Ask HN: How old were you when you got your first computer? - <AUTHOR>

I was 9. It ran windows95, and I waited a gazillion years for every web page to load just to have my connection broken every time someone answered the phone. <comment><USER2> I didn't have my first personal computer until I was 30. It was a Sun 3 "dickless" workstation on my desk, POS. I gave it to my grad student and got a Mac II the next year.

I read a Fortran (66?) programming lesson book when I was 15, and wrote some programs on paper, but had no machine to try them on.

I wrote Basic on a dial-in (120 bps acoustic coupled) teletype (with paper tape for saving/restoring) at high school when I was 16 (1973).

</comment><comment><USER3> Once my mother was working on a big project for her work in word. So, she was pretty much done when she hit Ctrl-A + spacebar. She panicked. All that work wasted. My 4 year old self heard her yelling in the other room and I came in. She explained what happened and I just pressed Ctrl-Z. Everything was back. She thought I was magical.

My first computer was about when i was 3. Well, I always had computers around but I started using them and surfing the web at around 3(which pretty much amounted to silly little games). But I knew the ins and outs of Windows and how to get around and figure stuff out.

I got my own personal computer at around 10.

Now, I'm 14 and I'm just getting into programming and Linux.

<comment><USER4> If you're for real, you're one scary motherfucker. I'm glad I'm not in the job market anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was 17 1/2. It was 1979, it was a TRS-80 with a whole 16KB of memory and a Z80 running at 1.77 MHz.

After two months I got fed up with how slow it was and wrote a compiler. It was written in BASIC and compiled itself. In the 16KB I fitted the BASIC source, two copies of the compiled version, and the tape saving program.

I think the compiler was 3810 bytes ...

</comment><comment><USER6> 13 years old my ZX Spectrum, bloody marvellous it was too

<comment><USER7> My first computer was a ZX Spectrum too, but I was 20.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was 7 and got a TI-99/4A. I rocked it out by saving and restoring programs to cassette tape. You read that right, cassette tape.

<comment><USER9> Cassette tape was also the format of choice for my Atari 400, but I had the computer for a year before I got the tape drive. So for a year I had to retype my BASIC programs into the 16k of RAM every time the computer got turned off. On the membrane "keyboard".

Cue Monty Python sketch: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13JK5kChbRw>

I remember wishing I had an Atari 800, which had _64k_ of RAM and a real keyboard!

<comment><USER10> My 400 DID have 64k and a real keyboard (both add-ons).

I was 16, but that was 1982. No intertubes. No printer. No RS-232. Cassette tapes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was around 8 or 9 when my family got an IBM PCjr. We got it for only $400 because we had a friend who worked for IBM and got discounts and it was already an older machine at that point (around 86 or 87). We never upgraded past the 128K of RAM it came with which limited what apps and games I could run on it. I spent most of my time on it writing in BASIC (which came on a cartridge, which meant I had a good portion of the 128K to work with) and later making attempts to learn C and assembly using some freeware compilers.

The PCjr must've had a bit of a following, because I used to get this catalog with all kinds of interesting upgrades for it that were intended to breath new life into it, long after it was obsolete. They had things like hard drives and replacement CPUs that were twice the clock speed.

Around age 13, I finally got a 1200 baud modem for it that I could only successfully run at 300 baud. But we finally got our next machine shortly after that: a 486/33 w/ 4MB RAM and a 2400 baud modem which blew the PCjr out of the water. The 4MB of RAM was a limitation when I tried to install Linux on it.

It seems I was short on RAM for most of my childhood. Though when my parents bought me my own computer right before I went off to college, I finally could breath a sigh of relief because I actually had enough RAM to run the things I wanted - it was a Pentium 1 with a whopping 16MB of RAM. Linux ran beautifully on it and I was pretty happy with it (as long as I didn't boot into Win95 on it, that is).

</comment><comment><USER12> I think I was about 10 and it was an Atari STE, I really wanted a Falcon though! I used to buy ST format and mess about with the programming listings that they put in there. I even managed to hook it up to a BBS a few times when my parents were out!

Eventually I managed to persuade my parents to get me a PC, I think it was a 486 with windows 3.11 on it.

All the cool stuff and technology that I get to use now, never comes close to giving me the feeling which those first couple of machines gave me.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think I was 10, an Apple II+. It wasn't the first thing I used to program (I'd dabbled in LOGO and BASIC before), but it was a surprisingly complete computer. I used it to learn about a lot of different things, such as input from peripherals like a joystick, as well as memory management -- from that damnable "out of memory" error when my overzealous BASIC programs got too big. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I was 6 and it was a Brazilian MSX: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotbit>. Man, those were the days, using MS-BASIC and drowning on GOSUBs and SPRITEs ;)

It was a time where the knowledge was a lot harder to be obtained, you had to buy books and magazines to know the new programming tips. Hard times :P

<comment><USER15> Wow, I'm surprised!! I am Brazilian too, though my very first computer was a TK-85 (aka Sinclair ZX81), when I was 13... At the time Brazil was under a "market block-out" that blocked all imported computers, so we were forced to use the crappy Brazilian knock-offs!

A few years later I got an Expert (MSX) and in fact I ended up writing the first anti-virus for MSX computers (Viru-Boot, not sure if you ever seen it, it was featured in the magazines at the time)

Are you from Sao Paulo? In Sao Paulo the default hang-out was either Paulisoft or Disprosoft, the best places to get pirate software.

The good-old-days!!

<comment><USER14> I am from Campinas, but I bought a lot of pirate software from those stores, and others. Since I was really young, my father used to drive me to São Paulo, to a joint on the Nacional building I think, where there was a software house that used to sell MSX floppies with software.

I remember it was one of the happiest moments of my life when I entered that office, picked the softwares I wanted from a list copied using a "mimeograph". Soon after that, guy that was helping us came back carrying a paper box full of 5 1/4" disks on it. I couldn't wait to be home and test all that :-)

Yeah, good old days... Playing Magical Tree, Nemesis, Penguin Adventure between MS-BASIC hacking. And I was 6! :-)

<comment><USER16> Men! take care with campinas water ;). Just kidding.

My first computer was a 386 already in the age of windows, and I was 6-8 years old :D

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I don't drink it :-) The problem is not the water, but the low water coolers :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember my neighbour had an Apple II+ that he let me use all the time, so I would have been 4 then.

The guy that lived in the basement apartment had a zx-81 and later a Commodore 64 and I programmed a couple of skiing games on the zx-81 before getting my first computer, a Tandy TDP-100, which is the same as the TRS-80 color computer 1 but with a white case. I would have been 6 years old I think? I remember it had a cassette interface and I was obsessed with mazes at the time and programmed it to generate new random ones for me.

Later on I gutted the TDP-100 for parts a robot that could sketch stick figure drawings controlled from some program on an Amiga.

Now that I think about it, I was a hell of a lot more productive when I was in public school than now.

</comment><comment><USER18> Probably 8 or 9 - had a ZX80 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX80>) and bought a book on BASIC so I could learn to write games. I learned GOTO and thought it was just the absolute sickest thing EVAR!

</comment><comment><USER19> Macintosh LC III. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_LC#.22Pizza_boxes.22> It was snappy enough with 36MB of RAM but the 80MB of HD was kind of killer. I was probably 7 years old when we got it and 10 when we maxed the RAM and bought a modem. I'm surprised that no one else had a Mac but my mother was a school teacher. I got a real computer at 13.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was 7 or 8, it was a Sharp machine that had a tape (as in cassette) drive and no screen (they were expensive). Using the manual, we used to boot up the machine from the tape, type commands on the keyboard in something like BASIC, and get a roll printer to print out-into two colors, black and red!- a car.

The second machine I got was an IBM XT clone, with DOS 2 or 3 and green CRT twice as deep as the desk we had it on.

<comment><USER21> Ditto, the family bought Sharp MZ-700 when I was 7 (c.1985), and only I became interested in it.

I upgraded to a Commodore 64 in about 1988, after my aunt didn't want it, and then a disk drive 2 years later with freezer cartridge. I had a lot of fun. The 16-bit machines (I had an Amiga/Atari ST) were fun, but it took until I got a 486 PC with 16mb RAM (1996) to actually make good use of a computer. Mainly web design work and email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was 4 when my family got a computer. All I really remember was that the storage media was a cassette tape.

My Dad worked for weeks to get the Cheers theme to play on it (using some DOS midi program I assume) and I remember wondering why his crappy sounding version took a whole tape to store on the computer while a regular cassette tape could store a lot of regular sounding songs.

</comment><comment><USER23> My dad used to tell me stories about how I used to load up various programs on our vic-20 at the age of 2 (there was a spelling one with a black bird/raven, I don't remember the name of it)

My first earliest memories of computer usage was loading up Ghosts n' Goblins on my Commodore 64 at around the age of 6/7, I still have my old C64 sitting in my back shed :)

</comment><comment><USER24> I got my first computer as Xmas gift when I was 7 years old. I read some sci- fi magazine and I soooo wanted a robot... But my mom told me they didn't have house-robots yet, so I asked for a computer instead. And I got it! A shiny Commodore 64, with the cassette and such. It took ages to load programs, and then most of the time they didn't work :)

</comment><comment><USER25> We had an Atari 800 as early as I can remember. Eventually we got the fancy- pants external cassette tape drive.

