Introduction to Moose, Perl's OO system - <AUTHOR> http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose-class/ <comment><USER2> Moose is a killer library for Perl. I really miss roles when working in other languages. I often feel like I'm fighting the language if I can't split out some common program logic into a separate module and compose it in.

I can get by in C++(using multiple inheritance and the CRTP), and Haskell(with typeclasses).

D has some interesting features - like template mixins - that look promising, but I haven't been gutsy enough to use it for any new project.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad I'm not the only one! Explaining why I'd possibly miss anything from the Perl world can sometimes be like pulling teeth.

<comment><USER4> I'm a heavy Rubyist these days, and Moose is one of the very few things I miss from the realm of Perl.

Here's a fun game: the next time someone asks you what technologies you work with or languages you prefer, somehow work in that you like Perl, at least Modern Perl with Moose. Count which one occurs most frequently: people backing away like you've begun frothing at the mouth, people asking if you've ever heard of ANOTHER_TECHNOLOGY (usually Ruby, sometimes Python), and people who assume you're a sysadmin who occasionally scripts something (they'll ask if you've ever used Puppet or Chef).

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/peczenyj/MooseX](https://github.com/peczenyj/MooseX) may be of interest to you then, there was a reddit post about it a few days ago.

To be honest, as a ruby person, I don't really see what benefits it brings to ruby but maybe I am just missing something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The talk is great. For those who do not have the patience, this is the doc of Moose [https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose](https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose)

This is the Moose Cookbook [https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose::Cookbook](https://metacpan.org/pod/Moose::Cookbook)

I think this is pretty much everything you need to start using Moose.

</comment><comment><USER7> I should point out that these are slides from a full day class where people also do a lot of exercises. You can see the whole thing at [https://github.com/moose/intro-to-moose](https://github.com/moose/intro-to- moose)

</comment><comment><USER8> The JavaScript library Joose was inspired by moose.

[http://joose.it](http://joose.it)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Notice that they are all just libraries, dedicated changes in Perl's core: 0.

<comment><USER9> I see that as a feature, honestly; what other languages have an OO system so massively flexible that you can easily build stuff like this on top of it?

Perl's OO system is often derided as "bolted-on", but once you thoroughly understand `bless` and `->`, your imagination is the limit.

<comment><USER10> See the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) and its Meta-Object Protocol (MOP).

<comment><USER11> Moose is back-ported Perl6 objects, which borrows heavily from CLOS and the concepts introduced in the Smalltalk traits paper. This is a bit of a simplification of the history, but the ancestry is present, documented and obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://github.com/hernan604/Tutorial-Joose-JS- PT](https://github.com/hernan604/Tutorial-Joose-JS-PT)

Joose js tutorial in portuguese =)

Its possible to have all the moose power in javascript

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not just use Ruby, all of this is already built in?

<comment><USER14> This was my first thought too. Can anyone elaborate on features Moose has that Ruby doesn't?

<comment><USER3> Did you read the linked article? It's not the prettiest intro I've ever seen, but for perl users its benefits can be seen on [http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose- class...](http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose- class/#slide27) vs [http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose- class...](http://www.houseabsolute.com/presentations/intro-moose- class/#slide28)

Ruby code wouldn't be as verbose as this, but still once you're used to building classes with Moose accessors, types, traits etc. in a mostly declarative manner, going back to hand-rolling checks and exceptions on bad attribute values, not to mention accessor methods and so on definitely feels like a step backwards.

In fact now that I'm doing a lot of Python these days I've come to the horrible realization that it's Moose which has made me yearn for a language with stronger emphasis on typing and correctness than Python can provide!

        Edit: and I don't mean "like java", where it only ever seems to get in your way...
        Moose does useful things and gives you stuff "for free" once you've told it what
        type something should be. And allows you trivially inherit/override type
        declarations, rather than jumping through hoops as in Java.

It's a full about-face compared to the liberation I felt going from C/C++/Java to Ruby back around 2006-2007.

Slowly working through Learn you a Haskell, but doubt I'll get a chance to use Haskell professionally.

<comment><USER14> Do you mean the optional type enforcement? Admittedly it's not built-in to ruby, but it's easy to replicate.. and a lot less verbose:

      # Implementation:

      module TypedAttrs
          def attr_accessor_type name, type
              define_method name do
                  instance_variable_get "@#{name}"
              end
              define_method "#{name}=" do |value|
                  raise ArgumentError unless value.is_a? type
                  instance_variable_set "@#{name}", value
              end
          end
      end

      # Example:

      class Foo
          extend TypedAttrs
          attr_accessor_type :bar, Integer
      end

      a = Foo.new

      a.bar = 5
      p a.bar
      a.bar = "hi" # ArgumentError

<comment><USER3> Sure. And just for attributes, there's also delegation, read-only attributes, builders, lazy init, roles, modifiers which are enforced at construction time (if `required` is true).

Moose isn't hard to implement, it's actually had quite a few alternate implementations even in Perl. Python has enthought's traits package, and I've just been pointed to [https://github.com/frasertweedale/elk](https://github.com/frasertweedale/elk) as well.

BTW it sucks to nit-pick, but the Moose version isn't any more verbose than yours:

        package Foo;
        use Moose;
        has 'bar' => ( isa => 'Integer' );

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great presentation. I have not used Moose much, but I have started using a lighter weight version of it called Moo.

</comment><comment><USER16> ¿it's hard to put a next/previous button?

<comment><USER17> bottom right if you have js enabled...

<comment><USER18> If you have js disabled, you get the whole thing as a normal document with a scrollbar.</comment></comment></comment>


Order in Spontaneous Behavior. Or: Do Fruit Flies Have Free Will? - <AUTHOR> http://brembs.net/spontaneous/ <comment><AUTHOR> This isn't really about the philosophical idea of free-will. The article describes how insects seem to spontaneously develop sophisticated movement patterns, instead of depending on preset rules.</comment>


Under "right-to-try" law, therapy may go for $300K–with no proof it will work - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/under-right-to-try-law-therapy-may-go-for-300k-with-no-proof-it-will-work <comment><USER2> This is of course exactly what everyone with half a clue said would happen.

I remember multiple groups claiming the law limited the ability to make exploitative profits from victims, yet here we have a 300k treatment. It does not cost 300k to create the medication, we know this because the costs for the trials would be even larger than they already are.

The simple fact is saying "limit profit" ignores the immense power of a corporation to invent expenses (how much does IP cost?).

The reality is that this was only ever going to be used to exploit people. The data is not useful for a trial, and because it's not in a trial then failures don't get reported as part of the trial. Suddenly you can make a profit without ever proving it does anything at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like patients willing to spend $300k would probably be either willing to try anything to save themselves or convinced of the efficacy of the drug they're purchasing.

I see no reason to prevent patients willing to spend money to try something from doing so.

<comment><USER4> You don't see the harm in any con man being able to put together a "therapy" that has no chance of working and charge terminally ill people a ton of money, wasting what little time they have, and taking their money from them?

I think the core idea of allowing people to try experimental treatments when they are terminally ill is a good one - but without protection, it's clearly ripe for abuse. Allowing it without any precautions in place is asking for the most vulnerable people to get ripped off in tragic ways.

The attitude of "any chance is better than no chance" has a ring of truth to it, but it also ignores the fact that people can pass off "no chance" as "any chance" very easily. The fact that anyone in that situation is _very_ unlikely to be a rational actor means that they are incredibly vulnerable to cons - they are in a situation with an extreme power imbalance.</comment></comment>


Khrushchyovka - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka <comment><USER2> At the time these were originally being built, sufficient people in the UK were homeless to motivate a significant squatting movement to rise up and reclaim bomb-damaged homes, and the whole issue of working class housing in the UK continued as a festering sore through the sixties, seventies, eighties, the decline of social housing under Thatcher, to the present day where (ironies of ironies) Russian Millionaires, some of whom doubtless grew up in Krushchyovka, displace British working poor from affordable homes to dig mega- basements...

Anyway: I digress. The worse of these units are pretty torrid but the best of them, _at the time built_ were probably better than many working people had in the west. Of course they were rapidly superceded by significantly worse and worse forms, and housing in the UK (the only one I know) got better, mostly.

Recent stories suggest the current owners and occupants are torn between realists who are going to get on, and some people who feel a sense of dislocation and fear being de-housed into significantly worse conditions in private housing for (somebody elses) profit.</comment>


A Standing Ovation for Plaintiffs in Data Breach Cases - <AUTHOR> https://casetext.com/posts/a-standing-ovation-for-plaintiffs-in-data-breach-cases

<comment><AUTHOR> Although a very "legal" issue, whether people have "standing" (i.e., the ability to sue in court) companies for data breaches will end up having ramifications for how seriously companies take security concerns. Really interesting breakdown of some of the recent cases.</comment>


Computers in North Korea run on look-alike Mac software called 'Red Star 3.0' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/what-using-a-computer-in-north-korea-is-like-screenshots <comment><USER2> Red Star 3.0 came out in 2013. There was a demo of it at CCC 2015 congress, at [https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7174-lifting_the_fog_on_red_star...](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7174-lifting_the_fog_on_red_star_os) .

