Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Have we always eaten them? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243692 <comment><USER2> One of the things that has always fascinated me is how much of our culture is a modern affectation rather than being some deep pattern of human behavior. You don't even have to go back a few hundred years; there are things Americans perceive as having been that way forever that did not exist at the beginning of the 20th century. Most of our eating and sleeping habits have been shaped by the Industrial Revolution.

Regarding the article, I've experimented with a lot of different eating schedules and structures over the years, largely out of idle curiosity to see if it makes a difference. To be perfectly honest, I can't eat three meals a day. My typical day is eating something very light in the late morning, though I skip it a few days a week, and an early-ish dinner. I've kind of arrived there randomly but it suits me. I don't have time in the middle of the day for a Roman-style big lunch even if I wanted to have one.

A big difference between historical eating patterns and now was the lack of massive quantities of refined carbohydrates and sugars in the diet a couple centuries ago. The insulin response to many foods common in modern diets encourages repeated meals. The fact that my diet is typically quite low in refined carbohydrates probably makes it easier for me to eat only one significant meal per day.

<comment><USER3> At least as far back as we have data (1909) the diet in the US was primarily carbs, in proportions considerably greater than today.

[https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnpp.usd...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnpp.usda.gov%2Fpublications%2Ffoodsupply%2Ffoodsupply1909-2004report.pdf)

The vast majority of humanity has, historically, eaten a diet comprised primarily of grain, potato and yam. Areas which supported such crops could support a lot of humans, while grazing areas had far lower populations.

It's historical nonsense to claim that a diet comprised primarily of refined carbs is some modern invention.

<comment><USER4> Carbs, no. Refined carbs, yes. I'm pretty sure the Romans didn't have HFCS.

<comment><USER3> The normal definition of refining grains includes milling and sifting, both of which are ancient. They extend the shelf life of grains, among other benefits.

You are correct by your narrower (and unconventional) definition. Sugar has only been common for a few hundred years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen more and more research on the benefits of fasting and skipping breakfast. I've actually not eaten breakfast in over 3 years and I have to say, I actually prefer not eating it. It took some time to adapt, but once I did, I actually felt better.

I've found it easier to maintain my weight, actually put on muscle (combined with other dietary changes needed to add muscle) and also increased my concentration and focus.

What do I do? I have a couple big glasses of water, a cup of coffee or two with heavy cream or butter and that is it until lunch. If I'm not trying to put on muscle I generally eat very low carb and that further gives me more focus and concentration.

Basically, my n=1 experience is quite good and I recommend others experiment with it.

<comment><USER6> [quote]I've seen more and more research on the benefits of fasting and skipping breakfast[/quote]

Interestingly, even research into eating habits (or at least the way the media picks up and reports on it) appears to be culturally biased, because where I live (Western Europe), there's an almost unrelenting stream of experts telling me how bad skipping breakfeast is. Supposedly it will make you fat, tired, weak and eventually even sick.

It's pretty annoying. I haven't been eating breakfast for almost 20 years without any perceived negative health effects, but every time I tell someone about it I get this lecture about how bad it is to not eat breakfast. This point of view is purely based on conjecture repeated from something people have heard before, never out of personal experience. When it comes to food & health, people really are like sheep, nobody really knows anything about it, but everyone has on opinion, and almost all these opinions are the same, based on 'common sense' and lore, not on scientific facts.

Only 10 years ago common sense said 5 glasses of milk a day were healthy, or bread and cheese for lunch. 1/5th of your diet should consist of dairy products. Today everybody thinks differently. Now counting calories is all the hype, but slowly research is starting to tell us that not all calories are the same in the sense that the kinds of food that contain them are digested differently.

tl;dr: I always get a little frustrated when people start telling me what is or isn't 'healthy' because most people are basically mindlessly repeating what someone else told them. Eating breakfast 'because it's healthy' is one of these things.

<comment><USER7> > not on scientific facts

But yes - all these guesses _are_ the scientific facts as far as we know them. You can complain about nutritional science being absolutely immature and probably highly corrupt, but it's still the best we have, and people who follow it aren't sheep anymore than I am for believing that there are atoms just because I was told so.

<comment><USER8> If a science is corrupt, it can be worse than useless. Scientific 'authority' is potentially as dangerous as other types of authority, if it isn't based on the scientific method.

Many authors (Nassim Taleb, Michael Pollan) talk about using other measures as heuristics. Pollan says 'would your great-grandmother have recognized it as food?'.

Adopting that one rule beats most modern nutrition advice.

We don't have evidence physics is corrupt. That's why your belief about atoms is reasonable.

<comment><USER3> What evidence do you have that nutrition science is corrupt and not based on the scientific method?

<comment><USER6> >> What evidence do you have that nutrition science is corrupt and not based on the scientific method?

The fact that conclusions resulting from 'nutrition science' often seem to contradict, or are found to be completely wrong every few years should be an indication. Today drinking coffee is bad, tomorrow it reduces your risk of getting cancer. Yesterday nuts were bad and will make you fat, today thay aren't that bad after all because the calories they contain mostly leave your body undigested. At one point in time eating eggs more than twice a week was considered bad for you because of the cholesterol they contain, but according to the latest studies they are a 'superfood', and the cholesterol they contain appears to have no relation to blood cholesterol.

The problem with 'nutrition science' (I have to put it between quotes it because I consider it more like religion than science) is that health effects resulting from diet almost exclusively manifest themselves after many many years. This makes it very hard to reliably measure them, not only because it involves tracking large groups of people over a long period of time, who need to stay on a consistent diet, should not move around to much because otherwise other factors around them could affect their health etc.

Research into nutrition health benefits suffers from the same limitations many other epidemiology research suffers. As it turns out, health is correlated to so many other things it is almost impossible to reliably relate health effects to causes. The difference between epidemiologists and 'nutrition scientists' is that the former group directly acknowledges the limitations of their population studies, while 'facts' about nutrition are usually presented as truth, and nobody seems to care to challenge them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of a similar BBC article, The myth of the eight-hour sleep. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783>

</comment><comment><USER10> Jews have codified three meals a day as part of the celebration of religious days (e.g. the sabbath) since the beginning of their religion. Going to the extreme of staying someone who does not prepare for three meals has no portion in the afterlife. At the same time they were critical of gluttony.

It amazes me how people can selectively present facts to appear intelligent. There was more to the ancient world than just the Romans and Greeks. So even if they didn't eat 3 meals a day I'm pretty sure there were plenty of ancient civilisations that did.

<comment><USER11> Calm down there Hulkomania, this article is very clearly written from the perspective of the British Isles, and the Romans were kinda a big deal there.

Before you start implying people are trying to "seem clever", maybe check that your indignation hasn't blinded you to the patently bloody obvious.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but (a) the Romans were quite a big deal to the Jews as "Judea" was part of the Roman Empire and (b) it's reasonable of the parent to bring up the Jews because it's an interesting counterpoint to using the Romans as representatives of what people did back then.

The original article could have mentioned this but does not.

<comment><USER11> You're missing the point.

This article is about BRITONS, i.e. the inhabitants of the British Isles. It's not using Romans as representatives of what PEOPLE did back then, it's using Romans as representatives of what BRITONS did back then.

Historically the Romans had a huge cultural impact on Britain... whereas ancient Jews had none. So why then should this article randomly mention ancient Jewish traditions?

You're complaining about a complete non-issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> General McChrystal, was a big proponent of a single meal a day. [http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/09/25/mcchrystal-...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/09/25/mcchrystal- s-war.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> After seeing a friend do the one-meal-a-day routine, I'm pretty convinced to try it out myself. He's very healthy, active and alert. He gets sufficient calories and nutrition and he can pretty much eat whatever he wants (within reason) for his one meal. I've heard him explain several times about how he feels his brain actually functions better this way when his body isn't trying to constantly digest food all day long.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well my farmer grand father, born in Europe in 1914 would eat four meals.

First a light breakfast very early, with a soup. Then around 10 a meat-based light meal after some hard work. Then at 13 lunch, and finally a dinner.

<comment><USER16> when was the dinner?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Air: Have we always breathed it? News at 11.

<comment><USER18> Considering that the answer to the article's question is essentially "no," this is a weak putdown.