LOGO rocks :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Our family had a DOS PC when I was very young, but the one I remember was an old Compaq running Windows 3.1 and TabWorks.

</comment><comment><USER27> A broader answer here.. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/327973/how-old- are-you-an...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/327973/how-old-are-you-and- how-old-were-you-when-you-started-coding)

I suppose the user profile on HN and SO is more or less comparable.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned the Amstrad CPC. I got one when I was 11. Here in Europe this machine had amazing market penetration those days (80's-early 90's), especially the 6128 model that featured a double-sided 360 Kb diskette (wow!) Simply amazing.

</comment><comment><USER29> 14\. It was a Vic-20. Cassete tape storage, 3.5k of memory. It did have a wicked fast centipede game, though in Ireland I wasn't able to find any decent books on writing machine code instead of BASIC. And Gridrunner. Oh yeah.

</comment><comment><USER30> My parents bought an Apple IIe when I was 8 or 9. When I was 11, I got a computer of my own - a Powerbook 140. A laptop with 4M RAM, 40M disk, a 16 MHz 68030 and a built-in trackball was quite impressive in 1992.

</comment><comment><USER31> TI99/4A , probably one of the only ones on Cayman Islands in those days.

</comment><comment><USER32> Around 1991/2 so I was around 8. 386SX 33MHz beige box running DOS. Learned programming by altering the source of Gorillaz and Nibbles.

</comment><comment><USER33> About 8 years old. 'twas a windows 95 desktop computer. I feel like I missed out on a lot of great old hardware though.

</comment><comment><USER34> I was 7, it was one of the very first sony vaios...and only because i had installed linux on my parents' computer. :)

</comment><comment><USER35> I was 4, dos pc. Space invaders for life.

</comment><comment><USER36> 9, It was a Philips MSX. Programmed LOGO on it. :) so much fun making the turtle move around.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was 12, and it was an Apple II+. Now this was 91 or so, so it was really old even then.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was 9, it was a Commodore 128D. Windows 95? You must still be a child!

<comment><AUTHOR> haha...I'm 22. That was back in '96.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I was 6 and got my uncle's old 486DX2 when he bought a new computer.

</comment><comment><USER39> 13 - a Dell I believe. I want to say it had a Pentium 1, 133 Mhz.

</comment><comment><USER40> 8 years old, Windows 98 on an IBM PC with a CRT.

1998.

</comment><comment><USER41> A VIC-20 when I was 11. A box of wonders it was!

</comment><comment><USER42> About 7 or 8, it was an Apple II GS :-)

</comment><comment><USER43> About 5 or 6, ZX Spectrum 48K.

</comment><comment><USER44> 7 or something. An Atari ST.

</comment><comment><USER45> 7\. Commodore Vic20.

</comment><comment><USER46> 11\. Commodore +4.

</comment><comment><USER47> 12, ZX Spectrum.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think I was about 7 or 8 and I got a 48k ZX Spectrum. Was my first experience of coding - oh how I miss the old tape loading noise.

</comment><comment><USER49> KIM-1 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIM-1>) in 1979. I was 23.</comment>


Ask HN: Would a Startup bother transferring an H1B Visa? - <AUTHOR>

I've an H1B visa, working for a software company in NYC. Lately I've been seriously thinking about relocating to the West Coast and working for a startup.
AFAIK transferring an H1B visa is less cumbersome than getting it in the first place, but would a startup even bother with this process? I understand this visa has restrictions working against the youngest startups, such as offering a salary at least in the average for the position. But what about more advanced startups?
Any experience to share would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> You pretty much need an experienced HR person to deal with this kind of thing - if your startup is, well, a startup, I am guessing they won't have anybody with the knowledge (or interest) to do the paperwork.

I imagine there might be an exception if you were actively headhunted and the company wanted to hire a lawyer to deal with it.</comment>


When a Mars Simulation Goes Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/mars-simulation-hi-seas-nasa-hawaii/553532/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> It makes me wonder who they are testing with and if they are all just academic folks testing isolated academic folks who are constantly concerned about the test they're in.... is that really a test about an experience on Mars?

Touching exposed wires (what the heck), turning on the wrong port on a switch (how can they not fix that them self?), nobody answering an EMERGENCY phone? Obvious safety issues not being taken seriously by other participants...

Seems like a wonky experiment gone wrong that is pretty distant from testing a Mars experience with people who actually might go to Mars.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like some seriously amateur hour electrical shit. I've seen photos of their setup. An off grid photovoltaic system with battery storage, and propane generator that feeds a battery charger, is not rocket science.

Telecom people build them all the time for remote mountaintop sites with kWh/day loads much greater than their habitat. They can't ground things properly and have exposed wiring? For the multi million dollar budget, inexcusable.

I could build a better power system than what I've seen pictured for well under $80,000 in one time equipment expenses.

This article focues on how the medevac compromised their experiment. How about their failure to adhere to proper engineering standards compromised their experiment? Nobody wants to take the blame.

Edit: Here is a photo of their pv setup. All COTS stuff. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mars-nasa-hi-seas-project- hawai...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mars-nasa-hi-seas-project-hawaii- completion/)

<comment><USER4> Not disagreeing with you at all; just keep in mind that these conditions are ultimately no more dangerous than camping — where exposed, temporary electrical setups are common — which probably gave them a false sense of safety about the setup.

Real NASA systems would need to be orders of magnitude more safe/reliable, but I suspect this experiment was at least partially designed to identify potential failure points that engineering solutions need to be built for (I.e. what things can a human fix safely and what needs failsafes and self-healing).

<comment><USER3> The Wh stored in their battery and the AC power of their inverter are significantly larger than that you'd see camping. Maybe what you'd see "camping" in a $90,000 50 foot luxury motorhome.

I'm guessing the habitat has a battery bank of at least eight 12v 100Ah batteries (if AGM lead acid, or equivalent capacity), and at minimim one 4000W sine wave inverter feeding several 120v 15a circuits. Also sounds like somebody shocked themselves on the AC power side, maybe the generator transfer switch, maybe just exposed wiring. Either way there are safe ways to do temporary ac power with twist lock receptacle extension cables and distribution boxes that are insulted up to 600 or 1000V and won't shock people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds like a complete lack of training. I imagine the astronauts on a real mission to mars would be instructed to keep hands clear of any live-front electrical gear during such operations.

<comment><USER6> It's hard to train someone not to do something that they already know they shouldn't do. Everyone knows they shouldn't touch bare wires, but unless you work with electrical circuits regularly, it's hard to develop the practices that keep you from accidentally brushing against an exposed wire.

And cutting over to the emergency generator is something that happens rarely.

It's unconscionable that they didn't have NEC compliant covers over _all_ exposed wiring. And they shouldn't even be flipping breakers (unless interlocked) to transfer power, they should just be flipping a transfer switch.

If they _really_ need to get to the wiring to fix something, it only takes a minute with a screwdriver to take off the cover.

<comment><USER7> I mean this is harsh but how dump are the people you work with if this is how you see people?

Not touching a wire is easy to do. If you can't do that perhaps you shouldn't be participating.

<comment><USER6> _Not touching a wire is easy to do. If you can 't do that perhaps you shouldn't be participating._

Accidentally touching a live wire is _very_ easy to do, all it takes is a moment of inattention when you put your hand down or a reflexive action to catch a dropped flashlight.

That's why electrical code doesn't allow _any_ exposed wires, even in breaker boxes in a locked utility room.

<comment><USER8> Even better you can't have exposed insulated wires.

Wires have to be insulated and then they need to be covered. Either run through conduit or with a second insulating jacket ala Romex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As interesting as this is, and no doubt useful for the _pioneering_ missions to Mars, most of these concerns are rather negated by the plan to colonise Mars. Looking at the Elon Musk plan he is talking about taking 100 people at a time IIRC. This allows social groups to form, and allows breaks from the norm by the ability to visit others.

If we are talking about 100's at a time, then there would be doctors, engineers, surgical facilities, public meeting areas etc. Presumably the initial settlement will take place in one place not in lots of isolated areas? Early trips presumably would be setting up the space-port and living facilities, making rocket-fuel etc. I think with work to do and with more people and more space to wander around the social problems would be rather easier to bear

<comment><USER10> Visiting Mars few times, then the public losing the interest is the most likely scenario.

Mars Colonization in our lifetime is fantasy. Not necessarily from technical but from purely economic perspective. You can't make near time colony self sufficient and maintaining it would require billions in subsidies year after year.

<comment><USER11> Mars settlement is going to turn out fantastically profitable.

At this point it's pretty clear that with low enough launch costs orbital industry will be a big thing. All sorts of high performance materials can only be made in microgravity:

* Better optical fibers with ZBLAN (happening today) and better optics in general with zero-g glass forming

* whole new alloys which can't be made in normal g due to density separation. Think better nickel superalloys, and guess what the price per kg could be

* much larger, purer, more perfect crystals of all sorts for semiconductors, drug development, etc

* artificial tissues and organs grow better when not under their own weight

Launch costs are dropping fast today, but will eventually probably plateau someplace north of $50/kg until we can move past chemical rockets, which IMO is fantasy in our lifetime.

As long as launch costs stay that high, it's strong incentive to develop mining and refining capacity on Mars. The gravity well is so much shallower than Earth that for any destination past LEO, you're saving money launching from Mars.

Martian materials won't be used on Earth for centuries, if ever. But $50,000 / ton Martian steel + Martian launch costs will be cheaper than ~free Earth steel + Earth launch costs within our lifetimes, imo.

