Ask HN: What kind of salary should I be looking at? - <AUTHOR>

I'm about to begin the interviewing process again, the first one is lined up for next week and I have no real idea as to what I should be looking at by way of a salary.
Quick background: 21 years old. CS graduate, currently doing a Masters degree. I live in Wales in the UK. Professional experience as a developer since 2009. Co-founder of a successful startup, but my interests and the company's visions have diverged. It's a long story.
Longer background: http://danprince.github.io/
Sadly, most of the work we've done as Astral Dynamics (the startup) has been contract work from the NHS and privately owned companies and we've not been able to showcase it due to NDAs. As a result the site has been neglected. Neither the site nor the public repos in are particularly good representations of the company. It's something we're going to try and work around over the next few weeks, so if you are interested, watch that space.
I'm looking primarily at front-end development with Angular + SASS, as I've spent the last two years leading Angular projects as well as providing comprehensive Angular training for our interns. Ideally though, I don't want to end up in a specialised role, if the project and technology are interesting, then I'll enjoy it. I would love to relocate to another interesting part of the world, providing I could find work there.
Some extra perspective on my current outlook would be highly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time! <comment><USER2> The replies you have gotten so far have been US orientated and vastly overestimate salaries here in the UK. Especially the UK outside of London.

Assuming you are in Cardiff, possibly Newport, a starting salary for a graduate is around £21,000 - £25,000. With your experience however I'd expect that £25,000 - £35,000 isn't impossible if the company wants a strong Angular dev.

My advice is that you should move to the South East of England, if it's feasible, salaries are way higher than the rest of the country.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, I'm in North Wales but the tech scene here leaves much to be desired. My first interview is in London and I'm completely open to the idea of moving elsewhere to work.

What's the differential between the salary for Cardiff/Newport and London?

<comment><USER2> The gap is quite large. Even between Manchester and London it's still large.

I've seen contracts that pay £450/day in London for experienced Rails devs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My strategy is to look in the mirror, and say a number. $60,000. Go up... $80,000. $90,000. $100,000. Until you laugh, then step back down one. Then ask for that. I've never been turned away from a job for asking too much.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm looking for a good JavaScript developer to join our team of 5 in Shoreditch, London. We use JS client-side and server-side and are pretty experimental with our tech. And I'm pretty sure we could offer you a salary you'd be happy with.

Fancy a chat? Send me an email (address in profile).

</comment><comment><USER5> What you should ask for depends on how easy your able to accomplish tasks and bring value with your work with the technology and business skills you provide to the company (How much money you generate or save vs them hiring more people to do what you do for less. Or how smooth and professional your work is compared to your peers.). You should also take into account how much money the company is generating. If your going to go work for a large bank your starting salary can be much higher versus going to work for a small or medium size business that does not have quarterly profits in the multi-millions or more.

Just be careful with the Senior level jobs, I would would not recommend going for them unless you really know the technology inside/out and develop in it with ease.

If your knocking out large applications with ease

Which are you:journeyman, junior,intermediate, senior, expert, master developer?

Regular ranges here in the USA metro areas are among the following:

For your general development:(Generic Java/C#/etc. General Website Design/Development) Journeyman:$50k-$59k Junior:$60k-$79k Intermediate:$80k-$89k Senior:$90k-$180k Expert:$181k-$250k Master:$251k-$1M+

For high demand programming languages/skills(Ruby/PHP/Java/Python/Node.js/large company Java and/or C# high performance optimization on the JVM or .NET Framework or websites and automation) Journeyman:$60k-$69k Junior:$70k-$79k Intermediate:$80k-$89k Senior:$90k-$199k Expert:$200k-$399k Master:$400k-$1M+

For specialized programming languages/skills (GPU/Cuda/OpenGL/ORACLE/C/C++/Cryptology/Game Engine development/Finance/Graphics or Animation software) Journeyman:$90k-$99k Junior:$100k-$119k Intermediate:$120k-$250k Senior:$250k-$400k Expert:$500k-$750k Master:$750k-$2M+

Also note these are for salaried positions, if interviewing for contract positions you would double the amounts since you are also covering the employers share, your own vacation, medical, dental, health, life insurance, savings, and investment income.

Just remember don't sell yourself short and get what you know your worth.

<comment><USER6> Can you define "joureyman" here? I have always understood "junior" to be the entry-level.

<comment><USER5> A Journeyman is the absolute beginner, normally this is an intern (can be contract, or salaried but normally always paid and temp to perm if things work out) or someone you take under your wing to teach them the ropes even though they have no experience in what your teaching them.

Junior developers have normally put in some time with their language of choice and can do some simple tasks but are not yet at that state to where they can do fully functional production grade applications from scratch without some assistance.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Cant Commercial Airplanes Go Faster? (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2012/10/can-we-build-a-more-efficient-airplane-not-really-says-physics/ <comment><USER2> This is in direct contradiction to this article (also posted today) on new developments in tech: [http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/aeroengine- composite...](http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/aeroengine-composites- part-1-the-cmc-invasion)

<comment><USER3> Just because you can't gain efficiency by changing the speed of the plane, with no other changes allowed, doesn't mean you have no options :

1) reduce weight (fuselage, engine, wings, have the passengers diet first, ...) 2) increase engine fuel efficiency, displace more air for fewer hydrocarbons 3) (in the article) reduce drag on surfaces that don't generate lift 4) lower cross section (a longer, thinner tube), of course, still needs structural soundness

The lower cross section would have the additional advantage that it would make the plane fly faster.

So in a way, the article is "wrong". You can make a faster plane, assuming you can solve all the issues that the obvious modifications bring : longer, thinner and lighter fuselage and wings, combined with similar efficiency engines (of course they'd have to have that similar efficiency at higher speeds).

Another way would be to fly (much) higher. But then the cost of climbing high would start to offset the gains from flying faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like the simplified explanation of how much energy to takes to move the air out of the way (v)^3 - I've heard this stated for vehicles before which is why roof racks are so bad for mileage.

Does anyone know of a similarly simple explanation of how much energy a vehicle must use relative to it's weight?

<comment><USER5> The best way to think of simple back-of-the-envelope calculations is this:

To go from point a to point b at a cruising speed of v, you need to speed up to v, maintain v, and brake to a complete stop. Analyze each separately:

1\. Speeding up. Since this takes so little distance (compared to the total length), let's ignore resistance. This speedup takes KE = ½·m·v² of energy to do.

2\. Maintain speed. This means spending energy to resist air friction (drag) and ground friction. Drag is ½·ρ·v²·Cd·A [0]; friction is (at most) μ·m·g. Energy is force × distance, and since the distance at top speed is effectively constant, it's going to be O(m + v²) in this case. [1]

3\. Braking. You can theoretically recover -½·m·v² here, but most of the energy is going to be lost to heat.

So, when you sum these up, the energy it takes to drive a vehicle a certain distance is linear in mass and quadratic in speed.

[0] The drag coefficient, Cd, is really weird. At low speeds, it's actually proportional to 1/v instead of a constant (i.e., drag is linear in velocity, not quadratic).

[1] Yeah, the article says that energy is proportional to v³. It's actually wrong--the power is proportional to v³. Whether or not the total energy is proportional to v³ or v² depends on what you hold constant: if you hold total time constant, it's v³, but if you hold distance, it's v².

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah, nothing like a good old-fashioned brouhaha over angle of attack vs. the Bernoulli principle. This same argument was going on when my Dad was training as a private pilot back in the 60's. Tastes great! Less filling!

Personally, I think they're facets of the same thing, but I don't know anything about it. Beyond that the piece seemed a bit of a mess to me. The content has not aged well. I usually expect Wired to do a better job of conserving the state of what they publish.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well then, how about charging more for faster flights, to account for fuel? I mean, domestic business class isn't that great, but people who pay others people money for it would presumably go for a faster flight.

<comment><USER8> > Well then, how about charging more for faster flights...

They did with limited success. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember how happy I was when I firstly made this consideration myself :) --> as racing cars have a back "aileron" which forces air to push them down (and stick to the road), airplanes have the same thing but inverted, which pushes them up. This becomes exceptionally clear when thinking about how flaps change the shape of the wing.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure if I agree with the conclusion of the article; if the problem is that the effect of drag increases with speed, then the answer here seems to be to decrease drag (perhaps with a more efficient flight profile). Or would that interfere with lift?

</comment><comment><USER11> OK, so the plane shoves air out of the way, and that takes energy. But when the plane passes, air will fill the air tube. Is there any way in theory to recover from that air filling the air tube some of the energy that was expended in making the tube?

</comment><comment><USER12> the article includes the link to the previous HN discussion on this here: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4644712](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4644712)

</comment><comment><USER13> Please fix the title!

