _launching successful open source projects, becoming team leaders, giving > talks at conferences, etc._

Again, none of these things indicate competence necessarily, and they certainly don't indicate that someone is a great hire. Coding is not just knowing facts and writing code. It's having the experience to know how to structure things, what tradeoffs to make, etc.

> _If you 're insulted by their success, maybe that's on you._

I'm not insulted by their success, but I am concerned that bootcamps are taking lots of money from people and not delivering what they say they're delivering.

Edit: If you look at other comments in this thread, I think many bootcamp grads agree.

There's also going to be some survivorship bias here: you succeeded due to your bootcamp, but does that mean it works for everyone? Would you have been able to do it on your own? Are you smarter than the average person who would be interested in a bootcamp?

<comment><USER55> What basis do you have for asserting that their contributions are bad? That their open source projects and promotions to team leadership aren't signs of competence? Look, you can go on believing whatever you want to believe about bootcamp grads - no one's forcing you to hire them. But it is interesting to me that my cohort mates keep getting hired by everyone from small startups to Google, and they keep progressing in their careers. That tells me the bootcamps have done a good job of prepping them to begin their coding careers.

And wait, who said bootcamps is for everyone? My bootcamp never made that claim - they specifically said that it's hard, they're selective about who they let in, and that they kick out people who aren't cutting it. And who cares whether I (or anyone else) could have done it on my own? Could you have learned to code without taking comp sci classes? Probably, right? Does that mean your college was pointless/useless/fraudulent? Of course not.

Bootcamps showed that entry level developer jobs at most web startups don't require four years of studying computer science. It's a craft that many people can pick up without formal education in the subject matter. And if you ever want or need to learn about 'deeper' subjects? We can just pick up a book and learn it. This isn't rocket science.

<comment><USER54> > _What basis do you have for asserting that their contributions are bad? That > their open source projects and promotions to team leadership aren 't signs > of competence?_

I didn't assert that. I asserted only that "contributions" are not evidence of competence. Competence isn't even always sufficient to make someone a good hire.

> _That tells me the bootcamps have done a good job of prepping them to begin > their coding careers._

I agree and said this in my original comment. I said that bootcamps are "teaching to the test" and prepping people to get past the hiring process.

> _And who cares whether I (or anyone else) could have done it on my own?_

The people who pay for a bootcamp and don't get their money's worth. It's not easy to part with $10k+ for most people. The top comment on this post is someone who felt that way.

> _Could you have learned to code without taking comp sci classes? Probably, > right?_

Yes, and I did. I'm self-taught. But it didn't take me 16 weeks. I still look back on my skills a year ago and think, "Wow, I sucked a year ago." And I've been programming for 20 years.

> _Bootcamps showed that entry level developer jobs at most web startups don > 't require four years of studying computer science._

They certainly don't necessarily show that. If you hire someone who needs months of training to be a productive, independent employee, that's not a success. That's evidence of a shortage of entry-level coders. I think that shortage is starting to wane.

> _This isn 't rocket science._

It's not rocket science, but besides being something that requires understanding the way computers work, it also requires learning and understand a staggering number of technologies. I regularly use CSS, and I can't even keep up with just CSS. There's too much to know.

There are also many layers to being a great programmer that people rarely get early on. Many people don't realize that readability/maintainability are the most important qualities of (most) code. Even if they do, they don't necessarily know how to achieve those things.

You seem to be suggesting that web programming is unique among professions in that experience is mostly unimportant and someone can figure it all out in a few months. Would you argue the same about plumbing, repairing air conditioners, accounting, or sales?

None of these things are rocket science, but they are things you can't just think your way through and understand how to be good at. It takes time and practice, like everything.

<comment><USER55> It's interesting that people who come on these threads to argue that bootcamps aren't effective, scams, etc. say, 16 weeks aren't enough to teach you everything about programming and that programming correctly requires constant practice and learn new things. Well, duh. That's true even if you spend four years majoring in CS, self-studied for a year, or got an associate degree in programming.

And yeah, that's because there's too much to know, especially in web dev where the frameworks and standards are changing all the time. And yeah, I think that a 12-16 intensive program backed by 3-6 months of pre-study (which was what my bootcamp was) is definitely sufficient to produce competent junior web devs. How do I know that? Because, again, I see people from my cohort and prior cohorts succeeding at their jobs.