<comment><USER19> That's the same answer as "have we always breathed air?" - no. For a long time our ancestor breathed water. Going even further back, we had neither gills nor lungs and didn't breathe at all.</comment></comment></comment>


Donation based app? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys!
I have this app [really basic] called "tu-dus" [htttp://tu-dus.com] that helps you with your to-do lists and so on. It's really simple right now and totally free, mainly because it doesn't cost me anything to maintain it and I made it for myself [I use it a lot].
I've seen that in Brazil, it's getting a lot of reviews and people are using it, despite the fact that I've never marketed the app.
There are a lot of ideas that I would like to put into practice to expand the app and make it more "professional", so I was thinking about revamping it a little bit, make it international and so on...
I didn't want to charge for it's use but I would love to see some money as a thanks or something. Maybe I'll enable file uploading and this kind of stuff, and that might cost me some money... You know.
Well, the question is... Is it possible to release this app as a "donationware"? Where people pay what they want as thanks or whatever? Would that work? What do you think?
I can see Wikipedia working like that, but Wikepedia is huge. What about a small app? Really unpretentious... <comment><USER2> You sound like a lot of engineers I know: you devalue your own time/expertise and are not comfortable with charging for it. I strongly suggest that you move past this hangup.

It isn't "pretentious" to sell things to people who want to buy things from you. It also isn't hard -- if you can set up a Paypal account to take donations you can just as easily set up one to take purchases. I recommend e-junkie, they'll automate the recordkeeping and license key delivery for $5 a month.

</comment><comment><USER3> You won't make any money that way. I know a guy who does that - he makes $300 a year. By charging for less useful stuff, I make more than $300 a day.

Just add some small feature like adding todo by email and make a pro version and charge $5. The people who love your app will glady support you. When you spend more than 2 weeks on a feature, put it in the 'pro' package. Take a look at how todoist.com is doing it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a site that's a utility for World of Warcraft players (pugchecker.com). It sees about 2,000 uniques a day, give or take, and I've had a donation button at the bottom for a few months now.

In that time, I've received four donations for a grand total of $45. That's a little more than what I see for one affiliate sale using banner ads on the site.

It can't hurt to ask but I wouldn't expect much in the way of financial returns from donations.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looking at the screencast, it looked very well done and beyond basic. I think you are selling yourself short when you say it's basic and not professional.

However, there are a ton of to-do apps -- many are free. I paid for the one I use because it's an iPhone app (Things). "Remember the Milk" is an example of a to-do app that has web and iPhone integration (and I think charges for both versions).

Off the top of my head, your niche looks to be non-engligh todos (in particular, Portugese). There are a lot of free to-do apps, but maybe yours is popular in Brazil simply because of that edge.

Start charging -- make a free plan that limits the number of to-dos so that people can still try it out and get some value. All current users should probably get the full version for free (for being early adopters) -- or at least of level that is equivalent to what they have now.

</comment><comment><USER6> The site looks good. The screencast ( <http://tu-dus.com/files/screen_pt.swf> ) explains things well even though I did not understand the language.

I have no first hand experience in receiving donations (tried, but failed). I have heard from other people that the 0.01% to 1 % of your visitors will donate depending on your audience and your campaign.

If I were you, I would not expect a business to be sustainable based on donations alone.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the success stories of this business model is probably cyberduck (<http://cyberduck.ch>) I have heard from friends that the guy makes decent money with his "donation"-business model. Though it's more like shareware than actually just placing a donation button on your website.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't believe in the free or donation based model. You should always charge for your web apps, even if it $0.99/month. You should charge.

</comment><comment><USER9> clicky: <http://tu-dus.com></comment>


Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20150802-column.html#page=1 <comment><USER3> So, I can't speak specifically to Qualcomm's case, however there's a weird paradox in Silicon Valley.

There's both an excess of jobs and excess of employees. This is probably true in every industry (every Starbucks is hiring, yet everyone complains how hard it is to find a job), but it's especially true in tech.

The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. Salaries have gotten so high that even the most mediocre developers are demanding six figures. There's been a huge inflation of salaries in tech, and a decrease in craftsmanship and quality. So, companies are getting less done for more money. It's a gold rush, and we're getting to the point where "3 months experience [1]" is the norm.

I've been trying to hire. I'm not worried about high salaries for someone good. However my inbox is full of people who know half a language and want a starting salary of $130k. That's crazy.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/technology/code-academy- as...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/technology/code-academy-as-career- game-changer.html?smid=tw-nytimes)

<comment><USER4> >The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates.

The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it.

Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training.

<comment><USER6> > Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all > too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and > going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money > instead of training.

Yes, once you train a person you need to pay them more. You might feel like they owe you, but unless there is a real understanding between the two of you that you are investing in them and expect to pay them less for some period of time to recoup the cost (eg in the form of a contract you both signed stipulating a minimum term after training, with claw back provisions), this is what you should expect.

Depending on how much it costs you (besides their salary) to train them, it can still be cheaper to hire and train than getting someone experienced, since everyone needs some time before they're really effective and you're paying them at a lower rate while you train them.

There is something to be said for small startups just not being able to support that kind of load, but I feel like once you hit about 20 engineers it's just people being lazy and not wanting to do things any differently, rather than any true constraints.

The fetishization of the 10x developer leads us to ignore the fact that lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired.

<comment><USER7> > lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite > repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired.

Then why the fuck isn't work automated away? We're developers, for God's sake! We develop things!

<comment><USER6> Because automation isn't magic.

The fact that something is repetitive and intellectually unchallenging doesn't mean it is mechanical and doesn't require human involvement and/or judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article makes the persistent assumption that any graduate is the same as any other engineer.

Having worked for a whole bunch of companies over the past few years, one thing is a constant in the tech industry: there is a limitless supply of candidates for any given job, all of which are bad. It is a huge, challenging problem to find the small number of people you want to hire. I'm not sold that "10x developers" really exist, but I know that "0x developers" are plentiful: these candidates aren't just a "poor fit", they are entirely unable to do the job they're applying for. I've seen far too many graduates who are entirely unable to solve the most basic screening questions, and just don't seem able to write code.

In a similar vein, it is entirely reasonable for a company to be simultaneously cutting jobs and hiring, if they are cutting persistent underperformers and trying to hire more promising replacements. (Some legal fiction is necessary to do this in the current regulatory environment)

<comment><USER8> Something I've thought a lot about at my current job is the relative nature of the 10x engineer. Half of the developers on my team consistently require over a week to accomplish tasks that would take me half of a day. That's a 10x difference. Some of these people have several more years of experience than I do. Everyone has over five years of experience.

The very fact that the disparity is accepted and allowed to persist is pretty demotivating. When deadlines slip, its not the stragglers who are asked what happened, its the high performers. It's not the stragglers who are asked to work more hours, because management knows that those hours would be ineffective. What that really translates to is "Gee, being 10x more productive is great, but we're behind, and you're the developer most prepared to fix this problem we have, so we're gonna need 15x."

Are there actually 10x developers who don't resent their 10% counterparts?

<comment><USER9> You're not a 10% programmer, you're a 90% underworked programmer. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> First, I don't know how this even started. Why did tech companies all of a sudden decide there was a shortage of knowledgeable and competent workers? I'm asking because throughout my career as a programmer I've worked with people from all sorts of backgrounds that have not had a traditional CS degree. They have come from fields like math, IT, physics, mechanical engineering, etc. Engineering disciplines but not really computer science.

The kind of work I've seen all those people do has also varied from things like control software for fields of heliostats to frameworks for server orchestrations to search and data mining. So how is it that I've managed to work with so many competent engineers and yet these giant corporations can't figure out how to hire semi-competent engineers to do some of the drudge work that I'm sure they need done? Maybe the problem is not with the workforce and the availability of knowledgeable and competent workers? Maybe the problem is their shitty hiring practices?

<comment><USER11> The tech industry's managers have been whining about this at least since I entered the workforce in the early 80's. I tend to think it's because the rise of the MBA and the consequent unwillingness to invest in people. MBA's want to hire engineers like they buy office furniture. And then manage them like a group of accounts payable clerks. Doesn't work.