Should be something like "Can We Build a More Efficient Airplane? Not Really, Says Physics", not "Why Cant Commercial Airplanes Go Faster?"

</comment><comment><USER14> "Planes fly by throwing air down."

This is wrong. Planes actually fly by stretching air over their wings (creating low pressure) and the higher pressure air below pushes the plane up (to fill in the void) - So planes fly by moving air up.

See Bernoulli Principle ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle))

PS: The reason most commercial jets cruise at ~585mph (or 85% of Mach one) is because of the huge amount of energy required to break the speed of sound.

Edit: I've you're going to downvote, you can at least comment.

<comment><USER15> F=MA still holds for airplanes. If there's no downwards acceleration of air, then there's no force to push the airplane upwards.

The way that this happens comes from a number of effects, from vortexes at the tips of the wings to the angle of attack, but in the end it all comes down to F=MA. And the only thing that can be accelerated by a plane is air. Ergo, air is moving downwards so that the plane will move upwards.

<comment><USER16> It's better to just remember that energy is conserved. Bernoulli's principle is a real thing and will add to the lift a wing generates without contributing to any net motion of the air upward or downward. The work done to compress the air below the wing and expand it above helps keep the plane in the air.

But, as everyone else responding to the parent has pointed out, the forces generated in this way are not nearly enough to keep the plane in the air on their own.

<comment><USER17> The way I understood this, it's impossible to generate lift without creating a net motion of air. Pressure is force per area, so saying that there is a pressure difference between the upper and lower side of the wing means that the air is exerting a force on the wing. By Newton's third law, that also means that the wing is exerting a force on the air, which has to move.

I guess you can also see it from conservation of momentum. Gravity acts on the plane, so each second there is a certain amount of downwards momentum added to the system. But the plane is not in fact moving downwards, so the all the downwards momentum has to end up in the air, so it has to move downwards. The net "lift" force is equal to the rate at which momentum is added to air.

If I understand it correctly, you can calculate the lift on the wing either in terms of the pressure on the two sides, or in terms of the downwards acceleration of air--it should be two equivalent views giving the same result. Bernoulli's principle gives a way to calculate the pressures if you only know the velocity of the air (this is a typical situation in a wind tunnel, where you make movies of moving smoke puffs), but it's not a separate effect from the air motion.

<comment><USER16> Unless I'm mistaken, ori_b is asserting that you can't generate lift without sending air off in another direction (i.e. downwash), and this is false. Again, most lift _is_ generated this way - my posts here seem to be mistaken for arguments that Bernoulli force contributes significantly to the lift. It does not. However, the work done to reconfigure the air surrounding the wing by the Bernoulli principle will contribute to the lift, and while it does result in moving air around (not necessarily down though, actually), it does not impart any net motion to the air after the wing has passed.

<comment><USER17> Yes, both ori_b and I are asserting that you can't generate lift without sending air off in another direction. If you don't impart a net motion to the air, then by conservation of momentum you also can't generate a net lift.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Promiscuous title #1: Vice president - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1921-promiscuous-title-1-vice-president <comment><USER2> The trend of making businesses feel way more important than they really are doesn't stop at job descriptions. It touches everything from marketing documentation, to product titles, to physical buildings, to new actual words.

I feel if business didn't spend so much time puffing their chest and get lost in overhead, they'd get far more done. I never understood the business culture, and I guess I never will.

On one hand, this all seems inane, on the other it might be like dating. Some people might complain that human dating ritual is silly and we should just be frank with each other and eliminate all the chasing. However, the superfluous elements of human interaction exist because it really does make sense in an indirect way. (Human feelings aren't binary).</comment>


Billionaire Blowups of 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/106352/Billionaire-Blowups-of-2008

<comment><USER2> 'Bjorgflur Gudmundsson

March net worth: $1.1 billion Current net worth: zero'

WOOW! I don't believe this.

<comment><USER3> "government seizure of Iceland's second largest bank wiped out the $1.1 billion fortune of Gudmundsson, the bank's chairman and biggest shareholder"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=414491>

<comment><USER4> So that's why you diversify :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With $1.0 billion you could invest $10K into 100,000 startups or $100K in 10,000 startups. Surely you could change the world, leave a legacy, and simultaneously generate a profit on that kind of investment, no?

Why doesn't somebody do this?

<comment><USER6> $1.0 in "worth" does not mean $1B in cash. Also, the administration of 10,000 separate investment? How would you mentor the founders? Staff the boards? Would it be worth your time or your investment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> why is a guy who lost .6 billion, in a higher spot than a guy who lost 1.1 billion?

<comment><USER8> cause it's in alphabetical order

<comment><USER7> oh yeah. Thanks</comment></comment></comment>


TextBlob – Finding Sentiments in Text - <AUTHOR> https://www.openshift.com/blogs/day-9-textblob-finding-sentiments-in-text

<comment><USER2> TextBlob is nice, but for sentiment analysis it basically wraps Pattern ([https://github.com/clips/pattern](https://github.com/clips/pattern)).

Pattern uses a whitelist heuristic approach that's got poor precision and is no longer state of the art.

Not that there's anything wrong with this code, but anyone who is looking to use sentiment analysis in their work should consider researching more up-to- date alternatives which don't necessary have Pythonic alternatives just yet.

<comment><USER3> It's not state of the art, but I just ran this guy's code with about 100 samples and it was spot on. It should be noted that the "state of the art" in sentiment analysis is actually pretty far advanced. For basic polarity testing, this works fine.

<comment><USER4> Would you sell the results?

That's basically my measure for real world vs academic.

<comment><USER3> As a library, I'd have no problem selling a service that used this, with the idea that for an MVP we could launch and then switch out with a more robust library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know of any email clients that will bump potentially negative or angry emails to the top of my inbox?

<comment><USER6> We are working on a tool which will flag mails that might require urgent attention. You can mail me if you are interested in discussing further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> An API like that is good for an introduction, but I think you'll get better results with a machine learning approach (my pet project [http://www.sentimentview.com](http://www.sentimentview.com)). When I was running tests with a baseline algorithm (just matching against positive and negative keywords), I saw results from 62% accuracy with the baseline to 80% with an SVM [http://blog.sentimentview.com/post/59031004797/learning- curv...](http://blog.sentimentview.com/post/59031004797/learning-curves-from- twitter-sentiment-analysis).

<comment><USER8> I'm looking at your examples[1], and I'm seeing a _lot_ of analysis that seems pretty wrong to me.

To be fair, I haven't counted and done the maths (and I understand that human sentiment analysis often doesn't agree with other humans), but.. well, look at these examples:

Positive: Thank you Urbana voter for pointing out what we knew. Cheat lie steal the election. We will NEVER become an Islam nation as Obama wants.

Positive: Fun fact: @kbzeese got 1.5% of the vote in 2006 US Senate General Election, but thinks he knows what the people want #headdesk

Negative: What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people.

Does your model give confidence? It looks to me like you are making it bi- modal, but if you had a "neither positive nor negative" category it might fix some of the issues?

Eg, this is rates as positive, but I'd rate it as neither positive nor negative: "Should ballot papers in Northern Ireland include photographs of the candidates standing? Make your views known. [http://t.co/NySCHsmecE"](http://t.co/NySCHsmecE")

Of course tweets are a pretty difficult thing to run sentiment analysis on: those random hashtags break a lot of machine learning models, whilst a human can read them and realise something like "#headdesk" is probably bad (although in that case the phrase "thinks he knows" is something that a model could probably use if it understood n-grams)

[1] [http://www.sentimentview.com/#examples](http://www.sentimentview.com/#examples)

<comment><USER7> Yes, all very good points. I didn't use a neutral category, as it's difficult to gauge whether a tweet should be neutral. I've thought of detecting them based upon news-speakish tweets, as you've pointed out. That would require its own machine learning run, just to sort out neutral from containing-sentiment.

Also keep in mind, different topics work better. The term "election" has a lot of news headlines, which many are probably neutral, skewing the results. More consumer-ish topics yield better results. But yes, tweets are difficult to analyze. I've done another recent experiment with tweet analysis, if you like this kind of stuff [http://primaryobjects.com/CMS/Article158.aspx](http://primaryobjects.com/CMS/Article158.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've found TextBlob to be a great tool.</comment>


EMF Detector with Compass a complete Android app - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.neotrait.emfpro&hl=en

<comment><USER2> Good one... Looking for some thing like this!! though needs liitle more improvement

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> +1</comment>


"feminists encourage women into tech even when their interests lie elsewhere" - <AUTHOR> http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm <comment><USER2> This analysis seems to confuse performance in tests with actual potential, then goes on to state evolutionary causes (without supporting evidence) as "probably" the cause, which is somewhat overreaching to say the least.

We've learned a lot about cognitive bias and the effect of mindset, priming, etc. since the 1960s. Enough to know that simply asking both genders to take a test is not a simple matter.