You can keep saying, but! but! they need tons of support and hand-holding! They can't possibly know how to write clean code! (Because of course, new college grads are writing Code Clean-approved code from day one) They need months of training before they can fix a CSS issue!

C'mon. Yeah, if you hire a recent bootcamp grad and tell him to rewrite the whole backend, you're setting him up to fail. But if you hire him as a junior software engineer and give him tasks that are appropriate for that role? And what new hire doesn't require training? You think brand-new plumbers, air conditioning repairmen, accountants, salesmen etc. don't require training and mentorship?

Yeah, bootcamp isn't a magical potion that turns everyday joes into Linus Torvalds. But so what? It's an innovative program that's produced thousands of successful engineers in the Bay Area and beyond. The sauce isn't for everyone, but it's been a great way for many people to prep for a new career.

Edit: And what's even more amazing to me about the anti-bootcamp screeds is that this is an industry that celebrates self-learned programmers! Very often I see posts that say, bootcamps are scams, don't do it, you can't be competent coming out of it, just go study on your own for a while. Okay. So studying and making stuff on your own can make you a competent programmer, but intensively programming for 12-16 weeks with other people who share your passion while under expert guidance, is somehow not good enough? Never understood that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Shereef Bishay sold out his staff and sold out his mission and he's going to the do the same to his staff at Learner's Guild in Oakland! He sold it off to Kaplan for 80M and his staff (with equity) got nothing!!!

I interviewed for a role at Dev bootcamp in 2016 and got an odd feeling from the place and the woman who interviewed me. She took several months to get back to me after I followed up multiple times and wow am I soooo glad I didn't get that.

<comment><USER26> Hey, what you're saying about me is not true. Please don't do that. Seriously, it hurts.

<comment><USER57> I was at DBC around the time of the sale and you're full of shit. You checked out, drove tons of taleneted people away (Michael, Lachy, Tony, Jesse, Keith, Zee, Myles, to name a few), and then decided you were bored with bootcamps.

You were in it for yourself and it would have been better for everyone if you could have admitted it. Sounds like you're still believing your own stories.

Kudos to you for hiring and inspiring an amazing team. Too bad you didn't know what to do with it.

<comment><USER58> It's true. Those instructors were all amazing, but Kaplan started asking them for their college transcripts to determine their pay scale (lol), and they realized the fight has already been lost.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FourQ: Four-dimensional decompositions on a Q-curve over the Mersenne prime [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://eprint.iacr.org/2015/565.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Looks pretty interesting: _" These results show that, in practice, FourQ is around four to five times faster than the original NIST P-256 curve and between two and three times faster than curves that are currently under consideration as NIST alternatives, such as Curve25519."_

Also check out FourQlib[1], MSR's (MIT-licensed) C implementation of this research.

[1] [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/projects/fourqlib/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/fourqlib/)</comment>


Focus, will you? - <AUTHOR> http://www.64notes.com/focus/ <comment><USER2> Now pack even more dangerous advice to students in one short article without too much back up and background, will you? OP jumped from description of his personal blazingly fast and 'energetic' thought process to generalizations too quickly, I think.

I actually strongly disagree with both points raised by the author and will state something quite opposite:

1) Focus is most probably not a direct function of one's mood. Do not mistake momentary excitement for ability to focus or being in a flow. Bright emotions come in bursts, quite often they skew and blur the vision and undermine your ability to think clearly. Basically, untrained person constantly falls prey to her emotions and impulses. The flow is a state of peace of mind, not of over- stimulation and constant agitation. Keep emotions for creative sessions (I don't believe too much in such thing, to be frank), but when you need to focus - try to get calm and then shift into flow-state.

2) One can - and I think one should - train to concentrate on most kinds of mental tasks (providing that nothing gets in the way, of course). Focusing only on what's interesting is very rarely an option. It is much more vital to be able to focus on what's important rather than on what seems to be really cool right now - for students and for entrepreneurs especially! And anyway, almost any big task, however cool, consists of some important not so cool small steps that can't be ignored. So: do try to focus on one thing at a time, be ready for your wandering mind to try to take you somewhere else, be ready to notice patterns of loosing focus (come on, you are _loosing_ focus, not just _changing_ it), don't over-rationalize or get aggravated at this and just make conscious effort to stay on topic. Being calm and prepared helps a lot.