Then add in the managements favorite predilection 'downsizing for success' In order to boost profits over the next couple of quarters, can a a few well oiled engineering teams. Then wonder why you don't good house engineering resources for the next big thing.

Frankly what they want, it's not possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a difficult problem to discuss, in large part because not all developers are created equal.

There _is_ a reasonable supply of entry-level and low-skill developers. I refer to them as commodity developers: Developers who have a very basic skill set, who can do only a few specific things, none of them with extreme skill, but some of them reasonably competently. They typically do web front-end work, but sometimes work in Java on server back-ends. Typical pay ranges from $80-$120k, the same as it has been for 10 years or more.

There also _is_ a shortage of high-skill developers. Compensation north of $250k-$500k is becoming _standard_ in some areas for such developers. [1] That pretty much could only happen if there were a shortage, since real wages have remained flat in general since the mid 1970's. [2]

The problem is when companies ask for more H-1B employees, citing the fact that they can't hire developers for their highest skill positions (or claiming that they can't hire mid-skill developers at "market rates", because even the mid-skill tier is asking for more money now), but then import commodity developers.

By importing such workers, it unfairly keeps those developers' wages down by creating an artificial surplus of employees at that level. The idea of an H-1B worker is that they are _not_ supposed to be paid less than the "prevailing standard" for a worker of equivalent skill in the local market [3]. But if by hiring H-1B workers you're holding down the "prevailing standard" in pay, that hardly seems like companies are following the spirit, or even the letter, of the law.

[1] My own compensation was in that range when I took a job working from remote full time, and I know several other developers at top companies whose compensation is well within that range.

[2] [http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480568/1/us-standard-of- liv...](http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480568/1/us-standard-of-living-has- fallen-more-than-50-opinion.html) and many other such charts and reports.

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Employer_attestation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Employer_attestations)

<comment><USER13> > Compensation north of $250k-$500k is becoming _standard_ in some areas for > such developers.

Do you have any more data on this? What skills in which areas are routinely worth north of $250k?

<comment><USER7> > What skills in which areas are routinely worth north of $250k?

Anecdotally, it's not a specific skill, but a talent for solving problems using any tools and skills necessary. The 10x developer is real, and he's not afraid to read a damn textbook or go to the library and study CS papers if that's what it takes to do the job.

<comment><USER14> "go to the library and study CS papers if that's what it takes to do the job"

EXACTLY! I've been knocking them off for years. Most modern problems are variations on older ones. First step is to see if someone solved it already, how, and if I can use it. So, stopping code injection for example, I find that all kinds of hardware from 1960-1980 tagged memory & used CPU in ways that prevented it. Stack overflowing S.P.? Use a reverse stack like MULTICS. Pauseless GC? Put one in memory controller on your FPGA/ASIC like a Scheme machine did. I could go on all day on this stuff.

So much wisdom in relatively, few books and a bunch of papers. I wish someone would figure out a way to collect, organize, and spread them. That way people might stop asking me things like whether OS's can be written in "managed code." Stock reply: "type Niklaus Wirth or Oberon System into Google."

<comment><USER15> As glad as I am to see someone mention all this great old technology, I feel compelled to point out that the GC on the MIT Scheme chip was not pauseless. It was a fairly simple mark-sweep collector.

<comment><USER14> I'm talking about this one (see Storage Management on p17):

[http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab- pubs/AIM-...](http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab- pubs/AIM-514.pdf)

They had to leave it out of the first prototype due to space constraints but describe the approach. They build a second, state machine into storage interface that continuously looks for stuff it can reclaim. The idea was clearly to make it concurrent and use dedicated circuits. An enterprising reader of old wisdom would combine this with any number of parallel/concurrent algorithms in literature to achieve GC w/ predictable, performance impact.

That work was later referenced in a 1976 treatment of the subject that worked out foundational issues for concurrent collection:

[http://repository.tudelft.nl/assets/uuid:8b7d64a2-e9a7-4b04-...](http://repository.tudelft.nl/assets/uuid:8b7d64a2-e9a7-4b04-93fe-1845088e5d58/P_1866_1258.pdf)

Most work in GC from them on focused on software implementations. Did find a hardware implementation in embedded space with some interesting choices:

[http://www.ece.iastate.edu/~morris/papers/IEEE_TMC_03.pdf](http://www.ece.iastate.edu/~morris/papers/IEEE_TMC_03.pdf)

So, the original LISP machines and many later used mark-and-sweep often around or during a heap exhaustion. There were concurrent ones, with most using software. The Steele chip describes a concurrent design w/ straightforward implementation in hardware. That combined with literature gave people more than enough to acceptably solve this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a major flaw in this article. Software developers are not cogs. Just because someone has an engineering degree does not make them just as good as any other developer. Being able to write great software usually comes from passion and practice, not a piece of paper that says "Computer Science BS". Some of the best developers I know didn't even get an engineering degree. Is there a shortage of people with pieces of paper? Maybe not. Is there a shortage of people that love writing software enough to spend most nights and weekends doing it? Yes.

This is based on my experience interviewing candidates for two small tech companies.

<comment><USER17> >Some of the best developers I know didn't even get an engineering degree.

How do you know this is just not confirmation bias on your part. You like to think that degree-less people are somehow vaguely 'better.' You know some developers that don't have a degree. Consequently they must be the best developers you know. I think most would agree that you would need actual double blind research including some way to order developers by ability that made sense. You would also have to have a sufficiently large sample size randomly chosen instead of your biased sample of a few people you know. It stands to reason, though, with no research done that you are just more likely to know more developers without degrees since only 18% of the population have a Bachelors and 7% have a masters.

<comment><USER18> > You like to think that degree-less people are somehow vaguely 'better.'

I don't think that he or she said that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> All arguments aside, there's one fundamental way to answer whether companies' talent shortage complaints are "phony" or not: pay. If there really were a shortage, pay would be rising dramatically. Average engineers would make 200k, 300k... Just like doctors do. But it isn't happening. These BigCos just want more supply so they can pay even less than they do now. Plain and simple.

Edit: Doctors and lawyers make so much because of artificial governors on the supply. They're not absurdly more talented or educated than other people (e.g. engineers), there are simply fewer of them. In the case of doctors, med school is the limiting factor. The time and $ investment is nuts. For lawyers, it's the Bar exam. When there are too many lawyers, the Bar association makes the test harder. When there aren't enough, they make it easier.

This makes me want a standardized programming test so a) talent level could be gagued more accurately than a cursory glance at someone's github account and b) the supply of engineers would be choked off.

<comment><USER20> Pay in the field has indeed risen dramatically in the last decade. Maybe not uniformly or to the level we would like (or in a way we think will last, such as being accompanied by increases in status in contrast to doctors, to expand on your example), but it has notably risen.

<comment><USER21> A pay-trend graph for some of these "established" companies, like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Seagate, IBM, Dell, HP, etc. would be interesting. My guess is pay has indeed been rising, but not as rapidly as the Silicon Valley boom would suggest. Unfortunately I don't think there is a good public data set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always viewed these persistent and ridiculous claims of a tech-industry worker shortage through a lens of class. To a Harvard MBA, that we programmers earn six figures is _prima facie_ evidence of a worker shortage, since there's no way that ugly nerds should be earning that kind of money for typing into a computer.

Programmers are workers, so investors and management should be able to siphon off their productive value the same way they siphon off the productive value of other works. That they can't right now is an aberration, a disease to be cured with massive immigration.

That we're not doctors or lawyers and make decent money is something that simply does not compute for these types.

<comment><USER22> When I was in college, I was doing engineering. Many of my friends got bored and wanted to go MBAs. I almost went that path until I started programming.

Ever since then I went from a commodified drone to feeling like a kid.

It felt like escaping the capitalist matrix. I almost was seen upon as a hippie. I told my dad that "I have no interest in pursing an MBA, I just want to spend me time in a cave with a terminal and a few books"

He was almost shocked by it.

I notice it all over in society these days.

If you read about how tuition fees are rising and students are in debt, people make insane arguments like "well on average a person earns X more over their lifetime by having a degree"

I never noticed how ridiculous these arguments were.