<comment><USER10> Mars does not have a microgravity.

Everything you say is argument for not going to Mars but develop industry in the Moon, close Earth asteroids or in the Earth orbit. Mars is in the bottom of big and expensive delta-v well just like Earth.

If asteroid mining becomes profitable, Mars can never compete. It has no microgravity, no enough sunlight, corrosive soil and dust everywhere. It's just a lifeless desert in deep delta-v.

Having small economic settlement inside near earth asteroid could be economically sound idea. Most of the work would be done by semi-automatic robots and people on Earth but maybe there is need for on-site crews as well.

<comment><USER11> Mars has half the escape velocity and a much thinner atmosphere. Just from the ideal rocket eqn the same reusable rocket flying from Mars can lift more than 4x the mass it can on Earth, and the comparison is even better when you look at drag and engine efficiency differences.

I don't have the expertise to really compare asteroid mining to Mars, but I'm suspicious of the fixed infrastructure costs. Mining and refining takes a lot of mass. Replicating that mass for each object you want to mine or flying it from rock to rock both seem like significant costs. Perhaps we'll find a big Goldilocks rock that's near Earth, will stay near Earth for a long time without insanely expensive capture maneuvers, and contains all the materials we want, but I think Mars has a better shot.

Mars also has much friendlier conditions for propellant manufacturing, which is an important factor in these cheap launches.

<comment><USER10> Mars is red because metals in mars are oxidized (iron regolith). Removing that oxidation requires energy. Just as on earth, most valuable metals are likely deep under surface.

Metals on asteroids are easier to extract. Some asteroids, like 16 Psyche are almost solid chunks of metal. Asteroid ice (oxygen and hydrogen) can be turned into rocket fuel with electricity from solar panels.

Single asteroid close to the Earth can supply all the needs on earth for centuries.

<comment><USER11> Only the very surface is red[0]. Martian crust is fairly normal rock underneath as I understand it.

16 psyche is one of the 10 most massive objects in the belt. The belt is more than twice as far away, and transfers to it are much more variable over the years than the fairly regular Mars windows.

Finding the "Goldilocks" object that supplies all our needs, can be regularly reached economically, etc etc isn't an easy problem.

Also, water gets you hydralox propellant, which is a bit of a pain in the ass. You really want organic compounds too so you can do methalox, which is one more constraint on Goldilocks.

[0] [https://m.phys.org/news/2013-05-curiosity-mars-rover- drills....](https://m.phys.org/news/2013-05-curiosity-mars-rover-drills.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My first thought is kill one, train a thousand. Mars is a long way away and if you have a problem its your's alone to solve.

But really how do you not have rcd power supplies in this sort of context!

Does Nasa stuff run on AC? I can't see a reason why you wouldn't want something like mains power for the crew being 12v dc for most applications and only a few things like an oven or high wattage device needing more. Kettle?

<comment><USER13> > My first thought is kill one, train a thousand.

While there may be an argument to make for more risk-taking in science, with space travel itself being among the likeliest candidates, I don't see how it applies to this situation.

Remember that every one of these simulated missions provides hundreds or thousands of examples for indidividual human interactions each. That's an indication of the amount of data needed to draw applicable conclusions. Allowing people to die could never approach those levels. Any conclusions would also be tainted by the nature of these experiments as simulations far more than any other events–because "is the result worth the price" would be the dominating question.

<comment><USER12> I was being flippant. I was suprised by the electrical fault. That sort of mistake doesn't really seem very NASA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting thought in the article:

> If the crew goes rogue, the people back on Earth might have no idea. Some > degree of eavesdropping on the crew might be necessary.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't think testing small group dynamics with a crew who are not "the right stuff" tells lots of useful things of what happens when astronauts go to Mars. Especially when there is no real danger.

<comment><USER15> It has been suggested before that people who are "the right stuff" might actually be poorly suited for a Martian mission. Becoming an astronaut or world-class scientist is highly demanding and takes a lot of energy. But a Martian trip will likely be incredible boring and stress interpersonal relationships.

So what we really want is competent, relaxed people who can handle 6 months of downtime in tight quarters.

<comment><USER10> Are you familiar with the Navy saying: Every Sailor a Firefighter? Do you think that damage controlman rating trains mainly for boredom (because usually nothing happens) or do they drill for surviving in a emergency?

Just like the life in the sea, aviation or in the ISS, Mars mission will be going trough checklists and routine inspections and preparation for emergencies. When something goes wrong it's the end of the downtime.

<comment><USER16> Not disagreeing with the "every sailor a firefighter", although the current generation ISS astronauts get considerable EMT training, along with other necessary emergency skills. Most astronauts have considerable knowledge of electrical system as well.

Were the Hi-SEAS astronauts trained to the same level as a NASA ISS astronaut? Unlikely.

Should a future Mars simulation have at least one highly experienced EMT, if not an actual emergency physician? Yes.

Should a future Mars simulation have at least one person with considerable experience in electrical engineering, computer science or avionics systems? Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having an option to call 911 in a pinch renders this whole setup a complete joke. Regardless of what they are testing the mere existence of this failsafe massively skews the results, if not rendering them useless completely.

Remarks like "I'm not a doctor, but it could be a heart attack _or something_ " don't instill much confidence in the quality of the experiment either. It's also telling that first responders refer to them quite bluntly as "fake astronauts."

</comment><comment><USER18> What a complete waste of time. The point of a simulation like this would be to see observe how people react in isolation and under stress. But, reading this article, its clear that these people are acting to please the scientists rather than reacting naturally to events.

If everyone clucks like a chicken on Day 7, is it because that's what happens under these conditions or is it because the software developer from New York saw it in a movie and thinks that's what the scientists want to see? They're even quoting lines from the Martian while they are in the simulation.

They are playing make believe. This is not science.

<comment><USER19> The article gives an impression of a group of people who behave like cultists.

<comment><USER20> Guess what, if you give people some high purpose, lock them away from society and force them to stick together, they start acting like cultists.

It may still be useful to see what kind of cults develop there. If I had to guess, I'd say the experiment planners want to discover how to manipulate people into the right kind of cult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Article was way too long.</comment>


Ask HN: More reliable sql setup? - <AUTHOR> I have 300gb time series historical stock data, adding more each day. I build models and rely on sql to do lots of work. I have many bash scripts that run at points each day. I then use c++ to interface with the sql server and do things sql isn't good at or fast enough at.
However my setup is flaky. I am running macOS on a Mac Pro with MySQL Server 8. It's not reliable. Stops running. Won't start up again. I have to move files around to convince it to work again. These same issues also happen on all the Mac hardware I have tried (Mac mini and a new MBP).
What is a more reliable setup that can use my Mac Pro hardware and the database living on an external USB drive?  MySQL must be super stable on some platform? Should I switch to Postgres? I haven't used it in 10 years but I assume they have a c++ connector.
Any advice appreciated.
Edit: It crashes because if cannot find a PID, even though it is there. It says it isn't the right one. I also was told that because the data was on an external drive this causes mysql to "lose itself". I was also told that perhaps there is a timing issue with mysql not finding the external drive in time and getting confused.
Edit 2: notated I have bash scripts running and I have tried other hardware with the same results. <comment><USER2> If you're thinking about moving databases Postgres or Postgres with TimescaleDB [1] might be an interesting option to consider.

But yeah, like akerl_ said, StackOverflow seems like the right place to ask otherwise.

[1]: [https://www.timescale.com/](https://www.timescale.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for mentioning timescale. This looks very cool. I signed up for some "office hours" to talk about what I do now with mysql.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's pretty hard to answer this without knowing why it's crashing / not starting.

Like, the boring answer it either "buy a VM somewhere and install the database there" or "buy DBaaS from one of the many companies that sell them", but there's no telling whether that will improve things until you dig into what's failing now.

From your edit, it sounds like you've been "told" some stuff, and you seem to be referencing an error message without providing it. I'd suggest you head over to the docs or StackOverflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I made edits. I tried using Windows Server 2016 Standard. I bought a legit license, but I can't download Windows Server 2016 1709 to get "Windows Services For Linux".

Stack Overflow hasn't been so helpful. I found all of the "told" items I mentioned there too.</comment></comment>


Brexit Is Done: The U.K. Has Left the European Union - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-a-turbulent-marriage-britain-says-goodbye-to-the-eu-11580477936 <comment><USER2> So, officially the Brexit has happened.

But in practice, not much will change until the transition period ends in December.

And now I wonder who's negotiation position will benefit from this: The UK's or the EU's?

And how likely are we to see repeated extensions of the transition period?

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://archive.is/QoqDe](http://archive.is/QoqDe)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an absolute win for democracy in the UK. There are some who don't like democracy and have continuously obstructed it in order to achieve a 'second referendum' even when they haven't implemented the first.

But then again, this is what happens when you respect democracy and it should prevail.

<comment><USER5> The UK's democracy isn't direct, and direct democracy is only one type of democratic process which isn't clearly superior to others. Equating the brexit vote with democracy itself is a fallacy. Our democracy is parliamentary and those 'obstructive' MPs were democratically elected representatives of the population.

<comment><USER4> Well regardless of how you have misinterpreted my comment, No-one said the UK's democracy is direct you're just further stating a matter of facts rather than an argument.