Eg. a recent study showed that boys performed better than girls at a reading test if they were told it was a game: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-boys- beat-girls-in-reading-1...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-boys-beat-girls- in-reading-1462202491)

Assume this is posted here either out of simple ignorance or trolling, or possibly both. Suggest reading Carol Dweck's Mindset book.

</comment><comment><USER3> even if it is over a decade old, this one has potential for maximum butthurt.

I'm going to go make some popcorn...</comment>


Someone Save Us From REST - <AUTHOR> http://wekeroad.com/2012/02/28/someone-save-us-from-rest/ <comment><USER2> Crack me up.

I am still learning programming the hard way - namely, by checking out how other folks do it, then struggling to do it myself. However, I've learned enough, I think, to get the impression that some people get rrrreeeallly attached to their architecture.

I have come to believe that all these models, "patterns" and such are very useful tools, but only that. Seems like we keep having these religous wars about language, patterns, architecture, whatever.

All of it is only useful as long as it, well, useful. When the "architecture" starts hindering the function, it has stopped doing it's job.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to be a programmer like you, then I took a Paradigm to the ... sorry, I can't do it.

You raise very good points though are we asking to be saved from REST or REST Pedants who argue about minutia ?

</comment><comment><USER4> I have not yet seen any application that would be improved by full HATEOAS. Fielding argues that you need it if you intend to be around for decades. Guess what, the Flickr API is verging on a decade and it's still doing fine.

Some things in the Flickr API could be nicer with more HATE. For instance, currently, the client needs to know how to turn a returned photo ID into a URL. Fielding would ask why the API doesn't just return URLs in the first place. (One answer: because that would be inanely repetitive.)

But that's mostly cosmetic. Yes, we expect the client to translate IDs to page URLs, but we also expect it to understand what the difference between a photo and a user is.

Nobody has explained to me how "Hypermedia" APIs are supposed to be traversable without a programmer embedding significant domain knowledge into the library anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> You're going to need a ControllerFactory for those Controller's; but at least you're using MVC. Did you remember to not have your Singleton instance instantiated until its first call?

Programming is an art as well as a science; and those papers were guides to direct us toward something useful, not to be followed as creed and memorized to be recited in a religious ceremony. The sooner people learn that, the better.

In all, I agree with your the post.

</comment><comment><USER6> What, an methodology that encourages (pedants note: I did not say mandates) a CRUDdy API, where resources are grouped together behind different urls, making automated interactions of any significance an almost hilariously slow series of HTTP requests (oh, oh, oh, keep alive!) while at the same time giving the API designer a smug sense of satisfaction and accomplishment might be worth looking at skeptically?

Naaaaaaaaaah.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice explanation from Glenn on both implementation decisions - both separate controllers and different url's: [http://codebetter.com/glennblock/2012/02/28/why-are- there-2-...](http://codebetter.com/glennblock/2012/02/28/why-are- there-2-controllers-in-the-asp-net-web-api-contactmanager-example-rest-has- nothing-to-with-it-2/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Brilliant post with intended humor. I see some bigger points here, beyond the discussion of REST. Like a satire on design and (over) engineering.

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome post. Love how Rob questions things and stirs the pot. Several good points.</comment>


Universal Basic Robot (why I think a Basic Robot is better than Basic Income) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/future-feed/universal-basic-robot-2b6e795dfdc0 <comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to offer this thought as an alternative to one more give money to everyone proposal that has been popping up all over on news sites.

</comment><comment><USER2> ok, I missed it. What's basic robot? The author never defines it as far as I can tell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Universal Basic Robot is a reference to the concept that we can provide everyone a service robot that can perform all the actions necessary to ensure their housing, food and healthcare needs. This is a new idea - the prospect of creating such a versatile helperbot is not new however. Just the concept of giving everyone one instead of giving everyone a stipend.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the definition, interesting idea. I hope people start to define how this can be accomplished. I've heard for a while now about basic income but I've yet to read how it can be implemented given our current social environment. I rather read more about how to make it a reality rather than it's good or bad. Like everything, it can be debated for ever but we won't really know it's benefits or shortcomings unless it's put into place. The basic income advocates have started with pilot projects which is good. It would be nice to at least start the discussion on how to implement it for basic robot.</comment></comment></comment>


Push Journalism vs. Pull Journalism - <AUTHOR> https://phillipadsmith.com/2019/02/push-journalism-vs-pull-journalism.html <comment><USER2> TL, DR:

Push journalism is what's happening now:

\- The reporter has a hunch about a story

\- The reporter checks with a couple of sources and their editor

\- The story is published

\- Then everyone in the organization PUSHES LIKE HELL to get the story in front of as many people as possible

Pull journalism would be the alternative (better) approach:

\- Have a hunch about a problem that people might be experiencing

\- Interview those people – perhaps a dozen of them – and listen for signals that your hunch is correct

\- Also listen for signals that your hunch is incorrect

\- Formulate a hypothesis based on these conversations about what might address the problem

\- Go back to those dozen people, if possible, and present your work. Rinse. Repeat.

\- Publish it, and then present it to all of the people that you've spoken with and ask them, if they believe it's useful, to let people know.

<comment><USER3> One issue that immediately comes to mind is that the people you're interviewing often don't want the story covered, or they want it covered in a way that promotes their angle on the issue. The "go back and present your work" part collapses there because they're going to be actively fighting against publishing, not promoting it. I'm not sure what adversarial journalism looks like under the pull model.

<comment><USER4> That's handled by going to multiple people. If you are seeing fighting by all or some people, or if you have conflicting information, that's a story in itself.

The important part is going to those people in the first place, whether they cooperate or not. You generally get a good idea of what's going on when you present later collected facts to people and get their reaction.

Treat it like a police investigation, you don't just interview a witness once, you interview them, go interview people from their statement, then come back and interview them again to see if everything matches up with what everyone said.

<comment><USER5> > Treat it like a police investigation, you don't just interview a witness > once, you interview them, go interview people from their statement, then > come back and interview them again to see if everything matches up with what > everyone said.

Lying to the police can lead to charges like obstruction of justice, filing a false police report, lying to the FBI, etc.

Journalists don't have this weapon in their quiver. Unless you're going to propose giving journalists subpoena power, your "come back and interview them again" approach simply isn't going to work.

<comment><USER4> The article is the charge. Like I said, if they don't comment then note that in the article, and ask others.

If noone comments then note that in the article.

<comment><USER5> "Treat it like a police investigation" without giving journalists police _powers_ (which they rely _heavily_ upon to complete an investigation) results in a pretty pointless process.

<comment><USER4> Since when is verifying facts a pointless process?

<comment><USER5> There are many other ways to verify facts versus an interview with a reluctant/belligerent subject of a piece.

<comment><USER4> Such as?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a rather confusing list of grievances. I have no idea why it's being upvoted, except maybe that any broadside against journalism currently finds its audience?

As far as I can tell, the author mostly wants journalists to focus more on what people want to read.

That's rather surprising, considering the criticism usually revolves around journalists writing too much _for the market_ , i. e. the perennial complaints about page view maximisation, buzzfeed's big clickstream leaderboard, too much political horse-race coverage, emotional storytelling, etc etc.

In fact, the article here makes this point almost explicit: "newsrooms aren't empathizing, prototyping, or testing their work with their audience before they publish." Count me among those quite happy with newsrooms not deciding coverage on the basis on "empathizing and prototyping". Because that would seem the quickest path into the filter bubble.

The article also ignores that most journalism already reaches its audience by what I would consider "pull", in as far as the concept has any meaning: I pay for magazines and a newspaper, and follow some publications and journalists on twitter or RSS.

The author complains about journalists "PUSHES LIKE HELL" (all-caps theirs). I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, really. Posting the article to Twitter and Facebook? The author lists "[..] email blasts, social media campaigns – and, possibly worst of all, paid social media campaigns". The first two seem completely benign, except that they are phrased to suggest some sort of malfeasance. A newsletter you presumedly signed up for is not an "email blast", it's just an email. Nor are social media posts the same as "social media campaigns". As to paid social media posts, I rarely if ever see see any paid advertising for individual stories. Does anybody?

Another complaint is journalists ignoring facts contradicting their pet theories, and not asking sources that would contradict them. That's a complaint seemingly completely unrelated to the article's main thesis. But in any case, it's mostly fantasy. Read any article in, say, Politico, The Atlantic, or the NYT and you will find either a quote from the subject of an article, or a statement such as "XYZ declined to comment / did not reply to a request for comment".

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't really see the relevance, at least wrt journalism with high stakes like the national security beat:

[https://theintercept.com/2014/12/19/senior-cia-officer- cente...](https://theintercept.com/2014/12/19/senior-cia-officer-center- torture-scandals-alfreda-bikowsky/)

How could that possibly have been published using the "pull" method?