I have been reading a lot on economics lately and karl marx predicted this outcome.

We have in many ways reached the end of capitalism, before capitalism as a system breaks apart. We are trying hard to commodify labour - but the great paradox is if you commodify labour then the free market stops existing !

I can go on and on, but yes - we need to get rid of capitalism and this free market darwinist bullshit and return to a more social and morally right form to organize society.

<comment><USER23> Can you explain more how the free market stops existing if you commodify labour? I don't understand that.

<comment><USER22> Sure !

Karl Marx originally explained the idea quite well.

Wages in a real economy is the real driver for demand. The capitalist yearning to drive down wages and cost as much as they can. That is how the system was designed !

The end result of thus maximum capital accumulation is a Commodification of labour. What does that mean ? It means that once wages are pushed down enough - there is no room for labour to increase demand and thus generate growth ( the thing that drives capitalism ).

Once you commodity labour then the demand side of your market collapses.

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This was what essentially what happened prior to the great depression and what happened ever since 2008.

I know people in silicon valley live in a bubble, but if you go outside you will see that the world is burning.

The reason why tech engineers are being paid 500K is not because of some inherit huge contribution to society but because huge accumulated capital is looking for yield.

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The way historically this inherient end state of capitalism was solved was through war ( it doesn't have to be )

War de-commodifcation labour by massively increasing its demand. It happened during WW-2, vietnam war, iraq war ( after the tech bubble burst )

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One way to solve the european debt crisis for example would be massively start spending. Imagine a massive investment to completely reform europe into green energy. There is however no political will to pursue this.

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The Chinese however understand this very well, their leaders are well versed with karl marx's study on capitalism - unlike in the west where neo-classic liberalism has corrupted the field of economics to such a degree that we cannot even openly talk about marx's analysis.

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For example the Chinese had 0 miles of high speed trains in 2009. Now they have 6000 miles worth of it !

They spend more cement in a year then america did in 100 !

They have more green energy then then both US and europe combined - <USER2> though they had no technological expertise until recently.

The Chinese also are spending a lot on their military but its a small part. They know that it can bankrupt a society.

Their most astounding new initiative is to provide free universal healthcare to 1.4 billion people !

While we in the west cannot even get out act together to solve the greece's debt problem. We are driving up growth by inflating huge tech and asset bubble in hope of driving up demand since the government is completely paralysed to act in a decisive way.

</comment><comment><USER24> This article makes the perennial mistake of assuming all "STEM graduates" are equal. This is flawed in three main ways:

1\. STEM graduates includes many fields where there genuinely is a huge surplus of labor (we don't really need more physicists).

2\. Talent is critical and sadly a large number of CS graduates do not have the talent to be good developers. Many fresh graduates just don't have the skills to cut it as a high-quality professional developer, yet the best ones have six-way auctions going. Companies are absolutely desperate for good developers, with the operative word being _good_. (Don't even get me started on bootcamp graduates.)

3\. The shortage of developers is most acute for senior developers. It takes about 10 years to become a truly senior developer and 10-15 years ago not many people were interested in starting a career in CS (the dot-com bust was still raw). This shortage can only be solved with time or immigration and until then senior developers can command considerable salaries ($250k+ all in).

<comment><USER25> The market doesn't "need" _any_ physicists. Hiring in sciences basically scales with available federal grants for research, which basically scales with the success of liberal politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The IEEE points out regularly that there's no shortage of engineers. Otherwise, salaries would be going up across the board. Whenever some employer complains they can't find engineers, ask how many people they have in off-site training right now.

Companies need to be paying for training that's just conversion from one skill set to whatever skill set the company needs right now. Most programmers who are competent in at least two languages can easily learn a third. A combination of explicit training and someone to answer hard questions is usually sufficient. (There's startup potential there - offer conversion training courses, where people who already know A are taught B. A "hard question" answering service, sort of like StackOverflow but paid, with a service level agreement, and without the clueless closing of questions, could work as a business.)

This industry has forgotten what management is for. Part of the job of management is to organize the division of labor. Not everyone can do everything. It's the job of management to divide up the job so that no one part is too hard. Instead, we see a demand for "full stack developers". That's a confession of incompetent management.

</comment><comment><USER27> > What Tornquist didn't mention was that Qualcomm may then have had more > engineers than it needed: Only a few weeks after her June 2 talk, the San > Diego company announced that it would cut its workforce, of whom two-thirds > are engineers, by 15%, or nearly 5,000 people.

How do we know that 15% isn't mostly coming out of the non-engineering 33%? And they may well still be hiring engineers massively.

</comment><comment><USER28> Until the law is passed that releases all restrictions on visa-workers and simply grants them citizenship or an extremely permissive stay-while-looking- for-a-job situation, increasing the h1-b quota is simply a means to create a reduced-rights cheaper workforce.

It really fills me with disgust to see influential people present this issue as a skills shortage, while hiring workers at reduced wages and burdening them with the threat of deportation.

<comment><USER4> That's the reason behind this too:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill- gates...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-gates- celebrities-support-education-for-computer-programming/)

Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates, Drew Houston, Tony Hsieh and Gabe Newell and Mark Zuckerberg aren't throwing their name and money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face - wages.

<comment><USER29> _" throwing money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face"_

Wow that's a unique level of cynicism even for this generally cynical forum. I'm speechless. So you see all these efforts to raise interest in computer science in younger generation of Americans and all you can think of is how all these new, enthusiastic programmers are going to compete with you?

<comment><USER7> Well, they are, aren't they? Cynicism isn't somehow automatically wrong.

<comment><USER29> Well it's not "wrong" in the sense of being factually incorrect but wrong in the sense of being just pathetic for a professional to be thinking such thoughts. Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students taking interest in your field, and instead of encouraging and teaching them, all you see is a threat to your livelihood... well... the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else, less competitive, to do.

<comment><USER4> >Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students

...then you were looking at something else. That was a group of billionaires advertising their naked greed and self interest.

When _normal_ school-kids take an interest in computer science it doesn't appear in Forbes magazine.

>the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else to do.

Now _that 's_ pathetic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> ... "may be phony"

Oh LOL, isn't this well known? Are people really just now figuring out NOW that this is, and always has been, about lowering expenses for these big companies? I mean, they aren't really even trying to hide this!

"our immigration system has failed to keep pace." The nation's outdated limits and "convoluted green-card process," she said, had left firms like hers "hampered in hiring the talent that they need."" ... "Only a few weeks after her June 2 talk, the San Diego company announced that it would cut its workforce, of whom two-thirds are engineers, by 15%, or nearly 5,000 people"

</comment><comment><USER31> Shortage may be phony?

Ask all the unemployed engineers over fifty if it's phony.

Ask all the women leaving the field after less than five years if it's phony.

Ask developers who want to work remotely if it's phony.

If you don't see companies making simple, easy changes then you can be pretty assure the shortage is phony.

</comment><comment><USER32> The very real issue is the use of H1-B visas to drive down the cost of labor across the board. Its not a coincidence that real wages in the US have declined since 1970 while the percentage of population immigrants represent have tripled from 4.7 to over 14%

<comment><USER33> You're using a real wages figure for the entire workforce, not engineers. Engineering salaries are extremely healthy, while the real minimum wage has also fallen. Unless you have data on inflation adjusted engineering wages, this is a totally misleading/inaccurate argument.

<comment><USER32> Not at all, as the entire work force has felt the effect of immigrants tripling as a percentage of the population, so to will Engineers with the increase of immigrants via H1-B visas

<comment><USER33> Did you read/understand my comment? I didn't say you're abjectly wrong, I just asked for actual data about engineering wages. We know average real wages have slipped, but we also know the real minimum wage has fallen a lot, and also that our GINI coefficient is up.

In the absence of better data, the logical supposition here is that real incomes amongst lower-income employees have fallen more than amongst higher income employees.

Again: Unless you have data on inflation adjusted engineering wages, this is a totally misleading/inaccurate argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is power law distribution of programming skills as in every other field. I am a web developer, I have worked with both established companies and startups from every continent in the world. I was hired recently by a client from USA, whose previous programmer created mess of code base, they were about to go out of business, had they not hired me to fix that up. I was able to fix all critical issues within a week, and was able to start developing new features withing two weeks. Were they not hired me from outside of their geographic area, they would not have survived today.