This Business Insider piece is dated 19 Apr 2017.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope s/he ran it in a VM or on disposable hardware. I'd be very leery of any software available for purchase by tourists on North Korea.</comment>


How a Tokyo Earthquake Could Devastate Wall Street & World Economy (1989) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/50839082/michael-lewis-japan-quake-1989

<comment><USER2> I could see how someone in June 1989 could think this. At that point, the Nikkei was around 33,000-- nearly its all-time peak. Japan was a huge bubble and people believed it was going to be the biggest economy in the world soon. Within 18 months, the index had dropped to 23,000. Today it's trading at about 9,000.

</comment><comment><USER3> As devastating as the Japanese earthquakes and tsunami were, it would pale in comparison to an earthquake in California, which has long been overdue.

</comment><comment><USER4> Where's OCR when you need it...

<comment><USER5> To know pain is to use scribd to read this article.</comment></comment>


Welcome to CodeCity - <AUTHOR> http://www.inf.usi.ch/phd/wettel/codecity.html

<comment><USER2> Somebody should give this a web frontend! Let me submit a git or mercurial url, publish an image for it for all to see.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, super cool. My first thought went to back in the day there were all those addons for SimCity like SimCar or SimHelicopter. Where you got to drive/fly around, respectively in your actual SimCity loaded in from a save file.

</comment><comment><USER4> had to:

"Lex: It's a UNIX system! I know this!"

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/quotes)

</comment><comment><USER5> This sounds really cool. The last release was back in 2009. Has it been worked on since then?

<comment><USER6> This is now integrated in Pharo.

[http://pharo.org/](http://pharo.org/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: GWT for Mobile Web Apps? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a developer working on a web application that runs on mobile devices. The idea has been floated by others on my team that we should switch to using GWT.
The biggest argument is that Java has compile-time type checking and better language constructs. Second, the backend is written in Java so there could be some code reuse.
The web app has completely custom UI elements with animation, has to support touch and remote control input, and limited CPU. It's not a vanilla enterprise or CRM application.
Any thoughts? Has anyone out there written a mobile web app using GWT? <comment><USER2> Can you prototype the UI in GWT first, and then see if it's worth the trouble to port your existing app to GWT?

There isn't likely to be that much code reuse with GWT between the client and the server - maybe some validation code.

I'd look at jQuery Mobile before GWT if I wanted to pick a Javascript framework for mobile web apps.

Hope this helps</comment>


Designing Across Senses: A Multimodal Approach to Product Design - <AUTHOR> https://itbook.store/books/9781491954249 <comment><USER2> Every submit for this site is just a daily ad for Amazon affiliate linked books (tag=itbook.store-20).

There is no "store". Even the descriptions are ripped from Amazon's pages.</comment>


Goat Simulator almost half as popular as DayZ and Rust - <AUTHOR> http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=265930q252490q221100

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe not appropriate for HN, but I thought it was interesting that the force of virality is so powerful that a tiny indie game like Goat Simulator could come anywhere close to the extremely popular and profitable DayZ or Rust.

It speaks to the fact that there are still opportunities for indie devs to make a name for themselves by making something interesting. It doesn't have to be a social or puzzle game either.</comment>


Ask HN: How risky is outsourcing design work overseas? - <AUTHOR>

I have a startup (www.couchster.com) approaching its public launch. All our CSS is custom, we're not using a CMS, but as the developer who designed all that CSS is not an expert, there are some design issues that need to be resolved prior to launch. I've been getting quotes from a large number of designers to overhaul the site (adapting it to a responsive design and fixing the various bugs we've run across so far), and the gap between the domestic and foreign options is dramatic. I'm typically loath to use foreign developers, simply out of quality concerns, but given the limited scale of work here and the fact they'll be working off an existing set of code, I'm not sure how great the downside is here. So how about it HN, how risky is it to outsource this kind of project to a foreign developer? <comment><USER2> In my personal experience, it can be very frustrating to try and collaborate on UI design remotely. This is further exacerbated by language barriers.

I have had recent good experience working with a relatively inexpensive design team based in Kansas City (cremalab.com), which was kicked-off in person but completed remotely.

</comment><comment><USER3> The biggest risk is you get something that is not what you want, are out some money and have to delay the launch.

If you are really concerned about it. A css framework can help your developer eliminate a lot of pain points and make a designers job easier down the road. For example twitter bootstrap is really easy to customize the color scheme, uses a grid layout, and does responsive design. If you don't like bootstrap there are a bunch of other frameworks that do the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have been designing for startups (mostly from SF and Europe) from Buenos Aires (Argentina) for over two years now and I think that if you find a good and talented designer / developer you can get first world quality work at a third world price.

Just to make sure, ask the designer as many questions as you can about their design process and their communication process. Also, make them sign a contract.

<comment><USER5> It would cost a lot trying to enforce an international contract. It would provide no more than a false sense of security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> well, risk can depend on where and who your outsourcing like the people I'm hiring for example, they basically not that bad there was this one time that I mistakenly sent the wrong amount as payment instead of the peso for my Filipino workers in the Philippines I sent dollars which was a big difference. but in the end they returned the amount so honestly, if you want their number let me know I think some of them have no jobs yet. they're cheap you can pay $400 lease for 4-5 pages website they also do HTML and CSS coding with great designer. I love their work, check out www.terminaltractorsales.com</comment>


Volitional Control of Vocalizations in Crows - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000375 <comment><USER2> Absolutely escapes me why anyone would think that any birds would not have conscious control over vocalizations. Highlights what is wrong with biology ie the assumption that we are surrounded by mindless organic automatons vice living, thinking creatures.

<comment><USER3> > "However, it is unclear whether songbirds can cognitively control their > vocal output."

The second sentence of the abstract.

These biologists did not seem to assume that 'we are surrounded by mindless organic automatons' at all. They just didn't know and that's why they did some research. They probably started this research _because_ they had some conviction that (at least some) birds do have control.

<comment> michael-ax [https://www.dropbox.com/s/9kr7ptryrbv1ruw/WhiteFeather.mpeg](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9kr7ptryrbv1ruw/WhiteFeather.mpeg)

As simply sitting with one of these birds will quickly convince you that they aren't just smart but have a lot of control, I'm moved to think that they simply explored the inefficiencies of mechanized training approaches.</comment></comment></comment>


America's Startling Short Range Air Defense Gap and How to Close It Fast - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13284/americas-gaping-short-range-air-defense-gap-and-why-it-has-to-be-closed-immediately <comment><USER2> I am personally more concerned with the lack of submarine defenses. The increased use of multi-discipline ships and decrease in training has really caused a growing concern in the naval community.</comment>


Understanding SaaS: Why the Pundits Have It Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://a16z.com/2014/05/13/understanding-saas-valuation-primer/ <comment><USER3> For those interested in getting a good overview of perpetual vs. SaaS business model I highly recommend Dave Kellog's post on the topic. He discusses both the operational and valuation impacts and walks through an example of a hypothetical startup under both models.

kellblog.com/2011/01/26/perpetual-money-vs-perpetual-license-subscription- saas-and-perpetual-business-models

Summary:

1\. Wall Street "sees through" the differences in models and value perpetual and SaaS companies roughly equivalently. SaaS companies are worth 1.8x the revenue multiple of perpetual companies (he walks through the math in the post)

2\. There are many good reasons for perpetual companies to move to SaaS models but valuation isn't one of them

3\. You get roughly twice the EV/R multiple as a SaaS model but building the revenue stream is just about twice as hard. CEOs who have done the transition from perpetual to SaaS say it takes 3 years to makes the transitions and it must be a top 3 company goal for that entire period.

4\. SaaS dampens revenue volatility - for better and for worse. Makes it harder to grow the revenue stream quickly and makes it harder to change once established. (This has an impact on investor psychology and reactions to a bad quarter can be very different in a SaaS model vs. perpetual)

5\. Sales compensation is a tricky issue with SaaS model. Sales people still want dollar compensation similar to a perpetual sale despite ratable revenue profile of SaaS.

6\. The implicit assumption that an annual subscription to use a service should cost less than equivalent perpetual license can be invalid when looking at the product from a customer Total Cost of Ownership viewpoint. (Companies are also outsourcing the capital intensity of having perpetual software)

<comment><USER4> I am also curious on founder stakes in SAAS companies Vs larger enterprise companies. My hunch was that that the customer acquisition cost (before it was paid back in say ~24 Months) are being financed by VCs instead of customers in the previous enterprise license worlds.

Since, 1) VCs are more sophisticated than the typical customers, 2) have more bargaining power - Are founders being diluted more in SAAS companies (Box.net) vs enterprise companies (e.g. Oracle)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great post. Superb introduction to the concepts with helpful illustrations. Adding a few ideas to the mix...

Typically a mature SaaS business has about 50% of its revenue from new customers and 50% from renewals. Early on that number is skewed to growth but if a company doesn't invest in retention early on, the company can go upside down, fast. Watching cohorts each month as their subscription expires is a good way to catch this early. Especially if you're in accrual accounting, because you can't recognize new revenue right away.