A referendum is an tool of direct democracy given to the people from the elected members of parliament. The newly formed UK government of the 2019 general election made it clear about respecting that referendum result. There is no where I said that a single referendum was the 'UK's democracy'. It's just one part of the democratic process in the UK.

<comment><USER5> I was just commenting on your suggesting that MPs obstructing the result 'didn't like democracy'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPad cannibalizing iPods, not Macs  - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/05/early-sales-data-suggests-ipad-cannibalizing-ipods-not-macs.ars

<comment><USER2> _Every_ device Apple makes (iPhone, iPad, iPod) is capable of playing music, and beyond that, a heck of a lot of people have iPods already. Those iPods will last at least a few years. It should not be surprising at all that iPod sales are finally dying down.

Apple is being smart by expanding into new product lines; that way, they continue to make profits, while people "hold onto" their purchased items. It would have been stupid to not make anything new and just expect steady iPod revenues for eternity.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm probably just another curmudgeon (which is probably an oxymoronic expression, when talking about the iPod), but something about having the iPod in my pocket and listening to music walking to work appeals to me a lot more than having it on an ipad.</comment>


Netflix Prize 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.netflixprize.com//community/viewtopic.php?id=1520

<comment><USER2> I don't know how they will be able to top the ending of the first one.

<comment><USER3> Easy:

One of the teams midway down in the ratings will die in a tragic plane crash two months before the deadline. The children of the deceased, and one of the grievously wounded survivors, will band together to keep the entry alive, in their honor, but are unable (despite the efforts of the previously retired, curmudgeonly expert hired by their friends and neighbors, after holding a bake sale) to climb higher than 3rd place. Finally, the day before the deadline, a kitten-- a _kitten_ , mind you-- meows frantically and leads a 7-year-old, tow-headed descendent to a closet where a shoebox is found, containing a scrap of paper, with a scribble mathematical formula, which when added, puts the team over the top. (Naturally, there's a thunderstorm at the time, so the power goes out 20 minutes before the deadline, but the team is able to use their ingenuity and good, American stick-to-it-iveness to rig a generator out of spare parts they find in the garage in order to upload the winning entry in the nick of time.)

<comment><USER4> Good start, but it needs a car chase and a gun battle.

<comment><USER5> Nah, the kitten needs some attendants, like a wise old pony or a funny sidekick. Killing one or the other is often a good way to ramp up the tears.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: My 14 yr old sister wants to learn to program. Best option? - <AUTHOR>

I've been developing software professionally for a long time. Mostly server, SaaS, web stuff in the healthcare space. My half-sister is 14 years old, extremely computer literate, and an avid gamer (WoW, and some other MMORPG stuff that I'm not familiar with).
She's recently come to an understanding about where games come from, and wants to learn to program. Of course, she's interested in game development. The Intro-to-Programming, and AP Computer Science classes at her high school have been cancelled.. and I'm struggling to find the best path for her. Like a lot of kids her age, she doesn't always stick to things she gets interested in, and I'd really like to set her up with the best possible chance of having an encouraging experience.
She wants to take a class that's structured and scheduled, since she's already struggled with some self-paced online tutorials, etc. I think an ideal setup for her would be a curriculum that's targeted to people her age, and uses exercises that get her building programs that do something more fun than multiplying matrices.
She lives in the San Diego area, in case that's helpful.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Sounds like what she really needs is a local class or club that she can attend regularly. If anyone in San Diego knows of one, that would be a great help!

Not being from San Diego, all I can do is point to possibly better self-paced online tutorials. I'd recommend <http://inventwithpython.com/chapters/> first. If she can get through that, she can graduate to using <http://www.pygame.org>

Otherwise, there's <http://www.codecademy.com/> and <http://primerlabs.com/codehero>

</comment><comment><USER3> How about having her learn Lua? It's a nice interpreted language with just a handful of bad quirks, and she can get some practical experience by writing simple mods for games when she gets good enough. Maybe you could help her get the environment up and running so she just has to duplicate a folder and tweak the files inside.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kudo from Microsoft Reasearch might be an option.

<http://fuse.microsoft.com/page/kodu>

</comment><comment><USER5> Get her an old copy of Kids and the Commodore 64 and a Commodore 64. Then she'll be retro cool.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.fablabsd.org/>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://codeyear.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Discuss with her and agree on / set a specific goal and then guide her towards that.

As of a year or three ago, there was a lot of consensus around Python being a good choice in a scenario like this.

Help her to quickly accomplish concrete things. Let those rewards provide further motivation.

Drop a few bucks on good resources, if and as needed (books, IDE, etc.). Enable her to quickly find and absorb high signal/noise ratio information -- as opposed to going on frustrating treasure hunts for it.

</comment><comment><USER9> what about eloquent Javascript with the embedded console for the exemples <http://eloquentjavascript.net/contents.html>. Or Dive into Python.Starting Python at the command line is easy. edit: I didn't read the whole comment so I didn't see the structured part.These books would'nt be that good then.</comment>


Y Not - YC rejects of the world, unite! - <AUTHOR>

Is anybody is interested in moving to SV anyway? After all, weekly dinners and a demo day are not that hard to organize. You might meet potential co-founders, or at least find people willing to discuss your start-up with, share apartments, etc. I'm just thinking out loud here. <comment><USER4> How about gathering in one of the countries that recently joined the EU: Bulgaria, Romania... Living is cheap, labour is cheap, people are smart. Anyone interested?

On the other hand conditions there not that professional and engineers don't have adequate experience. Hmm...

<comment><USER5> I'm living in Romania. It would be a great place to join up with other entrepreneurs. _My_ biggest problem is finding entrepreneurally-minded people (co-founders).

Finding experienced programmers to hire is not a problem, there are plenty. There's an entire outsourcing industry working for US and Western Europe clients.

Finding "professional conditions" (office space? net? or what?) is not a problem either.

Living costs are still cheap, but rising, and so are wages.

<comment><USER4> I'd be interested to learn more about Romania. Danny76, please contact me if you wish to discuss this further: kmt at ftml dot net.

<comment><USER6> Personally I wouldn't recommend Romania as a place to do a startup yet, at least not to incorporate in Romania. I moved to the US from Romania about 7 years ago and while some things have improved in the mean time I think the current system in Romania would impose too many road bloacks for a startup. Great place however to outsource.

<comment><USER4> Well, you could incorporate in Delaware but be located in Romania for a while. Also, Romania has probably improved a bit since you left.

<comment><USER5> Incorporate in Delaware; bureaucracy is still time-consumming in RO. You could work like that for a while and nobody would bother you (or even know you exist for that matter).

Eventually (i.e. when you have profits and want to take dividends) you're supposed to register your business with Romania. Or you could just go back to the US. At that point you probably have enough money to have lawyers and accountants take the hassle out of doing business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is something I was thinking about after reading the rejection thread.

How many other rejects are still going ahead with the plan to move their startup to SV this winter even though they aren't participating in YC? (or are already there after not getting accepted into previous cycles?)

We'll be there for sure, and would be highly interested in organizing something with other 'Y Not' startups to have some kind of social environment and network and have fun with other groups.

<comment><USER8> I live in Santa Cruz right now, and am going to be moving up to the bay. We found YC about 3 months early, unfortunately, and are just now working on a demo to shop around for seed funding.

I'm going to be moving up sometime in January. If people want to get together and rent and apartment, I'd be really interested. I'm thinking a 3 bedroom, with bunk beds and the whole nine yards.

Also, just getting together and eating dinner and talking would be immensely helpful.

Is anyone interested? How can we organize this?

I've created a facebook group (hold the lynching mob please). <http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5381210911>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am interested, though I need someone to invite me to US to let me apply for visa.

P.S. That is basically what I was talking about yesterday (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70071> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70107>)

P.P.S. I am interested to move, to communicate frequently and to share apartments to reduce costs.

<comment><USER10> The silicon valley probably ain't a bad place to be but:

\- there is this thing called the Interweb that helps communicate efficiently from all over the world (I find amusing the idea that you have to be in a certain place in one country to work on Internet stuff; doesn't sound like "eating your own dogfood" if you ask me);

\- instead of all european entrepreneurs moving to the US, why not organize in Europe? Most people want to move to the US because it's easier, with less bureaucracy... yet they have to face complicated immigration issues.

Just because pg is a brilliant entrepreneur who identified a few specific rules to help replicate what he did ten years ago doesn't mean it's the only way. Far from it. _Think different_.

<comment><AUTHOR> On the internet, nobody can see you fail. Peer pressure, weekly dinners, demo day - you can't really replicate that on the web.

As for organising in Europe, where? London is very expensive, and nothing else springs to mind.

<comment><USER11> I understand that Copenhagen and Amsterdam are thriving tech centers. They are also full of English speakers and beautiful women.

<comment><AUTHOR> A "thriving tech center" is overstating it a bit for Amsterdam, but we certainly have our share of small web start-ups, and there are plenty of programmers available. The atmosphere is great, the climate is no distraction, (but the nightlife is).

Language is not a barrier, but I don't think you should incorporate here - <USER2> have high capital requirements. NTIAALOA (not that I am a lawyer or anything).

<comment><USER12> Current minimal capital requirement is 18000 euro for a Dutch limited company, but a new bill will remove this requirement.

<comment><USER13> Is it really so hard to incorporate in the US but operate from overseas? I don't think it is.

<comment><USER14> Probably not, but I don't think you get any of the benefits of the corporation unless you also register a local branch of it, and then you're back to square one. Meaning you can't really be employed by your own company...stuff like that.