Couple of final thoughts about article. Focus is trainable, and in the long run persistence is what's important, not following your constantly changing emotions or chasing your thoughts. Multitasking is not suitable for everyone, not suitable for all types of activities and is almost as dangerous to young person as promotion of cool-looking do-what-you-want lifestyle to school students.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe that a lack of focus - for example being unable to focus on a discreet task for any length of time, is a bad thing. I've often drafted 10 responses to 10 different e-mails and given myself a mental slap on the wrist for realising that I've not finished a single one of them. Then the phone rings...then an employee interrupts me with a question on Skype and before I know it, it's lunchtime and I've got nothing done.

Focus is something you can learn, and I'm proactively re-wiring my brain through exercise and meditation to achieve longer levels of focus.

In the meantime - at the start of the day I set up my personal Trello board with the smallest number of tasks that I must do that day, and so long as those get done - I'm free to dip in and out of a range of other tasks that my job as CEO requires of me. This also helps to stop the self-hatred vibe, which is easy to jump on when I don't feel I've made enough progress in a particular area of the business.

TL;DR: Being a CEO is tough.</comment>


Apply HN: "atomic knowledge": a new way to manage notes on everything - <AUTHOR> 1) Theory: We have many systems (wikis, evernote, cyc, etc), but all are crippled by relying on human language as a fundamental layer.  To more powerfully manage knowledge, we can approach it more like an object model created on the fly by just using the system: what you know about a pen, say, is best expressed as numbers, relationships, and code (mass, owner, behavior ...); the human language words can change when the knowledge doesn't.
2) Vision:  Be effective on an individual level, then link OneModel instances (find others' data, subscribe to changes, copy, link, etc), to build large and comprehensive systems in wiki-like ways (with the power of the network effect), but without the crippling human-language limitations.  Think wikipedia but all the data is effectively computable, and locally controllable.
3) Today: The AGPL prototype is like emacs org-mode in being keyboard- and desktop-oriented, and feeling like nested lists galore, but uses postgresql, allows having the same data linked into multiple places, is much easier to learn & use than emacs, and has a  bigger long-term vision.  It's (for me) the best personal organizer ever: very fast to navigate, and very flexible.  The web site is generated from its data.
4) Next steps: Community-building and funding.  I could really use feedback.  The current target audience might be note-takers who touch type, like speed (and don't need mobile--cough), and need to be able to put the same information in more than one place in their notes.  And anyone who wants to help move the big picture forward.  Like, I hope to add anki-like features, and ways to attach code to classes of objects that were "modeled" on the fly as a side-effect of using the system (eg, so you can change the date on to-dos, in ways you specify, with simple code, or eventually run simulations, etc).
Much more info AND A WORKING DEMO or downloads to try, are at: http://onemodel.org <comment><USER2> Are there plans for a RESTful API so that it could serve as a backend for a variety of clients?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is some discussion about this at: [https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/04/23/0149257](https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/04/23/0149257)</comment>


In China's Hinterlands, Workers Mine Bitcoin for a Digital Fortune - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/business/bitcoin-mine-china.html <comment><USER2> I'm wondering how much capital went into this, and at what point it becomes profitable for the company.

<comment><USER3> Quite a decent amount as ASICs aren't cheap, and buildings/land aren't cheap either (despite this being the cheapest region in the world for this type of stuff).

Then couple this with the fact that your profits are heavily affected by market price swings.

Not the easiest business in the world I'd say :)</comment></comment>


IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2013/02/08/ibms-watson-gets-its-first-piece-of-business-in-healthcare/

<comment><USER2> People don't seem to realize how huge this is. This venture could easily turn out to be the most profitable in IBM's history, and one of the most important inventions in health care.

<comment><USER3> Preach on. I'm baffled by how techies can be so underwhelmed by what IBM is doing.

<comment><USER4> Such software has been available for decades, been shown to be superior to human diagnosis, and yet has not been accepted by the medical community. Doctors will likely continue to push back. It may require restructuring of the medical education community (perhaps a' la the movie Idiocracy) to bring about utilization.

