Ask HN: 0/30 in the job hunt. Is this typical? - <AUTHOR> Ten years of professional full-stack experience and having trouble finding a development job after relocating. I've gotten to 30 technical interviews in the last 5 months, and have received no offers.
I'm able to get interviews for the majority of positions I apply to and typically do pretty well through the first few rounds of interviews and even homework assignments (that I once swore off). I tend to do poorly in technical interviews, or so my 0-for-30 streak would have me believe. And I'm not sure what to do.
I honestly believe that if any company called up anyone I've worked with over my career they would vouch for my capabilities. Somehow my behavior or responses in technical interviews must be suggesting that I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm considering taking myself out of the workforce, or at least stop applying for jobs. What tech jobs don't require a technical interview? I've built the tech for several startups both as part of a team and by myself, I've managed teams, mentored engineers, launched products... <comment><USER2> There's a lot of "going-through-the-motions" recruiting going on. That is to say that they'll put you through an interviewing process, but you'll never get in, no matter how well you do. There are a number of reasons this goes on. One of them is an organization's ability to pat themselves on the back by "hiring only the best" and letting current employees do the interviewing, a self- fulfilling prophecy. It's like a game show where the host has all the answers and if you miss a single one, they have some lovely parting gifts for you.

These organizations tend to suck up a lot of the oxygen in the room. So for perhaps 20 of those 30 of your interviews, there's plenty of good talent that they turn their nose up at. Speaking from experience, the harsher the interview, the more likely it is to be the case that you never had a chance.

If you're going through spammy recruiters, consider not. There's a factor of cognitive dissonance going on where prospective employers want to hire you, but can't get past the principle of paying the recruiter's spiff (if you're seeking $180k on contract, this would've been ok, but not by the time they add the recruiter fee, they decide you're not worth $205k). The employer will waste everybody's time in the process. This looks good (they think) to the investors.

Push instead of pull to get your next job. LinkedIn, AngelList, a number of other sites.. when it's a good fit, the interview will be suspiciously easy.

<comment><USER3> The game show reference is hilarious, and painfully true.

</comment></comment><comment> git-pull I disagree with the other comments. If you interviewed 30 times and are an expert in the field, you probably made up for the variants at this point.

The culture today systematically lacks respect for seniority.

You don't give non-standardized technical screenings to candidates with a demonstrable track record. What are you trying to do by screening people? Are you saying that the applicant is potentially fraudulent?

Why isn't their technical screening standardized? What is it testing for? Is there confirmation by an independent body the screening represents the responsibilities of the role?

Some more factors:

\- If it's a startup and you have 10 years of experience, you'd have more experience than most founders. Outshining the master is super-unemployable, unless they're willing to split equity and let you in as a co-founder. Then they're serious. Otherwise, you're just another programmer to them.

\- The person interviewing you doesn't want to hire the person who replaces them. Then they'd be stuck job hunting like you. Unless they're retiring in the near future, being _too_ good is probably going to get you a sham technical screening, or some excuse that flunks you early on.

\- There is a reporting bias. Due to survivor guilt, you don't see people chiming in every time they get their time wasted.

<comment><USER4> "Outshining the master is super-unemployable"

Any founder worth a grain of salt, i.e. one you'd want to work for, realizes their weaknesses and strives to hire people smarter than they are.

<comment> git-pull I think that's an idealization of what it _should_ be.

I think that's what would be best for business.

So, back at a company called Buzzr, we had an opportunity to hire a very talented programmer known in the Drupal community. Many many accomplishments, it's safe to say if we took him on, it'd radically change our day to day operations (we needed to do _something_ , in my opinion). He really did espouse the best of the concepts of Drupal, which was perfect, since we were a Drupal SAAS platform.

We didn't take him on. There wasn't much chat - but I was able to scoop up hearsay of why: He'd shake things up too much; too opinionated.

Here's the thing though: who would he be butting heads against? Nobody really had strong technical opinions. I was really junior at the time, and would be _honored_ to work with him.

If you're somebody that has accomplishments and a track record, you're going to have opinions and a style. And for some reason, even startups where there is open room for delegation, decision makers lean toward protecting their turf. Even in situations where they couldn't do better themselves. Even when they're desperate for help.

We're making the mistake of viewing organizations being game theorists that make the most optimal decision - that's not always the case. Organizations don't hire, divisions and teams within them do. In practice, it's more nuanced and political.

It's safe to say, the decision maker's self-preservation overshadows the business making the best decisions.

Sometimes irking the decision maker's pride - disdaining something superior to them - is enough to end the process. It's less cognitive dissonance to just move to the other 999 applications in the pile, than worry how we're going to manage a generative, creative force. The narrative shifts to finding the most "appropriate" candidate based on the hiring manager's sense of safety.

That's my anecdote.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing. I found your views and points insightful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I've been to a few interviews recently to feel out the market, and I thought they went well, but it turns out they didn't. I was wondering why and realized that as a senior engineer I seem to be confident in my abilities, and don't really worry about not knowing something, because given a minute, I could do some research and come up with a great solution. I realized though, that interviews are not tuned for this. It's almost as if they are tuned to new grads and filtering them out based on what academic knowledge they retained, not pure problem solving skills. At least this is the vibe I got from the large companies out there.

If I was determined to get another coding job in a large company, I realized I simply need to conform, study, and prep. It only makes logical sense for them to have this system to filter out the huge number of applicants, but for me its like a waste of my time, reviewing and memorizing the specifics of a bunch of stuff that I may continue to never use.

It's almost like my "imposter syndrome" early in my career lead me to put on a veil of self-confidence and to "try hard" to prove myself. Which actually led to positive interview outcomes (I used to ace each one I went to). Now I am confident in my skin, and don't feel the need to compensate, which, I'm realizing, actually has a negative effect on people's perception of me as an engineer.

<comment> git-pull This is why I say it hurts businesses too.

If they're interviewing people and giving them trivia questions, they fundamentally don't understand the job.

We keep docs open all day. That's what browser tabs are for. Even seemingly basic stuff. Too much to keep fresh in memory.

I don't remember libtmux's API (a library I created). How do you expect me to remember python standard libraries I never used?

It's futile to explain to the interviewer - no matter how gently - that it's not the way it's done. That's being a prima donna. That's upstaging them, and going to be taken as a slight.

Part of the reason I'm passive in interviews is they already googled me (even if they don't mention it). They know I can program. If they're throwing curve balls at me, I ask myself if this is someone I want as a colleague. Is this someone who would take my technical advice.

I leave the interview with a sense of relief I don't have to live through the hell of a nightmare boss or toxic environment. Like a MoBA game, this is the chance to dodge early.

Screening can works both ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best advice I got (but not about technical stuff or homework):

Identify a problem the company has and offer a solution. When exactly to play the card in the interview is up to you, maybe you can even phrase it in to a question, I think most employers ask if there are any further questions at the end of an interview. If you can than sprinkle some expertise on the solution, even better (comparing it to some problem you solved in the past, not bragging about expertise).

If you can't find anything concrete, maybe you find a few maybes you can ask for and have a solution ready when they admit that something is a challenge. They definitely will see that you know where things could get difficult.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hear you. I am on somewhere around a 0/20 streak right now. The industry can have a lot of extremely pretentious people. I think you just need to be your best self; show as much true passion about development as you have and wait for somebody at a company you like who shares and appreciates your enthusiasm. Also keep up with personal projects on Github to show you are active. This is what was holding me back for a while before my last job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, and good luck to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A couple recommendations for you:

Interviewing is a skill like any other, and it's worth practicing. I know it's not great to have to "play the game", but it'll help you greatly in your career. I recommend two things - programming contests (TopCoder, HackerRank, etc.), and practicing with friends - get a whiteboard and get your friends to interview you. Repetition is key.

Think of good answers to higher level questions. For example, "why do you want this job?".

Reflect on common patterns in your interviews. If you sit down and think about it, do you know why you aren't passing? Are you unable to solve some problems? Are you going slowly on the interview problems? Do people have trouble understanding you? Do you get in arguments? Do you struggle with the management sort of questions - i.e. "talk about a time that you had a disagreement with someone on your team"?

One good signal is to think of how many hints do interviewers typically give you? If it's one or two, that's typical, but when you find yourself getting 5+, it's usually a sign that you're doing poorly.

Some common problems that I've seen from candidates.

\- Can't solve problems. Especially when people run in some direction without asking clarifying questions.

\- Really messy code. Interview code isn't going to be great, but I've seen some really messy code.

\- Slow movement. Sometimes I'll have a 3 part question, and candidates will spend the whole time solving the first part, often needing many hints.

\- Lack of opinion. I've seen a lot of candidates that try to be agreeable, but just end up having no opinions. "What frameworks would you consider for monitoring?" "Oh, whatever is best. Monitoring is really important." This is really important for senior candidates.

\- Lack of answers for the high level questions (again more toward senior candidates). Q: "Talk about a time that you've had a disagreement with someone on your team?" A: "Oh, I haven't really." Q: "Ok, how about a time that you made a technical decision that you ended up regretting." A: "I can't think of anything, we've made good choices." Q: "What about a time that you've disagreed with a decision from senior management?" A: "Got nothing." Q: "What kind of software do you like working on?" A: "Oh, anything really."