The 3x CAC for LTV is a good rule of thumb but does require you think about what LTV is. In the late 90s companies acquired customers using a 5 year LTV assumption which led to some really inflated valuations and lopsided businesses. I am conservative in my own startup right now, no more than 1-2 year LTV assumption for now to preserve cash flow until product market fit and retention are more consistent. one great reason for taking investment is to take some risks in acquisition on LTV, Gambling intelligently that you can improve your retention enough to match.

Early on, the ratio is likely to be even higher until you can drive the inefficiencies out of the spend. And as cost per click goes up in a given market you have to think very, very hard about it. If you're in an enterprise SaaS business, especially in marketing, it's really ugly for top of funnel terms. I've seen some terms at $11-$12 a click.

</comment><comment><USER6> They also did a podcast on this subject. Well worth a listen as well: [https://soundcloud.com/a16z/a16z-podcast-valuing-todays- fast...](https://soundcloud.com/a16z/a16z-podcast-valuing-todays-fastest- growing-software-companies)

<comment><USER7> For those who prefer to read:

I paid for and posted a transcription of that podcast.

[http://blog.chrisbarber.co/a16z-podcast-valuing-todays- fast-...](http://blog.chrisbarber.co/a16z-podcast-valuing-todays-fast-growing- software-companies)

<comment><USER8> Nice. How does the transcription work, and how much does it cost?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a good article and, although many people will know these concepts separately, it's good to have them all stitched together.

For me the question raises how to get through the dip when your cashburn is higher than your revenue because you haven't accurately established your LTV.

The second part of that is knowing how to price your service so that your LTV will exceed your CAC. You can control both parts of the equation (through efficient customer acuqisition) and by modifying the product price. But they don't work separately on each other - an adjustment in one will reflect in the other.

I guess there is no magic answer to that and it depends on your customers, your competitors and whatever precedents you think may be applicable.

</comment><comment><USER10> I heard A8n on a BBC podcast trying to explain that bitcoin was important not because it was a currency, but that it solved the Byzantium Generals problem, and so was a break with most other ways of paying people.

This is another we-thought-about-this-for-a-long-time-to-work-it-out article. Not A8N quality, but close.

Edit: this repeats pretty much the accepted wisdom as MicroConf et al - <USER2> the customers paying yearly _now_ so you can use that cash to go acquire another customer. Nice to see Rob Walling / Jason Cohen are ahead of the curve still :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> Most SaaS pricing pages give you the impression that pre-payment is prefered to month-by-month (hence the discount you get for buying 12 months today). With this in mind, isn't the old enterprise model just the ultimate future payment, and thus the ideal pricing model? You get all the cash immediately and there is zero churn risk.

The SaaS model is great for the customer and bad for the business. Maybe _that 's_ why the market doesn't like it so much.

<comment><USER12> that's too simplistic. there are pros and cons to each. for example, when running a saas you have a decent idea of how much revenue you'll have next month. with a one time sale model you start next month at 0 and only make money if you find new customers. (obviously not taking into account maintenance contracts, but still the point remains)

<comment><USER11> How about if after getting a million dollar check, you just pretend that it represents 100 10k monthly payments with a 0% chance of cancellation. Does that sound more stable/predictable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great article! A few comments:

> _In the perpetual license model, in-house IT staff managed all software > instances and thus could incur the internal costs to switch vendors if they > so chose._

This argument is flawed. There are switching costs no matter if it's SaaS or on-premise. This is why big companies outsource IT - it's easy to get rid of 100x Accenture consultants who specialize in SAP and replace them with 100x Accenture consultants who specialize in SalesForce. The switching costs are normally around process change, change management and training.

> _Budgets are much more decentralized now, because departments often adopt > SaaS technologies and make purchasing decisions independent of the > centralized IT organization. In the past, the tops-down technology sales > model made it very easy for a CIO to unilaterally replace application > vendors._

Which makes them _less_ sticky. Team frustrated using the $150/month PM tool that they chose? Good, they can get rid of it. LTV goes to zero.

> _This is why many SaaS companies today invest aggressively in sales and > marketing when adoption is high, even though it puts pressure on current > profitability._

SAP and Oracle did too at one point. They're milking their ~90% gross margins on support contracts today. BUT, they _still_ spend a shitload on cost of sale. I don't see cost of sale going down[1].

> _As a general rule if LTV is 3X or greater than CAC, that's a good sign that > the business model is working._

The fundamental problem today with SaaS is that I have yet to see to that a scalable and sustainable LTV exists (i.e. "winner take all"). As the OP points out, we can insinuate (not completely prove) a 3x LTV for Workday, but what exactly are they doing that SalesForce hasn't done in the last 15 years? Lastly, if this is a winner-take all situation, then shouldn't we stop talking about SaaS, since "SaaS" = "Workday"? Or perhaps, is this simply pointing out that if you're a SaaS your sole position should be to spend donkey-loads of money on marketing/sales, because you'll just end up getting acquired for your customers anyway?

[1] - [http://www.techdisruptive.com/2012/11/28/how-are-we-going- to...](http://www.techdisruptive.com/2012/11/28/how-are-we-going-to-make- enterprise-cloud-profitable/)

<comment><USER5> these are great questions...I suspect they're looking at erp equivalents with heavy technical integration, not the basic project management app, which have switching costs, but nowhere near the complex, often heavily regulated, issues involved in a multi billion dollar company's data integration situation. Not saying you're wrong, just that in large installs the post is closer to true than not.

As for spending donkey loads of money on marketing, it's really hard to get that model funded today. Investors are wise to it. Not to mention, paid search isn't nearly as cost effective as it was in certain categories. So you're left to grow on only product, SEO, and content, hoping for a viral loop. investors only (should) come in when you can prove that $1 in marketing spend yields $3x in revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just a note: as far as I know only 20.3% of Oracle's revenue came from the sale of new software licenses and hardware while four times that much, or 79.7%, is from annual maintenance fees and services (basically some kind of subscription). It is very dangerous to assume that these big companies are stupid.

<comment><USER15> You could argue that those stats are a reflection of a mature company with the license model. When they were in a similar position to many of these SaaS companies we are discussing, their license fee and customer acquisition cost were enormous. That automatically self-selected their customers to be large enterprises, who they were completely dependent on. The initial license fee is such a large proportion of LTV compared to maintenance fees. With SaaS, companies are banking on scalability, personalization (multitenancy), and less sources of friction. Establishing a successful SaaS company allows them to realistically chase the long-tail of SMB that single-license companies cannot scale to do effectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Part of the distaste is that many of these SaaS stocks are trading with valuations as if they're already at the far end of the J-curve. The market, evidently, agrees with Marc, so I'm not quite sure what he's complaining about.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've seen these LTV / CAC ratios before, but what about when CAC is zero? That is often the case for startups that don't spend any money on sales/marketing...

<comment><USER5> CAC is never zero from an accrual based accounting standpoint. You have marketing software, discounts, staff, etc. that technically count against it.

That said, CAC never remains zero in the long run, unless you're Facebook with huge viral coefficient, and still, it's not zero. If it was zero, you'd be in a massive arbitrage that's likely to be unsustainable. Certainly not in any competitive market.

<comment><USER17> Ok, so you could do

CAC = (quarterly business expenses [like salaries, rent, health insurance]) / number of customers acquired in that quarter

?

<comment><USER8> CAC is the cost _directly_ related to the acquisition of the next customer (ie the variable costs). This is not the fixed costs of running a company (salary, rent, etc). It includes basically anything you spend before you sign up the customer, like answering emails to prospects, implementing new features, fixing bugs found during trials, writing blog posts, etc. Or for high $$ SaaS companies, advertising, phone calls, meetings, proposals, demos, seminars, writing letters, lunch & learns, etc.

If CAC is zero, you are basically saying customers are finding you and signing up on their own, with zero effort from you. This is possible (ie Twitter), but the LTV (life-time value) for these products is usually very low. Usually, the company is expecting a few dollars per year of revenue from each customer from advertising.