So, what should you do to be able to hire good developers- 1\. Broaden your horizons, don't limit yourself to a geographic area. World is not limited to Silicon Valley.

2\. Be willing to hire remotely. I myself working remotely from start of my carrier, it is really exciting.

3\. Give freedom to developers, let them think out of the box. 4\. Before hiring developers full time, give them some real work(may be a small contract), this is better than asking them to solve puzzles :)

Feel free to ping me if you have any questions, sfix [at] outlook.com

</comment><comment><USER35> This H1-B problem is not a "silicon valley" problem. Those companies are unfortunately the companies that are probably doing H1-B the way it was designed.

The real issue is the tech industry outside of Silicon Valley providing services to everyday companies. That is truly where the injustice is and where the meat of this article is pointing at.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think the idea that "Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony" seriously misses the point. First, since it usually takes a considerable amount of time to specialize in high skill labor markets (ex. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.) ---- there is a gap in the signal (present vs. future). So, today there may not be enough workers that are familiar with designing chips for wearables (subset of hardware engineers). Then, because of limited supply --- prices go up. Other people see this, and are incentivized to train for the role (takes time, investment, etc.). Then, what usually down the road that causes such layoffs --- the industry changes and there's more labor in that market because of the previous signal. This gap in the signal is a basic feature of such makrets, which makes the tech industry's claim of worker shortage more likely true than not.

</comment><comment><USER37> Another factor is that even though there may be plenty of graduates with STEM degrees, they may not have the exact skills a company wants.

Just about every job posting is looking for someone with very specific knowledge of languages, frameworks, tools, platforms. etc. How many people with a CS degree already know the technologies that your company is using?

By expanding the employee search to the entire world, companies are more able to find someone who has the specific skills they need.

Yes, they are very likely trying to hire H1-B to pay less salary. But they are also hiring H1-B to save money by not having to pay for training. Even companies that work with very obscure proprietary technologies that almost nobody knows seem to insist on hiring people who have experience with that technology rather than hiring an otherwise skilled candidate and letting them learn on the job.

</comment><comment><USER38> Not all tech companies are the same. Google needs engineers with skills that most tech workers don't have. You might have a CS degree from a great school and 15 years experience with J2EE, but you're not experienced with say... reactJS. If Google (or Facebook, or startup that just raised $25M) is looking to hire a team of reactJS devs, then they can very quickly exhaust the supply of locals who have used it. From Google's perspective, there is a shortage.

But some other companies, usually 'IT' more than 'Tech' from my experience... yeah... they can get a bit squirrely. When a company gets newly 'redundant' workers to train the new migrants, they can't really claim that there are no suitable qualified locals.

<comment><USER39> If you want the absolute best for the job, in a very specific skill-set that has only _existed_ for two years, then you'd best be willing to pay considerably, or you're going to have to be willing to train people with the proper fundamental skills in that specific toolset.

A lot of companies are unwilling to do either of those. Offering $110k for a ReactJS developer? Better be willing to hire someone with a good understanding of software development patterns and a solid history of shipping code with the understanding that some on-the-job training will be required.

Won't settle for anything but the best? Then set the salary to somewhere it would pull the level of talent you need. And if you're not willing to do that, then consider how you can get by with the first candidate.

<comment><USER11> If you want the absolute best for the job you'd better be pretty awesome yourself or they likely won't work for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The idea here seems to be that there are vacancies for people that are good at the craft, care about it and are generally skilled. And that a lot of visas today are being taken up by inexpensive foreign labor that may not be accurately described as highly skilled. So, HN, what if the government raised the cap for US educated international students? The average quality of STEM education and the average skill is certianly higher in the US. The issue is that the international students that go through US education have to compete with other foreign workers and often don't end up getting visas even though they are able to fill those skilled position vacancies. Curious to know the pros of cons of such an approach.

</comment><comment><USER41> In this thread there's a lot of complaining about mediocre developers. I'm still finishing my undergrad, and looking to go the PM route, but how do I avoid being the type of developer complained about here?

<comment><USER42> You shouldn't go trying to be a PM, because you've got neither the experience nor the respect to get there. Sorry to be blunt, but this'll save some time.

Instead, focus on being the best engineer you can be, on building and crafting software as well as you can. That will earn you the respect of the people whose respect is worth something, and will give you the insights needed for leading a team properly.

<comment><USER41> >You shouldn't go trying to be a PM, because you've got neither the experience nor the respect to get there. Sorry to be blunt, but this'll save some time.

I get that, the only reason I have my sights set on it is that I'm already working as one for a company. :) I think that I'll best be able to leverage my experience and skills in some sort of technical product or program manager role, but I wanted to be sure I can pass a big 4 technical interview ect in addition to my pm/ business skills.

<comment><USER43> > I'm already working as one for a company. :)

Wow THAT is a touche!

<comment><USER42> Depends on the company. :)

Either way, the desire to hone the technical skills is in the right place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> From the frequent articles I see on HN and the subsequent reactions, would it be fair to say that this is the situation?

There is no shortage of programmers. However, there is a shortage of programmers (of X skill level) willing to work at the salary that a company desires. And that is where outsourcing and H1B comes in. Having a larger pool of candidates (at X skill level) will force the local candidate pool to lower their asking salary. In turn, this will allow companies to keep salaries deflated and profits up.

</comment><comment><USER45> My company has been trying to hire good Ruby and Frontend developers for... well.. a while.

There's no shortage of applicants but the quality...? Eh.

Finding even a Junior level engineer that knows more than "I can use these libraries" rather than "I know the language" is hard in both (but especially in JS).

There's a big pool... but sadly most of it is shallow.

</comment><comment><USER46> It is also true that computer science curriculum doesn't really cover anything but a specific subset of the software development jobs out there. The same may not apply to other STEM fields, but it is certainly true for software.

</comment><comment><USER47> Yes, this is a constant thing in Spain too.

Tech companies whining about worker shortage hit the news several times every year, yet working conditions and salaries never get better.

</comment><comment><USER22> The more I read articles like this the more I hate america.

america wants to be global hegemonic power without paying the price for it.

america only has 5% of the world's population and deserves only 5% of the world's GDP, and should limit itself to absorbing only 5% of world's resource.

American multinationals who also control america's govt want to absorb the best of the world's labour and force wage suppression on its own people.

Guess what - its working so well that they can even ignore to invest in their OWN infrastructure, education and people.

<comment><USER48> I'm not clear how a country can deserve a fixed portion of global GDP, no more, no less. It's not a zero-sum game, and how exactly do you apportion productivity?

And FWIW, in GDP per capita, the US is only #10.

<comment><USER22> 5% +- 1%

I am a strong believer that all people have equal ability, and if all countries were on a equal footing then their GDP size would be more of less reflective of their labour force.

Ofcourse it gets complicated if countries have resources only to their geography.

GDP per capita is a weak measure since america has high inequality, some people in america are as poor and hungry as the worst conditions in africa.

America was built mostly out stealing labour from the rest of the world in a selective way, without taking full advantage of your own labour force.

The unfairness comes when we talk about investment. A lot of counties like India invested heavily on education. What happened to the talent produced by that investment ? They all ran away to US.

Its okay if a small number of people do it, but when a huge portion of the population does it then its not fair to the country involved.

It also allows america to get away with it by not investing in their own education or labour force.

Some countries figured out this game - south korea, china. who force their labour to pay back the investment - is it wrong ? yes.

But given america's hypocrisy they had no other option.

Right now america is loosing its ability to attract talent, since the global financial meltdown in 2008. It used to be a blackhole to world labour and investment (using wallstreet).

But as countries develop american multinationals and the american govt will need to downsize and they are not happy to do it, since it means downsizing its global bullying power.

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If you want to learn more about how america has screwed over humanity.

1) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Global-Minotaur-Economic- Controv...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Global-Minotaur-Economic- Controversies/dp/1780324502)

2) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Oil-Kings-Changed- Balance/dp/143...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Oil-Kings-Changed- Balance/dp/1439155186)

3)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

I have been reading about it and making sure things are historically accurate, not only am I becoming more economically literal - I am also enraged about how horrible america has being, I used to celebrate american culture and now really feel bitter. I have been reading them only for the past 20 days or so, so my initial phase of angry is still not complete.