</comment><comment><USER9> I see similar posts here every now and then recently, and I myself had a similar experience a year ago when looking for a job after shutting down a startup. I have a similar background and number of years as you do. Compared to 10 years ago, I think we're at a place where there are a lot more qualified full stack developers who meet baseline standards, which allow companies to be a lot pickier (I find it a lot harder now to land a job offer compared to 10 years ago, personally). Which means you may have to "play the interview game" \-- study and practice up on algorithms. It does kinda suck, but this might just be the state of things now. Curious, do you happen to have relocated to SF Bay Area? I'm wondering if the symptoms are SF-specific because there are so many candidates in this area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some of the companies were based in SF, but I was interviewing remotely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Either you come off very poorly for a variety of reasons, or you're interviewing for jobs that don't really exist or with companies that enjoy wasting time on recruiting for sport.

Look for shorter term contract gigs. Those are usually real, and once you get in the door, it's often easier to suss out what is real and what is not, and who the players are in that org. Many of the best employees that I've seen hired at non-entry levels came in through that route.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Look for shorter term contract gigs

I initially applied for shorter contract gigs, but I found they had the same interview process as full-time salaried gigs. In the future I'll push back on some of the interview requirements for contract work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did you try destroying the interviewer? Usually, when an interviewee gives us the solution, we listen to them and then respond with, "you can instead do this". Which includes some trap. Interviewees who don't blindly do what we say and challenge our solution and explain us the reason pass our technical interview. Also, the board interviews are trivial for an engineer/coder. We usually ask very simple questions like "When would you choose linked-list over an array?" or some language specific stuff like "What's the difference between shared_ptr and unique_ptr?". It's trivial if you claim to have 10 year experience in C++. I mostly interview for startups but we don't trust your past title or years of experience by default even if it can be verified in some way. Some body-shops, simply reward fancy titles in lieu of raise less promotions which makes these titles useless.

</comment><comment><USER12> Out of curiosity, how long do these homework assignments usually take? A friend has send me his (applied for a remote position) for review and it looked like 4 hours best case. That was even before the phone interview. Doing 5 or 10 of those really adds up.

<comment><AUTHOR> The most recent one was capped at two hours, but some can definitely grow to the 6-8 hour range. The worst part is, the submissions are rarely discussed. They're just a step to get to the next interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

What would be the point of taking yourself out of the job force. You can try applying Accenture or some other consulting company. They don't really technically grill you.

<comment><USER14> I think you underestimate the destructive impact of 30 failed interviews. Stepping back and just doing algorithms for some time might be a good thing to do at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Everyone wants to work in California and everyone wants to work remotely. So, I think the combination of the 2 makes competition harder for you. I believe that's pretty much it... 7 billion people on earth, there's always a handful of people better than you (skills). Software isn't a niche anymore especially with globalization and certain countries where billions (not millions) of people have the exact same skills.

</comment><comment><USER16> After having similar trouble I started working on a "social network" of sorts to assist with networking and learning programming career related things: [https://coderpact.com](https://coderpact.com)

I am available (to you or anyone else) for mock interview sessions.

If you sign up I'll contact you or feel free to email me at: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER17> The key is to figure out WHY you don't do well in technical interviews, and then fix the root cause.

Do you known/guess whether the problem is the actual technical part, or everything surrounding it, which makes you appear as "sub-optimal cultural fit", e.g. person that is so nervous that they make everybody else feel uncomfortable too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know for sure, but I bet it's a bit of both (not necessarily at the same time).

One time in particular I matched on every single technical requirement in the job post, only to be told that "experience with our tech stack isn't important as culture fit". I'm still not sure if he said that because he believed I didn't have the tech experience and wanted to make me feel good, or if he knew I had the experience but already knew he wasn't going to hire me.

<comment><USER17> If you matched the technical requirements, then it seems exceptionally open way of saying "you are not good culture fit".

Maybe next step is to figure out WHY you are perceived as bad culture fit?

Do you have any obvious issues like being very nervous in interviews, or underlying general issues such as anxiety, or just being a very quiet person?

<comment><AUTHOR> > nervous in interviews, or underlying general issues such as anxiety, or just > being a very quiet person?

Yes, all three. The nervousness and anxiety are especially heightened during interviews, but I don't experience either on the job. Does that make me not a culture fit?

<comment><USER17> Well, if you have solid technical experience, but are being very nervous and quiet, and a recruiter tells you straight to face that "culture fit is more important", then the reason for failing 30/30 interviews seems fairly clear.

Why don't you A/B test yourself? Take double dose of your favorite anxiolytic and dress more casually to next interview and see what happens. If you fail again then it's 31/31 and not a big loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think giving up at this point is something I would do in your position. You're pretty much primed when it comes to interviewing. Not sure if it's kosher or not, but I'm curious on your background, experience and what your resume looks like.

Also, how did you come across these 30 interviews?

<comment><AUTHOR> The majority of the interviews came from responding to ads on startup focused job boards. I send a brief, personalized message which usually gets a conversation started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I understand the pain. I am in same boat, trying for over 6 months. definitely there is dome thing changed in the industry culture. you are competing with every one in the world and need connections inside company

</comment><comment><USER19> Where did you relocate to?

<comment><AUTHOR> California (not bay area), but primarily interviewing for remote roles.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How-to websites? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am looking for "how-to" websites that support public collaboration, like WikiHow, Instructables, Snapguide and Wikiversity.<p>I need them to be accessible to public - I have found only four above that are active and it seems there is no other that work on PC (non mobile exclusive). I need it for my research and I stumbled that there is so few of them... <comment><USER2> Do you need the "how-to" be the sole purpose of the website? I stumble onto how to kinds of things un-gated within other websites. Universities have them on a wide variety of things. Societies and affiliation groups often have them as well. The way to find them is to search how to do something a bit out of the ordinary, for instance how to build the rams horn headress from Game of Thrones or to think differently about how to do something, for instance not being knowledgeable about leds but wanting to use them in an unlikely way that just was not at Instructables, I found them pretty easily elsewhere. People recycle and resource web presence like they do stuff bending what they know or have already into what they want it to be. Even Instagram and tumblr are places to find how to's that communicate. Pinterest has many people who collect how to pages on boards. Lately, I just start there. I've learned to knit recently, much like code, actually and there are major communities that not only instruct but buy and sell. review books and support forums. Ravelry is a good example. Good Luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are some good ideas there. I am looking exclusively for how-to websites - I will use your suggestions and see how it goes. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Saving SSH/Telnet Sessions in OSX - <AUTHOR>

So I'm a network admin that's been using Windows/PuTTY for connecting to a large number of telnet and SSH services on networking kit and servers for years.
However I've recently moved over to OSX on a Mac Book, I'm quite happy with connecting to devices via Terminal/Console, just wondering what tips/tricks people have for creating shortcuts to devices?
Would be great if it was quick to use, may be also auto-login and easy to update IP's etc.
Not found anything suitable so far, so might have to throw some code together myself... <comment><USER2> If I understand your question correctly, you probably want to create an SSH config file. See the man page for the gory details: [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/ssh_config.5.html)

The config file format is slightly obtuse starting out, but with it you can create nicknames for machines, automate logging in, using different keys, etc. It's very powerful. I've gotten to the point where all I normally do at the CLI is `ssh staging` or `ssh dev` and I'll get to the right machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've used something similar at the moment, basically putting in /etc/hosts entries to map a fake DNS name on my laptop e.g. "staging" to the real switch ip address, so the command "ssh staging" works.

It works well for the common devices I access, however it's not really scalable enough. There are easily over 1,000 unique CLI interfaces that we support, and call me lazy but jumping in and out of spreadsheets constantly to find the IP/Port and credentials isn't something I enjoy.

Window's with PuTTY/SecureCRT can solve some of the issues using saved sessions that you can export and import.

However I would love something in CLI on OSX where you could type 'mgr'

Then you get a prompt like, '1) switches, 2)firewalls, 3)servers, 4)routers'.

After you hit '2' you get another prompt '1) London, 2) New York, 3) Lab' and so on...

Finally when you select the device it opens either telnet/ssh (depending on the device) and may be even authenticates you in, all with terminal.

Like I said it's a wish list, and I guess I will have to end up making something my self, but no point in re-inventing the wheel if there's already someone out there with a solution :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> the best thing I have found so far is vssh it is worth checking out and should fill you needs nicely.</comment>


Consus: Fast Geo-Replicated Transactions - <AUTHOR> http://hack.systems/2016/12/13/hello-consus <comment><AUTHOR> For those that are not familiar with Hyperdex[1], it is an open-source, performant, ACID compliant key-value store with commercial support[2] for fully distributed transactions.

It seems that Robert Escriva (creator of Hyperdex) is now working on a new database called Consus with the following key differences[3]:

"Consus has two (three) differences from HyperDex that I believe will make it more appealing in the long run:

1\. Consus doesn't separate the implementations of transactions and the regular code. Once we have a paper public on the topic and I have clearance to release the code, all of the code will be available under the same license, with no commercial fork.