"50 years of successful predictive modeling should be enough: Lessons for philosophy of science (2002)"

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.217....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.217.949)

Idiocracy, the movie

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/>

<comment><USER5> The book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" has a great chapter on human predictions versus those made by forumlas. The superiority of simple forumlas was being demonstrated way back in the 50s (see "Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis And A Review Of The Evidence"). Since then the evidence for statistical rather than intuitive prediction has only become stronger.

From "Thinking, Fast and Slow":

"The number of studies reporting comparisons of clinical and statistical predictions has increased to roughly two hundred, but the score in the contest between algorithms and humans has not changed. About 60% of the studies have shown significantly better accuracy for the algorithms. The other comparisons scored a draw in accuracy, but a tie is tantamount to a win for the statistical rules, which are normally much less expensive to use than expert judgment. No exception has been convincingly documented."

Also interesting:

"Several studies have shown that human decision makers are inferior to a prediction formula even when they are given the score suggested by the formula! They feel that they can overrule the formula because they have additional information about the case, but they are wrong more often than not."

<comment><USER2> 60% out of 200 studies is not all that good, really. It allows the experts to believe that if they're still in the top 25%, no machine can beat them (I know that this is not exactly what the studies say, but statistics are almost always being misinterpreted, so I do it here too).

The thing is: I expect Watson to perform significantly better than this. If it can beat Jeopardy grandmasters consistantly and _if_ that technology is correctly being reapplied to the medical field, Watson should easily outperform anything we had before.

<comment><USER6> It's worth noting that Watson didn't beat the Jeopardy grandmasters with accuracy, but with speed - not that that isn't useful in healthcare, given sufficient accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is truly impressive. The only part that I'm unsure about it is when they say they "WellPoint will be using the system [to help] health insurers determine which treatments are fair, appropriate and efficient and, in turn, what it will cover", the possibility for abuse their is significant.

Anyway, congrats to anyone at IBM who worked on this, when you make the future so great it feels natural, you're doing it right.

<comment><USER8> But is the potential worse than existing systems?

<comment><USER9> Suppose a doctor is paid by the visit - his incentive is to keep you alive for as long as the insurance will allow him to (which could have minus points as well as plus points). Watson's recommendations could be aligned more directly to the insurance company's bottom line : Keep you healthy as long as possible, but kill you quickly when things turn south.

Of course, it may be that Watson's choices are more optimal for the patient, but there's an ethical debate in there somewhere, I'm sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know what the specific metric is that they are using to compare Wat son to doctors? What does it mean that doctors make the correct treatment decision 50% of the time? I don't doubt that Watson is better at this task, but it's difficult to have an appreciation of its ability without understanding the test.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can imagine, how this will look like, so I illustrated it for your convenience. :)

[http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/3633/watsondiagnosissm.pn...](http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/3633/watsondiagnosissm.png)

</comment><comment><USER12> _Watson doesn't tell a doctor what to do, it provides several options with degrees of confidence for each, along with the supporting evidence it used to arrive at the optimal treatment._

That is, of course, as it should be (except for the comma splice, heh), but I think there's a grave danger of doctors becoming complacent about it over time and just doing what Watson recommends.

I think we need to make sure that "I did what the computer said" is not a defense against malpractice, and similarly that not doing what the computer said does not make one's defense more difficult. That will be a hard position to maintain, but the alternative is that eventually, doctors will cede their critical faculties to the machine.

<comment><USER13> When Watson tells the hypertensive diabetic to stop smoking and lose 100 pounds of weight, is the patient going to be any more likely to do it than when his human doctor tells him the same thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On one hand it's impressive and huge and through that is somewhat intimidating and scary, because it makes one feel like losing control (to the "machines").

On the other hand it's a straight-forward extension of a basic calculator. There are tasks that humans _can_ do, but not as fast, so why not automate them? It doesn't mean that no one can subtract and divide by hand, it just makes one's work more efficient. Similarly, Watson doesn't mean that next generation doctors will be lazy incompetent asses at mercy of a powerful computer system. It means that they will have yet another instrument to help them do their job better.

<comment><USER15> I don't think the concern is that the next generation of doctors will be incompetent, but perhaps they won't be as quick as their elders. There are times where you can't wait 30 seconds for Watson to suggest a course of action.