<comment><USER13> I highly doubt that.

<comment><USER14> Yeah? What's your information? Mine is spotty, but comes from a friend in Italy who is a registered accountant there, who told me in no uncertain terms that having DedaSys LLC in Oregon is all fine and dandy, but in terms of Italy, it basically doesn't exist. If at some point I would want to be employed by it, it would require creating a local subsidiary that then has all the same bureaucratic requirements that any other company would have. If you think about how governments operate, it does make sense. Even if you do business a lot in another US state, you're supposed to register to do business there - let alone another country.

The potential "loophole" is registering a company in an EU country that's not so lame as the continental ones (i.e. Ireland or the UK), but I don't have good information on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If anyone who wasn't accepted wants to move to Cambridge, my roommate and I may have a deal for you. We'll provide you(or ya'll--up to 2) with free room & board in return for doing some development for our company(an angel funded web 2.0 startup). Then you can spend your time working on your company in the center of innovation in Cambridge. I'm not saying this will definitely happen, but if you're nice enough and seem like you just need a boost like this to get going I just may. Email me breck at breckyunits.com if interested.

BTW- Our company started the YC application but our customers are closer to Cambridge so we never finished the app. Judging by the acceptance rate we most likely would have gotten rejected anyway but it still was too bad we couldn't apply. I've been living in North Carolina for 5 years, is there something about the winter in Boston I should know ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> Let's just not call it YC rejects ... I know they say that all PR is good PR, but I don't see the point of labeling yourself by one person's turn-down.

<comment><USER4> "Y Not"s sound pretty good, actually.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that name is awesome :-)

<comment><USER9> I second it :)

<comment><USER17> that's a brilliant name..

<comment><USER4> I think based on that and my other comment in this thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70299>) I'd like to start <http://ynot.bg> for all of us who may be willing to go to Bulgaria and work on their ideas there. Hey, I think I even have 200m2 of class A office space available there. Hmmmm :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> YC is great because you get environment and advise from people who were part of successful startups. Also their connection helps. After the rejection - <USER3> is better i do my work myself and then if needed - for connection and advise - I will apply again in YC for next round. You might be next BillGates or PaulGraham but at this time you are just like me and other developers who wants to be their own boss. So, as you don't have proven track record - I am not gonna move to SV just so that I can stay with other like minded. I am motivated enough to do same by staying at my place. I might be wrong but people should rethink about what they wanna achieve by moving...

<comment><USER19> YC is great, but I have realized this round that you need an easy mass appeal type idea to get in.

So a club of interested parties called 'Y Not' sounds good to me, I am not too far away to drive to SV (from San Diego, CA).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> First I'd like to say congrats and good luck to those who were selected to go to the next round! I'm sure this is going to be a very exciting, yet very nerveracking experience.

For those of you in europe, although it's not quite the same thing as Y Combinator I've been following the Seed Camp blog. This seems to be something that may be of interest to you not in the US. <http://www.seedcamp.com/>

As for those who got rejected (like me and my partner), just keep on working at it and keep your eyes open to opportunities. We tried and by far that's far better than not trying at all.

t.

</comment><comment><USER21> At this point, I wonder if we should start sharing YC applications, checking mutual interests and after that decide where, whom and when. Let's take the best out of a loss. If anyone is interested in South America (Buenos Aires) and build a p2p development platform, or need a highly skilled/experienced C++/webstuff programmer, drop me a line: rafael_imas[at]yahoo[dot]com.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why not just organize some regular BarCamps?

</comment><comment><USER23> It's completely off topic, but after reading through this thread, I have to say it: I love this community.

</comment><comment><USER24> Please don't come here. Stay where you are and try to make it work. Rents are already thru the roof from too many people moving in.

</comment><comment><USER25> I live in Santa Clara, here in SV, I'd love to meet up, please feel free to contact me.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well if you weren't interested why did you even apply at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> You misread my post, it isn't a rhetorical question, but an call for action. I've clarified it now.

<comment><USER14> You should not call it 'rejects', but 'YCommunity' or something like that. If I were in the area, I'd be interested, but I'm not a YC reject (I'm a didn't even apply:-) Heck, maybe some of the YC-accepted would be interested in meeting up and sharing information.

<comment><USER9> I don't care how to call this community. Name is not that important comparing to the value of community itself :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm interested in the idea for weekly dinner and demo day - just wondering how would you get all the VCs to attend?

<comment><USER14> > how would you get all the VCs to attend

You're not going to get that. If there is no way to keep bozos out, there is no guarantee of quality, and thus less interest. So just stick to fun meetings once in a while, rather than anything smacking of an 'organization'.</comment></comment>


Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.archaeology.org/0801/trenches/colorgods.html <comment><AUTHOR> The posted article doesn't have much context, but it's the only source I found with images of the ultravoiolet photographs which justify the colored patterns. More context and photos in this Smithsonian review: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true- colors-17888...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true- colors-17888/?all)

A comment on the social status of color, [http://moco- choco.com/2014/04/18/true-colors-of-ancient-gree...](http://moco- choco.com/2014/04/18/true-colors-of-ancient-greek-and-roman-statues/)

 _" While to our modern eye, the bright colours scream 'tacky,' to the ancients who painted them, it was 'expensive!' Back in the day, slaves wore roughcloth, like undyed and unbleached icky tan colors. The well-to-do wore 'inexpensive' colours, and the extremely wealthy wore 'royal' colours. There were even laws about it, a very wealthy merchant without a noble title might be able to afford purples and blues, but could be put to death for wearing them. Same goes for statues, only the very rich could waste colours on statuary and decor. It was a status symbol. Dyes, pigments, and paints have become so inexpensive that we've become a bit jaded."_

For offline archiving, a PDF with photos of the exhibits shown at Harvard: [http://harvardmag.com/pdf/2007/11-pdfs/1107-32.pdf](http://harvardmag.com/pdf/2007/11-pdfs/1107-32.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Some info on Alexander Sarcophagus in Istanbul Archeology Museum: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Sarcophagus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Sarcophagus)

Wikipedia image shows some color traces: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Sarcophagus#mediaview...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Sarcophagus#mediaviewer/File:Alexander_Sarcophagus_Battle_of_Ussus.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Found a comment by Gregory Meeker about "underpainting", which used to be on the Smithsonian article [1] [2]:

 _" It's reasonable to assume that the painting on the figures was at least as sophisticated as the figures themselves. By the time of the Alexander Sarcophagus the subtlety of the sculpture has far outstripped the colors identified and applied by Brinkmann. This does not mean that Brinkmann has left the path of accurate reconstruction; it may mean that his ultimate goal is impossibly distant. The colors he has identified on later pieces are clearly just underpainting for a far more realistic final finish. This was the process used in Renaissance oil paintings of equivalent visual sophistication. The assumption that the painting was as sophisticated as the figures is an extremely conservative one. The artistic and manual skills required for realistic sculpting are far greater than those required for life-like painting of a finished figure. And the painting task was a relaxed one, far more amenable to messing around until the artist got it right. So painting was easier, less risky and, because of weathering, constantly in demand. It is reasonable to conclude that until sculpting reached its zenith, painting of figures was substantially more sophisticated than the figures themselves. With luck, Brinkmann will eventually find a piece with all the layers intact."_

[1] [http://100swallows.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/greek-statues- we...](http://100swallows.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/greek-statues-were- painted/)

[2] [http://www.simorgh.de/objects/091008_1/](http://www.simorgh.de/objects/091008_1/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, this really does seem much more reasonable than the 'painting by numbers' style in the posted article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The statues on the pediment of the Philadelphia Museum of Art are painted in the old style:

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art_...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art_Museum_\(1\).jpg)

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art_...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pediment,_Philly_Art_Museum_\(2\).jpg)

I like it.

</comment><comment><USER6> This isn't a particularly new revelation as the article makes it seem (the article is dated 2008, but I remember learning about this when I was in school even earlier than that).

That said, it's rather interesting how many people - even very educated people - are unaware of this fact. I've heard art critics refer to the color as a sign of the 'pristine' and 'pure' aspects of Greco-Roman[0] art, completely ignoring the fact that they were actually painted with incredibly bright colors 2000 years ago.

(Of course, one can make a somewhat postmodern argument that the piece of art with the colors as they appear today should be evaluated in its own right, independently of what it was 2000 years ago, but I don't think that's what they were going for).

[0] Another fun fact - we actually have very few Greek art (statues) to study. Most of our knowledge of Greek sculpture comes from Roman reproductions, along with a few pieces that were hidden in tombs, etc. for centuries and forgotten. The Greeks, unlike the Romans, made a lot of statues in metals, and these were subsequently melted down for the materials[1]. The Romans produced original art, but they also produced mass reproductions of Greek art (marble, and other materials) - this is largely what we study today.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_sculpture#Materi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_sculpture#Materials)

<comment><AUTHOR> It sounds like the international museum road show with full-size painted replicas did a great job of popularizing the scholarly knowledge. If only there were educational museums for media/software studies and computer security!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went on a field trip to Greece in School, where I saw a lot of ancient ruins of temples that had also been painted when "in use". While the landscape was just breathtaking (and the ancient Greeks had a knack for putting their temples in beautiful places), I was always a little sad to be shown the ruins without a clue what those places must have looked like back in their prime.