<comment><USER5> did my response below not show up, because that's what I just said.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


V3 Telehash Encrypted Mesh Protocol Declared Stable - <AUTHOR> http://telehash.org/

<comment><USER2> Would be cool if such an protocol was included in the Linux kernel. Testing websites would be simpler you would have a p2p network address interface. You could build your own family social network without sharing data to central companies though requires native browser support too.</comment>


Memory Management in Oxischeme - <AUTHOR> http://fitzgeraldnick.com/weblog/60/

<comment><USER2> I'm a bit surprised it's using M&S instead of Cheney's algorithm. If you have precise roots, then Cheney's algorithm is easier to implement, and it often has better performance too.</comment>


How seriously should I interpret requirements for programming jobs? - <AUTHOR> I'm a physics student at Stanford applying for full-time programming jobs. I worry that I don't possess the attributes that many job postings seem to require. For example, Facebook's first new grad job states that I must have 3+ years of solving analytical problems using quantitative approaches and that I must be a 'strong programmer.'
But I don't consider myself a strong programmer. As a young soon-to-be graduate, I have big gaps in my software know-how. I've never worked on large-scale projects. I've never programmed on a team. I've never done unit testing. I've never used version control except a tiny bit of GitHub. I'm not experienced in a UNIX shell. I can't explain how TCP/IP works. And I'm not an expert in any language.
All I have going for me is that I'm smart, I've done well in my programming classes (algorithms, assembly, C, machine learning), I've placed highly in a couple of programming competitions, and I've built a few small projects for fun.
I guess I'm wondering:
(1) If companies like Facebook only want strong programmers with years of problem solving experience, should I just admit they're out of my reach for now and shoot lower?
(2) Or am I taking their job requirements too seriously and disqualifying myself unnecessarily? I've heard the possibly untrue claim that men tend to apply when they meet just 60% of the requirements.
(3) Also, how can I get a better sense of whether I'm a 'strong programmer' or not? I'm surrounded by a non-representative community of programmers, so I'm aware my self-evaluation may be way off.
(4) I thought that starting a software internship might teach me some of the skills I lack, but from looking at Google and other companies, they only accept students who are returning to school in the fall. Are there other opportunities where I could get exposure to working on large projects with large teams? I feel this is my biggest weakness as a candidate.
Thanks for listening to the ignorance and insecurities of a fledgling programmer. I will appreciate any advice you can spare. <comment><USER2> (1) Let me spit some fire. Facebook sucks at a lot of things and excels at some. There is a huge number of companies with development teams 10x smaller than Facebook's and 10x better. You're not shooting low if you're applying to something else, you're shooting high, because as someone who has no experience in team work, source control, testing or any specific language, anything will be aiming high for now.

(2.) Probably yes, but with your skill set you should be Aiming for a junior job, not something with 3+ years experience requirement.

(3.) Get experience and look at your old code in six months, you'll see what level you were on. It's not about "how strong is the force in you", it's about "how much experience and wisdom do you have in real world situations". Just in those first six months, you'll probably encounter a lot of situations your college didn't prep you for.

(4.) Go get a junior job. Join an open source project. Develop something alone and ask people to contribute. It doesn't have to be Google/FB/TW.

<comment><USER3> > It's not about "how strong is the force in you", it's about "how much > experience and wisdom do you have in real world situations".

For someone without a CS degree, building side projects [and sharing them] speaks volumes too. This matters more at startups, small companies, or anywhere hiring is less formulaic.

To OP:

3\. You could try fixing a bug on an open source project of interest to you and see if your PR gets accepted.

Another idea is to work on algorithmic problems in your spare time. Project Euler ([https://projecteuler.net/](https://projecteuler.net/)) is my current favorite site for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep in mind this is free advice:

Just get a job doing something interesting alongside people who are nice, smart, and willing to help you learn. Big organizations have advantages and disadvantages that vary for each individual. The only way to identify them in your case is actual experience. In the abstract it will just be a guess.

Working somewhere that's not Facebook or Google isn't necessarily "shooting lower" except when the target is a job at someplace everybody has heard of...though I am not sure if Walmart Labs would fall in or out of that category, it does really interesting work, which I point out because the world of programming jobs is bigger than what will make it through to young people studying at university. Even at a place like Stanford.

If the goal is _really_ working on large projects within a large team consider working for a defense contractor. That's where the really big projects are likely to be.

Whatever happens, odds are it's going to turn out well.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't let a single requirement that you don't meet deter you from applying -- if you're a 90% match for a company's requirements list, and truly believe you'd be a good fit for the job, chances are you're a better candidate than many other people applying for literally everything that has a particular job title, regardless of their experience. It doesn't hurt to apply. Just make sure you're pursuing other opportunities as well.

Since you're a Stanford student, I'd guess Facebook actually comes to your campus for some recruiting events as well. Check with your career center to find out. Meeting one of their recruiters in person would be a good chance to ask questions about their requirements and how your experience might match.

</comment><comment><USER6> First of all, it depends on who you are applying with. State agencies, state federal contractors, and large enterprise organisations take the requirements list very literally (and may be limited by legal requirements). Having participated in the other end of the process, we literally had to remove applications from consideration by well qualified candidates _in our own organisation_ because they answered "no" to one of the required job items while other candidates that seemed to be lacking even basic written English skills were still left in the initial pool for consideration because they made sure to answer "yes" to all the required items.

Other employers have much more flexibility but may be looking for candidates that have demonstrated experience in professional development as they don't want to waste time bringing them up to speed on "what is a version control system" kind of questions. It can take 3-6 months to bring even an experienced programmer up to speed on how other developers run things in a company. On the plus side, you're unlikely to have learned any bad habits from your previous employer that you would then have to "unlearn".

As most people suggested, you're probably better off spending 6 months to a year at a junior job. And it really has nothing to do with skill levels, but with learning how to work in a dev team, which you can't really pick up on your own. After you've gotten up to speed the first time, you'll probably start to be bored. This is a good sign as it means you're ready to "level up" and find a different job (even if it is in the same company).

</comment><comment><USER7> Do not worry. You have years of problems solving experience. Physics is one of the most challenging majors you can do. The fact that you completed a degree in it and have taken algorithms, assembly, C, and machine learning puts you in a fantastic place. Apply anywhere you are interested in for a new grad position and don't think twice. In fact, you would probably be a perfect fit for the more challenging to get machine learning and data science jobs. Many programmers haven't taken calculus. Don't underestimate yourself. I would probably hire you over most new grads with a CS degree, unless they had a solid portfolio, which in my opinion is the most important thing. Nothing says 'ability to build software' like building software.

</comment><comment><USER8> The best way to judge your experience as a programmer is not by educational level, but more by number of years of experience. If you have been a novice programmer for X number of years conider your true experience in the pro world to factor about X/5\. But mainly just be honest about that number. If you've done 5 on your own, call it 1. But just you should be looking for entry level and you might be able to cut it in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, I once saw a job offer with the requirement "10 Years of experience in NODE.JS" and I'm guessing they are still looking for such a person :)

<comment><USER10> No just a H1B willing to work for half the going rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given your background in physics, why do you want a job programming? Most of your self-evaluation failings seem to be related to the mechanics of programming, coding, and can be learned in an afternoon with the manual. As a physicist, you should be seeing the computer and programs for what they are, tools for exploration.</comment>


How SIEM and Log Management Solutions Will Help You Achive GDPR Compliances? - <AUTHOR> https://securign.com/what-is-a-siem-and-why-do-i-need-it/ <comment><USER2> Dear Securign, your site is a bit lean on details of your product.

Also you misspelled "Summary" and your css/layout is a bit awry.</comment>


Hacker News Leaderboard - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders I just saw this today, the leaders are suffiently out-of-reach. <comment><USER2> This is sort of interesting to look at, but not too reliable: it only shows users whose profiles happen to be swapped in to the in-memory Arc data structures whenever the list is regenerated. So from day to day, depending on post and caching and HN restart activity, different people are included or omitted. For example, at the moment raganwald isn't on the leaderboard, even though he has >40k karma, presumably because he hasn't posted in a bit, so his profile is swapped out of memory. I filed a bug about that but it got a WONTFIX [1].

I ran into that while putting together a profile of prolific HN posters [2]. I put it together a bit at a time over several days, and noticed that people were appearing and disappearing from the list, which seemed odd. I ended up finding a third-party list on Heroku that was more stable day-to-day [3]. However it seems not to be updating any more– the numbers are now a few months old.

[1] [https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/49](https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/49)

[2] [http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html](http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html)

[3] [http://hn-karma-tracker.herokuapp.com/overall](http://hn-karma- tracker.herokuapp.com/overall)

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of those lists middle school boys and girls would make within their social circles. "Cutest Boy" or "Nicest Clothes" ... all pointless when looked upon as an older person, but at the time it was all that mattered.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's interesting to note here is that the points totals have been removed for the top 10. It used to show vast differences between the "leading pack" and the rest... of the order of 20k karma points or so!

I guess the rationale for this change is to stop the silly competition (if there was any) once at the top of the pack. I'm not sure there ever was such a competition, mind you. I was #7 once upon a time and it never affected my posting habits.

<comment><USER5> You can still click on individual usernames to see karma. tptacek has 193,243 and patio11 just crossed 100,000 a week ago.

<comment><USER6> It's sort of helpful to be able to click a profile and see their karma, to get a sense of whether they're, I don't know, invested in the site? But it's not worth the creepiness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Getting rid of scores on the top 10 was a step in the right direction, but ultimately the long-term goal should be to get rid of scores for the top 2000.

Slashdot used to have a thing where your karma would eventually just say something like, "Lots".

</comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, within the top 100 there is a weak positive correlation between the total karma, and the average karma per comment, implying that the people at the top of the leaderboard are actually posting quality content, and not just making up for it with quantity.

The closest power law fit is

      predicted average score = 0.27 * (total score) ^ 0.25

which has a correlation of about 20% with the actual average scores.

<comment><USER8> Either that or people with higher average karma per comment are posting their comments earlier so they get more upvotes. Or HN's comment sorting algorithm is privileging users with higher total karma, so those users have their comments appear above other comments that have the same number of upvotes. Or users with better name recognition are more likely to get upvoted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find this slightly embarrassing. It's also broken. For example, I switched from my old account 6 months ago and it's still in the top 30.