<comment><USER16> Im sure there are many concerns, but I don't think the time is fast enough to be a non issue. How many decisions cant wait 30 seconds? Besides, moores law indicates that this can probably be reduced to 5 seconds in 10 years (being very conservative and assuming the scope of Watson increases dramatically). Actually, by caching common results my guess is most things could be nearly instant within a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can imagine the use of this for political campaigns, wherein the strategy is determined by the combinations of sub-electorate most likely achievable via which policy positions, stumping, ad-spend, etc.

I'd like to see the sports version as well for team-building, drafting, etc. I've long thought it would be entertaining as well to have a sports announcer that was an AI.

Not as high-profile or morally impressive, but I'm concerned that healthcare outcomes are difficult to measure and frequently marginal.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's funny that so many resources have been put into training Watson... far more than would ever go into training a medical student...

It has access to medical evidence that is stuck behind pay walls otherwise... it has access to case histories that another clinician learning oncology could never access...

Because of this, in some ways it's irrelevant to compare Watson to the old way of doing things... Of course it's better!

It's a great development in technology... maybe in the end this is the only solution to the general disillusionment with doctors... it's too difficult and inefficient and failure prone to train warm bodies with their own personalities to do medicine. Watson and its ilk are an alternative with a better return on investment, and improving them is therefore easier to incentivize.

A (closed source) triumph for technology... but a failure for education and academia...

</comment><comment><USER19> This initial rollout is not intended to be used by doctors to determine (or even suggest) treatments for patients. IBM is usually very careful to point this out: they are not looking to replace doctors, at least not yet.

(Source: work for a company that has worked with IBM on this)

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this goes to show, that even what we may now look upon as dinosaurs no longer capable of innovation can do great things if they put in the R&D and don't scuttle their own efforts with shitty corporate politics.

I really, really, respect IBM for being able to do this despite its size and age as a company. They somehow have figured out how to keep(or start again) innovating when most companies that grow to that size tend to become complacent or just play catch-up with more innovative companies.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is the single most impressive use of artificial intelligence today. Let's hope we can improve successfully improve the lives of everyone with this technology.

</comment><comment><USER22> i am in awe with the demonstration. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZsPc0h_mtM>. i think anyone who has done any sort of clinical reasoning in the hospital would be at least a little impressed. the scary part is that such technologies can only improve, while even the most seasoned physician eventually have to face mental decline.

<comment><USER17> Yeah interesting. It doesn't appear to characterize her bleak prognosis (regardless of treatment).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > WellPoint's chief medical officer Samuel Nussbaum said at the press event > today that health care pros make accurate treatment decisions in lung cancer > cases only 50% of the time (a shocker to me). Watson, since being trained in > this medical specialty, can make accurate decisions 90% of the time.

That sounds very impressive if the number isn't being cooked in some way.

</comment><comment><USER24> education, marketing, sales, social networks, planning, ads, defense, science, engineering, politics, games, news....

"Watson eating the world"

</comment><comment><USER25> Why I have the eerie feeling that this sort of thing might be very dangerous?

I mean, what happen if too much people start to rely only on this, and then it is used to mislead (WWII battle of beams style) or what happen if people start to become dependant on it, and you have a power failure?

For example a massive solar storm might happen in our lifetime, the last time it happened (about 150 years ago) it made telegraph lines catch on fire, and people could read newspaper at night using the aurora in the middle of the caribbean. If that happen again, it is very likely that we will have some time of global power and communication loss. Of course, that will mean some chaos. How hospitals that rely too much on technology will treat take care of the emergency?

<comment><USER26> Blindly trusting your doctor is dangerous, yet most people do.

<comment><USER27> I suppose very few doctors have way less than 90% accuracy and, on top of that, Watson is not sensitive to external factors. This is a fantastic tool and may end up changing the way we interface with the health care system.

<comment><USER28> > I suppose very few doctors have way less than 90% accuracy

It's a reasonable thought. When this has been studied at autopsy, however, doctors seem to be right 70-85% of the time (higher when very confident of the diagnosis) [1]. There are a bunch of studies that show this, and you can find many in the linked meta-analysis.