I know it is not easy, but I so wished to just once see the ruins of a temple next to a reconstruction of what archaeologists think it must have looked like back when.

So I think this is a really cool idea.

<comment><USER8> Agreed :-) But see the comment down thread about under painting - what we see here is fairly child like poster colours painting - all that can be justified from the scarce evidence. But it is hard to imaging the sophistacted sculptors leaving the painting to less subtle hands. So the reconstruction we could prove today is probably a laughable copy of the reality - after all they would have all the colours of the Greek landscape to inspire them!

<comment><USER9> > _But it is hard to imagin[e] the sophistacted sculptors leaving the painting > to less subtle hands._ //

It is hard to imagine. But there could be other reasons to use garish and unnatural colours, perhaps the colours were akin to pythagorean forms - <USER2> could represent perfect colours, seen as more godly or regal.

You can see a similar sort of thing in some sectors of [UK] society today. People paint on makeup that makes them look orange-y or an unnatural flat/monotone brown and that is seen - in limited circles - as the epitome of beauty. Consider Geisha as another example, flat white with shocking red lips, how unnatural.

This brings to mind reflections I've read on how important it is to not assume that just because something seems obvious or the best method available in the period with the technology available that it should be the case. Occam's Razor be damned, humans often complicate things beyond their need and those complications aren't often unrefined in some way.

It is fun to imagine marbles as life-size, lifelike figures, lacquered to give a living shine and perhaps dressed in fine vestments and perfumed; the uncanny valley of yesteryear.

<comment><USER8> We can say two things for sure - we do not currently know enough to have evidence of how they were painted, that these statues cross vast amounts of time, technology and fashion - and that so both of us could easily be right ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Speaking of unpredictable fashion and color, how about [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normcore](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normcore) :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OnboardIQ Raises $1.65M to Streamline the Hiring Process - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/onboardiq-raises-1-65m-to-streamline-the-hiring-process/

<comment><USER2> Congrats! I always see these guys working, working, working. Even during the time we were hanging out they'd be on sales calls, sending out emails, etc. Keep killing it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great team, huge problem, and a great solution. Congrats

</comment><comment><USER4> brilliant team, brilliant product, brilliant vision. have a feeling these guys are going to strike gold :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Congrats guys!! 👍</comment>


Ask HN: VoIP anyone? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
<tl;dr> You are operating multi-national and you are using a VoIP Provider? Which one? Are you happy with it? What could be better? </tl;dr>
Lets assume a startup/company slowly grows up and goes multinational. Assume further the main office is in the US, you are targeting new Customers in Europe and Australia and to overcome timezone problems you have a support team in the US, Europe and Australia.
I guess it would come down to some Providers like Vocalocity (Vonage) [1], RingCentral [2] and the more or less DIY Providers CallWithUs [3]/Voip.ms [4]?
Now, I saw providers like to high-price their services and features (ring-calls, call forwarding, ...), although it is basically all supported by SIP anyway. Is that correct?
...and here ends my knowledge totally: The way the packet travels is always source-server-destination only if the server is acting as a proxy? Meaning if someone calls from Australia to Australia, but the SIP Server is in Canada and acts also as a proxy, then there will be probably a round trip of 500ms? Or is this always the case? I was reading quite a while that voip.ms is having therefore a couple of servers [5]. I have played a little bit around with CallWithUs and get around 130ms delay to their echo-service and about 150ms delay to HongKong (I'm in Europe). Then I left a Skype conversation running to the US and someone called my DID number with his phone and, although I have no exact numbers, the latency was terrible compared to the running Skype conversation.
I am pretty stuck. Any help, advise, or any pointing in the right direction is highly appreciated! I can't be alone with that :)
Thanks
[1] http://www.vocalocity.com/ [2] http://www.ringcentral.com/ [3] https://www.callwithus.com/ [4] http://voip.ms/ [5] http://wiki.voip.ms/article/Choosing_Server <comment><USER2> Twilio has a great site which lists some providers that use their technology. [https://www.twilio.com/showcase/breakout/call-center-and- hel...](https://www.twilio.com/showcase/breakout/call-center-and-help-desk)

</comment><comment><USER3> Get dedicated T1's if you can afford them. Debugging phone issues is near impossible if you can't trust your network.</comment>


A serious drug problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/22/930871/-America-has-a-serious-drug-problem

<comment><USER2> This submission's title could have done without the editorializing. The article touched briefly on the actions of the cops themselves, in a few places, but focused far more on the systematic issues as a whole, related to the prosecution of drug crimes, as well as about 75% content covering the writer's medical condition.

<comment><USER3> The whole point of the article is that government policies are causing systemic suffering among those with debilitating medical conditions. It's about the hundreds of thousands of people dying each year in the U.S. because of drug prohibition, and the millions more who are in horrific pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there _one person_ on Hacker News that will write a heartfelt comment in support of drug prohibition? I don't think there is but am prepared to be surprised.

Otherwise, what is this post doing here? What are we learning from it? Is this just an opportunity for us to bicker about Obama vs. Bush vs. Ron Paul?

<comment><USER3> There's a difference between being vaguely against drug prohibition and having the facts and stories necessary to convince others. In the past 18 months I've read 6 or 7 books about drugs, gone to three conferences on the science of drugs, and listened to another 50+ hours of podcasts. From all this I've learned an enormous amount of stuff that I would have never learned just by reading Reddit or whatever.

There is a world of difference between knowing that many people smoke weed, versus having not only memorized the numbers from the most reputable surveys but also having read through their methodology, as well as all of the scientific research that methodology is based on. (If your curious about the validity of self-reported drug use, check out this: [http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/Monograph167/Mo...](http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/Monograph167/Monograph167.pdf))

I'm not trying to defend this story specifically, although I thought it was good, but there are definitely reasons for learning more about drugs even if you're already against prohibition.

(Also, for what it's worth, if you go through my submissions page there is an enormous amount of really intellectually interesting stuff related to drugs, drug use, the war on drugs, etc., and virtually all of it would be completely new to those reading it.)

<comment><USER4> I agree, but that's not this post, is it? You think it's a good story, so, how about saying why? It'll likely be the only productive debate on the thread.

<comment><USER3> What I thought was interesting:

* The information about Anklyosing Spondylitis. I know someone who has it.

* The low-income workers flushing their medications that they legitimately need because they are afraid of getting arrested, being forced to pay thousands to retain a lawyer, etc.

* The fact that if the DA says they have "reason to believe" you are going to sell your legally prescribed medication, you aren't even allowed to say that your doctor prescribed it or why you need it for medical reasons in your defense. So you essentially aren't allowed to defend yourself at all, which means you are all but guaranteed to go to prison based on the flimsiest of accusations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would any of these people have consented to a search? If a cop approaches you in the parking lot, be polite but firm, and waive no rights.

<comment><USER6> Cops can be very intimidating, especially for people who do not know their rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like I have to be that guy. How is this Hacker News?

 _Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

<comment><USER8> I guess if I really needed to, I could make some argument that connected stories like this to the forces that either support or cripple innovation. I realize that the crowd that reads Hacker News is mostly into software, but Hacker News is also an important website for anyone who is into innovation and entrepreneurialism. Some people who read Hacker News have ideas for startups that, if successful, would come up under the regulatory review of the FDA. As such, the heavy-handed tactics that the US government uses against anything drug related becomes a block on innovation in that field. An entrepreneur contemplating some new bio-tech, say some interesting use of new proteins from bio-engineered stem cells or bacteria, has to feel a chill when reading an article like this.

The problem is that the government's actions appear to be both arbitrary and heavy-handed, meaning that even when an entrepreneur has good reasons for taking whatever action they take, they may not be given a fair chance to explain themselves.

Hacker News sometimes upvotes articles that are not about software or startups, but they are about the US economy. This article (above) could be tied into that category of posts. After all, the USA is at risk of getting a very uneven form of innovation. If everyone who wants to do a startup dealing with drugs has to face (or their customers have to face) arbitrary actions from the government, whereas those entrepreneurs working with software face very little regulatory review, then the USA is going to get a lot of innovation with software, and relatively little innovation in fields in which drugs are involved. We will have an abundance of small web startups and a shortage of small biotech startups.

For a variety of reasons, too long to cover in this comment, it would be better for the USA, and the world, if innovation could happen evenly across all sectors, so that the only brake on entrepreneurs was their own imaginations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Crossposted from DailyKos:

82% of Americans report using or having used Marijuana, and 73% report using illegal drugs other than marijuana. 89% admit to having used any illicit drug.

Can someone remind me again why Obama wants to lock 89% of Americans in cages?

Source: p. 101 & 102 [http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2009...](http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2009.pdf)

original thread: <http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2010/12/22/6310/2857/12#c12>

<comment><USER9> That's absurd to me - really 82% have used marijuana? I guess the source is trusty but that blows my mind.

<comment><USER3> It's actually much higher than that, for a few reasons.

* It doesn't correct for students (12th graders) who were absent on the day of the survey, or for the 12-15% of students who drop out of high school before the fall of their senior year. By using clever methodology they are actually able to measure how the differences in drug use among students who were absent the day of the survey, but they don't correct for it. (They explain the differences in the methodology though.) And as for students who dropped out, Appendix A of volume 1 of the same report explains how they concluded that dropouts were probably 1.5x more likely to have used marijuana by 12th grade. So if you take into account that the 20% of dropouts and absentees have a lifetime prevalence closer to 88%, then that would increase the total lifetime prevalence of marijuana use by about 1%, so to 83%.