But most importantly, it seems like a red herring. Regardless of push or pull, the significant question for national security reporting is this: does the news gathering organization have enough money and prestige for a legal and PR team large enough to publish against the objections and pressures coming from the government?

If the answer is yes, you've got yourself a functioning national security division. If the answer is no, you're that "knucklehead" just asking to be made an example of, and you (wisely) don't publish the name[1].

I'm sure a lot of other types of news require similarly strong teams to write meaningful news stories against the wishes of other large and powerful organizations.

Edit: "knucklehead" quoting the ACLU lawyer's advice to that independent journalist. I personally admire his work on that story, and he's mentioned in the Intercept piece. :)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeEB6F8fmbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeEB6F8fmbY)

</comment><comment><USER8> this is a list of broad criticisms of journalism, not a radical new approach to journalism.

> journalists don't contact enough sources for stories

> journalists ignore sources which contradict their initial assumptions

> journalists don't work closely enough with their sources in writing their > story

> journalists tell stories which are not useful to their audience

> journalists should use a grassroots network of interested individuals to > spread word about new stories instead of traditional mass media channels of > distribution

<comment><USER9> It feels that a majority of the issues you have listed is mainly due to resources.

> Not enough resource to reach out to a wide number of sources, especially > when you know some stories will not pan out.

> If something goes against a journalist's assumption, it can make their story > null. This can jeopardize their career and cost a lot of resources to the > company

> In order to sell, journalists may emphasize the areas that makes the story > look juicy, besides, not all sources are reliable.

> The industry requires businesses to keep throwing watered-paper at the wall > to see if it sticks. It is the incentive it has to remain afloat. Besides, > what is useful to person X may not be useful to person Y (think of horoscope > for example).

> Some journalists will find it more profitable to sell to the mass media or > work a 'cosier' job in mass media instead of grassroot networks. Similar to > someone going to work for a FAANG instead of a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Author of the post in question here. Thanks for the thoughtful commentary. Always nice to stumble on a conversation about something I've written that I assume nobody has read. :)

Few quick responses to some of the themes that you've all surfaced:

The essay is coming from the context of my own work, which is focused on public-service journalism and local journalism. These types of journalism can result in different types of reporting products, e.g., [https://projects.propublica.org/chicago- tickets/](https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/) Many of us in the industry consider these types of products "journalism," but they are not necessarily what comes to mind for most.

National security reporting (The Intercept) and national reporting of any kind, are for sure different beasts, and beat to a different drum. National reporting, as pointed out, tends to report what has happened. National security reporting is typically adversarial reporting, and -- as pointed out -- the concept of pull journalism is probably not a fit there.

However, in the context of local and public-service journalism -- where, when it works well, it aims to explain "the climate not the weather" (i.e., _why_ something is happening, not simply that it happened) -- I believe there is an opportunity to do a better job "centering the user" in the conversation about what to report, and -- frankly -- what the reporting product looks like (Is it written? Is it video? Is it a database? Is it a podcast?).

All that to say, the essay simply proposes that there are patterns in journalism that have become cemented over the decades, and that re-thinking these patterns in the context of the changes that have occurred in the way people consume and interact with information are worth exploring for new journalism undertakings.

Three cents! :)

P.S. Thanks for catching the typos!

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand what the author's issue is with what he describes as "push". Sounds like how an investigative journalism project is supposed to play out. Couple of things:

> The reporter has a hunch about a newsworthy story that hasn't being told yet

A 'hunch' isn't something an editor signs off on when budgets are low as it is. More like "a reporter gets a lead about a newsworthy story".

> Then everyone in the organization PUSHES LIKE HELL to get the story in front > of as many people as possible in the hope that it will reach the people who > need that information the most

This seems like what the author has an issue with. If it's their story, they have the right to push it across whatever channels they have at their disposal. Today they use paid social. Yesterday, they may have used newsstands, or a syndication agreement with another publication.

What's the big deal?

</comment><comment><USER12> Coming from a field where "worse is better" has been the motto for a while, I don't think pull journalism seems like something that is going to really work.

<comment><USER13> Nice rule of thumb. "worse is better" would instead imply that solutions to the identified problems aren't likely to be implemented in some pure solution, but something much messier and more practical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > A few months back, I sat down for a coffee with a with a journalist who was > starting a new a regional news project.

What about proofread journalists? :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> There are some fundamental misunderstandings here about what journalism is and how it's produced.

 _> [H]ere's how I see push journalism:_

 _The reporter has a hunch about a newsworthy story that hasn't being told yet_

Most journalism doesn't start with a reporter's hunch; it starts because _something happened somewhere_. President Trump offended somebody; two soldiers were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan; the local factory announced it's laying off 10% of its workforce; the city council voted against filling the pothole on Main Street. _Something happened_ , an editor decided that thing was newsworthy, and now the reporter's task is to tell the reader about it.

Because of this, most reporters don't spend time thinking Big Thoughts about long-term trends. They tell a story of _something that happened_ , and then move on to the next thing that happened while they were writing about the other thing. Hence the saying that "journalism is the first rough draft of history" ([https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/08/on-the-trail- of-...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/08/on-the-trail-of-the- question-who-first-said-or-wrote-that-journalism-is-the-first-rough-draft-of- history.html)). Explaining long-term trends is what historians do. Journalists do something different; they tell people _what happened._

Most of the other misunderstandings in the piece fall out from this one. Journalists don't look for solutions to problems, they don't even look for _problems_ ; they look for _things that happened._ (Which is why problems like "the President offended somebody" get more coverage than problems like "in twenty years climate change will drown us all" \-- the President's offense is _something that happened_ , the creeping, inexorable apocalypse is something that _hasn 't happened_ yet.) Journalists have neither the time nor the need to consult twelve sources for every story; they're not looking to determine the ideal response to some problem, they're just looking to tell people about _something that happened_ , and you only need two or three independent confirmations that something happened to be able to say with reasonable certainty that it did in fact happen. And most journalists aren't "PUSH[ING] LIKE HELL to get the story in front of as many people as possible"; when they've told the story of one thing that happened, they move on to the next one. Things are always happening, after all.

None of which is to say that this process is necessarily _ideal_ , of course. (Few things in the world are.) Just that, if you want to reform journalism, you have to start with a firm grounding in what journalism _is_. And journalism is not a quest for product-market fit, or a flavor of historiography, or an attempt to figure out What It All Means. Journalism is _telling people about things that happened,_ and the further you get from that elemental task, the less what you're doing can be considered journalism.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't know much about journalism but I follow a lot of journalists on Twitter. (And I play a doctor on TV). Aside from coverage of Donald Trump, where in the past he has basically acted as the assignment editor for all of mainstream media -- I don't think this characterization of journalism is correct. For instance, the fact that the title of 'assignment editor' exists helps to dispel the effectiveness of "hunch" based reporting.

A lot of the high quality journalism I'm attracted to (NYT, This American Life, etc.) seems to be more "pull" than "push"... journalism through other media (namely TV and video) seems to be more oriented towards PUSH, while print, especially from older outlets (TIME, NYT, WaPo) seems more PULL.

<comment><USER17> > A lot of the high quality journalism I'm attracted to (..., This American > Life, etc.)

 _This American Life_ is journalism? I wouldn't call it that. It's more nonfiction storytelling, which isn't journalism in the same way someone's autobiography isn't journalism.

<comment><USER18> TAL does sometimes engage in journalism. Here are a couple of excerpts from the site below about journalism, I think some TAL pieces meet these criteria:

"Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities."

"That value flows from its purpose, to provide people with verified information they can use to make better decisions, and its practices, the most important of which is a systematic process – a discipline of verification – that journalists use to find not just the facts, but also the 'truth about the facts.'"

[https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism- essentials...](https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism- essentials/what-is-journalism/)

<comment><USER17> > TAL does sometimes engage in journalism....I think some TAL pieces meet > these criteria:

Give examples.

<comment><USER18> > Give examples.

A little politeness costs nothing.

From this week's episode, New Sheriffs in Town. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/669/scrambling-to-get- off-t...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/669/scrambling-to-get-off-the- ice/act-one-2)

It's similar to other work by Zoe Chace, like this story reporting from Jeff Flake's office around the Kavanaugh hearings. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/658/the-unhappy- deciders/ac...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/658/the-unhappy-deciders/act- one-6)

BTW, TAL calls what it does journalism. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/about](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/about)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What You Can Learn from How Warren Buffett's Investment Process Evolved - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/garymishuris/2018/12/07/what-you-can-learn-from-how-warren-buffetts-investment-process-evolved/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

> Buffett considered it exceptionally rare for a business with a strong > competitive advantage and the resulting high return on capital to be able to > redeploy capital back into the business at similar rates of return. If such > a business could be found it would be the perfect business: strong > competitive advantage with accompanying high returns on invested capital, > high returns on incremental capital that can be redeployed back into the > business, and a large amount of capital that can thus be redeployed over > time. The result would be a compounder – a business that could both generate > sustainably high returns and grow at above-average rates for a long time.