The main reason we haven't done anything about it is that it's not clear what to do. For example, we could make it use a shorter time window than "forever"—but do we really want to gamify karma further? I doubt it.

<comment><USER6> KILL IT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just think what we can do with all those imaginary points.

I'd like see some kind of solution where submissions don't disappear so quicky.

Maybe using tags that become sub-forums of sorts and the front page is just an aggregate.

Like tags for SSL, ddos, security, centos, payment-solutions etc.

Tags are not hard to implement, there could even be a limited set to choose from, that only certain users can add to, if there is any concern about new tag creation abuse.

And then a submission can span multiple tags, it may get buried under one tag but rank better under other tags.

<comment><USER11> _I 'd like see some kind of solution where submissions don't disappear so quicky._

I think it would be great if there was an "old" button next to "new" in the header, in which submissions of the past month (or so) show up, ordered by a score that allows for old stories to be bumped back to the top, like

        points * age * comment rate.

It would probably also help if new comments would be highlighted.

<comment><USER12> [https://news.ycombinator.com/classic](https://news.ycombinator.com/classic)

Not really what you describe, but it's along the lines of "give me an alternative to the frontpage or /new." I don't know precisely how it works. I think it gives more weight to votes from older accounts, but that's just a guess. It does seem to be a slightly higher quality frontpage, but that might just be confirmation bias. After all, if it were truly better, then /classic would be the actual frontpage.

There's also [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) which shows a time- ordered list of all submissions that reach the frontpage each day. I prefer it to HN's frontpage, both because you can scroll back over the past few days and because there aren't that many submissions that reach the front page each day, so it's easy to quickly scroll through a list of all of them to pick out anything of interest.

<comment><USER11> My thought was that the comment rate factor would allow for old stories to be bumped back to the top. Highlighting new comments would allow to continue old threads. I clarified my comment above in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really like the average points tracking in Hacker news.

Its interesting to note that some people got on the leader board via only commenting when their posts were relevant, the avg. 5+ points people and some got on their through just making sure their voice was heard, even if they didn't have anything relevant to say, the people with an avg below 3 points.

I've always treated HN's a bit differently from other message boards in that I only comment when I think I have something relevant to say, which is probably driven from the average point tracking system.

I'm actually surprised at the number of leaders with avg scores under 2. I'm guessing these people treat HN's like a regular message board and just comment on everything. The average of the top 100 seems to be 4.3 so it looks like

<comment><USER14> Like anybody, I have a reflexive tendency to feel pride when a number goes up, but pride in my average-point ranking is tempered by the knowledge that it's a statistic-of-convenience. It's not necessarily there because it's worth tracking or optimizing. It's there because the laziest possible stat, "total points," which tends to scale linearly with tenure and with volume of posts, became boring. So now we also have the second-laziest possible stat, "total points divided by total posts".

I have nothing against the simple stats -- why waste time on complex pseudoscience when basic pseudoscience will do? -- but the risk is that we'll design a stats page by adding numbers one at a time, in laziest-first order, until the screen starts to look cluttered, at which point we'll pick the most promising pattern we've spotted so far and start trying to optimize it. This is a great way to generate Powerpoint slides with lines that move up and to the right, and a lousy way to measure value. The micromanagement of statistical placebos is the occupational hazard of our age, and we should try to push back.

It's easy, too easy, to game my average-points ranking. I should contribute only popular thoughts to popular posts. I should assiduously avoid commenting on anything that's not on the homepage, or replying to people who are not near the top of a thread. I should make sure to comment within the newly-arrived- on-the-home-page time window, which is presumably now measured in milliseconds. I should certainly avoid giving advice to people on Ask HN.

That's no way to live.

<comment><USER6> Hopefully there's no way to live that really depends on HN in any way. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As always, the lawyer wins ;)

(hint: avg 52+)

<comment><USER16> I hope he has another account to post mildly relevant/interesting stuff.

<comment><USER17> My prediction is that he can't write anything uninteresting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any idea on the non-native/native English speaker ratio of that list? US / Rest of the world?

<comment><USER2> I tallied locations ~9 months ago [1]. Of the top 100 posters, I could determine the location of 81. Those broke down as 54 US, 27 non-US. Mostly from English-speaking countries: US/Canada/UK/Australia together accounted for 69/81 (85%).

[1] [http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html](http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> An aside, pg isn't on the leaderboards, and never was, since he was always far ahead on points. But, it looks like tptacek has finally passed him.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg)

<comment><USER20> Actually, pg was on the leaderboard for years. But, yes, his name was eventually removed, and while it was on the leaderboard, it was typically the top username by a very wide margin.

<comment><USER19> I thought the same thing and had to check the wayback machine. He wasn't on the leader boards, at least at that URL.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070302084140/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070302084140/http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20090722153500/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20090722153500/http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

<comment><USER20> Oh, sorry, I was thinking of nickb. :) Thank you for checking the Wayback Machine. I must have been aware of pg's karma totals by looking at his individual profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's the motivation behind posting these? Is there a way to say "these are the kinds of posts that are good for the community" without tacking a number on it?

<comment><USER2> I would guess it correlates highly with number of posts, so I just think of it as a proxy for "highly active long-time users". Another measure could just be postcount. Karma is like a slightly "corrected" postcount that is supposed to boost people who post highly regarded posts, and downrank those who post a lot but mostly junk. But I would guess just raw number of posts is still the main explanatory factor in the ranking (I don't have the data to test this guess, unfortunately).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> is this supposed to be some kind of incentive?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just saw this today, and the "leaders" are far out of my reach...

<comment><USER23> Trivia: It used to be one of the main links at the top of the page about 2+ years ago.

I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50, and so on, and was commenting and posting loads. I guess they didn't like that too much and it disappeared onto the Lists page ;-) I don't post as much now but that's probably a good thing for me.

<comment><USER24> _I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50_

Why? Oh, why? I look at my own HN posting as a personal weakness that does nothing to advance my career, general happiness, or sense of personal development. The really successful people I've known in my life don't get caught up in tussling in Internet forums. They stay focused like a laser on goals that are much more recognizable as "success".

And that reminds me to close my browser and think about what I really want to accomplish today!

<comment><USER23> _Why? Oh, why?_

Because, like Everest, it was there :-)

My time on HN has not been as negative as I infer yours has been though. It benefits me and I enjoy it. That back-handed airy-fairy malarky about what "really successful" people do sounds like a load of preachy cobblers to me though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there a decay function on these points?

<comment><USER26> Not for points but I believe there is for karma.

<comment><USER27> I've kept track of my karma and it only ever drops for downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ew

<comment><USER6> Yep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If given the choice to target users based on GMail data or targeting users based on Facebook data, I would take the former. GMail data would provide you with a much clearer and nuanced profile of someone, even if GMail has only 1/3 - 1/2 the user base. Facebook should do well with consumer brands though.

<comment><USER29> Wrong thread? :)

<comment><USER25> Damn! And no delete.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacking, as performed by an Orangutan - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25456799-2,00.html

<comment><USER2> "The alarm was raised by a member of the public about 11am."

As an electrician, who has installed several security systems... why wasn't the electric fence tied into an alarm system? It's not that hard, farmers even have it installed in case their fence gets knocked down by a falling tree branch. The last thing you want is a herd of cows or horses loose. You'd think the last thing a zoo would want is an escapee oranguatan, but obviously they don't care the few hundred dollars it would cost to secure an exhibit that probably cost over a hundred thousand dollars.

</comment><comment><USER3> Severe proof that the animals are not given enough mental stimulation in a zoo.

<comment><USER4> Yes - my first reaction was "Why don't they give her something interesting to do?".

<comment><USER5> Well, we know that many primates in the zoo are addicted to nicotine. Perhaps the nanny-state zoo administrators forced her to quit cold turkey "for her own good."

I'd McGuyver an escape attempt myself if my boss put an electric fence between me and a pack of smokes.</comment></comment></comment>


Assange Timed WikiLeaks Release of Democratic Emails to Harm Hillary Clinton - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/assange-timed-wikileaks-release-of-democratic-emails-to-harm-hillary-clinton.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0&referer= <comment><USER2> > revelations in the emails that party officials had privately rooted

This does little justice to what actually is said in those emails

I mean I don't get why they talk about him timing it to hurt her, he literally said that the next emails he releases will contain "enough evidence" for the Department of Justice to indict Hillary Clinton. [0]

I guess it gets the most media attention now, albeit limited from mainstream publications. I find it annoying that the most coverage from mainstream American publications have been about the leaks and not the content. More people have opinions on whether the Russians were the source for Wikileaks than about the content of the emails.

[0]: [http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-06-12/assange-on- peston-...](http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-06-12/assange-on-peston-on- sunday-more-clinton-leaks-to-come/)

<comment><USER3> This is the New York Times. They're here for Hillary in the same way the DNC is. _They_ don't care what's in the emails.

I'm sure they don't understand that releasing the DNC emails during the DNC makes perfectly good sense.

<comment><USER4> It's also possible they're "mad" (upset) that they didn't get an exclusive out of it as they did with the Manning cable leaks. So it might be a kind of hissy fit on the NYT's part.