* About 1.8% of those who admit marijuana use recant each year. It's likely those who recant actually did use the drug, for reasons that are explained here: [http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_ar...](http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_article2.shtml)

The survey partially corrects for this by counting those who recant after admitting to use on at least two previous surveys (multiple years apart) as having used marijuana. However, students weren't surveyed until 12th grade, so it stands to reason that if the 1.8% linear rate of recanting held until age 13 years 11 months, the average age of first marijuana use, then you'd have to add about 5.5%. Again this is somewhat speculative, but probably roughly accurate.

* It seriously undercounts those who later become heavily addicted to drugs. So anyone who didn't use drugs through 12th grade but then became a drug addict essentially wouldn't be counted at all.

* It doesn't count people who would have used marijuana at some point after 12th grade, but who died of non drug-related causes before they got a chance to. This is significant because unlike alcohol where virtually everyone who will ever drink has already started by age 18 or so, a large percentage of eventual marijuana users are still trying the drug for the first time up until their mid 30s.

The fact is that if you make it to age 50, your chances of having smoked weed are probably closer to 88-90%. The Erowid thing I linked to is also good in general for as a quick way of grokking the validity of the numbers.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Reducing Email Marketing Costs - <AUTHOR> I'm currently with mailchimp for email.  However as my list grows, I'm finding it quite expensive for a small business.  I've looked around and the big names tend to be fairly similar, but there's something around sendy with AWS, but wondering if that's the best option for reducing my costs, or if someone has an easy, cheap solution for replacing my mailchimp service? <comment><USER2> What size is your list?

What functionality do you need from an email marketing tool?

<comment><AUTHOR> 4 figures at present. Need ability to have sublists / tags, see open rate, and ideally have a template I can reuse as well. Automation for welcome emails, reminders and the like too.</comment></comment>


Nearly half of American workers have low-wage jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.knoe.com/content/news/Report-Nearly-half-of-American-workers-have-low-wage-jobs-565741211.html <comment><USER2> Not only have our minimum wage laws not been updated to realistic levels, neither has the poverty level. Half of Americans are indeed too poor to support themselves. They are not even making what the minimum wage should be and should get government assistance. Hard to keep calling America a developed country when easily half of its population cannot support itself and most of that half is not supported by the government. Definitely can't call that democratic either.

</comment><comment><USER3> From the union discussion the other day, one thing that always struck me was how weird it was that more conservatives don't encourage labor unions in the private sector.

I'd have thought, since fundamentally union membership is about private contracts between employers and a group of workers, that conservatives would see it as an alternative to government stepping in and setting up minimum wages.

If we had friendlier labor laws and we allowed more groups of workers to organize, the need for the federal government to step in with wage floors would decrease and, importantly, there would be more flexibility for employers AND employees -- like instead of paying above a certain minimum wage both sides could agree to more generous healthcare and/or retirement packages.

<comment><USER4> Modern conservationism in the United States is, by definition, anti-union. [1] This sort of political view aligns more with libertarian socialism, specifically in ideas like syndicalism.

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

<comment><USER3> Your comment is an interesting one, so not trying to disagree, but...

Modern conservatism is not so well-defined. I'd say "conservatism" is best defined by the values of people who call themselves conservative, not by political theorists. And that therefore that it's more partisan and tribal than ideological.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> there is a big lack of information in theses poor written 20 lines, and probably misleading on purpose.

\- Are theses low-wage jobs only considering full time jobs? \- What about student jobs? \- If some people have multiple part-time jobs but all of them individually fall under the median annual wages of $18,000, then they are increasing the statistics

<comment><USER3> Students and part time workers are in fact people and should be counted as such for their work.

If you were just asking for additional context in the article, that's one thing, but this is certainly not "misleading."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is arguably more appalling, is the fact that half of American workers, earn less than the average,

<comment><USER4> Only 30% of people make more than the average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For perspective, 18k a year in the US puts a person in the top 5% of income worldwide.

[http://www.globalrichlist.com/](http://www.globalrichlist.com/)

<comment><USER8> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global- income-calculator/)

This is saying it puts you in the 67th percentile when adjusting for purchasing power, which is still saying a lot.

<comment><USER7> It says that for a 3 person household. For a single income, it puts you above 90%, eerily similar to the data I presented :)</comment></comment></comment>


Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05741 <comment><USER2> If you're on a phone, here's an HTML version of the article: [https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1803.05741/](https://www.arxiv- vanity.com/papers/1803.05741/)

<comment><USER3> This is great.

Do you know what software is being used to automate the conversion from pdf to html?

<comment><USER4> Their Show HN has the answers: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534580)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never understood it. I've only had horrific experiences with my open source efforts. From the simplest cases like being ignored on PRs and tickets to mockery in social circles for algorithmic mistakes to finding out my work was enabling bad people to finding out people were misrepresenting my employment status while using my work in violation of the license, I don't think I've ever once had a positive experience with open source as a producer. Hell, I never even knew my extensions to the clojure time library were even being used until another maintainer who had added some incremental stuff over my work disappeared.

I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self it was all a waste of time and I shouldn't do it. Maybe then I could be more positive about it now that I'm better at writing software.

<comment><USER6> Since you don't give verifiable links to examples so we can judge for ourselves, and your reported experiences don't match the majority's, the rest of us are more or less forced to believe the simplest explanation:

There's a known principle that goes "If you think that everyone around you is an asshole, _they're_ not the assholes, _you are_.". This would be the _simplest_ explanation in this case, since we don't know anything else about you.

Of course, you could easily remedy this by posting enough examples to change our minds, but until you do, Occam's razor must reign supreme.

<comment><USER5> Nothing I can do can change the outcome either way, teddyh. I suspect you've already decided how you feel about me.

People are seeing a candid discussion of subjective experience as an indictment of theirs. This is another action I regret. I thought perhaps a related but dissenting viewpoint would have value to the conversation, but I guess not. This conversation itself is an example of the kind of negative experience I'm talking about.

I'm sorry my post offended you. It wasn't my intent.

<comment><USER6> > _Nothing I can do can change the outcome either way, teddyh._

On the contrary, I told you _exactly_ how to change my mind (and that of others): Point to examples that we can read for ourselves and decide that yes, you really were treated badly in all these cases. That really _would_ change minds.

> _I suspect you 've already decided how you feel about me._

Again, you are mistaken. You are just some random anonymous person on the internet; you could very well be an asshole; what do I know? But if that is the _most likely_ explanation of your reported experience, then sure, why not. I can easily use that as a working hypotheses, because I have no vested interest in having a good opinion about you; I don't care about _you_ at all; I don't even know you, so I have no strong opinion about you. I _do_ care about people reading your description and (even though you were careful enough to not do so yourself) generalizing your experiences to the whole of the community, and being discouraged thereby.

You must understand that when you write something along the lines of "I had only bad experiences doing X, and I wish I could travel back in time to tell myself to not ever do X.", it _will_ be taken as a generalized advice to everyone, and be more or less rightly criticized as if it were such.

If you instead had written about the same experiences using words like "People can have bad experiences too; I only had bad experiences doing X, and therefore I gave it up. Was I just unlucky?", I believe that people would be much more open to either agree or disagree. But that is not how you presented it.

> _I 'm sorry my post offended you. It wasn't my intent._

Not offended. Just worried that people might draw unlikely conclusions from your limited sample of experiences (especially when the submitted article is an actual scientific paper about this very issue).

<comment><USER5> > On the contrary, I told you exactly how to change my mind (and that of > others): Point to examples that we can read for ourselves and decide that > yes, you really were treated badly in all these cases. That really would > change minds.

Consider for a moment what you're asking me to do: name names. In several cases, for events over 5 years old. You're asking me to expose myself to more contention and argument to convince you that my feelings are not dirty lies that slander the OSS community.

The most respectful thing I can do for all parties is relate my experiences. If you find them to be so outrageously implausible that you feel the need to call me an asshole, there's not much I am willing to do that will change that. You're right, I could link to examples of people behaving badly (and inevitably, cases where I have behaved badly because those exist). But there is very little upside in that for me.

Like I said, this demand predetermines the outcome. It asks me to shoulder more commentary like this for the dubious promise of your personal approval. That's not a very compelling value proposition. Add to that that your tone disinclines me to believe you're actually asking in good faith, and I have absolutely no reason at all to reopen these topics.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry, I did not mean to ask for anything you were unwilling to do; your initial text did not give the impression that you were unwilling to name names, it just lacked details or links – on the contrary, you even named "my extensions to the clojure time library", which could conceivably be used by somebody to look up said details, so I did not see anything to indicate you wanted to avoid "naming names".

Certainly, nobody can force you to name names if you don't want to, but vague accusations (such as yours) towards a community deserves to at least be questioned and probed for evidence. Some people would say to not say anything which you're not prepared to back up with evidence, but I'm not sure I would go that far. Unsubstantiated claims have _some_ value if presented carefully and tactfully. But you appeared to be neither; you seemed to make sweeping generalizations (while carefully not literally doing it), but not giving examples or even details. This style is a non-working strategy for effecting change, which I would assume to be the goal of us all.

> _Add to that that your tone disinclines me to believe you 're actually > asking in good faith_

I'm sorry to hear that; I did not mean to give such an impression. I would certainly say that I believe myself to be acting in good faith, such as it is; my goal is to give people what I believe to be a reasonably accurate picture of what kind of treatment they can expect from contributing to FLOSS, to counter the view they might get from your initial comment.