In the article they mention Geico as a good investment, which it was, but we could extend the same sentiment to his heavy purchase of Apple securities as of late. Apple has a lot of cash on hand, ready yo be put back into the company for further growth, as well as incredible profit margins and a huge "moat" in the brand name.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking to outsource web development of my site/app - <AUTHOR>

Im taking some advice I got earlier this week on HN and will begin to look to outside companies to help with the development of my website/app . Do any of you have some suggestion on which companies to use???
Some quick site specs  ....
E-Commerce website with pinterest like interface with ability for users to interact with products in real time and for other users to see the results of that interaction in real time.
Suggestions on anything; companies to look at , pricing , programming languages is welcome <comment><USER2> On the first of every month, there are two submissions to HN from user "whoishiring" [1] where the first submission is companies looking to hire [2], and the second is those looking for freelancers or looking for freelancing work [3].

I mention both since some of the firms hiring could be what you're after, or you could possibly go the freelancing route.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring>

[2] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5304169>

[3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5304173>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking thru the links now good stuff Thanks I appreciate you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Derek Sivers has a good post on outsourcing development: <http://sivers.org/how2hire>

Here are the steps Derek suggests:

1\. Reduce your big idea to "Version 1.0"

2\. Write a simple overview of what it does

3\. Write a detailed walk-through of every click

4\. Break it up into milestones

5\. Make your first milestone a stand-alone project

6\. Post it at elance, guru, odesk, vworker

7\. Hire one from each

8\. Continue with the one you like best

</comment><comment><USER4> A general recommendation: make sure your specs are very explicit about what you want and how it should work and think through the edge cases beforehand.

<comment><USER5> A different but related recommendation - hire one of the Whoishiring thread to help you think through those edge cases and deliver tests /specs and _then_ hire someone to work on it.

<comment><USER6> I never saw some case about it, but that sounds like a great idea. I outsourced all the development of my startup and is very hard to transform all your vision on specs. I do have a very logical mind, but that is more about knowing what technology to use than being able to describe the features. An i itial, experienced, trusting consultant may help a lot.

Also, try learn the basics of coding and software engineering so you can better manage this outsourcing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice Im currently taking courses at codeacademy so I can have some basic understanding I love this community people are genuinely eager to give good advice I appreciate it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Research Blog: Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts Are Broken - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-nearly.html <comment><USER2> From 2006, so 12 years old.

There was a whole bunch of code that failed around that time, once memory sizes approached the addressing range of 32-bit integers.</comment>


Things the Google Play Store Should Add, Change - <AUTHOR> http://aschuenemann.com/things-the-google-play-store-should-add-slash-change

<comment><USER2> I've added it as a comment to the blog, but to keep it central, I'll add it here:

Having migrated from iOS to Android, the thing I miss the most is 'does this app contain In App Purchases, and if so, which one'. For me it's mostly a critical criteria to either download it (if it's a lite version, containing an IAP for the full one, ie the non-consumable as you call it) or a skip it (if it contains 'buy 15000 pieces of gold for $5, ie the consumables).

At the moment, I trust almost none of the games on Android, since even some of the ones you buy contain IAP, and there's no way to find out before installing them.

<comment><USER3> I also one of those terrible Android users that pretty much populates my phone with just free apps. Navigating play to sort out the free from the paid apps is an unbelievable chore. I'm not going to buy an app when I'm looking for free ones, period. Having no way to simply browse free apps makes the play store so unusable that I never actually go to it.

On the occasion that I _do_ want to buy an app, I never find it through the store either, it's 100% a referral from someplace else.

<comment><USER4> What are you talking about? It's very easy both on the phone and on the desktop to browse free apps and games.

Free apps list: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/topselling_fre...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/topselling_free)

Free games list: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/GAME/collection/...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/GAME/collection/topselling_free)

They also break down paid vs free in specific categories, like free finance apps: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/FINANCE/collecti...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/FINANCE/collection/topselling_free)

<comment><USER5> I think he means he wants free apps that have no IAPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would add: a better way to handle spam / hate reviews on your app's page on google play. Personally I've got a couple that for some reason keep appearing before great positive reviews, although the hate ones were down voted by many.

</comment><comment><USER7> It has beta testing [https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answ...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answer/3131213?hl=en)

<comment><USER8> I think he wants Google Play to serve alphas and betas as live apps to the public with a small warning tag:

"Google could provide an open Alpha/Beta system which lists the app on the Play Store as they normally would, but the app would have an Alpha/Beta tag next to the name so that users know what they're getting into. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Google Play Store should add an API. iOS is far ahead in API access to the data about apps compared to Android.

</comment><comment><USER10> everytime when i use google play store's searching service, i would say `fuck you google` again.</comment>


Rackspace and Github accused of patent infringement - <AUTHOR> http://news.priorsmart.com/api/0.1/litigations/txedce-139822/Complaint.pdf?oauth_body_hash=2jmj7l5rSw0yVb%2FvlWAYkK%2FYBwk%3D&oauth_nonce=33051896&oauth_timestamp=1347971999&oauth_consumer_key=2037219&oauth_signature_method=HMAC-SHA1&oauth_version=1.0&lituser=6092217&oauth_signature=%2BuAZojm81O61tJ2ouwuSm2QdRGA%3D&ls=2012-09-18

<comment><USER2> This smells like a test case. If PersonalWeb wins this, it would seem that their purchased patent bundle would allow them to effectively squeeze all 'cloud' providers. They certainly have the big legal guns in McKool Smith. Sadly, it seems more lucrative to build tax castles all up and down the river and demand tribute than it does to create and sell actual goods and services.</comment>


Kindle 2 Petition - Everyone Should have access to E-books - <AUTHOR> http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/We-Want-To-Read <comment><USER2> This is access in the sense that visually impaired people are affected by Amazon's decision to allow publishers to disable text-to-speech on their books; rather than access in the sense that everyone should get a free Kindle.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I was going to comment strongly _against_ that assumed second meaning; that first one I have more mixed opinions about.</comment></comment>


Another Metroid 2 Remake v1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://metroid2remake.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> Since there is no official Mac version (yet) I created a quick-and-dirty standalone wrapper .app using Wineskin Winery. It works really well and can be downloaded here:

[http://www14.zippyshare.com/v/owU5nvIE/file.html](http://www14.zippyshare.com/v/owU5nvIE/file.html)

(Needless to say: install and run at your own risk!)

<comment> w0rd-driven This is perfect so far. With the xbox 360 OSX driver this plays really well. This should be the official non-official port for the time being.

Is packaging it in Wineskin Winery tricky? My only concern is with updates and if I had to package it myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also check out Hyper Metroid, the Super Metroid romhack, a completely new and much bigger game, with new graphics and many new mechanics. It's superb.

[http://www.hyper.metroidconstruction.com/](http://www.hyper.metroidconstruction.com/)

<comment><USER4> Nice. SM is one of my favorite games of all time so hopefully this one will scratch the itch too!

<comment><USER5> If you haven't already dealt with the patching annoyance, [https://a.cocaine.ninja/ytcdwm.smc](https://a.cocaine.ninja/ytcdwm.smc) will save you some time. Also I think worth mentioning: I've been playing SM since it came out, and Hyper is the first game in a very long time that inspired the same feeling of exploring a new world that I remember from my first playthroughs of NES Metroid and Super. Enjoy!

<comment><USER3> Ori and the Blind Forest will also give you that super metroid fluid movement fix. It's bloody excellent.

<comment><USER5> Beautiful, too. Probably heartbreaking, if the trailer's any guide. Sold. Thanks for the rec.

<comment><USER3> The story is somewhat undermined by the fact that someone at ms made them draw all the dialogue text in the windows 8 font. TBH I cant make much sense of the plot. The game is awesome though.

Being an experienced metroid player, you'll probably want to put it on hard mode from the start, although you can switch at any time.

Also make sure you get the newly released Definitive Edition, which has some extra stuff in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mind boggling - the guy has nice working animations going back to 2009

[http://metroid2remake.blogspot.com/p/about- project.html?m=1](http://metroid2remake.blogspot.com/p/about-project.html?m=1)

Incredible perseverance to ship it after close to a decade of work!

<comment><USER7> In fact, at least since 2008...

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080615000000*/http://metroid2r...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080615000000*/http://metroid2remake.blogspot.com) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owSldu1CRSo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owSldu1CRSo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A minor program note: the blog says that a native Linux version is coming soon. However, the Windows version runs perfectly for me using Wine 1.8 on Ubuntu 16.04. There's no need to wait.