Of course, this focuses on things that can lead to death. If your doctor misdiagnosis RSV as metapneumovirus, you'll survive either way in all likelihood, so for some diseases we'll probably never know the true diagnostic accuracy.

[1] = [http://www.pathkids.com/autopsy/hasleton%20on%20discrepancie...](http://www.pathkids.com/autopsy/hasleton%20on%20discrepancies.pdf)

<comment><USER22> another secret in medicine is that a lot of what patients come in for end up to be self-limiting anyhow; the patients just gets better on their own. in these cases, there may be misdiagnosis in there somewhere, but nobody would really care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Please state the nature of the medical emergency.</comment>


Why NULL is Bad? - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2014/05/13/why-null-is-bad.html?2014-19 <comment><USER2> It's a blub language issue:

       (defun get-by-name (name)
         (let ((id (database-find db name)))
           ;; return NIL or employee instance
           (if id (make-instance 'employee id))))

If necessary, we can make the generic functions that normally operate on employee to also work on nil, by specializing methods for the null class:

       (defmethod salary ((e null))
         0)  ;; null employee makes nothing

No problem to see here, move on:

       (salary (get-by-name "Nonex Istent")) -> 0

Note, by the way, how the test is "(if id ...)" and not "(if (zerop id) ...)". get-by-name itself returns nil when the name is not found, rather than an integer, which means zero could be a valid ID. The conventions shortens code since the result can be treated as a boolean value indicating found or not found, and the true value is an ID also.</comment>


How to randomize your MAC address on OS X - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=2738 <comment><USER2> How I've been doing it for years:

[https://github.com/feross/SpoofMAC](https://github.com/feross/SpoofMAC)

> spoof-mac randomize en0

<comment><USER3> Feross has also done a node.js version: [https://github.com/feross/spoof](https://github.com/feross/spoof)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, isn't Python now shipping with OSX? I haven't tested it, but wouldn't this also work while being more readable? (DISCLAIMER: I haven't tested it. Also, I haven't tested it.)

        from random import randint
        from os import getenv
        from subprocess import call
        from sys import argv

        if len(argv) > 1:
        # get network interface from cmdline parameter
            intf = argv[1]
        else:
        # get network interface from ENVIRONMENT variables
            intf = getenv('INTERFACE', '')

        if intf:
        # generate random mac address
            r = lambda: randint(0,255)
            randmac = '%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X:%02X' % (r(),r(),r(),r(),r(),r())
        # change mac address
            call(["ifconfig", "%s hw ether %s" % (intf, randmac)])
        else:
            print "Couldn't determine network interface"

<comment><USER5> This code will lead to a nice, self-inflicted bug that will sometimes break your network connection. The low two bits of the first byte of the MAC have a special purpose and should be kept at 0 [1]. Learned this the hard way when developing on an embedded TCP stack. The switch silently discarded packets from multicast or local MAC addresses.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address#Address_details](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address#Address_details)

<comment><USER6> You can use tricks based on multicast ethernet to detect interfaces in promiscuous mode:

[http://www.securityfriday.com/promiscuous_detection_01.pdf](http://www.securityfriday.com/promiscuous_detection_01.pdf)

[http://nmap.org/nsedoc/scripts/sniffer- detect.html](http://nmap.org/nsedoc/scripts/sniffer-detect.html)

<comment><USER5> That's pretty cool, thanks for the hint. The original PDF seems to be from 2001, does this still work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On Linux, you can use macchanger[0], a tool which does this automatically for you. I wrote about it here[1].

[0][https://github.com/alobbs/macchanger](https://github.com/alobbs/macchanger) [1][https://www.zufallsheld.de/2013/08/07/mac-spoofing-under- lin...](https://www.zufallsheld.de/2013/08/07/mac-spoofing-under-linux/)

<comment><USER8> I'll try this again, but on a recent clean install of Ubuntu 14.04 macchanger didn't appear to do anything (it worked perfectly on 12.04). I was interested in the option to randomly spoof a different one at reboot but didn't get it working after several tries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alternatively...

      sudo ifconfig en1 ether `openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'`

Credit where it's due: [http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/01/change-mac-address- os-x/](http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/01/change-mac-address-os-x/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Elsewhere on HN in case you missed it - random MAC addresses are coming to iOS8: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864813)

<comment><USER11> Just was going to comment that is someone wants to track you they'd probably track your mobile device which is much harder to customize. Looks like somebody at Apple had the same thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I'm not mistaken, the author recommends saving the file to

        /opt/local/etc/oui.txt

but the plist runs

        bash /opt/local/bin/macrandomize.sh

I think one or the other probably needs to be changed, unless I'm missing something here.