In conclusion: There is a good possibility that you were merely unlucky, either with individual authors or toxic projects. That is simply a slightly more unlikely explanation than the simplest one which I gave. Please don't be offended by it; I actually only offered it as a motivation for you to disprove it by giving us examples, so we might see for ourselves, and I fully expected you to simply give a few links to end the matter. Since you won't (for reasons I fully accept), the discussion took an unexpectedly unproductive turn, and I am sorry for that. I never accounted for the possibility of you to not wanting to give details or references, but I should have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a core contributor of some very popular github projects, I get a ton of emails from researchers wanting me to fill out surveys. It would be nice if it was somehow centralized instead of a lot of independent people trying to do the same work over and over.

<comment><USER8> With respect to community surveys, I think they can be a good thing, but they're annoying when it looks like the author is on a fishing trip rather than trying to identify the answers to a few new specific questions.

Usually my off-the-cuff response is "What are you trying to understand which isn't already discussed heavily?". New areas of research and some small amount of redundant work is fine, but too often everyone covers the same base without aiming to take a deeper dive on something new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the article (fig. 13a)

Motivations: \- To improve the project because I am using it \- To have a volunteer work \- I have interest or expertise on the project domain

Project characteristics: \- Friendly community \- Availability of the project leaders \- Unit tests

Barriers: \- Lack of time of project leaders \- Large and complex project \- Unclear, complex or buggy code

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the converse would be very interesting as well: Why do people dis- engage?

<comment><USER11> The paper also addresses that at section 3, Barriers[1]:

        - Large and complex project
        - Lack of time of the project leaders
        - Non-clear, complex or buggy codebase
        - Lack of time of the own contributor
        - Inappropriate design or architecture
        - etc.

[1] [https://www.arxiv- vanity.com/papers/1803.05741/#S3.SS3](https://www.arxiv- vanity.com/papers/1803.05741/#S3.SS3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Figure 9.b seems to have a problem with sampling? Half numbers of core contributors are plotted even though they (thankfully) don't correspond to the samples.

<comment><USER10> No, the negative lobes just show how contributor numbers are whole numbers. Natural, even.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but do we need that information? It could be the case of any integer graph. Either just plot the samples, or curve them. Don't curve them with intermediary values, that means even less than a trend curve.

Edit: okay maybe the violin plot as it is shown has the correct density information. I disregarded that aspect of the plot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My takeaway from the paper (read two months ago) was that core contributors looking to encourage more core contributors should focus on making great software which will have dedicated users some of whom might be motivated to help project eventually as a core contributor.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm on the other end of the spectrum, I have a bunch of low popularity projects on Github (Python, C, Puppet, a little bit of Perl). Low popularity meaning above 0 users, but users can be counted on your fingers.

My motivation are often the following:

* I've encountered common issues at work that are generic (ie not tide to the functional domain of my employer), with no time to spent on it at work, as a consequence I chose to implement the thing on my free time and open source it because it kind of frustrated me.

examples:

\- web UI to manage DNS zones content, (previously the team was managing their dev boxes IPs in an excel sheet).

\- web UI for LDAP management, with a simple notion of "Roles".

\- tools to convert Visio files (specially stencils) to SVG as my company wasn't big on buying Visio licenses, and I was under Linux 99% of the time anyway.

\- a generic enough puppet modules to manage samba.

* To learn new stuff or be better in a specific language. I've a bunch of project like that, were part of the goal was to unrust my skills or to learn how to setup unit test, continuous integration and code coverage. This is the way I learned pytest, cunit, gcov, Jenkins, Travis-ci, CMake.

Sometimes my motivation are a little weird. One time, I've created an empty repository with a description and didn't start the implementation of what I had in mind. Someone stared it out of nowhere, and I felt compelled to actually implement it. It did learn me in the end that if you want a good "ini" like parser in C, OpenSSL is quite decent with a permissive license.

Another time, I created a very rough Python library to display histograms in ASCII. I just dump it on GitHub with no setup.py, nearly no documentation and everything pretty much unorganized (initially, it was an half baked stat module for an IRC bot). Someone submitted a PR righting the thing (proper layout, a setup.py file, the thing being published on pypi and some rst documentation). I accepted the PR gladly (and a few others after that) and I felt compelled to add at least some unit tests.

This library code is absolutely horrible (even me, the creator, I spent a few days figuring out all the edge cases), bu strangely enough, it's my most successful library/tool (yay, a whooping 81 stars \o/) and people do contribute to it.

It brings me to another point: external contributions.

From what I've experienced, people will more often create issues than submit PRs. That's ok, but it can also be a little bit of a strain if your are the sole maintainer of a project as I am. I know that on some of my projects, issues can be left unanswered for months if not years.

For PRs, you are more likely to receive PRs if your language is easily accessible. On my Python projects, I got a bunch of PRs, some of them far beyond simple bug fixes (ex: implementing new really interesting functionalities, like color support in the previously mentioned ASCII graph library). In my C projects, I almost never get PRs, and I'm guessing the language is a huge barrier, even if, in my opinion, the code is far more readable and structured than some of my Python projects. An interesting mix of the 2 is actually a Samba Puppet module. I've a bunch of Puppet DSL code, where I've received ton of PRs, but I've also a little ruby code (type providers), this one I almost never get PRs for.

Lastly, for a bunch of my project I feel a little culpability since I don't maintain them appropriately, there is a bunch of my projects where I lost interest in the subject (example, my puppet module: I don't use Puppet anymore). But at the same time, I feel a little responsible for all the people asking me questions or submitting bugs to these projects.

PS: why fundamentally do I contribute in Open Source? Mostly because of: hey, I've implemented this, it was useful to me at some point, it might be useful to other people, why should I keep it private? Other people could pick it up, and use it to do some incredible things.

</comment><comment><USER15> Saying FLOSS instead of "open source" is like saying "LBQTXRSABCFGHKWPÖ" instead of "queer". Putting more letters doesn't make it more inclusive or anything, it just makes you look less serious.

<comment><USER16> Open-source does not convey the same idea as free software.

<comment><USER17> And LOSS wouldn't work out quite as well as FOSS or FLOSS :)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Cutting Costs Is Expensive How $9/Hour Engineers Cost Boeing Billions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-scene/why-cutting-costs-is-expensive-how-9-hour-software-engineers-cost-boeing-billions-b76dbe571957 <comment><USER2> From what we know about the 737 MAX issue so far, the software not performing as specified was not one of the causes. The article's jump from "these accidents cost lives and money and can be resolved by a software patch" to listing tools and processes that ensure software behaves as specified, seems unjustified.

Even the idea that a good software engineer would have caught the problem in the specification seems far fetched. The MCAS software was designed with a low impact (small individual corrections, small maximum total correction) that would have appeared safe to anyone, and those constants were increased later on. Do we expect good software engineers to second-guess changes in physical aero constants coming from aero engineers?

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem seems to be that the software blindly trusted input from a single sensor. The issue I take with that is that multiple sensor readings are available on the aircraft. Even in non-life-critical applications like video games, software engineers absolutely are responsible for validating inputs from untrusted sources.

Beyond that, a good software engineer would have ensured that the specification made sense, that the integration with the rest of the system made sense, and that a sensible override system was part of the system design.

That said, the bulk of the article focuses on management's failure to ensure that quality was a priority, and to communicate that clearly in the company culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The author read "We believe this can be updated through a software fix" and jumped to the conclusion that this was a software fault. It was not, the software did exactly what it was supposed to do. This is a terrible 'article'.

<comment><AUTHOR> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20326045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20326045)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Got a non-paywall link?

<comment><AUTHOR> The link should not be paywall protected. Did you try it?</comment></comment>


Our Response To Unsealed Court Documents In Dajaz1 Domain Seizure - <AUTHOR> http://dajaz1.com/our-response-to-unsealed-court-documents-in-dajaz1-domain-seizure/ <comment><USER2> Andrew Bridges @ Fenwick has gone to bat over this case when others largely ignored it. At Stanford he blasted the entertainment industry lawyers over this case and they just shrugged. The impact of the entertainment industry's actions and lobbying are perverse and have far-reaching implications for startups and our economy.

Hopefully this story doesn't end here and Bridges gets a pound of flesh from these people.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"The government should be embarrassed for keeping that information from the court."_

Well, this is that transparent and lovable government Mr. Obama promised us. Can all those bubble-heads that voted for "change" see it now? Can they?

<comment><USER3> no worries, I know this will be downvoted, BUT this just shows how pissed I am. We wasted last 4 years so much...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have had a special love for music all my life.

But I sometimes wish I did not know what I now know about the Recording Industry in America and how they do "business".

I simply do not see music the same way.

These people are disgusting. They are a taint on something that should be pure. They are like drug pushers, and music is the drug.

Even if they paid my "salary" as an artist, I could not sleep well knowing what they do. I need to read that quote from Jagger again to remind myself musicians, despite supporting the RIAA, do recognise music is more than an "industry".

The RIAA's short-lived empire will someday fall. And music lovers in the future will look back and realise that, like those who loved music before there was an "industry", they are much better off than we were.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I feel sick every time I spend money on music; so I don't. I'm done. No more.

<comment><USER6> I get that same feeling.</comment></comment></comment>