As a now grown person who owned the original Metroid 2 on Game Boy, I'm loving this remake.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iM26OGIH1o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iM26OGIH1o)

Though I'm a fan of video game music and remixes, I'm very picky about them. Especially when it's reinstrumented. (I'm yet to find a remix of Kraid's Hideout from Metroid 1 that's anywhere near as good as the original.) But this remix from Metroid 2 works pretty well.

<comment><USER10> _But this remix from Metroid 2 works pretty well_

Eh, to each their own I suppose. I was really excited about this remake when I saw the graphics. Watching the video you linked dampened my enthusiasm.

I grew up on Metroid 2. I remember playing it outside the principal's office in school! The music is dark and haunting and unlike anything I've heard since.

<comment><USER11> To be fair, the piece remixed in that video is one of the only "traditional" musical tracks in the game, and I think the remix works pretty well. But I share your concerns: I hope that the later parts of the game, where music is replaced with weird sounds and background noises, retain the wholly alien feeling of the original.

Metroid 2 is relatively forgotten compared to Metroid and Super Metroid, but its graphics and sound build up a sense of tension and uneasiness in a way that they don't match, I think. This blog post articulates my feelings on the music of Metroid 2 pretty well: [http://www.jonas-kyratzes.net/2007/03/15/the- music-of-metroi...](http://www.jonas-kyratzes.net/2007/03/15/the-music-of- metroid-ii/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing that post. It echoed many of the thoughts I'd had about the game. The sheer genius of Metroid 2 is how well it juxtaposes the ruins of a lost civilization with the sheer alien horror of the "jungle" that is taking over. The music and sounds don't just complement that, they play a starring role in the creation of that tension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know what the chances are that Nintendo will force a take down of this? I know they tend to enforce their rights very strongly on YouTube, not sure what their track record is for these matters outside of that.

<comment><USER13> It uses their intellectual property and content Game Boy Advance versions of Metroid. Chances are Nintendo will take it down same as when they killed the remake of Mario 64.

<comment><USER14> And Chrono Resurrection... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Resurrection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Resurrection)

<comment><USER15> Mmm, this was Square Enix stopping it though, not Nintendo. Nintendo was silent on the Chrono Resurrection project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Despite Metroid being my favorite game series, I never played Metroid 2 on the GB. So I'm excited to play a nice modernized version (a la Zero Mission). Also, yes, it runs well in wine :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Metroid is an absolutely fantastic game series and it's amazing that fans are doing things like this while keeping a continuity with the story and game mechanics/art.

</comment><comment><USER18> Super fun, great music and awesome art work. I'll keep playing this.

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh man, I loved this game. I still have the original cart + my old gameboy from when I was a kid. Having your own pet Metroid was so cool.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hope you all downloaded the file when it was available. The file has been taken offline due to a DMCA takedown.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:31059585e68123d095871d3169899cd900b77213&dn=AM2R%20v1.0

</comment><comment><USER21> This is amazing! Already 40% through. I love some of the new puzzles added as well as the bosses. So glad to see this finished!

</comment><comment><USER22> It's Amazing, I played it whole

I wonder where are more of the secret areas...

</comment><comment><USER23> love the music</comment>


Apparatus with Magnets - <AUTHOR> https://www.notion.so/Apparatus-with-Magnets-Intro-2e32af5b59b64a45b3b203408374a56e <comment><USER2> It's interesting how far software lags behind hardware. We've had touch screens for ~15 years and we still don't know how to use them. I'm glad there are people pushing the envelope for direct manipulation UIs.

<comment><USER3> I think the first time I used a touch screen was at Arby's to order my meal around 30 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of those web pages I can't scroll down using the space bar.

<comment><USER5> Because this is Notion, it's supposed to be used as a notebook(although they call it pages), not as a webpage. Until now I didn't even know you could share them like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Uggg...please don't hijack the standard scrolling or the Up/Down/PageUp/PageDown buttons. When I see this, I just leave immediately.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Implementation of "rules" - i.e. "point is on the line" - using magnets.</comment>


ROI on T-shirts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sourceninja.com/roi-t-shirts/

<comment><USER2> Great analysis! I've been working on a startup merchandising site (StartupThreads) so I think about this a good deal. A few tips from working with companies:

1) Make it interesting - Tie your design into the ethos of what your customers care about. This can compelling beyond just your logo/brand (An Example by CloudMine: <http://on.fb.me/MD9E0W> and AngelHack <http://on.fb.me/Mmn8CM>)

2) Fit & Quality Matters - Spend the extra few dollars to get a decent American Apparel shirt, as it will fit better and stand out amongst the bargain bin shirts that most startups hand out (order womens sizes, guys). Increases the likelihood that they will wear it more than average shirt.

3) Make It Exclusive - There are varying strategies on this, but it is my observation that giving it out to those who really care about your company is the best way to go. You don't want the receiver to feel like you are bribing them to try their service/product. It works better if you are thanking them for their loyalty, as you help to solidify that relationship.

4) Reduce Your Colors - Most t-shirts that you are going to put out are screen printed and the cost varies based on the amount of colors used in the design. You can get great results with a one color shirt (see stripe: <http://on.fb.me/MHG7Hp> or foursquare: <http://foursquarestore.com/shop/product/SH_MayorCrown>). Even if you have a multicolor logo, there are likely ways to represent it with less colors and still communicate the same things.

5) Ask If The Printers Save Screens - If you are screen printing, have your printer save the screens they use, as it is a fixed cost that can save you money on subsequent runs

6) Vector Artwork (!!!) - Make sure your designer creates vector versions of your logo for print (bonus points if they do different versions for varying amounts of colors). You do not want your logo to look jagged when printed, so the best bet is to play it safe with a vector version of all artwork. (I spend most of my time dealing with this, actually)

Working on a full post on this, will get it out soon!

<comment><USER3> Awesome complementary wisdom to a great post. Thanks Frank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting methodology. Some thoughts:

(1) 12 times is way too low for number of wears. I'm probably extreme, but I've got tech shirts that could apply for a drivers license; I've easily worn some of them hundreds of times -- let's say every other week for the last 500+ weeks. (The older shirts are too worn thin/ragged to wear in public any more though.)

(2) I'm not sure CTR is going to be as high as an explicit ad. Clicking a link is a fairly low barrier, and still only gets a 0.14% conversion. CPC is probably the wrong model to apply; you might want to look at it as traditional advertising and apply a CPM. For what it's worth, I'd bet that your conversion rate would be higher than average since the visitor has already qualified themselves somewhat more than just a casual clickthrough.

(3) For all of the times I've worn those tech shirts, I can only recall a couple of times when someone has actually talked to me about one of the shirts. Once (a nice polo shirt with embroidered logo) I was asked if I worked for the company (which was somewhat well known) -- the answer was no. The other time was when a fan of the by-then defunct company mentioned on the shirt remarked that it was too bad the company had imploded.

(4) I've gotten free t-shirts that required very little engagement on my part with the company. E.g. rackspace sent me a shirt several years ago I think just for answering a survey; I've never been a customer. Definitely consider giving shirts to people who can actually talk about you if someone _does_ ask about your company. IOW, the CPM on a "talking billboard" is worth more than on a static billboard.

<comment><USER5> > (1) 12 times is way too low for number of wears. I'm probably extreme, but > I've got tech shirts that could apply for a drivers license; I've easily > worn some of them hundreds of times -- let's say every other week for the > last 500+ weeks. (The older shirts are too worn thin/ragged to wear in > public any more though.)

Depends greatly on the quality of the shirt. I have shirts that have held up like you describe, and I have shirts that became unwearable after a half-dozen times. If you want to provide shirts, don't use the lowest bidder.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We did some ROI calculations on purchasing and distributing t-shirts. Do you guys think that we missed anything, or made the wrong assumptions?

<comment><USER6> Aside from it not being ROI, I thought it was as good as any guess. What I was hoping for was a clever way of measuring some of the things you assumed.

I think what you calculated is called customer acquisition cost. ROI is how much you made from your investment in a given time, usually as a multiple of the investment -- sometimes it's quoted in time to breakeven.

<comment><AUTHOR> Once I read this comment, I think it clicked. The result of what we calculated is customer acquisition cost. But, we were trying to figure out if T-shirts were worth the upfront cost. I am not a marketer, so I am 100% sure I am confused by the terminology.

<comment><USER6> To get ROI, you need to also know the value of a customer. If each customer pays 2 x Customer Acquisition cost in the first month, then the ROI is 2 in the first month. If it's a subscription, and 100% stay for a year, then it's 24 (or 2400%) in the first year.