<comment><USER5> Clinton Foundation Donors [1]

$1,000,000-$5,000,000

Carlos Slim

Chairman & CEO of Telmex, largest New York Times shareholder

[http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton- foundati...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundation- donors-include-dozens-of-media-organizations-individuals-207228)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Notice how the NYT dropped the comment feature from their site.

Notice how they've been caught during this cycle fighting Clinton's battles against Sanders.

Notice how there isn't a single direct quote from Assange regarding an intention to "harm hillary"... there are only quotes about how he dislikes her platform.

Nothing talking about the msm collusion with dnc? We all noticed.

So many things to notice here.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nonsense. To harm or get rid of Hillary it should have been timed earlier. Wikileaks clearly needs a lot of time to process such massive leaks. They are doing journalists work after all.

A few months ago there was still a chance to get a non-criminal, not-lying nominee who would have had a chance against Trump. Now it's too late already. The only outcome was Wasserman Schultz being promoted and Trump leading the polls. All this was entirely expected.

<comment><USER8> > The only outcome was Wasserman Schultz being promoted

Schultz wasn't promoted, she was removed from a position of substantive power and moved to one that's basically a zero-responsibility-and-power position traditionally used to recognize people have given notable support to a candidate.

<comment><USER9> What is this Amy Bouzaglo's kitchen?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Putin did it", "Assange wants to harm HRC"... anything to avoid talking about the actual _contents_ of the emails.

<comment><USER11> Is there anything in the emails that hasn't been discussed to death already?

Benghazi is a pretty much settled issue after 8 or so enquiries failed to turn up anything of substance.

I'm guessing that the rest of the stuff is the usual small potatoes politics that just happens because it has to happen.

<comment><USER12> Note that these are not Hillary's private server emails but the internal DNC emails, different leaks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More like Assange timed the WikiLeaks release to provide more information to the voters, which is good.

A well informed voter is a good voter.

<comment><USER14> "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

More information does not necessarily lead to a better vote (where "better" is defined as the vote that the voter would pick were they in possession of _all_ relevant information).

To illustrate, imagine two candidates: candidate A, who looks like a regular politician, and candidate B, who looks like a serial killer. In the absence of any further information, you vote for candidate A.

Now imagine you read an entirely truthful pamphlet detailing guy A's trust fund excesses and other misdemeanors, while helpfully mentioning that guy B volunteers in a homeless shelter in his spare time. You switch your vote to guy B.

But it transpires that guy B occasionally abducts and murders the odd homeless person. He really is a serial killer! So your initial, "uninformed" vote was _correct_ , and moreover correct for the _right reasons_ , despite being strictly better informed after reading the pamphlet.

Trump will certainly have skeletons in his closet too.

<comment><USER15> I have heard a "Trump probably did something equally bad, but we may not know" argument once when discussing Hillary Clinton's involvement in drone assasinations. I immediately pointed out that it is speculation at best, unless backed up by evidence.

<comment><USER10> Trump is pretty open about the bad things he _wants_ to do, though. Although I'm still hoping he's just a loudmouth.

P.S: Not a Killary supporter (just making sure I'm not misunderstood ;-)

<comment><USER15> Indeed; Trump has said on public TV he would "take out" the families of terrorists. But the current administration has already done that, intentionally: [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how- team...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama- justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/)

As a German, I find it very weird that so many americans support politicians who boast about assassinating people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I sometimes think there are more Trump supporters in the Silicon Valley than our leaders who seem to think they represent the entire SV.

This article talks about the shy trump vote. [http://praxis.ink/2016/07/democrats-fear-secret-trump- vote-t...](http://praxis.ink/2016/07/democrats-fear-secret-trump-vote-that- doesnt-show-up-in-polling/)

How much of this shy vote is true in Silicon Valley?

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there any time prior to November that this could have been released that wouldn't have cast a bad light on the DNC and Clinton?

</comment><comment><USER18> If he thinks Hillary is bad, just wait until he releases something bad about Trump when Trump is in power!

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone surprised and/or outraged at this runs a very real risk of playing the useful idiot</comment>


Starcraft on Open Pandora: How the Port Came to Be - <AUTHOR> http://pandoralive.info/?p=3089 <comment><USER2> As a longtime fan of this project, I have to say that I was not at all surprised to hear that Notaz pulled this off, in the way he did. The man is a veritable wizard on the platform (and many others besides) and has continually demonstrated that the open-source mantra really kicks serious ass if you take it seriously. Notaz, I salute you!

The Pandora itself, is an amazing project. Against all kinds of odds .. drunk people in funny hats, a volcano, multiple mutinies and uprisings and public linchings of many key players involved .. somehow EvilDragon and his motley crew are still there. There's still a righteously viable ecosystem around the tiny platforms' little repository .. ([http://repo.openpandora.org/](http://repo.openpandora.org/)) and there is _much_ of value to run on the thing, more to the point.

Starcraft being onboard is a real gem. Fact is, its a bit of a watershed. The OpenPandora has been considered 'dead' for a long time .. but actually this demonstrates more and more the fact that if, indeed, you build it, and put it in the right hands: such things will come to pass.

<comment><USER3> This 'dead' project has been home to some rather nice original works over the last few years.

<comment><AUTHOR> like your glshim, and Compo4All for online scoring leaderboards for emulated games (and native ones as well).

glshim: [https://github.com/lunixbochs/glshim](https://github.com/lunixbochs/glshim)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Server is down... Cached version: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TaAWyk...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TaAWykRcHGcJ:pandoralive.info/%3Fp%3D3089+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

<comment><AUTHOR> Back online for a while already, just FYI.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the story behind the news that made it to the top of HN a couple of weeks back, when Notaz ported Starcraft on ARM architecture (for the Open Pandora) : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372414)</comment>


Show HN: Skeletal Animation System – a WebGL animation blender - <AUTHOR> https://chinedufn.github.io/skeletal-animation-system/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here - happy to hear / answer any questions, criticism and feedback!

<comment><USER2> Can you write a tutorial on mesh deformation and all of the other stuff that goes into skeleton animations?

<comment><USER3> Check out: [http://skinning.org](http://skinning.org)

This course is awesome, from linear blend skinning up through the latest elasticity-inspired models. The videos are locked behind the ACM paywall but the course notes and slides are all online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recognize that 3d model from when I was learning blender. It's carl from the walking dead, from a tutorial by Sebastian Lague. His channel is full of Blender, Unity, and general Game development tutorials. All very detailed and helpful: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ)

</comment><comment><USER5> Really super stuff. I like that you're building a workflow from Blender to the Browser like this. Also that it's threeJS free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah one thing that I'm really hoping to see in the graphics community is a nice selection of standalone pieces that you can combine into your own rendering pipeline.

<comment><USER6> While I think that is admirable goal, I think it is hard.

The reason is that it is hard enough to ensure that changes in one subsystem of Three.JS doesn't break another part and it has a large set of test/examples and its all in one repository.

I think the only scaleable production robust solution is to have a lot of unit tests that ensure integrations work between tools, but then you need to tie these tools together in some fashion for testing purposes. Thus while having lots of separate tools is nice, the likelihood that you can combine them into a robust whole without additional work/testing is exceedingly small unless there is some type of large scale collaboration and testing between these tools.

Right now baseline Three.JS under MrDoob's leadership serves this purpose (collaboration around a robust integration-tested core) for us at ThreeKit.com and Clara.io.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Three.js stuff always impresses me, I've been learning blender for about a month now as a hobby. Thanks for another thing to put on my list to learn from.

<comment><AUTHOR> And thank you for the feedback!

So, it turns out that this demo doesn't use Three.js, but the idea is that, if you wanted, you totally could :)

And I'm a Blender noob as well, this tutorial series on character modeling, texturing, rigging and animation was super useful for me. Has a nice pace and doesn't skip over any details -> [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DiIoWrOlIRw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DiIoWrOlIRw)

<comment><USER6> Three.JS has support for pretty flexible "animation clip" blending via "animation actions" btw... [https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/blob/dev/src/animation](https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/blob/dev/src/animation) And you can export out animation clips from blender.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh awesome and thanks a lot for the link.

I'll definitely need to spend some more time playing with and learning from all of the existing solutions

<comment><USER8> I've used the skeletal animation API (exporting from Blender). It's very cool, but the documentation isn't great (or at least wasn't last time I checked).

Key points:

* if you use the JSON loader, the animation data is in an "animations" array hanging off the geometry object

* you need to create an AnimationMixer and pass the elements of the animations array into its "clipAction" method to register these animations with it

* to animate a mesh, you need to construct a SkinnedMesh rather than a regular Mesh

* you then also need to call the AnimationMixer's "clipAction" method again (for a different purpose this time), giving it the name of the animation and the mesh you want to animate

* every frame, you need to call your AnimationMixer's "update()" method.

(I used this as part of my last couple of Ludum Dare entries - [https://github.com/matt-williams/ld36/](https://github.com/matt- williams/ld36/) and [https://github.com/matt- williams/ld37/.](https://github.com/matt-williams/ld37/.))