2\. Consus provides wide-area, geo-replicated transactions with much lower latency than is possible in any other system I know with the same consistency that Consus provides.

3\. I'm still actively working on Consus; I'm not actively working on HyperDex."

[1] [http://hyperdex.org/](http://hyperdex.org/) [2] [http://hyperdex.org/warp/](http://hyperdex.org/warp/) [3] [https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233](https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233)

*edit: should have linked to the project's homepage ([http://consus.io/](http://consus.io/)) which contains more details, if mods could change the link that would be great ;)

<comment><USER2> HyperDex is pretty interesting.

I evaluated it for a project last year, but decided not to use it. One reason was that at the time, the project seemed to have been abandoned; the author did not respond to issues or pull requests. Another was that based on Google searches, there seemed to be no one else actually using it in production; so even considering getting the commercial ACID support seemed like a big gamble, never mind that I couldn't find any info on how it performed in large clusters, and so on.

That said, it seemed technically brilliant, and fast.

If Escriva can accomplish the same thing with Consus, in a fully open source way, and gain traction enough to keep the project alive, I could see this as something I would consider using. That said, I'm wary of anyone who just abandons projects like that, without telling anyone about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > If Escriva can accomplish the same thing with Consus, in a fully open source > way, and gain traction enough to keep the project alive, I could see this as > something I would consider using.

Totally agree. I feel like there's a big void in the open-source world for this type of technology that has yet to be filled. There used to be FoundationDB and, well, we all know what happened there. CockroachDB is probably the only other active, open-source project right now that claims to have strong ACID guarantees for multi-database transactions. However, the team is not wholly focused on performance at this stage of development (which some of their early benchmarks demonstrate).

If Consus can retain some of the performance characteristics of Hyperdex while providing completely open source distributed transactions, it will be an absolute game changer.

<comment><USER2> It's promising, at least. I think a system like this would be the most useful if you're able to layer a query language on top of it, and apparently even FoundationDB (which had an SQL layer on top of a K/V store) didn't perform all that well. The Cockroach guys claim to have found a performant way of doing SQL on top of K/V, if I remember correctly, but we'll see. But having transactions in a distributed K/V store is certainly useful.

<comment><USER3> If you are willing to optimize for a KV store with distributed transactions you can do a lot better than putting a SQL layer on top of it.

<comment><USER2> Not sure what you mean by that. Consus seems to be directly inspired by Google's Spanner, which famously has an SQL layer, F1, on top.

<comment><USER3> It does, but unless you know it is on top of a distributed KV store and design your schema and queries around that you will suffer horrible performance issues. Also, F1, similar to FDBs implementation, forces you to model your databases differently than you would in a "normal" oltp relational database.

<comment><USER4> Almost every single host SQL solution I know of is built on a B-Tree for at least some of its properties. A B-Tree is nothing more than a lexicographically sorted key-value store.

Consus is a lexicographically sorted key-value store.

Where you will hit performance bottlenecks is when your query planner/executer makes traditional assumptions about performance that do not hold across machines.

A good SQL implementation on top of a kvs should not force you to accommodate it any more than your current "normal" databases subconsciously train you to accommodate your disks (hint: they do).

<comment><USER3> I would be very surprised if anyone is still running their primary data store on "disks" that cares about performance. BTW, look at the design of F1 and you will see that they do object like hierarchical storage of related tables to ensure that they don't have to go cross partition for queries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's also a blog post announcement here: [http://hack.systems/2016/12/13/hello- consus/](http://hack.systems/2016/12/13/hello-consus/)

Reading through the post about active development on the predecessor HyperDex: [https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233](https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex/issues/233)

> I've stopped developing the project for non-public reasons that aren't > technically related to the project.

Along with this line in the blog post:

> not one in which a company with profit motives releases a half-open product, > but one in which those interested in Consus can come together to build > something better.

It seems like there was some friction around the commercial nature of Hyperdex.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, we've updated the link from the GitHub project: [https://github.com/rescrv/Consus](https://github.com/rescrv/Consus).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Consus technical report...

Consus: Taming the Paxi [https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03457](https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03457)

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool! Also, you might take a look at [http://bedrockdb.com](http://bedrockdb.com) for a geo-replicated, ACID, SQL database (basically a replication layer atop SQLite).

</comment><comment><USER9> Let's call Aphyr ;)

[https://aphyr.com/about](https://aphyr.com/about)

<comment><USER10> Jepsen or it isn't ACID?

<comment><USER4> I'd ask you to please read the discussion section of the paper on Consus before calling Aphyr.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> so what happened to hyperdex? it looks like the project is no longer maintained. could you please share why the project is dead?

</comment><comment><USER12> No README?

</comment><comment><USER13> All I see is consensus, misspelled. Too much time in the trenches.

<comment> shawn-butler In Roman times, grain was essential to life and Consus served as the protector of grain; through its similarity to the word consilium, Consus became associated with secret conferences.

So there you go.

<comment><USER4> "... In Modern times, Consus is very similar to the word consensus; not coincidentally the former uses the latter to serve as the protector of data."</comment></comment></comment>


Recognising Burnout - <AUTHOR> https://ftp.fau.de/fosdem/2020/UB5.230/burnout.webm <comment><USER2> I thought I was burning out pretty hard core recently. I went to the dr, did some blood work, and found out I had a serious vitamin D deficiency causing all sorts of scary symptoms. Might be something to look into if you're working too much and are experiencing new health problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a manager that forced me to take a day off at least once a month and I still owe them for that. I dont do it every month now, but I definitely take the time to rest more often and in the end I am much more productive.

<comment><USER4> Surely you're joking

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why this excellent video only got a few points.

<comment><USER6> When I click on the link in safari I get a download prompt. Why not YouTube?

<comment><USER7> Youtube may lead to more burnout</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple Python Uwsgi Library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pvtmert/uwl <comment><AUTHOR> i needed quick uwsgi handler for some http endpoints for db connection this weekend. so with some hacky ways i created this.

maybe it will be helpful for educational purposes idk.

i know there are frameworks but many of them are bulky and needs lots of dependencties sometimes. i work on payment systems where external libraries require approval from managers.

i use this to collect some reports from servers, using `dbm` module to store them.</comment>


The young and the jobless - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/01_0

<comment><USER2> The payoff for working while in school is now quite low. When my father was in university during the early seventies, he could pay for his tuition, texts, and car for the whole year with one summer job. The kind of job you can get today wouldn't cover a fraction of that even if you were working year-round.

<comment><USER3> Working while in school is the best thing I've done for my career. Right out of college I had 5 years of experience, which is extremely important for employers. So after I graduated I got jobs that my classmates could only dream of.

<comment><USER4> Ditto here - anyone who is in college and _not_ going for internships (or other jobs) in their relevant field is IMHO losing out big time.

<comment><USER5> In lieu of a thesis, my college offered what was basically a year-long small- group internship with a corporate sponsor for several technical majors (including math!). I would highly recommend them to anyone, even people continuing into pure academia. My college takes this program more seriously than most, to the point that CS and Engineering majors don't even have the option of a traditional thesis, but I've heard that they're available in some form at a lot of universities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Follow the link and look at the participation rate in the 16-19 (pre-college) demographic. Headed to nothing.

Of course one can see that just by walking into any fast food restaurant, coffee shop, or supermarket in the USA. All the jobs are being held by adults who want the work, as low-paying as it is, and the kids could care less. That work is beneath them. They'd rather stay home on Facebook playing Farmville.

I'd like to see more analysis there. If these kids have no work ethic _now_ , what happens in 20-30 years?

<comment><USER7> I'd suggest looking ath the labels of the axes on the graphs. They're zoomed into the middle, so the bottom is as far from "nothing" as the top is from the bottom.

<comment><USER6> Run a regression on that data and tell me where the bottom is. One can say "we don't know"...but it sure as hell isn't slowing down anytime soon.

<comment><USER7> I meant the bottom of the graph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> you know, in other countries college is free or state sponsored. why not try there. the us education system is big business, and you don't even learn that much anyway.

<comment><USER9> That really depends on the program. It is possible to get a top-quality education at a US university, but you have to work at it just like you would anywhere else.</comment></comment>


Joyent now paying people to not switch from Node.js to IO.JS - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2015/02/03/joyent-nodejs-incubator-iojs-node-io-fork

<comment><USER3> "IO.js, what's that?"

This is a hilariously out of touch move by Joyent.

The major concern most people have with node.js is the governance model - <USER2> fact that a single corporation controls it makes a lot of people uneasy.

This thin ploy really highlights exactly the kind of company that Joyent is and really validates those concerns. They're not interested in working together with io.js, they're interested in using their corporate muscle to squash what they see as a competitor.

The worst thing is the incentives they're using are barbed - really they're just offering you a discount on their products in return for locking you in to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair - they have an incubator program they're already running to encourage NodeJS adoption:

"The company's Node.js Incubator Program is designed for companies, startups, and individuals doing interesting things with Node. Members will receive Joyent's training and support, $25,000 worth of services in Joyent Cloud Hosting, tools and debugging, access to Node project leader Timothy J Fontaine, plus marketing and networking opportunities."