<comment><USER48> _The unfairness comes when we talk about investment. A lot of counties like India invested heavily on education. What happened to the talent produced by that investment ? They all ran away to US.

_...*

 _It also allows america to get away with it by not investing in their own education or labour force._

One of the two us is missing a part of the picture. I have met many immigrants from India and other countries. Many are sharp. But here's the thing; none of them have capstone degrees from India.

They may have attended high school in India, and _maybe_ undergraduate. But universities in India do not have a good reputation in the United States. So people who want to work in the United States frequently come to get degrees in the United States.

In fact the "problem" as I heard it recently was exactly the other way around. Foreigners come to the United States, spend twelve years getting a BS & PhD on grants, and increasingly elect to return to their home country. In years past, more of those students would stay in the US, but barriers to citizenship are apparently as high or higher than ever.

I am not at the forefront of hiring and international labor politics, but this is what I have seen & heard in the past ~8 years in America.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> One word: training

</comment><comment><USER50> Wow... as a VISA immigrant, who had a VERY hard time getting through the visa process, this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating.

When a company lays off 20,000 people, those are _not_ the same people as the ones coming in on visas. They are probably very low skill engineers. The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled than their american counterparts. America is _winning_ by exercising this brain drain.

>These are designed to serve high-skilled immigrants but often >enable the importing of Indian and Chinese guest workers to >replace an older, more experienced, but more expensive >domestic workforce

Come on. Really? All the young indian and chinese talent I meet is way above average.

<comment><USER51> >this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating.

I'm not sure accusing the other side of holding silly opinions is the best way to start a debate

>The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled than their american counterparts.

This may be your experience, but it hasn't been mine. Sure the ones working at Google are exceptional, but in my experience, companies outside of the top tier are using H-1Bs to recruit indentured servants who are tied to the company under penalty of deportation.

>Come on. Really? All the young indian and chinese talent I meet is way above average.

There are plenty of other anecdotes to refute this. I've worked with (and went to school with) many very talented and exceptional young indian and chinese programmers, but they weren't above average as a category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> "we looked everywhere for someone who'd be willing to work 7 days a week with no overtime at an annual salary that does not keep up with region's cost of living, we really tried, so it must be that there are no workers available."</comment>


White House proposes crowdfunding exemption  - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/08/president-s-american-jobs-act-fueling-innovation-and-entrepreneurship

<comment><USER2> Seems like some very reasonable proposals that have the potential to make a huge impact.

 _support long-term unemployed workers who create their own jobs by starting their own companies_

 _nationwide, interoperable wireless network for public safety_

 _new science labs and Internet-ready classrooms_

 _BusinessUSA within 90 days...one-stop online platform will provide access to information about the full range of government programs and services businesses need to compete globally_

I'm happy to pay my taxes, personally I don't think there is a much better use of my money than improving the lives of the people in this country, or any country for that matter (once my basic needs are met, of course). Putting people to work is just an awesome side effect of improving our infrastructure and schools. If there is wasteful spending in the government, identify it, and get rid of it. There's no need to maintain some religious faith against ever raising taxes for anybody though. I mean look at today's tax rates compared to the early 80s: [http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_individual_rate_histo...](http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_individual_rate_history-20110323.pdf) [PDF]

It will be interesting to see if the Republicans are willing to compromise on increasing revenue, and the Democrats on entitlement programs, in order to meet the goal Obama has set for the deficit reductions, which is what will ultimately determine if The American Jobs Act will come to fruition.

<comment><USER3> _There's no need to maintain some religious faith against ever raising taxes for anybody though. I mean look at today's tax rates compared to the early 80s:_

Instead of focusing on one particular tax rate (marginal individual rates) and ignoring all the others, why not just look at tax revenues?

They've been more or less flat (at 18.1% of GDP) for the past 50 years.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/federal-government-budget- ove...](http://www.businessinsider.com/federal-government-budget- overview-2011-1?op=1)

<comment><USER4> The people arguing that taxes on high earners should not be raised (and should perhaps even be lowered) are mostly not saying "The government's revenues are too high"; they are saying that _those tax rates_ are too high -- that higher upper-band income tax rates are unjust, or will reduce the incentive to work harder, or something of the sort.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me to respond to this by pointing out that upper-band tax rates have been distinctly higher in the past, and that innovation and wealth creation have done just fine when they were.

Incidentally, it seems pretty odd to me to say "more or less flat" and give a number as precise as 18.1% when the actual variations have been from 15% to over 20%. I wouldn't call that "more or less flat" (though I would agree there's no long-term trend, which is an entirely different matter) -- but, regardless of that, I suggest an experiment. Ask someone to plot a graph of something that's "more or less flat at 18.1%", a graph of something that's "more or less flat at 18%", or a graph of something that's "more or less flat, between 15% and 20%". I predict that the first will be much, much flatter than the actual revenue graph; the second will merely be much flatter; and the third might be about right (though probably still too flat; "varying between 15% and 20%" would most likely get you a better result).

In other words, your choice of wording gives a very false impression of how the graph actually behaves.

<comment><USER5> "It seems perfectly reasonable to me to respond to this by pointing out that upper-band tax rates have been distinctly higher in the past, and that innovation and wealth creation have done just fine when they were."

In the olden days the top tax rates were incredibly high (90%), but you didn't actually pay that; you had a ton of deductions to lower you actual paid rate.

Forgetting that argument for a second, was there an opportunity cost that doesn't exist today? With those periods of innovation and wealth creation, did they only happen because we were the "best" location at the time? As in, it didn't matter what the rates were because the US was the best place given the infrastructure you require. Now you can go to many places on the globe and get the same stuff done. Wouldn't that imply that the US has to become more competitive in order to promote growth, and part of that competitiveness (the variables we can manipulate) would be lowering marginal income taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its exciting to watch this proposal start to come to fruition. I worked in the government, and attended an Access to Capital Summit in the Dept of Treasury back in March, where I saw this proposal take bloom.

At the Summit, Jessica Jackley of Profounder and Kiva vocally voiced concern for the Reg A and Reg D restrictions on "accredited investors". Sec Geithner was in the room as well. A month afterwards, the idea had organically permeated other conversations in the White House, and meetings in the OSTP would often bring up the issue. Now it seems its finally made its way into legislative proposal.

Comes to show I think, that even though government is slow, byzantine, and sometimes impossible to access, often all it takes to get something done is to just show up and say something really provocative. Someone may listen!

</comment><comment><USER7> How can you spend "$25 billion in K-12 school infrastructure" and "$1 billion to support NextGen air traffic modernization" "all without adding a dime to the deficit"? I think the programs should go ahead deficit or no, but it does seem like something's being left out.

<comment><USER6> Often its by just shuffling funds from certain programs to another. I believe in this particular case, they'll also use revenue-generating measures like closing tax loopholes to fund the new programs, thereby not adding to the deficit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kudos to KickStarter and the two projects for getting a mention on Whitehouse.gov

</comment><comment><USER9> I wish the president had used this opportunity to support real patent reform. That could've been a huge step toward supporting startups and job creation.

<comment><USER10> Protect IP Act passed today, I believe, which is a real bummer for actual patent reform that will promote innovation, since the system was just shifted from a 'first to invent' to a 'first to file,' supporting patent farming/fencing and litigation. Bummer :(

<comment><USER11> Protect IP didn't pass; it was the America Invents Act (patent reform).

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the correction. I keep mixing the two up :-\

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In a way, I kind of wished they had linked to something a little more relevant with the Kickstarter link. There was some strong talk about transportation infrastructure and technology leading that in the president's speech tonight

I realize it's reaching, but I think maybe using the revolights project page to suggestively highlight transportation/infrastructure is an important theme as a part of the Jobs Bill.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/revolights/revolights- jo...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/revolights/revolights-join-the- revolution?ref=spotlight)

</comment><comment><USER13> If I am interpreting this correctly, they want to deregulate small-scale angel investing up to $1m? So long as the risk is largely distributed?

This sounds like a good plan, at least on the surface!