Feel free to ask if you hit any problems and I'll try to answer, although I wouldn't call myself an expert on this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a way to turn on non-constant shading?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh interesting:

So the short answer is - not in the demo, but yes in your own code

\---

The demo's model rendering is powered by load-collada-dae ( [https://github.com/chinedufn/load-collada- dae](https://github.com/chinedufn/load-collada-dae) ) which right now has a default shader (what you see in this demo) and very few options to manipulate that default shader (I'm still thinking about the API)

Planning to update load-collada-dae to allow the user to pass in their own shader (with non-constant shading if they so please)

But skeletal-animation-system works completely independently of whatever renderer you're using so you could swap out load-collada-dae with, say, regl or Three.js or your own custom library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can you explain your process of completing this? How did you do this without Three.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> So the process roughly boiled down to:

1\. Figure out what I wanted the input and output to be for the API. Write that down. 2\. Write and implement tests against that desired input and output. So at this point the `skeletal-animation-system` API is ready. Time for the demo

3\. Create the demo. The main pieces of the demo are:

A vertex shader that positions each vertex based on up to four bones that have a certain percentage of influence on that vertex. That shader looks something like this -> [https://github.com/chinedufn/load-collada- dae/blob/master/sr...](https://github.com/chinedufn/load-collada- dae/blob/master/src/shader/generate-vertex-shader.js)

A parser to get the mesh and bone data from a collada file -> [https://github.com/chinedufn/collada-dae- parser](https://github.com/chinedufn/collada-dae-parser)

\---

I don't have much of a write up right now of how this works.. But if you'd like to get a better sense you might look through the demo code. The entry point is here -> [https://github.com/chinedufn/skeletal-animation- system/blob/...](https://github.com/chinedufn/skeletal-animation- system/blob/master/demo/browser.js)

Alternatively you can run the demo locally and play around with it:

```

git clone [https://github.com/chinedufn/skeletal-animation- system](https://github.com/chinedufn/skeletal-animation-system)

cd skeletal-animation-system

npm install

npm run demo

```

Really wish I could point you to something more in depth, sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is dope. Good work!</comment>


Not having a cell phone means that the world has to run on your time - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38646066/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/

<comment><USER2> It's less about having/not having 'foo' and more about letting or not letting 'foo' dominate your life. In the case of cell phones 'foo' is the cellphone as well as all the people trying to contact you through it.

I never answer a call I don't recognize, I check the vmail afterwards. If they don't leave one, oh well guess they didn't need to talk to me that bad.

I often don't anser the phone when someone I know does call, I check the vmaili afterwards. If they don't leave one, oh well guess they didn't need to talk to me that bad. OTHOH if they call again right away I assume it's important and answer. There's a parable "Boy who cried Wolf" applicable to those who abuse this.

(smart)phone is external memory, camera, notebook, calendar, email, gps, some other stuff and a mostly outbound telephone.

It's massively useful, it has an off switch.

<comment><USER3> _It's less about having/not having 'foo' and more about letting or not letting 'foo' dominate your life. In the case of cell phones 'foo' is the cellphone as well as all the people trying to contact you through it._

I couldn't agree more. This problem appears to date back to landline phones, as well. Telemarketers can't interrupt one at dinner if on simply doesn't answer the phone.

Insisting on not having 'foo' at all times states that, at no time, will 'foo' be desireable, and that stretches credibility.

With effectively ubiquitous text messaging, which is asynchronous like email, the whole "operate on your time" argument falls apart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "what about emergencies?" issue comes up quite a bit, I thought I'd share my perspective. Having been in a few actual life or death emergency situations in my personal life and formerly being a police dispatcher, I've been on both ends of this.

You don't need to be immediately reached by phone in these events unless you can actually do something about it. Calling 911 and attending to the emergency trumps calling me at unless I'm close enough to help, i.e. walking the dog, at the neighbor's house, etc. If I have to drive to get there, it's too far; call me after things have stabilized.

If it's a call to break bad news, the last thing you should be doing in the event of tragic news is hopping in a car a driving somewhere while you're an emotional wreck. Racing to the hospital in an attempt to get in "your last words" is dangerous and is not as fulfilling as you might hope. Live in such a way that you're at peace with everyone you care about and last words are not needed.

Also, in my own ability to cope with events, simply receiving news that someone died is the easiest. Being there and witnessing someone die is far harder (or visiting them every day in the hospital until they die...even if you aren't there when it happens), and the hardest for me was performing CPR on someone and the person dying anyways (it helped me to learn later from the autopsy that CPR was never going to help, but it's still traumatic to me in a way that the other events weren't).

In short, real emergencies happen too quickly for a call to non-emergency services to be of any help, worrying about those situations is a waste of your time, and it's possible if you're like me, that actually being there is worse than not being there. Business emergencies are a different beast though.

<comment><USER5> The way I see it, the "what about emergencies?" argument is not so much about someone in an emergency being able to reach you to ask for help or to inform you.

It's a matter of YOU having a phone to make an emergency call to 911 when/if you have the need.

<comment><USER4> Ahh, well I carry a cellphone, but tend not to answer it. Whenever I've had the conversation, it was always about being reached, not making the 911 call.

(Edit: I guess you're personal behavior will probably dictate which conversation you have, reach-ability vs. emergency services).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seriously, what is it with you yanks?

"I used [something most people use] every minute of every day, but I decided to stop using [that something] alltogether and now I feel [free/empowered/at peace/intellectually stimulated/etc]."

What about moderation?

<comment><USER7> The key here isn't that you aren't carrying a cellphone... it's that the people trying to contact you know you aren't carrying a cellphone.

<comment><USER8> You don't have to answer every single call. I carry my phone all the time but I don't answer calls from unknown numbers. A lot of times I don't answer calls from friends either. They know I'll get back to them when I feel like it. Nobody has ever gotten their feelings hurt because of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A common factor of these famous people who do not use a cell phone: they have at least one assistant/secretary.

<comment><USER10> Not at all. In almost all cases, it's a self-maintained illusion that the people that call you cannot wait for a few minutes or hours to hear back from you.

Sure, it might be annoying to someone that they didn't get to talk to you, but rarely does it actually make a difference.

<comment><USER11> Text messaging wastes far less time, and leaves time for more interesting pursuits than trying to quickly, extemporaneously, condense the purpose of your call into the space allotted by voicemail.

Without my Droid, my conversations would consist of a lot more bookkeeping.

<comment><USER12> I prefer to treat text messaging like email, where I don't read it as soon as it is received. In fact, using Google Voice, my text messages ARE emails. People get used to and usually respect the fact that I have more important things to do that constantly reply to their queries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >The only person his habit seems to annoy is his wife. "She wants to do things on the fly. I'm of the mindset that we can avoid that just by planning. I say, 'Katy, I'll be home at 7 or 7:30,' and she says, 'Let's talk about it later.'"

I'm with his wife. Life's too short to script my time. Maybe when I'm his age I'll mellow out a bit, but until then I like texting a friend and grabbing a late-night bite to eat then doing something absurd.

</comment><comment><USER10> Absolutely. I managed to successfully evade cell phone ownership for years and it was dramatically empowering. It also made me develop a pretty strong distaste for our cultural addiction to instant communication.

In fact, it's become at least a small part of my definition of success. I am not a concierge. I do not await phone calls with the longing of a teenager on Friday night. My peace and leisure cannot be disturbed at random. And most importantly, my interactions with the people in my present can not rudely be put on pause for just any reason.

I have never had a call in my life that could not wait a few minutes. If you have many of those, I'd suggest that someone (not necessarily you) needs to revisit some aspect of their infrastructure design.

Sadly I was finally lured into the mobile masses by the prospect of smartphone application development. Though I am at least able to rationalize it with the thought that it's not so much a phone as it is a tiny personal computer that I can distract myself with whenever _I_ want.

<comment><USER13> Like any other development tool, you can leave the smartphone on your desk. No need to carry it around.

<comment><USER14> One could, but I think part of being a good app developer is understanding how people use the platform. Just like Boeing needs pilots, Ford needs drivers, etc.

Imagine trying to develop a web application if you only used a browser on your own development and production website (ie: that you otherwise "left it on your desk")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, what I learned from this article is:

If you are stinking rich or important and have an assistant, you don't need a cell phone because your assistant will have their cellphone and you can take it when you need it or have your assistant call someone.

I'm in shock!

Sorry, Charlie, I plan to keep mine.

If I can't find someplace, I need the maps on my phone or the ability to call someone. I can't just lean over to my driver and say "Take me there."

If my plans change, finding a pay phone is impossible. One time, my car ran out of gas. I was broke and couldn't buy any at the time. I thought it would go 3 more miles. So I started walking home and figured if I saw a payphone I would use it. I didn't want to impose on some store's line to call my wife. Would you believe that after passing 3 gas stations, 4 fast food places, and more along an entire strip, there wasn't a single payphone?

</comment><comment><USER16> >"In India, even the yak herders and rickshaw drivers have cell phones"

It still amazes me as how much improvement the mobile phone has brought to the low income workers in third world countries!

<comment><USER17> 20 percent plus in income for some occupations, such as fishing in some areas. That makes cell service probably the most effective poverty abatement program I can name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I disagree that it necessarily makes the world run on your time.

All it does, is make the default method of communication _asynchronous_ and forces synchronous communication to be scheduled.