I can totally understand why they'd not want to _pay money_ to people who switched.

That said since Node and IO are compatible I don't get why they'd want to slow progress like that - they're hooking people on their cloud services (which will work just fine in IO code) their ecosystem (the package manager NPM works on both IO and node) and their services. They could totally at least make a more reasonable statement than "What's IO".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "IO.js, what's that?" asked Joyent CEO Scott Hammond in response to my query about whether projects based on the fork would be able to enter. "This is a Node.js project for Node.js innovations."

I think this attitude is entirely detrimental.

</comment><comment><USER5> At Joyent they still miss the point completely. It's a shame.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like a lot of people have flagged this article, I wonder which company they work for.

<comment><USER6> When in doubt, blame Microsoft, it's always a safe bet.</comment></comment>


Mass. drops to third in venture capital cash for first time - <AUTHOR> http://bostonherald.com/jobfind/news/technology/view/2011_1013ny_deal_top_bay_state_mass_drops_to_third_in_venture_capital_cash_for_first_time

<comment><USER2> I thought one of the big problems in MA is that the courts favor the employer re: non-compete clauses. If I'm remembering correctly, this would be a real damper on the ability of talent to pursue opportunity.

<comment><USER3> They do that in pretty much every state. As far as I know, California's treatment of non-competes remains unique. Everywhere else, they're fully enforceable with rare exceptions, even on grunt-level code monkeys.

Debates surface every once in a while as to just how important California law has been to the development of Silicon Valley. It's obviously had some impact, but it's impossible to strictly quantify, and muddying the waters is that it's definitely not the only place with a notable tech concentration, even if it is perhaps the biggest and highest-profile.

<comment><USER4> Hmmm, for me it's sufficient to note that California's policy and Silicon Valley's success are both unique (I think you vastly understate its success when you say "perhaps the biggest and highest-profile"). I think it's hard to argue that having the nation's most liquid market for talent was not significant.

There are probably a few other things that in combination were or are unique, I'm thinking good weather in the vicinity of 2 of the world's best EE and CS departments (Stanford and UC Berkeley). Other things like a culture more accepting of failure may have followed, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The full report is here: [http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture- capital/quarterly-ven...](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture- capital/quarterly-venture-capital-report-q3-2011)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone speak to why New York has become such a good locale for venture capital? I live in Seattle, and haven't really kept up with the state of things in New York. Is it simply that the firehose of capital available there is being turned in a new direction, or are there other structural reasons why NYC is a great place to start a business?

<comment><USER7> I'm guessing it's the combination of firehose of capital and huge, densely packed population. And due to the computing needs of wallstreet there are quite a few skilled programmers around. Basically $ + hackers.

<comment><USER8> In the past, people have cited the presence of Wall Street being the thing that prevented the 'pure tech' startup scene from developing - since Wall St paid developers too well.

The real eye-opener for me was how crowded and positive the Startup Weekend events have been in NYC : And the number of Meetups is staggering. It seems to me that some kind of critical mass has been achieved, and New York no longer feels like a staging area before moving to the Valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good - Boston VCs need a serious kick in the pants with how they treat entrepreneurs. I don't think this will be ego-busting enough to do it though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Meh... I don't think this is really big news.

"Massachusetts firms experienced a year-over-year decline in the number of VC deals in the third quarter"

This is looking only at this quarter vs. the same quarter a year ago. Take a look at VC funding over a year and it's not a smooth cash flow. You get peaks and valleys and it's often a few really big investments that drive those variations.

If, at the end of this year Boston is raising less cash than NYC (comparing all of 2011 to all of 2010) and then I might concede something is happening.</comment>


Clear-Window Surgical Masks Are a Lifesaver for Patients with Hearing Loss - <AUTHOR> https://www.hearingtracker.com/news/clear-window-surgical-masks-are-a-lifesaver-for-patients-with-hearing-loss <comment><AUTHOR> Some of the masks with a clear panel are visually inelegant, which could be a barrier to uptake. Perhaps that will improve.

Also, what's the plan when you cough or sneeze and the inside gets spackled? It's a problem for cloth masks too, but at least it's not visible.</comment>


Greece arrests Russian suspected of running $4B Bitcoin laundering ring - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-russia-arrest-idUSKBN1AB1OP?il=0 <comment><AUTHOR> Something related to the news[1] couple of days ago about Bitmixer.io closing down?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843373)</comment>


Jack Shares Some Big, Square Numbers: 341,688 Readers Shipped, $137M Total Flow - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/29/jack-dorsey-shares-some-big-square-numbers-341688-readers-shipped-137m-total-flow/ <comment><USER2> So at 1% fees, Square is making $1.37 M in revenue?

<comment><USER3> at 0% fees, Square is making $0.00 M in revenue

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happens to all these payments startups when credit card fees go from 3% => 0.3%?

<comment><USER5> That won't happen. The credit card cartel will ensure the transaction fees stay in the 1.5% to 3% range because if they don't they can't meet quarterly profits. Regardless of the technical infrastructure the companies will be fighting an up-hill battle against hundres of years of banking history. Also, why do you think the credit card companies are quickly investing in these startups? A: To ensure control.

<comment><USER4> >>> That won't happen

Better take another look at Dodd Frank

<comment><USER6> Did you actually read dodd frank? Because you are completely wrong about what it says. The Durbin amendment to Dodd Frank is a reduction of interchange fees for _debit cards_ issued by _large banks_. It impacts ~50% of debit cards, which are about ~30% of total cards, so 15% of cards in total. And it reduces those fees by 60-80% (so from around 1.5% to < 1%). As a result, it is a very minimal financial hit to the banks who ultimately receive the interchange revenues.

Furthermore, Durbin amendment will not survive. I will bet anyone on this - the banks are running a very aggressive FUD campaign which I suspect will work. It sucks, but that's what is what's happening.

Also, keep in mind that the fees being legislated by Dodd Frnak are the interchange fees that are actually the most significant expense for payments companies such as square, so it could improve their profitability a lot. It could also allow them to lower their fees and still make money, which coud increase adoption.

Durbin amendment, if it survives, is a positive for Square and every other payments company. It is a negative for the banks that ISSUE debit cards (basically Chase, Citi and BofA).

<comment><USER4> Good luck Sean

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting numbers: an average of ~$6 worth of transactions per day per reader sent out. I'm sure 95% of the readers are unused. I wonder how they count revenue too - like what does that $59k today mean?

So $2 million divided by 23k payments today is $85... A fairly high average transaction size, I'm assuming because they have a number of contractors/art sellers that skew the number much higher. What's interesting is that those guys would probably be better off with a standard merchant account (depending on how much they are transacting per month) <http://feefighters.com/square- calculator>

But they probably went with Square because it's easy. This totally flies in the face of what I earlier thought, that square was being used primarily for low dollar transactions.</comment>


California Child Welfare System: agile, iterative and user centered procurement - <AUTHOR> https://meet.lync.com/osicagov/tyu/9HBZ7YRD <comment><AUTHOR> This is the second vendor forum for a new, agile, iterative, user-centered procurement from the State of California.

For background:

* [http://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2015/11/30/a-new-approach...](http://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2015/11/30/a-new-approach-to-procuring-government-technology-in-california/) * [http://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2015/12/07/child-welfare-...](http://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2015/12/07/child-welfare-technology-in-california-part-two/)</comment>


Andreessen Horowitz's First Move in Biopharma - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/12/04/andreessen-horowitzs-first-move-in-biopharma <comment><USER2> >No, they're apparently selling "Rise" pills to improve your memory, and "Sprint" pills to give you more energy. This is the sort of thing I see advertised on the subway, next to the offers to learn how to be an HVAC technician – can "boost your immune system" be far behind?

Did Andreessen Horowitz really just invest in the bio equivalent of a "Clean your Mac!" spammer?

<comment><USER3> Let's be honest. Andreessen Horowitz are not altruists by any means. They are in it for the money.

This is the equivalent of the horny goat weed impulse item craze at 7/11.

<comment> xkcd-sucks It's a really good way of targeting mid-20s college-educated white men who smoke too much weed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The founders were interviewed on a recent A16Z podcast: [http://a16z.com/2015/12/03/nootropics/](http://a16z.com/2015/12/03/nootropics/)

<comment><USER4> Great contrast to the OP. They sound like a highly competent team, making a better "coffee".

<comment> mck- Now we can be like Bradley Cooper in Limitless. _mind blown_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Disclaimer: These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Our products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.</comment>


Ask HN: What can an experienced engineer uniquely learn by joining AWS? - <AUTHOR> I work at a well known company in the Bay area. I make close to 380k, subject to market conditions.
I sometimes get bored by doing run of the mill backend work like building APIs, gRPC, etc.
I am seriously considering joining AWS as senior SDE. Is there anything I can learn uniquely by joining AWS? <comment><USER2> How a truly abusive work culture feels from the inside?

How to memorize "principles" and use them as tools to advance yourself and sabotage others?