</comment><comment><USER14> The regulations regarding funding for private firms stems from a time when it was much harder to do qualification. With the changes in technology and the emerging reputation economy, the risks of such investing have diminished. Especially if it's capped, opening up investment to the average person would cause an explosion in innovation and job creation that would offset the harm cause by fraud. I'm extremely excited by this!

</comment><comment><USER15> That is some crazy PR for kickstarter. Wow!

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish they had something for alien founders creating jobs.

<comment><USER14> Take a look at OpenStarts.com

<comment><USER16> sounds interesting, but I think one problem will be the number of shareholders are often limited. You may run into issues like the differences between public/private companies. Did you think of how you might solve that?

<comment><USER14> Thanks for checking it out. The companies are public and there's no limit to the number of shareholders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Trillions for banksters, millions for the entrepreneurs. It's a start I suppose.

<comment><USER18> This is the kind of worthless comment I hoped would never become commonplace on Hacker News. There's no argument here. There's no point. It's just an snide jab with an information content of zero. If you disagree with the article, say _specifically_ why. If you agree, say _specifically_ why.

<comment><USER19> I think wavephorm makes a valid point. The government has been giving huge sums to the banking industry to bail it out, a fact. And a tiny fraction of that to entrepreneurs, also a fact.

If the US had more startup-friendly policies, you could imaging a $100B fund, still 1/40th of the banking industry bailout, that could have a huge positive effect.

Being aware of the disparity is the first step toward correcting it.

<comment><USER20> Giving or lending? I can't find accurate numbers. Much of the money was loaned to companies to weather the crisis. It had to be paid back. How would lending to a bunch of risky startups make things better? The govt should create an environment where it is desirable for entrepreneurs and investors to take risks.

Anyway, whining about the financial crisis and saying they got more is pointless. What is the best way to create a system in which startups can thrive? Guaranteed loans for everyone probably isn't the answer.

<comment><USER21> If I offer to buy something from you worth $1 and give you $100 for it do you consider that a $99 loan?

Yes TARP was paid back by the banks. The bigger problem is the highly overvalued junk assets the government assumed from them though. It's into the trillions and is being downplayed by the media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the outside looking in, I really don't understand why Obama's approval ratings are at an all time low. I wish the UK were as elegantly pragmatic as this.

<comment><USER23> The U.S. economy is stalled because of a wave of government legislative activism (health care, finance, bailouts, energy, labor) unseen here since the New Deal.

<comment><USER24> >The U.S. economy is stalled because of a wave of government legislative activism

Really? I thought it was that dive in consumer demand.</comment></comment></comment>


Dinner for One: New Year's Eve Sketch Beloved in Germany Finally Screened in UK - <AUTHOR> https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/dinner-for-one-music-hall-sketch-beloved-by-millions-of-germans-finally-gets-uk-premiere/ <comment> em-bee discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794397)</comment>


Greece on the breadline: 'potato movement' links shoppers and farmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2012/mar/18/greece-breadline-potato-movement-farmers

<comment><AUTHOR> _So: a town hall announces a sale. Locals sign up for what they want to buy. The town hall then tells Kamenides the quantity required and he and his students call local farmers to see who can supply it. They show up with the requisite amount of produce at the appointed place and time, meet their consumers, and the deal is done._

This is just screaming out for a mobile/web app.</comment>


HN Meetup Tel-Aviv - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
From the many previous posts I have read, it seems like there is a large community of people from Tel Aviv (and the surrounding area) on HN.
So, we decided to "pick up the glove" and organize a HN meetup in TelAviv.
Everyone who are interested in joining please comment / pm-via-profile. (fbgroup): http://bit.ly/hackernews_il <comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://bit.ly/hackernews_il>

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't make it, but perhaps if there is one in summer I may be around. How can I keep track of future meets?

<comment><AUTHOR> This: <http://bit.ly/hackernews_il> is a link to a facebook group. We will post info on this and future meetups there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm in too.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER5> sounds awesome

</comment><comment><USER6> interested

</comment><comment><USER7> +1</comment>


Google Acquires Elastifile - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/inside-google-cloud/expanding-our-enterprise-file-storage-offerings-to-simplify-the-management-and-scaling-of-data <comment><USER2> Looks like Elastifile allows users to "mount" cloud buckets to their servers as NFS. This allows them to run old desktop workflows without the need to migrate these workflows to the cloud.

The upside is that Google Cloud is getting serious about the enterprise because most of them still use desktop applications.

The question is how long this will last since the future is the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER3> It will be interesting to see how well this scales. I have seen AWS EFS fall over under heavy read load (lots of reads for the same TB-scale data). A lot of poor souls using Horovod with no data team use EFS to "distribute" data in data-parallel SGD.

<comment><USER4> EFS generally only falls down when you hit your IOPs limit for the measurement period -have seen this soooo many times. Buy more storage/IOPS, and monitor that puppy.

<comment><USER5> IOPs is one of the main pitfalls of cloud platforms and I'm baffled that neither GCP nor AWS make it easier to detect that you are hitting a limit there.

I've had multiple gigs where I was tasked with solving performance pitfalls, and most of the time it was as simple as upping the IOPS. In one case even though the problem was resolved in the end, the client migrated away from the cloud again because of that bad experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would be interested to see how it compares with AWS EFS under a variety of load.

AWS EFS implements NFS 4.1 which support has support for massive parallel IO.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> I guess this will be the Google Cloud equivalent of Amazon's EFS?

<comment><USER8> There's already GCP Filestore.

<comment><USER9> Filestore is basically a single google-managed instance running NFS. It's much less sophisticated and resilient than EFS, but also can be much faster since it doesn't have the overhead of a distributed system. Don't try running something that touches lots of files like mercurial on EFS, trust me...

The article says Elastifile (which I know nothing about) will become part of filestore.

<comment><USER10> Filestore is also really expensive for what is basically just NFS.

<comment><USER11> Managed services are generally for enterprise, where you're fully costing out support + security mitigation.

Eliminating team coordination tips the balance.

<comment><USER7> EFS is... surprisingly cheap, as long as you don't need heavy sustained IO for more than a few hours at a time. Great for a simple file store and some big data purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE)

</comment><comment><USER13> Elastic is next

</comment><comment><USER14> A disk that can be attached to multiple VM's and support simultaneous reads/writes is a huge addition to GCP.

<comment><USER15> Google Cloud Filestore has existed for some time: [https://cloud.google.com/filestore/](https://cloud.google.com/filestore/)</comment></comment>


Perfect decision: outsourcing to Poland - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sunscrapers.com/post/153773500282/perfect-decision-outsourcing-to-poland <comment><USER2> Please stop propagating such baseless and contentless opinions. It's sad that, apart from geographical location, Poland's IT workforce is graded in such articles by successes in algorithmic quiz competitions that are totally irrelevant to real-world programming.</comment>


Ask HN: Acquisition interest by a competitor, please share your advice - <AUTHOR> I'm a single founder of a B2B products startup that is bootstrapped and profitable. Within two years of existence, it now generates $250K annual revenue, and the satisfaction levels from our customers are surging. We are venturing into the SaaS market with a novelty product across multiple verticals (Supply Chain, Logistics, Health-care, etc.) which would offer better flexibility for customers, both technically and financially. Things are going well, and we are growing organically.
I have recently been approached by a competitor with interest to acquire the startup. Before that, I was contacted by two other interested parties but didn't consider it at all. Although I view this as a hint that we are doing things no too bad, I'm not convinced that acquisition is the way forward for us.
Would you consider acquisition over let's say, external investment or staying small and doing it all by yourself? How can I safeguard my startup in case the acquirer's motivation is only to clear up space and not to help develop it further? <comment><USER2> Having had a couple of companies acquired now, Be cautious in how you deal with any competitor that has interest in acquiring you. Not to say I wouldn't do it, just be careful, more careful the bigger the competitor is.