It doesn't "make the world run on your time", unless you're still using a phone to interrupt other people with unscheduled synchronous communication.

The responsible way to ditch the interruptions and improve focus is to shift _your own_ communication to asynchronous methods and expectations as well.

I leave my phone on silent (no ring. no vibe.) unless I'm expecting a particular call. I think it's vastly less rude of me to make an unscheduled caller wait until I make time to answer a message than for that caller to have presumptuously attempted to interrupt my day with an unscheduled call or "emergency" email they demand an instant response to.

I have yet to work out a good way for _actual_ emergency notifications to ring through. But until phones provide a good solution to that[1], I'll err on the side of being more productive every single day in exchange for running the risk of being 'out of contact' in the event of an actual emergency.

[1] I've tried setting my default ringer to dead air and setting a custom ringtone for my wife. But that doesn't let me easily flip the ringer back on for when I'm expecting a scheduled call. And I'd still like an email client that will let me set a custom alert rule based on contact. I'd rather not run a second email client to watch an 'emergency' mailbox.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely it doesn't make the world run on your time. Being contactable by mobile if your friends expect to be able to is basic politeness. I mean, if we're waiting for a train and one of our group is late and they call/pick up when we call them, we can make a plan, to wait for the next one or meet somewhere else. If not, I don't think it's reasonable to expect telepathy to work... We're gone.

<comment><USER18> Situations like that are precisely why I prefer an easily-switchable behavior to simply not carrying a phone.

"Meeting up" is precisely the kind of time when I have my phone set to ring.

It's silent during my normal daily routine or when I'm with all the people I planned to be with. (out of respect for _our_ time together)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For years I was conditioned to pick up the phone as soon as it rang. Growing older, I realized this to be the wrong approach. Today, most calls end up in my voicemail.

Lessons learned:

\- Urgency is typically defined in terms of the calling party. In most cases, it dissolves into something that did not warrant my attention in the first place.

\- Interruptions _will_ take away from the task at hand and result in decreased personal productivity.

<comment><USER3> _For years I was conditioned to pick up the phone as soon as it rang._

I'm extremely curious as to how this happened. I doubt I was conditioned, but I never felt the obligation to answer a ringing telephone. Perhaps this was a consequence of being a first-generation immigrant from a country without ubiquitous phones?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Lud must have been here."

This reminds me of an essay by Thomas Pynchon: "Is it OK to be a Luddite." Possibly posted to HN recently.

[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite....](http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html)

Pynchon's point seems to be that the Luddites were not opposed to technology for the reasons we commonly imagine: fear of change, fear of submission to the machine, fear of obsolescence.

Instead, Ned Lud (an historically obscure, possibly fictional character) was a Hero who stood up to and mocked the machinery of a ruling class. Machinery that, incidentally, put many human beings out of work.

Ludditism was more a sideshow act in an evolving campaign of class-warfare. But also a kind of myth.

Cell phones are interesting in this context because they're a double-edged sword. They are both liberating and totalitarian. To give up your cell phone is to avoid the demands of possible higher-ups, but also risk missing timely receipt of profitable information ("The stock market's crashing, sell quick!").

</comment><comment><USER22> Everybody knows I carry a phone but they also know that I don't answer it if I can't or don't want to. I have no problem with letting someone go to voicemail if I can't or don't want to talk on the phone right then... me carrying around a device that allows me to be connected whenever I want doesn't obligate me to actually be connected at any particular point. If they need me urgently, they should leave a second voicemail or, preferably, send me a text.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I stopped carrying my cell phone to theaters because I kept forgetting to put in on vibrate.

I stopped carrying my cell phone to business meetings because I didn't want to be distracted by the vibrating.

I stopped carrying my cell phone to restaurants because I wanted the people I was with to think that no one was more important than them while we were together.

I stopped carrying my cell phone to my mother's because she outranks anyone who could possibly call.

Except for travel, I stopped carrying my cell phone altogether.

I'm not sure I would go the the extreme of no cellphone like some of OP's examples, but I'm getting closer.

Now, the only reason I have a cell phone instead of a land line is for travel and emergencies.

[Aside: I _love_ the idea of a voice mail greeting that asks the caller to email me instead. But I won't do it. It just seems like a rude way to treat someone who bothered to call. I'll keep checking voice mail (sigh).]

<comment><USER17> There are a couple of voicemail transcription services available, or you can use Twilio. I suggest language like "For quickest response, please spell me your email address."

<comment><USER23> Google Voice transcribes voicemail. A bit hit-and-miss sometimes, but decent (and, presumably, getting better with more data).

<comment><USER7> You're being generous... it seems as if their service is worse off now than it was when GrandCentral ran the place.

<comment><USER24> For me it's usually both accurate enough to get the gist of the message, and inaccurate enough for a good laugh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I always have my cell on either silent or vibrate mode. This frees me from unwanted distractions. But there is one slight problem to this whole "free your time" deal: your friends might get annoyed at the delayed response.

But I think they've gotten used to my behavior. Maybe.

</comment><comment> saint-loup This way of thinking is kinda like "who will be the worst jerk, me or the guys trying to contact me?"

</comment><comment><USER26> Until two months ago, I had been cellphone-less for over a year. People around me knew this, and were often bothered by it, but most of them understood that it was my decision and that it didn't seriously impair me at working in the world. I was still very reachable by mail and MSN, as well as my home phone. Knowing that I have absolute choice about when I'm reachable and that people know that I may not be reachable at some times was profoundly gratifying. What bothers me most about my cell phone is that people assume that I'll have it with me at all times, and that I'll pick it up if called. I haven't found a better way to kill this assumption than not having a phone.

</comment><comment><USER27> Way too extreme. You can have a cell phone and still make the world run on your time.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've never had a cellphone of my own. My wife carries a TracFone which we use for a few minutes a month ("I'm running late" kind of calls), and once in a while I borrow it.

It's not a power play. I've just never felt like I needed one. I watch other people's "relationships with their cell phones" and I'm happy to skip it.

Also, people interrupt _having sex_ to answer the phone? What the hell is wrong with you people?

</comment><comment><USER29> I feel naked without my phone

</comment><comment><USER30> The world has to run on your time, unless the world can happily ignore you.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd love to turn my cellphone ringer off, but it's not really practical for a sysadmin.

And once I'm available 24/7 for work, I become available for anyone else that has that number.

<comment><USER3> _And once I'm available 24/7 for work,_

As a sysadmin, this is why I pretty much always insist on an on-call rotation and escalation. Humans can't actually be available 24x7.

It's also not a foregone conclusion any more than a single cellphone has only one number. Google Voice has made call forwarding an inexpensive proposition.

<comment><USER31> The higher you are up the escalation pyramid, the more available you have to be (though you are hopefully bothered less often).

Of course humans can't be "always" available, but there can be a (self- imposed) obligation to be as available as possible. Personally, I turn my phone off in theaters and museums, and at weddings and funerals.

I've considered setting up multiple numbers, but haven't yet.

<comment><USER3> _there can be a (self-imposed) obligation_

Unimpose. That's all there is to the liberation promised by not carrying a cellphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I used to be highly addicted to cell phones in the '90's.

In 2005 I spent a year working overseas. When I got back I just never got around to buying a new phone. I have to say, it has been extremely liberating.

So much so that we went one further - we don't answer our land-line either unless it's someone we know _and_ we don't check voice mail.

I also don't wear a watch and go to sleep/get up whenever my body tells me to rather than stick to a strict schedule.

You can reach me via email, MSN, GoogleTalk, Skype or hey, knock on my door and say hello!

<comment><USER27> I use my cell phone a lot more for GoogleTalk than for calls.

In fact I have a data plan that has no call minutes. If I want to make a call, I can buy a prepaid card or call from other phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This works great if you're in a job where they can afford to not get back to someone immediately. For people in a situation where they're really playing for the breaks (which is most young people trying to get established, and especially entrepreneurs), you can't afford to take more than a few hours to get back to people.

<comment><USER13> Unless you are saving lives (a doctor) or protecting the country (in defense), or maybe a few other edge cases, the perception that you need to get back to a person in a few hours is probably more on your end than on the recipient's.

<comment><USER34> Or need to fix your production servers which have suddenly crashed and every minute of downtime is costing you money and reputation. A category many people on HN probably fall into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I still remember the days before cellular phones. My dad even had one of those early car phones, it had an awesome speaker phone, but used it infrequently. As soon as he got a work cell phone the interruptions came.

I'm no luddite, but that doesn't mean I like cellular phones.

</comment><comment><USER36> I moved to a new country one week ago and I thought that I would have needed a new sim card for my cellphone. To my surprise, after a week I still see no reason for having a cellphone with ne. I feel more free now and I'm not sure I'm going to use a cellphone anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER37> I keep a mobile, I just don't give anyone my number unless I am prepared to have them interrupt me at any time, this list currently includes two people. I have a decoy number that routes straight to voicemail that I can give people if it would be otherwise strange not to give it to them.</comment>


A word of advice for Code Year participants - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mattwaite.com/post/15576694916/a-word-of-advice-for-code-year-participants

<comment><USER2> Good advice built on a great essay.

<http://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/></comment>