Unless you're looking for a post-grad credential in sociopathy, find another cloud vendor or infrastructure provider that's more benign.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know there might be more ops load and the bar is high to perform.

But is it really cut-throat in terms of co-workers trying to sabotage each other?

<comment><USER2> (Edit: ok not formal, but "Connections/Anytime Feedback/Forte" does that job well enough and effectively anonymously)

Oh yeah - including a system for anonymous denunciations.

Also please consider the average (very short!) tenure there.

<comment><USER3> Disclosure: I work for AWS.

I am personally unaware of any such "formal system for anonymous denunciations," or that there ever has been. I am in a position where I would know if such a thing had existed within the last 10 years, and I know how to engage with the the appropriate owner if one ever came into being (as all Amazonians are encouraged to do if they have a concern).

[edit written at 2020-04-06T19:50:00Z in response to parent edit]

Forte, and Anytime Feedback before it, is not anonymous, nor is it "effectively anonymous". Just like an email to someone's manager, when you submit feedback your contact information is known to the manager receiving the feedback for one of their reports. It is the responsibility of a manager to take the feedback in context, along with any other information they have or can obtain, and decide what, if any, message should be conveyed to their report. Within my (very large) organization, it is our intentional practice at the highest levels to reinforce that managers must "own their feedback" for their reports. That's to say: you take in all the information and signals that help you grow and develop your report, and you don't say "one of the pieces of feedback that I received is _____."

Currently Forte feedback is provided verbatim to employees without any information about who provided a piece of feedback (both positive feedback and growth areas). This may be why you characterize the feedback as "anonymous." However, 1) only feedback that you request from your colleagues, or your manager explicitly requests on their report's behalf, is included in the Forte annual process. It does not provide any mechanism for someone to provide "unsolicited" feedback (though constructive feedback is encouraged at Amazon, either direct or via a manager). 2) Feedback provided in the Forte annual process is only provided to their report at the discretion of the manager.

From your comments it's pretty clear to me that you didn't have a good experience at Amazon. I'm sorry for that, especially if there was a manager who didn't live up to our high expectations with regard to how to manage performance and develop their reports.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I wrote a shitty guide to having the WSL Bash run in background - <AUTHOR> https://emil.fi/bashwin <comment><AUTHOR> I must repeat that it really is kludge.</comment>


Rails 6 adds ability to block writes to a database - <AUTHOR> https://blog.saeloun.com/2019/12/10/rails-block-writes-to-database-connection-while-prevent-writes <comment><USER2> Nice article! Is it possible for me to restrict make disable write for all the tables when use rails console in production. Do you have a recommendation?</comment>


How Imgur avoids the ugliness of social media - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2018/12/26/18155660/imgur-alan-schaaf-social-media-cesspool-abuse-moderation-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast <comment><USER2> .. by not being a social network, and by aggressive moderation.

"Imgur is not for connection, it is for disconnection."

"Imgur doesn't subscribe to free speech absolutism: Its moderators believe some things don't belong on the site's public forums, and so the offending content gets removed without much deliberation." (I'm not sure if I believe this one)

It's effectively the image hosting site for reddit. The challenge in this market is making enough money and managing the moderation; all the addictiveness and "social" is outsourced to other sites.</comment>


Pointers and memory leaks in C - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-toughgame/

<comment><USER2> Actually, "what bothers [...] the most about C" for me is not pointers or leaks. It is people who blame the language for their inability to keep track of the memory they allocate and use.

<comment><USER3> Most people who write C professionally have no trouble doing this, but memory leaks still occur.

It's easy to miscommunicate what part of the code manages what memory if you're working in a group, not to mention just normal human error. It's very easy to accidentally forget to free something, especially when you're on a tight schedule or distracted. I mean, how many times have you wondered 'how did this ever work' when looking through old code you wrote?

That said, most of these problems are significantly lessened by C++ (though it's obviously not a panacea).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Accessing the null pointer is very dangerous, as it might crash your program. Always make sure that you are not accessing null pointers."

If you're going to read or write through an invalid pointer, the NULL pointer is your friend, and an immediate segfault is the best thing that could happen. The worse thing that could happen is that the program keeps chugging along and you never notice the bug.

"Always use memset along with malloc, or always use calloc"

That's a good way to defeat checkers like Valgrind. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but not something a programmer should be instinctively doing without thinking about it. In fact, excepting stylistic stuff, "always" is a poor way to approach programming. You should do nothing which isn't deliberate and well thought out.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why the link made it to the front page. Everything in there is absolutely basic knowledge which every programmer who specifically chooses C over other languages for a task knows anyway. If you choose C you know that you have to be careful about dynamic memory. Somewhat obvious, no?

<comment><USER6> Well, what you say is right. However, there may well be quite a few Javascript/Java only developers around who are interested in all those funny 'memory leaks' of C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sadly it doesn't address the debugging problem at all. Mentioning very useful tools like valgrind and address sanitizer (asan), which can help to save lots of debugging time.

</comment><comment><USER8>
        char *name = (char *) malloc(11);
        // Assign some value to name
        memcpy ( p,name,11); // Problem begins here

"In this example, the memcpy operation is trying to write 11 bytes to p, whereas it has been allocated only 10 bytes."

I'm sorry, but I see it as having malloc'd 11 bytes...

<comment><USER9> The first parameter to memcpy is the destination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > memset(p,'\0',10);

<comment><USER11> I think you should read the above as:

        memset(p, '\0', 10);

Probably best approach is to always use _calloc_ , unless you fill the buffer yourself with other meaningful values immediately after allocation.</comment></comment>


Congress Approves First Big Dodd-Frank Rollback - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/business/congress-passes-dodd-frank-rollback-for-smaller-banks.html <comment><USER2> Taxpayers are on the line for trillions of dollars with socialized risk and yet there are people on this thread regurgitating the same old anti-government anti-regulatory line without any irony. How can you roll back regulations without resolving fundamental questions about risk and 'too big to fail'. With citizens like this who needs oligarchs.

These are the same anti-government folks who will whine endlessly about social services as 'handouts' and 'freebies' and look the other way while trillions go to subsidize the rich and powerful. This is ideology.

Either you believe in democracy or you do not. In a democracy the government is you, not an organization out to get you. Regulations exist to protect the whole from the greed of a few.

This mythical anti-government civilization full of freedom only works in a farming based frontier society that has occupied land and can give parts of it away for free to all new comers, where any government can only take away rights. But that time is long gone.

<comment><USER3> >Regulations exist to protect the whole from the greed of a few.

Regulations exist so that entrenched players can use the lethal force of government to block new challengers. Never quite as blunt as I put it, but that is the threat backing all the actual outcomes.

And the overall solution is to allow them to fail next time. Don't fix it, let it crash and burn. Stop socializing the losses since the profits were privatized.

<comment><USER4> >And the overall solution is to allow them to fail next time

Then pass a regulation barring the US from ever giving another "bailout". In the aftermath of '08 those corporations played the US like a fiddle to get their billions of dollars in free loans because "our whole financial system could collapse if you dont". Why wouldn't they play this game again, perhaps even more brazenly than last time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My wife works in the corporate mortgage department of a fairly large US bank and she told me how many of her fellow employees cheered on this news a few months ago when it became clear regulations would be rolled back. Then a month ago about half of those same people lost they're jobs; turns out spending extra resources checking the accuracy of loans and applicant financials is not something banks do if they don't have to.

The other interesting tidbit I learned form her is that the bare minimal paperwork processing that will still get done is actively being outsourced to India. Just a reminder that one of the large problems to come out of the last financial crisis was that banks couldn't even tell who owned the actual morgages or provide the actual signed loan documents to many borrowers.

If (or rather when) we have the next mortgage crisis it's going to be an absolute mess.

<comment><USER6> So basically when that invariably happens (next mortgage crisis) we can expect more of the same...public losses, privatized profits.

<comment><USER7> The more immediate crisis will probably be due to other types of consumer debt. Take a look at auto lending and bundling as an example.

<comment><USER8> Not to mention the mountains of leveraged buybacks and leveraged buyouts. In my industry all the big players are bidding prices that can't possibly turn a profit for assets which they evidently hope to flip later. I think that kind of behavior is endemic at this point. So I think it's going to wind up being a corporate debt bubble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems 2008 didn't cause enough misery for voters to understand their own interest.

But maybe the next one will be bad enough, or the one after that worse yet. I gather the last time this happened (1870s-1930s) it was a lot of fun.

<comment><USER10> Not being snarky--but did Trump promise anything specifically about bank regulation when he was campaigning?

Maybe the populist "drain the swamp" could be taken as a vague direction on this issue, but in any case he seems to have done the opposite.

<comment><USER11> This was a bipartisan act of congress, not a Trump thing.

<comment><USER10> How many Dem votes before a bill can be labeled bipartisan? 1? In my mind bipartisan should practically be nearly equal representation from both sides.

<comment><USER12> In my mind the bill needs significant representation from both sides to be bipartisan, but not necessarily equal. Unfortunately this had that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is everyone so against this? These types of laws tend to be worthless, except in one thing: Preserving incumbents (large banks in this case).