The fact you are getting interest can be a few likely reasons, the most optimistic is you have hit on a real need and niche and people want to get in on it now. Another, competitors see you gaining some traction and they want to buy the traction not the product. And still yet, it could be they are wanting to kick the tires and learn what you are doing to walk away and repeat what they like. Of course there are other scenarios too, but just some points of interest. As for safeguarding against what a competitor wants to do all you can do is ask and get a feel for their intent, if you get to the point of due diligence you'll pick up on it quickly by paying attention to what they care about most. If they spend 80% of the time on customers and financials it is fairly obvious they are likely going to ditch the product, if it is more balanced than so will be their approach.

Only you can decide what is best and what their intent is since you are directly involved. But I'd always talk to people, if nothing else you can learn something from them as much as they learn from you. Be humble, and don't try and be something you are not (advice I wish I'd listened to on my first sale), e.g. if this is your first time admit it, there is no weakness in that because it will be obvious to everyone anyway. And if you are humble and cautious it will actually give you good will in the transaction if you move forward.

As far as acquired vs investment, it is really a personal decision again. Do what you want to do. I'd think that being acquired even at a decent multiple for a product doing 250k/year run rate you are still going to take home less than a million dollars most likely. Usually that is the first rude awakening to most people, they think they'll get a 10x or higher multiple when in reality most M&A for small business ends in far less than that, and many times winds up in an asset purchase agreement and not a stock purchase to limit liabilities. There are exceptions of course, and if your growth is off the charts then you can argue for a much better deal. But in the end, it has to boil down to what do you want to do? Grow it or sell it and get a nice start on savings?

* edit: word clarification

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the advice. I've witnessed the business growing up on its own because the products are far superior to all others on the market. It's one of those things that happened unexpectedly, and I jumped in when things were on the up already.

I want to see the business thriving and wouldn't consider a buyout for less than a million because that would be foolish. I do, however, need a new direction to accelerate our growth.

<comment><USER2> You're welcome. Personally, I used a couple of people that approached me as validation I was on the right track. I spoke with them about the market and discussed basic terms and ideas but I never intended to sell or partner with them (but wasn't against it either), I just wanted to get a read on the situation and to practice and learn. You might want to try the same, keep an open mind but use it more as a learning opportunity to see. Who knows too, maybe they surprise you. Just keep an eye out for red flags. For example, I have seen founders fall for it (and I almost did too), where you get a verbal or even a LOI for some large amount, pending due diligence of course. But in reality they are intentionally overshooting it just to get you into due diligence so they can learn what they can and then either they back out and site some deficiency in the due diligence or they low ball and say they'll only close at 25% or some crazy low number based on their findings.

This is why if they are quite a bit larger there has to be a breakup fee, something reasonable to cover your expenses, the extra time & money you are spending on accountants, legal etc. Plus it should be just expensive enough that it makes them want to complete the deal at a fair price.

Besides going through this process myself a couple of times, I've also been hired by acquiring firms to perform the due diligence on smaller companies so that has given me some awesome insight that I wish I would've had before.

No matter what you do, good luck and I wish you the best!</comment></comment></comment>


Firefox zero-day was used in attack against Coinbase employees, not its users - ga-vu https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-zero-day-was-used-in-attack-against-coinbase-employees-not-its-users/ <comment> ga-vu Article poses a good question. How did a privately reported zero-day leak from Bugzilla into an attacker's arsenal?

Also, why did it take 2 months to fix an RCE? It's an RCE, not some XSS. I'd imagine this would be a high-priority. No?

<comment><AUTHOR> TFA's first answer is the most likely. If one researcher discovers a vulnerability, another researcher can also discover it. No "leak" required.

I agree that RCE should be a priority!

<comment><USER2> I'm betting on insider access. Microsoft had to lock down internal access to their security bugs when some employees were selling the bugs on the black market.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a source for that? Google's not giving me anything. I'd definitely like to know more - I can't help but wonder how widespread that kind of behavior is.

<comment><USER4> Locking security bugs from wide internal read access has been SOP everywhere I've worked for decades.

<comment><USER5> I think they're asking for a source on the specific claim about Microsoft employees selling bugs on the black market, which is what I would also like to see.

I don't need to be convinced that security bugs should be on a need-to-know basis during the responsible disclosure period, that seems obviously prudent. Anyone not working specifically on security can learn about the details at the same time as the wider public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A good example of why HTML emails need to be downgraded to plain text in financial companies, and links stripped and checked before it's shown.

<comment><USER7> Now if only every company and their mother would stop using third parties for links.

I don't care if you track that I clicked on your link. I care that your link doesn't appear to go to the same site your reply-to email would go.

<comment><USER8> > I care that your link doesn't appear to go to the same site your reply-to > email would go.

From one of the last emails I read this evening: "we would like to inform you that there is a form on our website" [me]: The form is not on your website, only the link to it.

You're right, but it's much more simple to disallow links, people don't really understand the difference on a website, emails are another additional complication.

<comment><USER7> How would you recover accounts if links weren't permitted?

<comment><USER8> I'm late to this, but...

1\. while developing -> send tokens for copy/paste if a user has chosen text- only emails

2\. while administering -> institute the policy of having to ask one of the administrators, if it happens too often you have worse problems in any case

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> its Interesting how cryptocurrencies have provided an economic incentive for exploiting zero days. It's hard to keep an exploit a secret when there's such huge potential payoffs.

The level of sophistication in crypto hacking would terrify me if were a crypto startup employee.

<comment><USER10> Speaking as someone who works for a crypto-startup, it's hardly soothing to know that we are a gigantic target for hackers. Also have the joy of being consistently bombarded with phishing emails pretending to be from other employees.

<comment><USER11> For internal funds use Multi-sig and require all signers to use hardware wallets. As for contracts, formally verify them using KEVM and get audited by a reputable cybersecurity firm like Trail of Bits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am more interested in how Coinbase employees discovered the attack. I am assuming nobody clicked the suspicious link and instead took it to a vm for reversing and analysis. It would have been game over if the exploit was actually executed on a non-sandboxed machine.

<comment><USER13> Notice unusual connections coming from one laptop, then use a second system to click on all the links they clicked the day before?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd love to know how Coinbase discovered the exploit — whether on the employee desktops, due to unusual activity by the employee account on internal Coinbase systems, at the company network level, by a human or robot, etc.

<comment><USER15> [https://twitter.com/SecurityGuyPhil/status/11414663355928698...](https://twitter.com/SecurityGuyPhil/status/1141466335592869888)

<comment><USER14> Thank you! Great that they shared the IOCs and IPs associated with the attack. That thread doesn't really describe how they discovered it though, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They left out one other opportunity: they purchased the 0-days from a broker or company like Zerodium. The cost might be worth it to them if there were high, perceived odds of getting in.

<comment><USER8> Is it really that easy to get access to the exploits of the acquisition program? Throw them a bunch of money and it's yours?

<comment><USER16> I'm not saying it was easy. I have no idea how those programs or the brokers supplying them work. In this hypothetical scenario, they could be regular customers operating within the suppliers' expectations. Alternatively, a broker has some 0-days that the big-name companies aren't buying or not at that price. Potentially already has them. Some other party is willing to buy them at a nice, but reduced, price.

When I did thought experiments on it, one of the big issues for me was how to show buyers the vulnerability without losing money from them stealing it or deal with them claiming that they already had it in a way that minimizes risk to all parties. It was a tricky problem. Folks selling on the side was a potential result in some scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do we know how the exploit would be used? If you are accessing your mail account in the same browser, are you at risk?

</comment><comment><USER18> Serious question, is Chrome considered to be more secure than Firefox by cybersecurity professionals? And if so, why?

</comment><comment><USER19> Why were Coinbase employees allowed to use Mozilla Firefox?

<comment><USER20> A better question would be: why were Coinbase employees allowed to use any browser with javascript enabled and outside of a VM? Qubes OS has been a thing for quite a while.

<comment><USER21> _> why were Coinbase employees allowed to use any browser with javascript enabled_

I don't know, maybe because they need to get work done...? Even traditional banks allow JS.

<comment><USER22> I've worked at a large traditional bank (market cap and enterprise value are both around 100b), they also allowed firefox as well as js, at least for developers (I don't know what it looked like for non developers).

<comment><USER23> Of course, there generally are legal processes to leverage if money is stolen from a bank. The cryptosphere isn't as forgiving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Have they considered rewriting it in Rust?</comment>