Pro-ROI calculations take into account the time-value of money and taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a cool calculation, and the numbers seem pretty reasonable. One benefit from tshirts that isn't taken into account here is simple exposure -- even if someone who sees the shirt doesn't follow up on the company themselves, let alone become a user, they are at least more likely to remember and recall the name. (Coming from MIT, it seems like Palantir and Dropbox had a lot of success getting good word-of-mouth campaigns going because of their stylish shirts).

Also, quality does matter. An extra couple of dollars per shirt can make a disproportionately large increase in the number of times the shirt is worn.

<comment><USER8> Given we both just posted within two minutes of each other about how great the Dropbox t-shirts are I think we can conclude it was quite the investment for them!

<comment><USER6> Is this it? [http://stream.mcohen.me/entry/dropbox-t-shirt--- back-22-173....](http://stream.mcohen.me/entry/dropbox-t-shirt--- back-22-173.html) \-- this is great because it almost begs anyone who sees it to ask you what it means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why use Click-Through Rate to calculate return? Cost Per Impression would make a lot more sense to me, since it is closer to how traditional advertising is measured.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent point. We aren't traditional marketers and some of the terms are still newish to us. I will revisit the terminology of the article and update it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The formula you are using looks correct, but the value estimations are mostly wild-ass guesses, particularly the CTR. My own guess is that CTR for t-shirts would be much lower than traditional online ads, but who knows?

Suggestion: create a unique URL on the t-shirts so that you can test effectiveness-- a landing page for the t-shirt. That way you could even test alternative t-shirt designs, if you wanted to.

<comment><USER11> To me the CTR seems reasonable, if anything I would guess that 0.14% is a low estimate. The conversion rate on the other hand is sky high. Even for a free software product expecting a 7% conversion rate on fairly untargeted traffic is unreasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> T-Shirts are boring. That's why we give away embroidered socks! (with embroidered sock of course)

<http://pic.twitter.com/1M6w281b></comment>


All Nations Except U.S. Agree on Climate Accord at G-20 - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/all-nations-except-us-agree-on-climate-accord-at-g-20 <comment> a-zA-Z As a US citizen I find this incredibly bleak, but I hope the rest of the world pushes forward. I imagine at some point the US will try to get back on board.

</comment><comment><USER2> As an American, our country has become an embarrassment.

</comment><comment><USER3> How did the U.S. go from world leader to world laggard?

<comment><USER4> Gerrymandering, and the Citizens United supreme Court decision that let corporations contribute unlimited amounts of money to politicians.

<comment><USER5> I don't think either explain Trump's election. For the most part, corporations didn't back Trump and gerrymandering with in states doesn't have any affect on the presidential election.

Trump won because of the electoral college, a weak Democratic candidate, and because Trump unlike most mainstream Republican Presidential candidates pandered to people's baser instincts.

<comment><USER6> Gerrymandering has had a huge effect. I highly recommend reading _Ratf--cked_, it'll probably make you angry though.

<comment><USER5> Gerrymandering affects Senate and House races. Electoral votes for president are based on the entire state's population. How could gerrymandering affect the Presidential election?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First of all, this is extremely light on information, barely a paragraph.

Also, this is a completely non-binding, symbolic accord. Pure politics, only important for signaling value.

<comment><USER8> Then it should be effortless to agree to it.

But that would upset a portion of Trumps support base as well as his parties donors, which want to keep perpetuating the myth that climate change isn't real for as long as possible.

<comment><USER9> That cuts both ways. Signing it would have made a lot of people feel good without actually doing anything.

All the accords and agreements in the world will do nothing to help get us out of this mess. There is only one thing that will save us: technology. Clean energy sources, clean storage, more efficient use, etc. And it has to have a lower price across the board than what we already have, in order to ensure adoption. It also has to work just as well or better than what we already have, or no one will use it.

Nothing else will help, because no matter what pieces of paper are signed, people _will not_ give up their lifestyles and they _will not_ pay more for what they perceive as the same thing. They will continue to drive cars, fly, eat meat, and so on. And those around the world who are not already living that kind of lifestyle are working as hard as they possibly can to get there. The only thing that will be palatable is to give people things that they perceive as being just as good (or better), with the same or lower price tag. Nothing else will work.

Need an example? Just look at CFCs. Did the world stop using them because everyone cared about ozone? That's what everyone said at the time, but in reality the change only happened because there was an alternative that didn't come with a higher price tag and didn't have any significant disadvantages. We got lucky. If the alternative had cost even a tiny fraction of a penny more per unit, or not worked every bit as well as CFCs, industries across the world would have spent untold sums of money lobbying against it, calling ozone depletion a myth, and so on, just like we are seeing today with climate change.

If you truly care about climate change, you'll stop worrying about political agreements and start working on clean technology. Nothing else will work.

<comment><USER10> Not sure why the downvoting. This may come across as cynical but it's also realistic.

Climate change reminds me a lot of dieting. People say they want to do something about it, but in reality they don't truly want it because they can't tolerate the sacrifices required.

So we speak in aspirational tones: "I really _should_ lose some weight", "I _should_ eat better", "I _should_ exercise more", and then we turn around and go back to doing the same things as before.

Only with climate change we're fighting that at the _societal_ level.

The only solution is to correct incentives. Ideally that would mean: tax bad behaviour, subsidize good behaviour, and eliminate barriers to change.

But of those, only the last is possible, because the first two require government action that no one actually wants to take because, again, people _aspire_ to thwart climate change but don't actually want to make the necessary sacrifices to do anything about it.

And that last option, eliminating barriers, comes down to technology by making it cheaper and easier to not dump CO2 into the atmosphere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A sad day for US Science, a sad day for the world.

EDIT: Add second phrase.</comment>


Zhaoxin KX-6000 CPUs Purportedly Match Intel's Core I5-7400 in Performance - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-zhaoxin-kx-6000-core-i5-7400,39694.html <comment><USER2> It's history repeating. After ww2, Japanese electronics was the cheap stuff like we perceive Chinese products as today. During the 70s Japan caught up and got ready to overtake in certain fields. Surprise. Than this repeated with south Korea. Now China is getting ready.

And every time it's the same pattern. First it's "hah look they make these cheap inferior copies" then quality improves and gets on par so it changes to "well they just copy our products and then sell them for cheaper because labor costs are much lower" and then when they finally start to innovate and excel everybody is super surprised cause it was just stupid Japanese/Korean/Chinese copying our technology without really understanding it so how could they possibly make something on their own?

 _(yes, obviously not everybody, but this is pretty much a simplified /exaggerated version of the overall sentiment)_

<comment><USER3> That's totally true. The Chinese are also starting to aggressively go into distribution and finance. And unlike the Japanese and Koreans they aren't politically under the thumb of the US. They are big enough they can ignore the Washington Consensus.

That's where the big freakout is coming from.

<comment><USER4> The real freakout is that their government combines ruthless authoritarianism with suffocating surveillance technology, and they haven't even gotten started yet...

<comment><AUTHOR> For me the scariest part is the demonstration that capitalism works better under an authoritarian regime.

<comment><USER5> authoritarian regimes can start off very efficiently, but eventually collapse because of corruption. The corruption results in very inefficient allocation of capital. The chinese govt is very corrupt with an estimated million civil servants taking bribes.

If china is lucky xi jinping, who is now president for life, will be a great ruler for his whole life. If china is typical, he will make some bad decisions and the system will collapse.

<comment><USER6> > authoritarian regimes can start off very efficiently, but eventually > collapse because of corruption. The corruption results in very inefficient > allocation of capital. The chinese govt is very corrupt with an estimated > million civil servants taking bribes.

The PRC definitely has a lot more low-level corruption, but the US has enough high-level corruption to be concerning.

<comment><USER7> The PRC has lots of high level corruption as well. Much of the Chinese economy is already owned by a few powerful red families.

<comment><USER8> Ah no. Chinese economy is much bigger than something a few families can own.

<comment><USER9> Much and most are not synonymous in this context

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hold on now.. Neither the article nor the article it links to have any details on what it means by matching performance. No benchmarks are given or even mentioned, only many words written about how it has a 3ghz clock speed and how 3ghz is an "international mainstream standard".. Given the nontechnical nature of the publication, I would not be surprised if the clock speed was the only thing they were measuring by.

<comment><USER11> There are some benchmarks available on Geekbench with some of their current CPUs: [https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/12754288?baseli...](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/12754288?baseline=12740853)

Single core performance / IPC seems more comparable with Intel's Atom line, but that's still very impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Intel's monopoly handicapped Moore's law for a decade until competition reemerged.

<comment><USER13> Moore's law is about transistor density, and Intel is not responsible for its leveling-off; that'd be the order-of-magnitude increase in engineering challenge due to quantum effects at lower scales. There was plenty of competition to shrink die size (especially on mobile, a market Intel isn't even competing in) but everybody who got down to 10nm has just been stuck in the same molasses.