<comment><USER13> Saving stuff into /opt/local is a terrible idea anyway, it's the default path for MacPorts.

<comment><USER14> Honestly using MacPorts is a terrible idea. If you need non-standard packages uses homebrew -- which goes out of its way not to break system components, unlike MacPorts.

<comment><USER13> Huh? The whole point of MacPorts is that it builds its own dependencies, thereby not touching the "system components" at all. It's entirely self- contained in /opt/local, or /Applications/MacPorts for GUI apps. I've been using it for many years and it's never broken anything. (Except occasionally itself.)

I would argue that you're far more likely to have stuff already installed in /usr/local than in /opt/local.

Homebrew is currently trendy but there was nothing wrong with MacPorts. Declaring the entire project to be "a terrible idea" is simply ignorant.

<comment><USER14> I've been using MacPorts for the better part of decade and some ports in it clobber system files without warning. I've been bitten one too many times by that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You want unpredictable random numbers, so using bash $RANDOM is no good. hexdump + /dev/urandom + sed would work, incantation left as an exercise to reader as I don't have a Mac around to check limitations of their hexdump(1)...

(Same goes for the Python solution posted in another comment here).

<comment><USER16> Here's the way to properly grab a random line from a file using Bash: [http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/026](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/026)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does this even work on the wireless interface on a mbp? The driver used to prevent you from setting the MAC addr to anything you wanted, vs the ethernet driver for the wired interface that lets you play with it freely.

<comment> o0-0o I tried to get this to work on my MBPr, and sadly it did not work. It might have been my lack of prowess, but it's pretty straightforward.

<comment><USER18> First you need to disassociate wireless card using Apple80211.framework:

      /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -z

Then you can change MAC-address:

      ifconfig en0 ether aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wrote my own little terminal commands back when I had a 5 hour lay-over in Charles de Gaulle Airport (Paris). At the time, they offered 15 minute free wifi, so I just ran my little tool and it worked a treat.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was wondering: why did they decide to randomize the address? Why not use the same address for every device?

<comment><AUTHOR> MAC addresses are heavily used for routing purposes on a link layer. [Ethernet, WiFi ...]

<comment><USER21> ^ This. A MAC address is a link-layer network address, just like an IP address. For example, the ARP protocol[1] uses it to identify devices with a given IP address on a network.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Resolution_Protocol#Exa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Resolution_Protocol#Example)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hey, is there a way this could be done under Windows? Run from a batch file for example?

</comment><comment><USER23> Be careful. Randomizing your MAC address may make your computer stick out more than if you pick a single legitimate looking MAC address and stick with it for a while. Not all 16 million MAC prefixes have been sold to manufacturers yet.

</comment><comment><USER24> I prefer adapting the method described in Unique Local IPv6 Unicast Addresses [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4193](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4193)

</comment><comment><USER25> One of my friends also told me Dropbox uses MAC address to identify computers. He wrote a similar script to get lots of referrals and free space on Dropbox. Probably against their Terms though.

<comment><USER26> Hmm, I wonder how this works.

MAC addresses are OSI Layer 2, so your one wouldn't normally get passed through to Dropbox's servers.

I'm guessing their client reads in your computer's MAC address and sends it as part of the login?

I wonder if it's possible to spoof it just for their client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have my computer set up to randomize MAC address on boot, on both partitions.

There are some downsides (having to relogin to certain wireless networks every boot) but by-and-large it's worth it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Tangential, but it's actually heartwarming to me that so far every commenter seems to understand that the "MAC" in the title refers to Media Access Control, rather than a comically incorrect way of spelling the name of the computers that OS X runs on.

<comment><USER29> Wait, I thought the Mac Address was 1 Infinite Loop

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does OSX Yosemite have the mac randomization like ios8?

</comment><comment><USER31> i use linkliar [https://github.com/halo/LinkLiar](https://github.com/halo/LinkLiar)</comment>