Large banks can easily deal with the law and keep right on going. All it does is make life much harder for smaller banks.

<comment><USER10> My vague understanding was that Dodd-Frank was a partial restoration of the pre-Clinton era limits on speculation... Is that not correct? In any case I don't understand how that helps preserve incumbents over small banks.

<comment><USER11> It does a LOT of stuff. Some good, some just paperwork. It's the paperwork part I'm talking about.

But it's such a large act that without knowing which parts were repealed it's very hard to discuss.

<comment><USER13> Just a note: paperwork is usually just data on disk now. Maybe a database or 10, or just a bunch of logs. But generally not as bureaucratically onerous as one envisions a ton of actual paperwork.

A virtual paper trail isn't a bad thing when you've got to (a) manage risks based on decisions made by these processes and (b) make sure you're obeying the law.

<comment><USER14> No, Dodd-Frank is in fact bureaucratically onerous. The cost of paperwork has nothing to do with whether or not the documents are actually on paper.

<comment><USER15> Data science is hard and requires lots of data. It's still useful to have that data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My understanding of the issue is that it was mostly a scaling falicy. A ratio of assets to loans was asserted by the federal government that banks and credit unions must operate within, but that ratio was too onerous for small players like credit unions with less than $1B in assets. I did marketing for a credit union that had to constantly stop doing auto loans or quickly double down to maintain a tightrope walk to stay inside those ratios. It was much easier to comply with at larger scale. Bad maths made a decent rule into something that had unintended consequences.

<comment><USER17> I can see it both ways. I have heard that the original restrictions were too onerous on small banks. But on the other hand, a failing asset class will affect multiple banks. It's possible that multiple community bank failures could act like a bigger bank failing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been holding off buying a house until the next crash. Won't have to wait much longer.

<comment><USER11> You'll be waiting a LONG time. The next crash will be student loans. The one after that will be something else entirely.

There won't be another house price crash until there is another generation of people who forgot the old one. You could be waiting 20 to 30 years.

A truism of the financial world is that if you thought of it, so did everyone else. That means that unless you are truly original (you probably aren't) you can only make money on a particular position if that position is one that makes money if everyone does it.

A position that requires you to do it, and everyone else to do something else (like waiting on a crash to buy a house, while everyone else doesn't) isn't going to work. If you are waiting, so is everyone else, and that means everyone will buy, which means the price won't go down, and you have a self- canceling prophecy.

<comment><USER19> Student loans are not large enough to matter in the regard you're referring to. The housing market mess was at least 30 times larger than the student loan mess.

Most student loans are in the government's hands, most of the interest goes to the Federal Government, not to eg JP Morgan or Bank of America. The US financial system has minimal exposure to student loans and the default problems.

You're talking about $400 billion of present high risk default potential. The housing market crash wiped out ~$25 trillion in paper wealth just in the US, including in the stock market. American wealth dropped by 40%.

That drop would be equal to $40 trillion today. The entire student loan market is $1.4 trillion, a fraction of that is a default problem.

The Fed was running $85 billion per month QE programs just to stabilize the housing market.

If it were necessary, the Fed could fix the student loan mess in six months of casual QE.

The 2008-2010 great recession took down dozens of global banks, including making two of the big four in the US insolvent. Dozens of large corporations from around the globe required short-term Federal Reserve loans to remain operational as the global monetary & banking system froze.

Student loan defaults are a $50 billion per year problem. The loaned out money was conjured out of thin air by the Fed and US Government (which does not have a surplus to lend); the interest being paid is paid on that same magic money. The Fed shovels large piles of cash back to the US Government every year. If they need $300 billion to fix it, they've got more magic money (ie the Fed will debase the dollar and 0.2% of the value of all dollar assets globally and they'll do a program with the US Treasury).

<comment><USER20> This is really insightful, thanks!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nobody knows what's actually in Dodd-Frank, but a _lot_ of people have opinions about it!

</comment><comment><USER20> Sorry for the naive question, but what actually happened? WSJ is reporting that the big change is the increase from $50B to $250B for the definition of "large bank" subject to automatic "too big to fail" regulations.

Here's the list of ~30 banks affected according to wikipedia as of ~Jan 1, 2018:

rank, name, location, marketcap

13 Charles Schwab Corporation San Francisco, California $243B

14 State Street Corporation Boston, Massachusetts $238

15 BB&T Winston-Salem, North Carolina $221

16 SunTrust Banks Atlanta, Georgia $205

17 American Express New York, New York $181

18 Ally Financial Detroit, Michigan $167

19 Barclays New York, New York $157

20 USAA San Antonio, Texas $155

21 MUFG Union Bank New York, New York $154

22 Citizens Financial Group Providence, Rhode Island $151

23 Deutsche Bank New York, New York $148

24 Fifth Third Bank Cincinnati, Ohio $142

25 Royal Bank of Canada New York, New York $141

26 Credit Suisse New York, New York $141

27 UBS New York, New York $140

28 BNP Paribas New York, New York $139

29 Northern Trust Chicago, Illinois $138

30 KeyCorp Cleveland, Ohio $137

31 BMO Harris Bank Chicago, Illinois $131

32 Santander Bank Boston, Massachusetts $128

33 Regions Financial Corporation Birmingham, Alabama $124

34 M&T Bank Buffalo, New York $118

35 Huntington Bancshares Columbus, Ohio $104

36 Discover Financial Riverwoods, Illinois $100

37 Synchrony Financial Stamford, Connecticut $95

38 First Republic Bank San Francisco, California $87

39 BBVA Compass Birmingham, Alabama $87

40 Comerica Dallas, Texas $71

41 Zions Bancorporation Salt Lake City, Utah $66

42 E-Trade New York, New York $63

43 Silicon Valley Bank Santa Clara, California $51

What else is there? (besides partisan histrionics)

Xpost from Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/8ldxmj/comment/dz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/8ldxmj/comment/dzffn3v)

<comment><USER5> Will be interesting to see what with some of these banks as they grow and start approaching the new $250B cliff. I suspect a lot of creative accounting and a glut of banks at the $249B level in a few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> To be fair, deregulating small banks might make some sense.. If it's not too big to fail, then by all means let it fail :)

Ideally, you would follow it up by putting even stronger regulation on big banks.

</comment><comment><USER23> Apparently they would like a financial crash and a violent revolution?

<comment><USER24> In bound...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "A decade after the global financial crisis tipped the United States into a recession..."

should read:

A decade after the global financial cluster f#ck - orchestrated by irresponsibility and negligence on the past of the United States government, and its puppet master, Wall Street - politely refereed to as a recession..."

<comment><USER26> That also pushed most of the western world and some other financial hubs into meltdown too! This doesn't just affect the USA :(

<comment><USER25> My point was, the USA was the means and the ends, not just the ends. The USA was the perp, not the victim.

The NYT's wording attempts to rewrite history, badly. This is journalism?

<comment><USER26> I wasn't disagreeing with ya, just expanding on your point. The quote and article seemed to ignore the world wide impact 2007 had

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Meanwhile what's being done about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Nothing. It's being pushed around with the hope that everyone will forget about them until the next crisis.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is actually a good thing, the regulations were a big burden to small banks. The roll back doesnt affect the "too big to fall" institutions but it really eases the pressure on local and regional players.

Dodd-Frank costs banks a lot of many but it doesnt scale with the size of the bank, smaller banks are subject to the same constraints as the biggest banks though they are not capable of causing a systemic crash. They should not be penalized for the actions of the bigger players.

<comment><USER29> > smaller banks are subject to the same constraints as the biggest banks > though they are not capable of causing a systemic crash.

Contagion ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_contagion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_contagion)) can still take place with a (literal) local bankruptcy depending on the exposure of larger institutions to that smaller firm's losses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's about time. Dodd-Frank is an absolute embarrassment and is just bureaucratic nonsense, created so the gov can pretend they've done something.

</comment><comment><USER31> Bitcoin should jump up in price.

<comment><USER32> People really need to stop predicting market prices on internet forums. You have no hope of being right better than chance. Bitcoin is liquid enough that any news about law changes will have been incorporated into the price before you hear about it on Hacker News. If you actually believed yourself, you'd be betting money on it, not telling everyone. That shows that you don't believe what you're saying, so it's wrong to try to persuade other people. Wait till you got rich being right more than you were wrong, then tell people about it.

<comment><USER33> Are you familiar with the phrase, "shooting the shit"? That's all we do in the comments here. You shouldn't take them seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Excellent, now if we can just stop manipulating risk assessment in the student loan market we'll be on track. Glad to be moving to the U.S. in the middle of what appears to a policy renaissance. Maybe something can be done about the budget, though I can't exactly judge each administration for not taking on such an abstract marketing challenge.

Pretty sure this only applies to banks with small holdings, so I'm not really sure why anyone's getting their panties in a knot.

<comment><USER35> Why pick on student loans and not mortgages? The home interest tax deduction is a much, much bigger subsidy, with rather worse externalities ("housing crisis" vs. "a bunch of 20-somethings with worthless degrees).

<comment><USER36> Housing has collateral, the house and land it sits on.

A useless degree has zero value and can't be resold to cover the dollars lost to unrepaid student loans.