Intel _is_ responsible for sitting on its laurels re: highly-multicore processors and total TDP, don't get me wrong. But neither of those have anything to do with Moore's law. Ryzen CPUs are as big as Texas; we're scaling "out" rather than "down" now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anybody know if these chips require anything like Intel's IME or AMD's PSP? Could this be the answer Libreboot has been looking for?

<comment><USER15> I highly doubt one of the most authoritarian governments is going to produce a chip the libre community would use

<comment><USER16> I live under authoritarian government. The basic idea everybody here adheres to goes something like this: as long as you're going to be spied upon (and you are), it might as well be a country on the other side of the globe. We're in much greater danger from the shadowy types who are supposed to be protecting us from foreign actors (heh), than from the NSA. That's one reason why we proxy everything through US servers. So who knows…

<comment><USER17> I buy that logic so long as you:

1\. never travel overseas.

2\. the authoritarian govt doesn't run low on cash and start selling all this data to the highest bidder. very similar to fears about the Soviet nuclear stockpile after the fall of the Soviet Union.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And you won't be able to buy it outside China.

<comment><USER19> as I posted under [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20238207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20238207) you wont be able to buy them full stop. They are samples (if they ever existed at all). Afaik not a single device shipped with those CPUs ever. They are the product of: "National IC Investment Fund (called the "Big Fund") will mainly focus on three key sectors in the coming years, including memory, SiC/GaN compound semiconductor, and IC design with its application in IoT, 5G, AI, smart vehicles, etc."

~$75 billion by 2017

[https://press.trendforce.com/node/view/3025.html](https://press.trendforce.com/node/view/3025.html) direct non-repayable cash money funds up for grabs to anyone showing something on paper.

<comment> dis-sys > direct non-repayable cash money funds up for grabs to anyone showing > something on paper

If it is indeed that useless and wasteful, why the US is forcing China to stop such state funded initiatives? It is so far one of the key issues blocking the China-US trade talks.

Using your logic, US should just relax and sit back to watch China waste all its limited money on such highly corrupted projects and to have itself destroyed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a feeling this is the 80/20 rule. It's fast now, because it doesn't actually do everything, it's a sample.

Once they actually implement that final 20%, they'll realize it's harder than it looks, i.e. it's slower than before.

Things like cache coherence, thread isolation, hard stuff like that.

</comment><comment><USER21> If they keep up that pace they'll soon catch up fully

</comment><comment><USER22> Question... does Zhaoxin allow the public to audit their x86 microcode updates; that is, is/are their microcode/microcode update format(s):

a) Documented

b) Publicly Available/Transparent -- no NDA or paywall

c) Auditable

?

</comment><comment><USER23> Match as in performance, not IP, in case anyone else read that headline incorrectly. Very interesting, I wonder if it'll be available stateside

<comment><USER24> OK, we've added performance to the title above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My take on the headline was that Intel's I5 was copied exactly. Not the case. "Performance on par with..."

<comment><USER26> Mine as well, I believe it was intentionally click baitey.

However, it looks like they developed the tech in house, which is a testament to China's advances in R&D. I've long worked at semiconductor companies where employees wrote off Chinese tech as incompetent, but their ignorance and hubris was the thing China was relying on to move up the value chain organically.</comment></comment>


Jerks are deprecated, be nice - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flaper87.org/post/51f971da0f06d323de297e4d/

<comment><USER2> I think there's one thing thats been missed, and its that some people don't like being told they are wrong, and then get personally offended by being told that.

Sure, you can be nice about it, but some people just can't take it no matter how nice you are.

Being honest isn't being a jerk, its being kind.</comment>


YUI 2.7.0 on TaskSpeed » Yahoo User Interface Blog - <AUTHOR> http://yuiblog.com/blog/2009/04/13/yui-270-on-taskspeed/ <comment><USER2> Most significant paragraph from the whole piece:

 _Though YUI performs ably, it's my opinion that the numbers seen in TaskSpeed should be taken with a hefty grain of salt. The tests are designed to exercise library abstraction logic against DOM-intensive operations. The issue here is twofold:

1\. Not all libraries (YUI included) have abstraction logic for all of the specific tasks, which breaks the apples-to-apples comparison.

2\. And in order to get meaningful numbers, the test operations are iterated up to 500 times or performed against excessive numbers of nodes. In real-world cases, these conditions are not the norm, meaning the differences are exaggerated, perhaps even grossly._

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. When I was writing the TaskSpeed test-case for YUI; I definitely gather these same views a Luke. While working on the YUI test-case, Luke and I had some good discussions around our thoughts about the test. He did a great job bringing them together cohesively in this write-up.</comment></comment>


My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part Three - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-three/ <comment><USER2> Very much looking forward to the rest of this list. Obviously there are tons of lists on the topic, but his list has been slightly different so far, and his personal takes have been nice.

Here are the other two posts in the series:

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part- one/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-one/)

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part- two/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-two/)

And here are a few more links on this general topic in case anyone's not seen them before:

[http://cspray.github.io/my.so-archive/100-most- influential-p...](http://cspray.github.io/my.so-archive/100-most-influential- programming-books.html)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the- single-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most- influential-book-every-programmer-should-read)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38210/what-non- programmin...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38210/what-non-programming- books-should-programmers-read?lq=1)

[http://blog.codinghorror.com/recommended-reading-for- develop...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/recommended-reading-for-developers/)

<comment><USER3> Your link to "What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?" is broken. It appears the page has been deleted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good books it seems, but the one book I'd never seen before was the Thermodynamics book. He makes this claim:

"From my own experience this book can be worked through in two full nights"

Really? In my experience there's no way I could make it through a 150 page physics book in two nights, unless I already knew the material. And even then I think it would be tough.

That said, if this is a book I could do in two nights, and actually learn Thermodynamics -- then I'm all in!

<comment><USER5> I had a quick skim of the Project Gutenberg link another poster gave. I wouldn't recommend this book if you are looking for a modern understanding(from within the past 50 years), as it only covers classical thermodynamics, and not statistical mechanics. This book feels like it's over a century old, and while classical thermodynamics may seem simple and pure, it's not at all how scientists in the past 50 yrs would think about, model, or analyse such systems and processes.

It's really ironic that it's authored by Fermi but doesn't touch on quantum mechanical distributions, for example his own Fermi-Dirac distribution for ensembles of fermions such as electrons in a metal.

Modern approaches typically derive the thermodynamic laws from the underlying statistical properties of large system sizes. And are much more powerful since you can handle variances and higher moments beyond just the mean. And also let you apply quantum mechanics and to see how Fermions differ from Bosons, and derive cool things like the Blackbody spectrum, or Fermi energy of an electron gas.

Decent books are Reif, Kittel & Kroemer (we've used both these at undergrad level classes), or Landau Lifshitz volume 5, and one by Feynmann at the grad level.

Disclaimer - I TA'd stat mech / thermo four times during my PhD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Share what you are reading with the HN bookclub.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636361)

</comment><comment><USER7> Kind of wish he'd pick up the pace a bit...

</comment><comment><USER8> just a placeholder for later

<comment><USER9> Check out [https://delicious.com](https://delicious.com)!

<comment><USER10> Or [http://pinboard.in/](http://pinboard.in/)</comment></comment></comment>


The Blogosphere - how big and profitable it really is? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sharelomer.com/2010/07/blogosphere-market-stats-how-big-and.html

<comment><USER2> I would sooner believe that Obama has been captured by little green men flying on dragons and nobody noticed because of clever interference run by the Illuminati than believe any of these statistics.

<comment><USER3> Fred Wilson wrote on this a year and a half ago. I find his response a lot more realistic: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/01/avoiding-the-bi.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Great link, thanks pal. i also loved the review by Marc Andreessen [http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/andreessen-on-charlie- rose-...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/andreessen-on-charlie-rose-i-am- creating-a-fund-full-video/) who said we should stop the printed press and go digital...

<comment><USER4> RE: Stopping the printing press... If you have not yet read:

[http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and- thinking...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the- unthinkable/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of > $75,000 a year.

My programming blog has had about 110K+ visits over the past month (85K+ absolute unique visitors). It didn't make me $6K, not by a long shot. In fact, it made less than 1/10 of that.

Of course, if my blog was a shady site about Acai Berries, then perhaps the figures would be different. On average though, I have a hard time believing the numbers reported by the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Antonio,

This report was by technoarti in the state of the blogsphere 2008... I visited your blog @ <http://blog.antoniocangiano.com/> and it seems great, i will subscribe to it :)

I am so happy that you got this numbers, its always great to meet people who help others grow.

we need more services which will enable people bloogers who has traffic to make more revenue from ads and grow thei community...

Maybe we can think of something, i did not see any ads in your blog... will love to talk more @ firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER5> Hi Sharel,

I was actually referring to my biggest blog, <http://programmingzen.com>.</comment></comment></comment>