<comment><USER37> How do you figure what degree is useless?

I mean, an art degree can easily lead to retail management. A business management degree often leads to the same sort of job. In some companies, you can earn these jobs working, but you are more likely to reach that management position at 30 instead of 23. These jobs don't pay all that much, true. But it is better than nothing and hey, if you went to college, you'll likely be a few years ahead of the peers that didn't. Theoretically, this will be a bonus. A teacher might not earn enough to cover their loan, especially if the person has an early childhood education (pre-school) degree as those jobs tend to be just slightly more than minimum wage. Yet few would argue that these are useless degrees. Some degrees become useless over time when a field is phased out, and others produce a few too many degrees when the field changes, rendering a few useless. Lawyers have experienced this - and not only that, but those lawyers that decide to do community work and be a criminal lawyer (especially a public defender) might not be able to afford his or her loans.

This is the problem with writing degrees off as useless due to earnings. Lots of professions will fall into that category, even if I get the feeling they are talking about things like art degrees - which some folks would argue are necessary. The only real way to avoid this is to make sure the student loans are affordable even in the worst situations. Make college not cost as much. Use alternative ways to provide education other than loans. Taxes are a good start for funding since overall, college degrees are good for the college at large.

<comment><USER36> > How do you figure what degree is useless?

If it has no positive bearing on your employment prospects then, for the purposes of producing a livelihood, it's useless.

> I mean, an art degree can easily lead to retail management. A business > management degree often leads to the same sort of job. In some companies, > you can earn these jobs working, but you are more likely to reach that > management position at 30 instead of 23. These jobs don't pay all that much, > true. But it is better than nothing and hey, if you went to college, you'll > likely be a few years ahead of the peers that didn't. Theoretically, this > will be a bonus.

Spending tens of thousands of dollars for something that's " _better than nothing_ " is lunacy. Might as well just give the money directly to those people so they can use it as a down payment for a house.

> A teacher might not earn enough to cover their loan, especially if the > person has an early childhood education (pre-school) degree as those jobs > tend to be just slightly more than minimum wage. Yet few would argue that > these are useless degrees.

Most teacher's degrees _are_ useless. I'm not suggesting we eliminate training or education entirely but a preschool or elementary school teacher does not need to spend four years at university to teach children ABCs or 123s.

> Some degrees become useless over time when a field is phased out, and others > produce a few too many degrees when the field changes, rendering a few > useless. Lawyers have experienced this - and not only that, but those > lawyers that decide to do community work and be a criminal lawyer > (especially a public defender) might not be able to afford his or her loans.

And it naturally sorts itself out over time. It happens to people without degrees as well. There were plenty of horse carriage drivers that had to find alternative work.

> This is the problem with writing degrees off as useless due to earnings. > Lots of professions will fall into that category, even if I get the feeling > they are talking about things like art degrees - which some folks would > argue are necessary. The only real way to avoid this is to make sure the > student loans are affordable even in the worst situations.

I'm not against people pursuing their dreams. I'm against them doing it with my tax dollars. If a future barista wants to spend four years partying at a liberal arts school studying underwater basket weaving then let her find her own sugar daddy to pay for it.

> Make college not cost as much.

Stop handing out boat loads of cash via student loans and college prices will plummet immediately.

> Use alternative ways to provide education other than loans. Taxes are a good > start for funding since overall, college degrees are good for the college at > large.

Or starve the beast and let it fix itself in the private sector.

Honestly the only government involvement I'd be on board with is on the supply side, primarily through nominally priced community colleges. At least there the outlays are fixed (i.e. fixed local budget), there's no money flowing to shady private sectors, there's no conflict of interest in juicing the price higher as it's coming out of the same pocket. I suggest nominal pricing over free as there needs to be some skin in the game for students as well though I'd want it to be low enough that a min wage job should cover it.

This approach also has the pleasant side effect of forcing private institutions to compete against nearly-free community colleges. Without Federal loans juicing their prices, they'd be forced to come down as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Australian Government and businesses hit by state-based cyber attack, PM says - <AUTHOR> https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/hacking/australian-government-and-private-sector-reportedly-hit-by-massive-cyber-attack/news-story/b570a8ab68574f42f553fc901fa7d1e9 <comment><USER2> There's more details in the NCSC write up:

[https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy- past...](https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy-paste- compromises-tactics-techniques-and-procedures-used-target-multiple-australian- networks)

<comment><USER3> Thank you! But I don't see anything in there that isn't normal attempted cybercrime. What Steve Gibson dubbed "Internet Background Radiation", the continual poking for vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER4> The mitigations are hilarious too:

\- Update

\- Use 2fa

<comment><USER5> sounds like most of the "hacks" are actually employees getting phished.

<comment><USER4> Something which happens everyday.

In $currentyear, I don't see how even the most tech illiterate employees can't get lessons in phishing prevention along with having sysadmins who are ahead of the curve.

Getting reasonable levels of protection isn't hard to achieve, but they are hard to justify the cost of to execs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the motivation behind this announcement?

Considering that it is a generic 'we are under attack'.

The Prime Minister doesn't usually hold press conferences like this unless there is a good reason.

<comment><USER7> Australian unemployment is essentially at 11% and youth unemployment is >25%. Both are going to trend higher this next quarter. I think it's a distraction from the poor handling of the recession. It's been pretty standard tack to ring the national security bell when ever there is a speed wobble from the government. This will grab the news for the day so they can end the parliamentary week without the weekend news being about everyone lack of a job.

I can't really see any 4d chess moves from the Australian Government here.

<comment><USER8> > I can't really see any 4d chess moves from the Australian Government here.

Or ever, at least from any of the parties we have contending for power right now... But "how good is coal?" :sigh:

(I assume you're the Gonzo who's sharpening up a nice knife for this weekend? ;-) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment> timothy-quinn The Aus Government has a good guide called the "Essential Eight" for reducing risk. It's a good starting point for businesses, and is pretty much universal advice, not just applicable to government departments: [https://www.cyber.gov.au/publications/essential-eight- explai...](https://www.cyber.gov.au/publications/essential-eight-explained)

My take on the E8: [https://blog.congruentlabs.co/essential-eight- essentially/](https://blog.congruentlabs.co/essential-eight-essentially/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is it possible it is being made as "breaking news" as support for any other narrative? Just saw on BBC breaking news

> Regrettably, this activity is not new. Frequency has been increasing."

<comment><USER10> I'd wait til 5:30pm. It's possible they might be using this to cover another last-minute-friday announcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let me take a total shot in the dark. The country responsible starts with a C and ends with a A.

<comment><USER12> But Canada is just cold Australia, why would they want to hurt us?!

They scream cyber attack every time any of their services see a small uptick in usage, like the social services website Centrelink did, when the lockdown/ job losses started. I'm going to assume it's incompetence on their side, for now.

EDIT: 95,000 users is all it took, apparently: [https://www.itnews.com.au/news/minister-backflips-on- mygov-d...](https://www.itnews.com.au/news/minister-backflips-on-mygov-ddos- attack-claim-539704)

Some further information here: [https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy- past...](https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy-paste- compromises-tactics-techniques-and-procedures-used-target-multiple-australian- networks)

<comment><USER13> Or... China is actually up-happy about people pointing out it's use of disinformation and economic coercion amidst COVID-19.

<comment><USER12> Looking into it more, ACSC has posted a serious advisory [0], so it might be real this time. It's not a good look when the government screams cyber attack willy nilly though, because people get jaded, and think it's rather their own incompetence, again.

[0] [https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy- past...](https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy-paste- compromises-tactics-techniques-and-procedures-used-target-multiple-australian- networks)

<comment><USER13> That maybe true but joking that Canada may be behind this when China is well known for this type of behavior is disingenuous.

<comment><USER8> If you didn't laugh out loud at that, you clearly do not know many Australians (or probably Canadians either...)

<comment><USER12> Oath! I didn't want to assume where they were from, but it's definitely not Australia haha. Canadians go alright, but they're dangerously close to USA

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I guess sentencing an Australian citizen to death wasn't enough retaliation.

<comment><USER15> I think this is Australia's response to that.

There is nothing new in the announcement, it's a many months old incident in a decade long Chinese cyber breaches.

It's announced today in what seems like a weak volley back in the reshuffle of trade with China post C19.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if we'll ever see letters of marque for cyber offense. It feels a bit like it's already the de facto situation in some countries because they just don't investigate.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone taking responsibility for inadequate defences?

<comment><USER18> Adequate by what measure? Best practices? Regulatory compliance? Are there ever adequate defenses in cybersecurity?

<comment><USER4> From the Australian Signals Directorate advisory:

> The title 'Copy-paste compromises' is derived from the actor's heavy use of > proof-of-concept exploit code, web shells and other tools copied almost > identically from open source.

Surely adequate can fit into defending against common open source toolkits?

<comment><USER19> Hmm, a "sophisticated state actor" or a copy-paste script kiddy? Which one was it?

Copy-paste and open source was enough to get into the Australian Parliament, apparently our pollies simply can't resist the allure of larger penises and wealthy Nigerians in trouble.

Or maybe, just maybe, there is just the slightest possibility that this is all just a manufactured distraction from other issues...

These are the nincompoops who passed a law to backdoor everyone's encryption and nuke their own country's IT industry from orbit with a law that nobody wanted. What a surprise that they can't keep their own data secure.

<comment><USER20> > Hmm, a "sophisticated state actor" or a copy-paste script kiddy? Which one > was it?

There's no contradiction between those two things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >Government sources say China is behind the attack and Mr Morrison refused to shut down speculation that the nation was the "sophisticated state-based actor" behind the attack. Refusing to name the foreign entity, the Prime Minister stressed investigations were continuing by the Defence Signals Directorate and law enforcement agencies.

[https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/cyber- att...](https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/cyber-attack-in- australia-china-the-chief-suspect-behind-attack/news- story/44d60fdd551cfd890a0d4c14be5b15a7)

>9News political editor Chris Uhlmann said China was behind the attack.

[https://www.9news.com.au/national/cyber-attack-australia- sco...](https://www.9news.com.au/national/cyber-attack-australia-scott- morrison-government-private-sector-breach-of- security/e621ae47-f810-4fa7-9c11-3caa3b09f4dc)

</comment><comment><USER22> Aren't they the ones who passed an anti-encryption law? Gee, imagine thinking they care about security, they never seemed to care about it before with all the breaches and attacks which hit on a regular basis.

</comment><comment><USER23> North Korea raising its head from the sand now that Kim recovered from his mystery illness.

</comment><comment><USER24> Seriously, which one of you is doing this?</comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for test coverage? - <AUTHOR> I've been toying with the idea of starting a consultancy that's sole goal is to improve testing infrastructure, speed and coverage.<p>It's something I've always enjoyed on my own projects, so I think I'd enjoy helping other development teams do the same. <comment><USER2> There may be a market for this, but I think it'd be difficult to retain that specific focus. Beyond setting up generic infrastructure (CI server, test framework, coverage tools), you'd presumably also need to write tests. Writing tests requires understanding the code, gathering and understanding the requirements, working closely with all stakeholders and developers.

At that point, what are you going to do? Do you write tests and refuse to participate in feature development in other ways? Considering the tremendous cost required to understand code well enough to write effective tests, it'd be a waste of resources.

Code that was not written alongside tests is also hard to test. You'll have to implement dependency injection in some form to decouple components for effective testing. Now you're re-architecting the code. Now you have to interact with developers even more, and unless the code isn't being touched by anyone else, you'll effectively be another developer on the team.

Unless you plan to focus solely on setting up test infrastructure, which is probably too narrow a focus for a consultancy. A larger devops role might make more sense, if you'd prefer not to write the tests.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed response.

I think a lot of companies have some portion of their code that's been avoided for a variety of reasons. I think adding unit tests, simple automated tests and quick CI processes can really alleviate that fear...so eventually that section can be refactored (or moved to a service, etc).

I appreciate what you're saying about needed to be more deeply connected with the code for truly valid tests. What I'm wondering is if there's a happy middle ground where code shops just want basic coverage around their code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've thought about this a little bit lately as well and do see some value in it. Maybe one way to get around the issue of needing to be deeply familiar with the client's codebase is to first just set up the testing infrastructure for them. This is easy enough. From there you could add basic unit test examples and then do training sessions with the team until they mostly understand the concepts themselves and are able to take it over. The client could ask you back in a few months to check up on things and make any corrections allowing you to move on to help another client/team in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER4> Write a blog post about how to set it up. send it out to some people you might be interested in targeting as clients see what they say.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I think that'll be one of the future steps if this thing goes anywhere.</comment></comment>


89 Ways to Kick Start Your Hacking - <AUTHOR> http://effectize.com/become-coolest-programmer <comment><USER2> I'm beginning to think that the following sets are mutually exclusive:

      1. people who make web pages called "[1-9][0-9]* Ways To .+"

      2. good hackers ∪ people I want to read

Anybody have a counterexample?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see how this list is going to be helping a "beginner" at all. It's "89" items that all boil down to "Read code, write code, study techniques for abstraction", which in turn boils down (roughly) to "practice" - which is the same thing you need to do to get better at, or master, any activity.

</comment><comment><USER4> 5.3 # Consider taking the SCJA or SCJP exams

WHAT?!

</comment><comment><USER5> Any list above 5 items signals that the writer hasn't done what is really valuable for the reader: Preselected and prioritized the material.

89 items is just camuflaged information overload.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why has it always a certain number? 7 Tips To Get Rich. 15.4 Ways To Get Smarter. 89 Ways to Kick Start Your Hacking. 28 Secrets To Be Whatever.

<comment><USER7> It's hard to have an instantiated and filled list with an undefined number of items.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> excellent?

<comment><USER9> 89 way to kickstart your grammar, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me or do a lot of these points contradict themselves right after being said?

-Being driven and lazy at the same time.

-Extreme optimism

-Extreme pessimism

-Being good at math

-Having good communications skills

<comment><USER9> This is a sure sign of a sociopath, which explains a lot about my most geeky friends.</comment></comment>


CheXpert/MIMIC-CXR datasets: ~600,000 labeled chest X-rays from Stanford and MIT - <AUTHOR> https://stanfordmlgroup.github.io/competitions/chexpert/ <comment><USER2> Massive HIPPA breach or all 600k signed release?</comment>


Update of 02-09-2017 - <AUTHOR> https://btc-e.nz/news/3 <comment><USER2> "Update of 02-09-2017"

That's a pretty bad title. First, update pertaining to what? Second, what date format is that?

I think a revised title mentioning "BTC-e" and "September 2, 2017" would be an improvement.

<comment><USER3> Is this the original title of the submission or did it get changed?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the original. Apologies in hindsight mentioning btc-e would have been wise. I tend to read the title and domain so I kinda didn't notice it but after I thought maybe not everyone does that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could someone with domain knowledge put this development into context for me?

<comment><USER5> Essentially, they are giving people the opportunity to transfer out 55% of their account balances. In exchange, your account is deleted and you waive the right to the remaining 45%.

If you don't cash out, then they are claiming that your account will be transferred to the new site with balances intact, and withdrawals will be available through the new site with the remaining 45% tied up in a "debt token". The rough idea is that these tokens will be able to be redeemed in the future for some amount.

The calculus for account-holders is such:

1) If you choose to withdraw 55% now, that's the maximum you'll ever get (also, no one has even gotten anything back yet as they say it takes up to 72 hours). So you take the 45% haircut as cost of leaving your coins on an exchange instead of in a wallet you control.

2) If you wait, there's no telling what will happen. The happy path is you wait, then cash out your 55%, and then the 45% is eventually paid back to you over time. This path does have precedence. The unhappy paths are plentiful. The site could get shut down again, for good. They could bar you from withdrawing without proper verification. This could mean providing sensitive items such as your passport and address. Not great from an anonymity standpoint. Then who knows what the FBI or IRS would do.

<comment><USER6> Just for curiosity: What happened to the other 45%? Has the government seized it? Was it lost before, but now they have to make it public? Is it a "shipping and handling cost"?

<comment><USER7> The government seized it. Was mostly in Fiat currencies.

<comment><USER4> What is a Fiat currency?

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well unable to login. After resetting password, it gives an alert popup in Russian and no way to copy that text to translate it. Why can't alert text be copied !

<comment><USER10> Iirc Firefox lets you copy/paste alert text, but it was years ago when I tried that so I'm not 100%.

But you could also use Google Translate on your phone just by taking a picture of your screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > 01/09/17 Update of 02.09.2017

> 01.09.17 21:17 from admin

> planned by September 15, 2017

Hopefully the next update will be "We have discovered ISO8601"</comment>


South American startup Moneero creates bitcoin payment API for Twitter, SMS - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/south-american-startup-moneero-creates-sms-bitcoin-payment-system/

<comment><USER2> I didn't see an API documentation on their site. Or I missed it?</comment>


Gmail promo for Priority Inbox creeps out Chrome users - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9182918/Gmail_promo_for_Priority_Inbox_creeps_out_Chrome_users_

<comment><USER2> Haha, I was actually wondering about this. I assumed it was just a video that started playing in the background, but I wasn't able to find it. Nice to know what it actually was.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is more annoying than when a blocked popup in chrome still fully loads and starts playing a video.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's with Google this past year or so? This is just the latest in a series of poorly executed, or just plain dumbass, rollouts. Is there no adult supervision at the googleplex?

<comment><USER5> I got burned so badly from Google Buzz, I don't rush to try any new product they roll out, and that has stood me in good stead lately. Shame, because they made so much great stuff at first. Frankly, if I could find the person responsible for the Buzz privacy choices, I'd happily beat him senseless.

<comment><USER6> Oh fascinating, you openly admit to wanting to do physical violence to someone who made a change to a service you undertook to use freely and without coercion. Seems immoral to me but your mileage obviously varies.

<comment><USER4> I'm not down with the beating senseless part, but I would say that by making a service "free" they don't get to be sloppy or negligent with privacy. There's still a duty of care, as the lawyers say. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The September that never ends.</comment>